SIPRI Yearbook 2026: Key Quotes from the Introduction
On June 8th, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published its annual assessment of the state of disarmament and international security. On June 9th, we did a brief commentary on the Yearbook’s summary. We then did a more in-depth look, in which we pulled on some of the threads, pointed out patterns, and asked some questions. Here, we’ve selected key quotes from the full report’s introduction, written by director Karim Haggag.
On the compounding nature of today’s insecurity:
A self-reinforcing cycle seems to have taken hold: the different arenas of competition entail greater vectors of risk and multiple pathways for escalation, which further exacerbates the overall sense of insecurity and vulnerability. Page 6.
On avoiding great power conflict:
Both complexity and insecurity therefore pose growing threats that if left unchecked can potentially undermine strategic stability. Preserving strategic stability thus emerges as the defining challenge for managing great power competition to ensure it does not devolve into great power conflict. Pages 6-7.
On globalization and great power politics:
Whereas the military, security, ideological, technological and geo-economic dimensions of great power politics have always been interconnected, the linkages between them have become ever tighter with the acceleration of globalization, deepening dependencies and, by extension, vulnerabilities. Page 8.
On the democratization of precision-strike capabilities:
Precision-strike capabilities are also no longer the exclusive domain of advanced major powers. Sophisticated strike capabilities, which previously required billion-dollar aircraft or naval platforms, are being replicated by relatively inexpensive systems. As a result, the number of groups and nations capable of projecting power at range has increased significantly: over 90 countries and more than 65 non-state actors now operate some form of uncrewed vehicle systems (generally termed ‘drones’). Page 10.
On the convergence of risks:
As militarization continues apace, driven by eroding alliances and interstate armed conflict, the technological drivers fuelling rearmaments and the vulnerabilities produced by weaponization of global supply chains will converge to produce multiple points of geopolitical friction and ultimately military risk—all against the backdrop of the continued breakdown of channels of political communication and crisis management across the various conflict divides in Europe and East Asia where these trends are most pronounced. Page 11.
On the nuclear landscape:
The removal of structural constraints is likely to pave the way to renewed arms race dynamics between the nuclear powers, driven by the US imperative to counter the demands of what nuclear planners define as the new ‘two-tier deterrence environment’—countering the combined nuclear forces of both Russia and China. When factoring in the growing lack of transparency regarding nuclear weapons, these dynamics are likely to steer nuclear planning towards worst-case assumptions, rendering nuclear deterrence relationships more prone to unpredictability and potentially crisis. Page 13.
On transactional diplomacy:
This gradual shift towards the power paradigm culminated in the distinctive approach that characterized US ‘peace diplomacy’ under the second Trump administration. Defined by a mix of transactionalism geared towards quick-win outcomes—dealmaking substituted for peacemaking; coercive diplomacy to maximize US leverage; a highly personalized diplomacy centred around the president himself; and an aspect of ‘mercantilism’ where peace making entails commercial agreements that often blur the distinction between public interest and corporate gain—this approach constitutes the antithesis of the liberal peacebuilding paradigm. This shift in approach is not solely confined to the Trump administration. Many of the mediation roles under taken by states such as Qatar, Egypt, Türkiye and Saudi Arabia, among others, for the conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Syria, Iran and Venezuela had to adjust to the logic of short-term deal-making imposed by Trump. Page 17.
On the expansion of the use of force:
It would be easy, but perhaps premature, to conclude that this shift towards the expansive use of force is inherently contradictory with transactional diplomacy under Trump, but warmaking is not necessarily irreconcilable with dealmaking. However, the stark incompatibility with traditional notions of peace is unmistakable. Untethered to any structured negotiating process designed to build confidence among adversaries and ultimately address the core issues between them, and shorn of any fidelity to normative, or even legal, frameworks of peacemaking, this approach makes no pretence of achieving anything resembling an enduring settlement of conflicts. Page 18.
On the blurring of civil and military arenas in the digital domain:
Similarly, the huge demand for information processing generated by the digital battlefield is prompting greater reliance on civilian information infrastructure including commercial satellites, data centres and communication networks. The blurring distinction between civilian and military infrastructure becomes especially pronounced in the cyber domain where networks supporting public health systems, financial centres and transportation systems become targets for cyber operations… The overarching trend highlighted by these developments points towards the erosion of the separation between the military and civilian domains of war, providing harbingers of what is to come. Page 21.
On the policy agenda for the future:
The polarized politics and acute insecurity prevailing in both regions ensures that the policy agenda for the foreseeable future will remain narrowly focused on defence and deterrence. Here there is an opportunity for peace research to engage with key governments to foster a different concept of security, one in which deterrence and reassurance are seen to be complementary—and indeed reinforcing—rather than in opposition or tension. Pages 23-24.
On the impact of climate change:
An especially important area of focus is the impact of climate change on the shifting security landscape. The climate-related risk models, governance architectures and peacebuilding frameworks that underpin international security were built for a world that no longer exists. Responding effectively requires moving beyond narrowly defined technical questions and siloed interventions toward integrated govern ance approaches capable of managing the deep interlinkages between environ mental disruption, fragility and violent conflict. Page 25.
On cognitive warfare:
The growing salience of ‘cognitive warfare’ driven by advances in neurological science that will enable control over ‘mental space’; the expanding scope of ‘hybrid’ or ‘grey zone’ warfare involving a range of hostile acts, often enabled by technology, that fall below the threshold of armed conflict; and the transition to fully autonomous platforms in future battlefields, all pose critical questions for research. The transformative nature of these trends prompts a need to shift from a focus on weapons—and even the technologies themselves—to an effort that situates them in a broader geopolitical, legal and ethical context, while framing the policy questions that flow from this inquiry. Page 26.
On the importance of the role of peace research:
What distinguishes peace research is the purpose for which this knowledge is deployed: at a minimum to stabilize and manage adversarial relationships, while striving to eventually transcend conflict divides anchored in durable frameworks that accommodate—often varying—notions of ‘peace’. Page 27.
