Peddling Peril Index

Available now! The Peddling Peril Index for 2023/2024

by David Albright, Sarah Burkhard, Spencer Faragasso, and Linda Keenan

August 8, 2024

The PPI 2023/2024 is the fourth edition of our comprehensive and in-depth ranking of the effectiveness of national strategic trade controls. It uses over 100 indicators to rank 200 countries, territories, and entities according to their capabilities and demonstrated success in implementing export, import, transit, and transshipment controls of strategic goods and technologies. These controls are key to thwarting the spread of nuclear weapons, other destructive weapons, and the means to make them.





The 2023/2024 Peddling Peril Index (PPI), the only public effort to comprehensively rank national strategic trade control systems in 200 countries, entities, and territories, continues to present a troubling picture of the state of efforts to stop the illicit trade in goods critical to nuclear weapons, other WMD, and conventional arms.

The world faces tremendous challenges from illicit actors who undertake innovative and complicated schemes to acquire strategic goods and tacit knowledge abroad, aiming to advance the political and military goals of pariah regimes such as Iran, North Korea, and Syria, and our adversaries, such as China and Russia. Strategic trade control systems, as proven by dozens of case studies documented by the Institute and others, play a central role in international security. If they are well implemented, strategic trade control systems can be effective in deterring, detecting, and prosecuting illicit strategic trade.

Today, Russia’s illegal invasion of neighboring Ukraine and its subsequent, ongoing war of aggression newly highlighted the importance of strategic trade controls and countries’ abilities to keep goods, equipment, and designs with military applications out of the hands of adversaries. Russia’s warfighting capabilities are dependent on illicit imports of strategic goods and sophisticated sanctions-evasion schemes.

At the same time, China and North Korea are planning to rapidly expand their existing nuclear weapons arsenals, and Iran is closer to having nuclear weapons than ever before – with all three programs dependent on high-quality items imported from abroad.

But how effective are existing strategic trade control systems? And do all countries have them? In its application of over 100 indicators, the 2023/2024 PPI reveals the current state of strategic trade controls worldwide and serves to remind the international community of the pressing need to more widely implement and enforce trade control systems throughout the world. Most of the countries scored below half of the maximum points in the PPI, with the areas of enforcement and proliferation financing most in need of global improvements. Additionally, over half of all countries lack relevant, comprehensive export control legislation.

Despite its overall worrisome assessment, this edition also reveals a degree of measurable progress. In comparison with the 2017, 2019, and 2021 PPIs, this fourth edition shows that global trade controls are slowly, but steadily improving in many key categories.

For an individual country, the PPI provides its total score and final rank, supplemented by its scores in major categories and a comparison to similar countries. It is a tool that countries can use to identify deficiencies, compare their policies and processes to those of others, and improve their national trade control systems. The PPI also provides an indication of a state’s vulnerability to illicit procurement schemes and measures the extent of a country’s compliance with international obligations, such as United Nations Security Council resolution 1540. It can assist governments and organizations in better targeting assistance and capacity building efforts.

Political will, bilateral and multilateral cooperation, and innovative ideas remain vital to closing gaps in strategic trade controls. The PPI is a key starting point for discussions in government, industry, academia, and the NGO community and is aimed at improving the effectiveness of strategic trade controls, making the world safer, and ultimately stopping the proliferation of dangerous weapons.

More about the content:

The book contains 15 chapters in four main sections, and there is something of interest for everybody: governments, international organizations, industry, and fellow NGOs.

The PPI for 2023/2024 is the fourth edition of the index. It encompasses information gathered during 2022 and 2023 and remains the only comprehensive public effort to systematically score and rank national strategic trade control systems.
As in the earlier versions, the PPI measures the effectiveness of strategic trade controls using a set of criteria relating to a country’s existing laws, regulations, procedures, practices, international obligations, and actions. Its fundamental purpose is to identify in a measurable manner the relative strengths and weaknesses of national strategic trade control systems throughout the world.

Section I of the book includes information on the index’s development, methodology and data. The final chapter introduces the overall scores and rankings. Annex 1 provides a full ranking and lists scores for all 200 countries, territories, and entities. We include a cluster analysis, which divides countries by score into four groups. The cluster analysis allows for quick determination of a country’s placement in a high or low-scoring group (or a group in-between), and for easy cross-country comparisons. Annex 2 lists the countries in each of the four clusters.

Section II presents key rankings in the index by grouping countries into three distinct tiers, each of which represents countries that are alike in their supply potential, economic development, and other measures. The usefulness of this type of approach was recognized in UNSCR 2325, when it urged the 1540 Committee, in its work, to take into account “the specificity of States, inter alia, with respect to their ability to manufacture and export related materials, with a view to prioritizing efforts and resources where they are most needed without affecting the need for comprehensive implementation of resolution 1540.” In brief, Tier One in the PPI includes those nations that can supply, at least partially but significantly, the wherewithal to make nuclear weapons, other WMD, or the means to deliver them. Tier Two includes countries of transshipment concern, and Tier Three includes the remainder of the countries.

Section IV discusses approaches aimed at improving scores and strategic trade control implementation. Comparisons to previous rankings are drawn and statistical analysis is applied to the data. Like the 2017 and 2021 editions, the new edition contains a chapter on recommendations. Among others, it introduces an element of global implementation of strategic trade controls that has gathered momentum in recent years but has yet to emerge out of the discussion stage: the development of an international standard on export controls. However, the recommendation chapter is not meant to be comprehensive; rather it is a careful selection of the most timely, pressing, and actionable issues relevant to the PPI. For additional recommendations, we encourage interested readers to explore Chapter 12 and Chapter 16 in the 2017 and 2021 editions, respectively, as well as the PPI webpage on our website, which features additional PPI applications created as external reports.

In many ways, the 2023 PPI paints an improving picture. In comparison with earlier editions, it shows that global trade controls are slowly but steadily headed in the right direction. The scores have improved across all areas in the index.

We are thankful for the positive reception to the project and to those who took the time to share their comments and recommendations. We were pleased that several governments reached out to share additional information for this update and to learn more about how they could improve their strategic trade control implementation. As in the previous versions, it is our hope that the PPI will be valuable to states, organizations, researchers, and the general public. We aspire for it to motivate strategic trade control efforts worldwide and reduce the chances that additional states or non-state actors will obtain the wherewithal to fabricate nuclear and other destructive weapons.

Buy the book on Amazon here.

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