ABSTRACT
The essential statistics of military power are readily accessible. There are three principal categories of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, chemical and biological. The nuclear category has received the most public attention and its extent can be briefly summarised. Five nations-China, France, the UK, US, and USSR-admit to being nuclear-armed, though several other countries, including Israel and South Africa, are known to have nuclear weapons, and several others, including Brazil, India, and Pakistan are thought to have a nuclear capability. Proliferation of nuclear weapons is likely to spread even more widely if civil nuclear reactors continue to be constructed in otherwise non-nuclear countries. There is an abiding danger that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which up to 1990 had remained practically a dead letter in terms of the nuclear disarmament it envisaged, will become one with regard to non-proliferation also.
