ANALYSIS – China's nuclear arsenal is growing at an alarming rate. Amid the growing global chaos coincidentally happening under Joe Biden, spending on nuclear weapons by the world's nine nuclear powers has increased by 13% to a record $91.4 billion during 2023.
This has in part been driven by a sharp rise in U.S. defense budgets, but most of the U.S. nuke spending so far has been to modernize and replace aging systems, not add more weapons to the U.S. inventory.
Russia, under Vladimir Putin, who has made numerous nuclear threats since invading Ukraine, has been on a tear adding advanced new nukes to its arsenal, including cruise missiles, hypersonics, submarine launched ballistic missiles and even a massive nuclear torpedo. Russia's nuke arsenal already outnumbers the U.S. 6,200 to 5,500 warheads. (RELATED: Biden's Failed Diplomacy Led To Russia Replacing US In Niger)
Meanwhile, China is dramatically expanding its nuclear capabilities at a furious pace. Both of these countries create the biggest threats to world security, but China leads the on growing its arsenal. (RELATED: US Plans For Drone ‘Hellscape' Against China In Taiwan Strait)
The combined nuclear weapons' spending in 2023 of China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the U.K. and U.S. breaks down to $2,898 a second, according to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).
Their report provides a stark and troubling overview of global nuclear weapons expenditure: it has surged by 34% in the past five years, from $68.2 billion to $91.4 billion annually, with a cumulative total of $387 billion during this period.
As always, these usually left-leaning sources claim that the United States' share of total spending, $51.5 billion, is more than all the other nuclear-armed countries put together.
But this claim always significantly understates spending by other nations, especially China and Russia. And it ignores what the money is being spent on.
Focusing more on capabilities and numbers of weapons is a far better gauge of where the real growth and dangers lie.
In the case of Russia, it's more about capabilities than numbers. Moscow has invested heavily on new types of nukes and nuclear delivery systems.
In China, it's about advanced weapons AND numbers. According to a new report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), China is also modernizing its nuclear arsenal and could have as many intercontinental ballistic missiles as the United States by 2030.
This, from having an arsenal a tiny fraction of America's size just five years ago, of roughly about 200 nukes.
It has since more than doubled.
So, what does China want?
According to one expert, it seems that Chinese dictator Xi Jinping believes that more powerful and numerous strategic capabilities will persuade the United States and others to treat China as “an equally powerful country that deserves respect – deserves to be treated equally.” (RELATED: America And China Compete For Vietnam As Xi Visits Hanoi)
The Washington Post just reported: “Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists nonprofit group and an associate senior fellow with SIPRI, said in a statement that China was ‘expanding its nuclear arsenal faster than any other country…'”
Based on the current trajectory, Beijing could have more than 700 warheads by 2027 and 1,000 by the end of the decade.
The Post added:
The expansion of China's capabilities came as SIPRI warned that even as the total number of nuclear warheads around the world was declining as Cold War-era weapons were phased out, there were steady year-on-year increases in the number of operational warheads that could be used quickly in the event of conflict.
About 2,100 deployed nuclear warheads are being kept in a state of “high operational alert” on ballistic missiles — and while almost all belong to Russia or the United States, China is believed to have placed some warheads on this level of alert for the first time, SIPRI found.
And it's China's dramatic expansion of its nuke force that is the most globally destabilizing.
The Post continued:
SIPRI's estimates aligned with figures recently included in a Pentagon report to Congress, which stated that China probably had “more than” 500 operational nuclear warheads by May and was “on track to exceed previous projections.”
At a recent conference on nuclear disarmament, a senior Biden administration official warned that the United States might need to deploy a greater arsenal of nuclear weapons if rivals such as Russia and China continue on this path.
This may be one of the few things I would agree with Team Biden, though the growth of our adversaries' military capabilities is partly due to Biden's weakness and appeasement.
President Donald Trump would be the best man to ensure America's nuclear superiority in the coming years.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
READ NEXT: Secret Service Agent Reports Unimaginable Experience While Biden Parties
