The Cost of Restraint: India's Divergent Responses to China and Pakistan as Nuclear Rivals

The common wisdom on nuclear proliferation is that each new proliferator will trigger regional rivals to follow suit. Why have so few rivals actually done so? The authors argue that states are most likely to reactively proliferate when a proliferating rival has extensive aims and inferior conventional capabilities, factors that combine to make nuclear restraint costlier than pursuing the bomb. Analysis of India’s divergent responses to China’s and Pakistan’s nuclearization supports this claim.