Analysis of National Strategies to Counter a Country's Nuclear Weapons Program

Finding the best national strategy to prevent or delay a country from acquiring nuclear weapons continues to be a critical issue for U.S. policy makers. In this paper, we build on previous work to develop a model that addresses this question. This model identifies the strategy that minimizes the disutility of the overall cost of the strategy and the cost of the consequences resulting from the strategy. We illustrate the insights that the model provides with a case study of Iran's nuclear weapons program.