Nuclear weapons are undemocratic, useless, criminal, terrorist, and unethical – they cannot serve deterrence without being used, and their development steals the resources that should be used to solve real problems and secure humanity’s better future.

Jan Oberg

TFF director

June 9, 2026

Global nuclear weapons spending reached an unprecedented 119 billion USD in 2025, according to the latest analysis by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). This represents a 19 per cent increase over the previous year and continues a five‑year trend of accelerating investment in nuclear arsenals. In total, nuclear‑armed states have spent 471 billion USD on these weapons since 2021.

The United States alone accounted for 69.2 billion USD, more than all other nuclear‑armed states combined. China (13.5 billion USD) and the United Kingdom (12.6 billion USD) followed as the next largest spenders. All nine nuclear‑armed states increased their budgets, many by double‑digit percentages.

These investments are not short‑term. Current modernisation programmes will keep nuclear weapons operational for decades. Several systems now under development or deployment are expected to remain in service into the 2060s, 2090s, or even beyond 2100. These include the US Sentinel ICBM, the UK’s Dreadnought‑class submarines, France’s next‑generation ballistic missile submarines, and China’s JL‑3 submarine‑launched ballistic missile.

Nuclearism – the thinking and tbe weapons – is not fading; it is being entrenched for the next century.

The nuclear weapons industry is a major beneficiary. At least 25 private companies earned 38 billion USD from nuclear weapons–related contracts in 2025 and collectively hold 401 billion USD in outstanding contracts. Lobbying is extensive: 138 million USD in the United States and France, and 226 documented meetings between contractors and senior UK officials. Nuclear weapons are not only political instruments; they are commercial products with powerful institutional defenders.

The opportunity costs are staggering.

The 2025 nuclear total equals 32 years of the UN regular budget. It exceeds the cost of ending world hunger for multiple years. One day of nuclear spending could fund 17,000 solar‑powered home transitions or plant two billion trees. Nuclear weapons do not merely threaten humanity; they drain resources from the very things that could secure its future.

Anti-democracy, Terrorism, Illegality, Deterrence, Accidents and Unethical: The Pillars of the Nuclear Delusion

Nuclear weapons remain humanity’s most destructive and undemocratic curse. No population has ever been asked whether it wants these weapons in its name. Decisions about devices capable of killing millions of civilians are made without public consent, democratic debate, or moral accountability. No opinion polls show that any nation’s majority wants them or would accept their use on their own territory.

The defining feature of nuclear weapons is that they are designed to kill innocent people who are not participants in any conflict. That principle — the deliberate targeting of civilians — is universally condemned in international humanitarian law. It is incompatible with any claim to civilisation, ethics, or responsible statehood.

The core definition of terrorism is the threat or use of violence against civilians to achieve political ends. Nuclear weapons embody this principle completely. Their destructive power is aimed not at military targets but at cities, populations, and the fabric of human life itself. The strategic value of nuclear weapons lies precisely in their ability to inflict mass civilian casualties. This is not a side effect; it is the doctrine. Nuclear deterrence depends on making entire societies fear annihilation. If non‑state actors used this logic, we would call it terrorism. When states use it, we call it security policy. The moral distinction is nonexistent.

Nuclear weapons are also illegal under international law. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2017, prohibits the development, possession, threat of use, and use of nuclear weapons. It entered into force in January 2021 and is now supported by 93 signatory states and 70 states parties. The treaty expresses the will of the global majority: most of humanity lives in countries that reject nuclear weapons outright. Nuclear‑armed states stand outside this legal and moral framework, isolated from the norms they claim to defend.

Supporters of nuclear weapons often claim that deterrence prevents war because nuclear weapons will never be used. But this argument collapses instantly. If both sides know the weapons will never be used, there is no deterrence. Deterrence only functions if leaders are willing to carry out the threat — that is, to commit mass murder when the strategy fails. The credibility of deterrence rests on the declared readiness to slaughter civilians on a scale that violates every principle of international humanitarian law. A doctrine that requires the willingness to commit a crime against humanity cannot be defended as a peace strategy.

Nukes are also unethical and illogic. There can be no political goal that legitimises their use and the automatic killing of millions of people, huge cities, and causes irreparable environmental damage. No human being or government anywhere can or should have the power to decide about humanity’s future. No government would use them on their own territory, they are by definition non-defensive is more than one sense. And who could conquer and use a territory after it has been nuked – a nuclear desert for what?

Even if one were to accept this perverse-grotesque logic, deterrence still fails on practical grounds. Too many accidents – that you have probably never heard of.

It assumes perfect rationality, perfect information, perfect technology, and perfect political stability — conditions that have never existed in human history. The record of nuclear near‑misses exposes the fragility of the system: false alarms at NORAD, malfunctioning early‑warning satellites, misinterpreted radar signals, lost bombs, accidental arming events, and human errors that brought the world within minutes of catastrophe. The Petrov incident alone — in which a single Soviet officer chose not to report what appeared to be a US nuclear launch — demonstrates that deterrence has survived not because it works, but because individuals have disobeyed it.

A security system that depends on luck, secrecy, and the hope that no one ever makes a mistake is not a security system at all. It is a permanent hostage situation in which the lives of billions depend on the flawless functioning of machines and the flawless judgment of leaders.

No other policy area would tolerate such risk. No society would accept a transportation system, an energy system, or a medical system that fails even once in a century with civilisation‑ending consequences. Yet this is exactly what nuclear deterrence demands.

Nuclear weapons are not stabilising. They are not civilised. They are not compatible with democracy, law, human dignity, not to mention military efficiency.

Nukes are the last great superstition of the modern world — a belief that terror can produce safety. The world has abolished slavery, child labour, rape as a means of war, and absolute monarchy. It can abolish nuclear weapons too.

There is a convention against genocide. Were nuclear weapons to be used, it would not only lead to a genocide, it would be omni- and eco-cide.

The ICAN report shows that nuclear‑armed states are choosing long‑term nuclear rearmament over global public goods. The political argument shows that nuclearism is indistinguishable from the logic of terrorism. The historical record shows that deterrence is a myth sustained by luck and delusion.

Together, these realities point to a single conclusion: nuclear weapons have no place in a civilised world.

Nuclear abolition is not an idealistic dream. It is the only rational, ethical, and human response to a system built on the – unacceptable – threat of mass murder.

We need only one critical mass – explosion: Humanity’s mobilisation for the most important issue:

NUCLEAR ABOLITION NOW!

  ICAN 2026 report, nuclear countries intensify nuclearism