Expanding Input Variable Sets to Enhance Nuclear Proliferation Predictions

There have been various efforts in the research community to understand the determinants of nuclear proliferation. These efforts led to a development of quantitative tools to project the occurrence of nuclear proliferation events. These efforts have shown that information about the political issues surrounding a country’s security along with economic development data are important to explain the occurrences of proliferation decisions. However, these models have not been reliable. Development of quantitative models for proliferation assessment should be based on the understanding of the scenarios of nuclear proliferation taken by different countries and using the factors that are relevant to describe specific scenarios. Expansion of input variables to improve the modeling efforts should be guided from this understanding. This paper provides an overview of this process. Starting from the review of proliferation motivation, requirements, and scenarios, the paper attempts to connect the scenarios of nuclear proliferation with the selection of model variables and nuclear proliferation modeling. By using two quantitative models of nuclear proliferation assessment, the paper also examines the relative importance of input variables. The paper also notes the limitations of the existing approach and discusses the needs for future work.