Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)

This SIPRI Insights seeks to contribute to the operationalization of nuclear disarmament verification. It explores existing solutions to define a baseline for new arms control and disarmament verification regimes, and considers the requirements for verification under the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Existing solutions might be sufficient to enable several near-term disarmament steps and to lay the foundations for a comprehensive nuclear disarmament verification regime supporting the TPNW. However, more technical work is needed to achieve all the preconditions for a nuclear weapon-free world, particularly on verifying the dismantlement of nuclear weapons. At the same time, a more favourable political context could reduce the extent to which technical challenges are perceived as obstacles to nuclear disarmament. Even in the absence of new disarmament treaties, the operationalization of disarmament verification can begin at a conceptual and discursive level, by adopting a more policy-oriented approach to disarmament verification.

Total global military spending rose for the second consecutive year in 2018, to the highest level since 1988—the first year for which consistent global data is available. World spending is now 76 per cent higher than the post-cold war low in 1998.* World military spending in 2018 represented 2.1 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP) or $239 per person. ‘In 2018 the USA and China accounted for half of the world’s military spending,’ says Dr Nan Tian, a researcher with the SIPRI Arms and Military Expenditure (AMEX) programme. ‘The higher level of world military expenditure in 2018 is mainly the result of significant increases in spending by these two countries.’