On March 26, the Geneva Press Club launched the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor 2026 edition with an online zoom conference (above).
Alistair Burnett, Communications Director, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) introduced the speakers. ICAN was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. It is a riveting presentation by:
Hans M. Kristensen, Director, Nuclear Information Project, Federation of American Scientists, the world’s authority on numbers and types of nuclear weapons
Stuart Casey-Maslen, Visiting Professor, University of Johannesburg & Editor, 2026 Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor Report
Grethe Lauglo Østern, Special Advisor on Weapons Issues, Norwegian People’s Aid, a key ICAN Partner
Following are select comments from the conference. Of particular interest are Hans Kristensen’s remarks about Israel’s nuclear arsenal. His most recent report for the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute cites Israel’s 90 nuclear weapons.
Alistair Burnett:
This is a very apposite moment given wars currently underway involving three nuclear-armed countries in acts of aggression: Russia, the United States and Israel and the fact that there are no more arms control treaties in force. The last one, the New START agreement [2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty] expired at the beginning of February. So effectively there are no legal limits, diplomatic limits on numbers and types of nuclear weapons anymore.
Hans Kristensen: Now we’re in a situation in which these countries [the nine nuclear weapon states: China, DPR Korea, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, Russia, United Kingdom, United States] are actively, and I would say, even aggressively pushing the role and value that nuclear weapons have.
[Note: There are currently 42 countries with either nuclear weapons or “nuclear arrangements”.]
Hans Kristensen:
Israel is sort of a strange or a complicated case because compared to so many other nuclear weapon states, there’s very little information available from Israel. Much has come out in the form of declassified documents, especially from the US side. And also interviews with people that were involved in the Israeli nuclear program over the years. They’ve sort of gradually built more and more texture to the Israeli situation. But one of the reasons the Israelis are not very active, if you will, with nuclear, and I say that with, you know, trepidation, because of course one of the issues is whether they have built nuclear cruise missiles into their attack submarines. And this is an ongoing debate.
Nonetheless, Israel compared to other nuclear weapon states has a very clear separation, if you will, of the nuclear warheads from the military. At least to the extent it’s understood. And so they’re not even stored together, nor the warheads stored in a fully assembled form. And so there are a number of steps they have to go through, if you will. So that’s just to say Israel is sort of a very opaque country, not just because they’re secret, but because they’re very good at being secret. So that’s the way it works.
Alistair Burnett presents audience question: Do you have confidence, given that leaders of the nine nuclear-armed states [China, DPR Korea, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, Russia, United Kingdom, United States] have enormous power and responsibility in their hands—do you have confidence that the current crop or any crop of leaders can handle the responsibility in a crisis, to make the decision to use nuclear weapons, in the context of the current conflict on Iran? Is that a perfect storm that dramatically increases the risk of use, having this sort of, as it were, coming together of incredibly unstable and unpredictable forces that have been unleashed by this conflict?
Stuart Casey-Maslen responds:
[Confidence?] NO! Where is there any statesmanship today? In the past we had deeply flawed individuals who were statesmen. You look at somebody like Nixon. For all the things we can criticize him for—in the nuclear sphere and in biological weapons he made progress. There was genuine progress, despite the flaws. Today all I see are flawed individuals without that statesmanship. Maybe I’m too old and cynical, but I just don’t see– Where are the ideas out there? That we can kickstart some form of disarmament? How can we replace a New START? I see nothing at the moment. Maybe–Hans you’re very close to this. Maybe you see some positive signs, but I don’t see them, frankly.
Hans Kristensen: Yes. It’s a good question, and it’s one that—I mean, there is a long debate about this, and there is an ongoing debate about whether leaders can be stable or trusted or have a chance to be stable.
One of the things that happens when you have nuclear arsenals—that large nuclear that are very high alert can hit your country very fast—is that it sort of moves your mindset and your military planning toward worst-case scenarios. Very short decision timelines. It takes 30 minutes for a missile to fly across the Atlantic. It takes only 15 minutes if you launch it from a missile submarine that’s off the coast. And that’s no time to make decisions.
And so in those situations, you would have countries go into sort of pre-prepared reaction patterns. And that is, you know, riddled with danger about misunderstanding and overreaction and what have you.
This is actually getting worse in the sense that we now see these hypersonic weapon systems in the regions being developed that will even further shorten the window of action and, you know, consideration for what is done.
But, I’m also of the view that—in my experience—I actually think, ironically, the danger is not so much in the military as much as it is in the sort of civilian side of governments. Because in my view, that’s where you cook up, that’s where you see these new autopilot tendencies for nuclear strategy and what have you.
My experience with talking to military people involved in the nuclear business is that they’re a lot more conservative and much more aware about what the consequences of potential use and misunderstandings are.
One thing that really struck me about the discussion about Ukraine—when people started reacting to the Russian threats again and again. Early on there, one of the American military officials I talked to at one of the conferences—I said, you know, what would you do if the Russians used nuclear weapons in Ukraine?
And the first word out of that person’s mouth was: We would try to de-escalate.
That was, I mean, it’s like, that’s what it’s about. It’s not about: We will hit them back because we’re strong.
I mean, it was about how do we manage this thing and get it back to where it should be.
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