A New Model for Nuclear Proliferation

摘要

If the logic of nuclear deterrence is adopted, the impulse to develop these weapons in states will be driven by the number of nuclear states to be deterred. This logic leads to an exponential growth in the number of nuclear states, not as found. If instead we assume that each nation is discouraged from developing nuclear weapons by the efforts of all those already in possession of them, a differential equation for the rate of change can be presented. The solution to this equation, with only one important variable, provides a distribution of nuclear weapons states with time given by the square root of elapsed years since 1945. The fitted curve from this result is in remarkably good agreement with the data to date, with nine nuclear powers. This success should lead to deeper considerations of the assumption behind the mathematics, which gives a simple equation that so closely reproduces a complex history.