國立臺灣大學政治科學論叢

Abstract / Chinese PDF Download

Since the outset of the development of nuclear technology, nuclear proliferation has been a widespread concern in international society. Many states feel that their security is threatened by nuclear proliferation as non-official nuclear states acquire nuclear weapons. Thus, responses toward the proliferators have become an important component of security strategies. Possible responses include granting economic incentives, sanctions, and preventive strikes. However, there is a tradeoff between these strategic choices. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the causal mechanisms that impact the strategic choices of both counter-proliferators and proliferators and to generalize as well as theorize strategic choices and strategic interactions. The paper develops, solves, and analyzes a game-theoretical model to identify equilibrium points, and enumerates the substantive meanings using comparative static analysis. Furthermore, the paper analyzes the cases of the North Korea Nuclear Crisis and Iraq War as empirical counterparts, extending the empirical implications of the theoretical model and provide preliminarily verification for the model. The paper finds that the degree of threat and the technology constraints faced by proliferators, the incentives offered by the counter-proliferators, the cost of launching an attack, the damage caused by an attack, and the expectations of each side affect the likelihood of an outbreak of conflicts under such situations.