from Mother Jones:
Report: World May Face New Nuclear Arms Race—By Adam Weinstein
| Mon Nov. 7, 2011 12:03 PM PST
Fear of new American military capabilities is spurring nuclear powers like Russia and China to modernize their atomic arsenals and evade disarmament, according to a new report from a US-British think tank.
Even though Barack Obama has pledged to work for global disarmament and the United States negotiated a new nuclear arms treaty with Russia, the world's nine global states still possess 22,400 warheads and are moving swiftly to "modernize" their stockpiles, according to the study "Beyond the United Kingdom: Trends in Other Nuclear States" (PDF), by researchers at the British-American Security Information Council. "There is little sign in any of these nuclear armed states that a future without nuclear weapons is seriously being contemplated," the authors conclude.
The report is part of a major push in Great Britain to reassess that country's nuclear weapons program, but it's chock full of data and analyses that show how the Nuclear Nine are expanding their capabilities, exploiting treaty loopholes, and heading for a possible 21st-century arms race.
Much of that effort is being spurred by US policy, the report notes: "
lthough the Obama administration deserves huge credit for kick-starting multilateral nuclear disarmament talks with Russia, it also appears true that the United States continues to view nuclear weapons as essential to national security and is planning, and spending, to ensure it has robust nuclear forces for many decades to come." ............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/11/nuclear-arms-race