A Bargaining Model of Nuclear Weapons Development and Disarmament

This paper addresses four questions about leaders’ rationales and strategies for developing and confronting nuclear weapons programs. First, why do governments develop nuclear weapons? Second, under what conditions will governments attack nuclear aspirants to prevent or remove their weapons programs? Third, why do aspirants sometimes develop nuclear weapons ambiguously? Fourth, why do counter-proliferators offer inducements to aspirants? We develop a game-theoretic bargaining model to study these issues. Two governments, an aspirant and a counter-proliferator, bargain over the aspirant’s nuclear program. The aspirant has private information about its preferences for developing nuclear weapons. It can be either a “normal” type, which benefits little from having nuclear weapons, or a “motivated” type, which seeks weapons for intrinsic or instrumental value. The counter-proliferator decides whether to pay or force the aspirant to disarm. Inducements can be effective under some circumstances.