Layered Verification: Irreversible Nuclear Disarmament and Highly Latent Nuclear States

The report Layered Verification: Irreversible Nuclear Disarmament and Highly Latent Nuclear States by Stephen Herzog examines how states with advanced civilian nuclear programs or past weapons capabilities pose risks to disarmament because of their latent capacity to build bombs. It proposes a “layered verification” framework—overlapping international and country-specific monitoring measures—to manage nuclear latency and reduce the chances of undetected violations. While acknowledging that verification will be costly and imperfect, the study concludes that this approach can lower proliferation risks to politically acceptable levels and is ultimately cheaper than maintaining today’s nuclear deterrent systems.