Revisiting Societal Verification for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Arms Control: The Search for Transparency

Abstract

The last couple of decades have seen a surge in non-state actors wielding increasingly accessible information and communication technologies to provide intelligence to relevant publics and governments on a range of issues, including on nuclear activities of concern. This has prompted the impression that more transparency would translate almost surely to a world secure from nuclear danger arising from treaty-violating nuclear proliferation or nuclear arsenal expansion. As a matter of fact, the idea of involving civil society in treaty verification–or “societal verification”–hails from the post-WWII scientists’ peace movement. In this commentary, it is argued that some of today’s prominent instances of societal verification deviate significantly in spirit from initiatives suggested by the original conception. Today’s efforts have lent themselves to co-optation by states in the service of US and Western hegemonic interests and do little to curb nuclear danger. Indeed, they conform to a depoliticized conception of societal verification. This commentary sketches the evolution of the theory and practice of societal verification and calls for the launch of a community conversation to rethink societal verification in such a way as to avoid the further entrenchment of the status quo.