GENEVA: Nuclear-armed states spent more than $100 billion on their atomic arsenals last year, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) said on Friday, lamenting the lack of democratic oversight of such spending.

The group said Britain, China, France, Pakistan, India, Israel, North Korea, Russia and the United States together spent nearly $10bn more last year than in 2023.

The United States spent $56.8bn in 2024, followed by China at $12.5bn and Britain at $10.4bn, ICAN said in its flagship annual report.

Geneva-based ICAN won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its key role in drafting the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which took effect in 2021.

Some 70 countries have ratified it to date, four more have directly acceded to the treaty and another 25 have signed it, although none of the nuclear weapons states have come on board.

Hosting costs

This year’s report looked at the costs incurred by the countries that host other states’ nuclear weapons.

It said such costs are largely unknown to citizens and legislators alike, thereby avoiding democratic scrutiny.

Although not officially confirmed, the report said Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkiye were hosting US nuclear weapons, citing experts.

Meanwhile, Russia claims it has nuclear weapons stationed in Belarus, but some experts are unsure, it added.

The report said there was “little public information” about the costs associated with hosting US nuclear weapons in Nato European countries, citing the cost of facility security, nuclear-capable aircraft and preparation to use such weapons.

“Each Nato nuclear-sharing arrangement is governed by secret agreements,” the report said.

“It’s an affront to democracy that citizens and lawmakers are not allowed to know that nuclear weapons from other countries are based on their soil or how much of their taxes is being spent on them,” said the report’s co-author Alicia Sanders-Zakre.

Vested interests

Eight countries openly possess nuclear weapons:

the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, Pakistan, India and North Korea.

Israel is widely assumed to have nuclear weapons, although it has never officially acknowledged this.

According to ICAN, the level of nuclear weapons spending last year by these nine nations could have paid the UN budget almost 28 times over.

“The problem of nuclear weapons is one that can be solved, and doing so means understanding the vested interests fiercely defending the option for nine countries to indiscriminately murder civilians,” said ICAN’s programme coordinator Susi Snyder.

The private sector earned at least $42.5bn from their nuclear weapons contracts in 2024 alone, the report said.

There are $463bn in ongoing nuclear weapons contracts, some of which do not expire for decades, and last year, $20bn in new nuclear weapon contracts were awarded, it added.

“Many of the companies that benefited from this largesse invested heavily in lobbying governments, spending $128 million on those efforts in the United States and France, the two countries for which data is available,” ICAN said.

Standard nuclear doctrine, developed during the Cold War between super powers the United States and the Soviet Union, is based on the assumption that such weapons will never have to be used because their impact is so devastating, and because nuclear retaliation would probably bring similar destruction on the original attacker.

Published in Dawn, June 14th, 2025