By James Blitz in London
The world?s nine nuclear-armed powers are set to spend a total of $1,000bn on the procurement and modernisation of atomic weapons programmes over the next decade, according to an anti-nuclear weapons group whose cause has won high-level US support.
Global Zero, which is campaigning for abolition of the world?s nuclear arsen?als by 2030, will host a London conference this week attended by senior Russian, Indian, US and Chinese figures, among others. It aims to highlight how the cost of nuclear weapons is becoming ever more unaffordable for states whose defence budgets are hard pressed by the financial crisis.
According to the organisation, the nine nuclear states ? the US, Russia, China, the UK, France, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea ? are set to spend $100bn between them on nuclear arms programmes this year.
The figure comprises the cost of researching, developing, procuring and testing nuclear weapons.
Global Zero calculates that the states will spend the same amount in every year of this decade.
The organisation says spending on atomic weapons accounts for about 9 per cent of total defence spending in these countries ? a proportion set to rise because budgets for conventional military hardware are being cut back in many countries.
The campaign to seek total abolition of nuclear weapons has received high-profile backing in recent years, notably from Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, two former US secretaries of state who have embraced the cause of multilateral disarmament. Barack Obama, the US president, has said the organisation ?will always have a partner in me and my administration?.
The group?s two-day London meeting will be attended by Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the Russian parliament; Jaswant Singh, the former Indian defence minister; Valerie Plame, the former CIA operative; and leading Chinese government ?figures.
One of its aims is to try to expand discussion of disarmament beyond the US and Russia, which have 95 per cent of the world?s atomic arsenals between them, and to engage some of the other nuclear states.
The US and Russia recently ratified a New Start agreement cutting the size of their arsenals. But the deal will not cut how much each state spends on nuclear weapons, according to Bruce Blair, a Global Zero founder.
?Spending will increase because of decisions by both nations to upgrade and replace,? he says. ?Modernisation is progressing at such a pace we are seeing more spending on nuclear weapons than at any time since the cold war.?
? The Financial Times Limited 2011