Status: 05.07.2021 4:12 a.m.
Foreign Minister Maas and his counterparts from Spain and Sweden have called on all nuclear powers to continue disarmament. The number of nuclear weapons is falling worldwide. However, more are operational than they were a year ago.
Before a meeting on nuclear disarmament in Madrid, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and his colleagues from Spain and Sweden called on all nuclear powers to significantly reduce their arsenals. “This could include downgrading the role of nuclear weapons in their strategies and doctrines, reducing the risk of conflict and accidental nuclear weapon use, further reducing nuclear inventories and laying the groundwork for a new generation of arms control agreements,” wrote Maas, Arancha González Laya and Ann Linde in a guest article for the “Rheinische Post” on the occasion of the meeting of the Stockholm Initiative for Nuclear Disarmament in Madrid.
“End nuclear weapons tests once and for all”
“We must end nuclear weapons tests once and for all by finally bringing the Treaty on the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty into force,” said Maas, González and Linde in the contribution. In addition, negotiations on a treaty banning the manufacture of fissile material for military purposes would need to be restarted and robust and credible capabilities for verifying nuclear disarmament steps built.
More nuclear weapons operational than a year ago
In the Stockholm Initiative, 16 countries have come together to promote the reduction of nuclear weapons around the world. After the meeting between US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin in mid-June, hopes for progress have grown again. The two largest nuclear powers in the world had agreed to discuss nuclear disarmament.
Leading peace researchers see signs of a worrying turnaround in global nuclear stocks. It is true that the total number of nuclear warheads continued to decline, according to the annual report published by the Stockholm peace research institute SIPRI in mid-June. According to estimates, there are now around 13,080 of them. However, more nuclear weapons are operational than there were a year ago.