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In February 2015, President François Hollande stressed the need for a nuclear deterrent in "a dangerous world". He also detailed the French deterrent as "fewer than 300" nuclear warheads, three sets of 16 submarine-launched ballistic missiles and 54 medium-range air-to-surface missiles and urged other states to show similar transparency. [60]
Despite a reduction in global nuclear tensions and major nuclear arms reductions after the end of the Cold War following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, estimated nuclear warhead stockpiles total roughly 15,000 worldwide, with the United States and Russia holding 90% of the total. [2]
The Cuban Missile Crisis (October–November 1962) brought the world closer to nuclear war than ever before. [194] The aftermath led to efforts in the nuclear arms race at nuclear disarmament and improving relations, although the Cold War's first arms control agreement, the Antarctic Treaty, had come into force in 1961. [J]
China developed its first nuclear weapon in 1964; its nuclear stockpile increased until the early 1980s, when it stabilized at between 200 and 260. [1] India became a nuclear power in 1974, while Pakistan developed its first nuclear weapon in the 1980s. [1] [21] India and Pakistan currently have around one hundred nuclear weapons each. [19]
The following countries have either attempted to develop, actually built, or bought weapons of mass destruction, including biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. List [ edit ]
[citation needed] During the Cold War, the Chinese nuclear deterrent consisted of gravity bombs carried aboard H-6 bomber aircraft, missile systems such as the DF-2, DF-3, and DF-4, [31] and in the later stages of the Cold War, the Type 092 ballistic missile submarine. On June 14, 1967, China detonated its first hydrogen bomb.
Former U.S. officials Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Bill Perry, and Sam Nunn (aka 'The Gang of Four' on nuclear deterrence) [71] proposed in January 2007 that the United States rededicate itself to the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons, concluding: "We endorse setting the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and working energetically on ...
Russia and the United States are the world's biggest nuclear powers, holding about 88% of the world's nuclear weapons. [7] The Soviet Union ratified the Geneva Protocol—prohibiting the use of biological and chemical weapons in interstate conflicts—on April 5, 1928, with reservations that were later dropped on January 18, 2001. [8]