The former US President Donald Trump kept a blackout on the number of warheads in the country. Now, the US State Department has published the number of nuclear warheads in the country stockpiles for the first time in 4 years. The military maintained 3,750 active and inactive nuclear warheads as of September 30, 2020. It is down by 55 from a year earlier and by 72 from the same date in 2017. The figure was also the lowest level since the US nuclear stockpile peaked at the height of the Cold War with Russia in 1967 when the total was 31,255 warheads. The numbers were released following an effort by the administration of President Joe Biden to restart arms controls talks with Russia after they stopped under the Trump administration.
The US State Department issued a statement and said, “Increasing the transparency of states’ nuclear stockpiles is important to nonproliferation and disarmament efforts”. Point to be noted that Trump pulled the United States from the Iran nuclear deal and the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) treaty with Russia. The United States also left another crucial pact, the New Start Treaty on the rocks last year before its scheduled expiration on 5th February. New Start caps the number of nuclear warheads held by Moscow and Washington, and its expiration would initiate a reversal of the reduction in warheads on both sides. Trump said he needed a new deal that includes China, which only has a portion of the warheads that the United States and Russia have.
President Joe Biden came into office on 20th January and immediately proposed a 5-year extension to New Start and Russian President Vladimir Putin quickly agreed on it. The deal caps at 1,550 the number of nuclear warheads that can be deployed by Moscow and Washington. The US and Russian diplomats held talks behind closed doors in Geneva last week. The event took place to start discussions on a successor to New Start and also controls on conventional weapons. A US official also called the talks productive, but both sides said the mere fact of holding the talks was positive. It is noteworthy that the United States had 5,550 warheads, compared to 6,255 in Russia, 350 in China, 290 in France, and 225 in Britain.