Nuclear War Edges Closer as Nine Countries Quietly Spend Rp 2,000 Trillion

Nuclear-armed states are ramping up their spending on atomic weapons, with expenditure reaching a record high of nearly US$119 billion, equivalent to roughly Rp2,166 trillion. This was revealed in a report by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) on Tuesday (9/6/2026), which detailed how the world’s nine nuclear-weapon states collectively increased their weapons spending by almost US$17 billion last year.

As geopolitical tensions mount, a new nuclear arms race is unfolding, one that its protagonists have been preparing for decades, the ICAN report stated. Susi Snyder, ICAN’s programme director and a co-author of the report, added that artificial intelligence could heighten the risk of nuclear weapon use, calling the development deeply worrying.

The nine nations are the United States, China, India, the United Kingdom, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, France and Russia. Of these, the United States spent more than all the others combined. Washington disbursed US$69.2 billion on nuclear weapons in 2025, an increase of US$12.4 billion from the previous year. China ranked second, with an estimated spend of US$13.5 billion last year, followed by the UK at US$12.6 billion and Russia in fourth place at US$9.5 billion.

Over the past five years, the nine countries have spent more than US$470 billion on their arsenals, and investment is expected to grow further in the future. The report also showed that America’s new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile programme is anticipated to remain operational beyond the year 2100. Furthermore, increased plutonium production in the US indicates that the country’s warheads could endure until 2120. This points to significant long-term investment, with US nuclear weapons spending over the decade from 2025 to 2034 forecast to reach nearly US$1 trillion.

Snyder noted that what these countries spent in 2025 could have funded the United Nations’ operational budget for 32 years. She added that the amount spent on nuclear weapons in a single day last year could have provided food security for more than two million people. Rather than delivering aid or guaranteeing essential services such as healthcare for their citizens, nuclear-armed states are instead investing in weaponry they know they cannot use without committing war crimes, she said, describing it as a complete disconnect from reality.