The Extent of Nuclear Weapon's Role in Changing Conflict Levels Between India and Pakistan

Indianapolis, IN

This project examines different scholars to determine the usefulness of nuclear weapons in changing conflict levels between states. Two schools of thought were discovered in said research. The first is Let’s Get MAD, which suggests the acquisition of nuclear weapons by both India and Pakistan has reduced conflicts in the region. The second is MAD is Bad, which suggests the acquisition of nuclear weapons by both India and Pakistan has not reduced conflicts in the region. Based on these two schools of thought, the hypothesis that Nuclear weapons change the levels of conflict between India and Pakistan was reached. In order to test said hypothesis, a quantitative study of a t-test for independent samples will be employed, and will be followed by a Pearson’s R test. Data for said tests will be collected from the Correlates of War (COW) project. The COW has many different variations of data sets, and this work will utilize data from the Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID) set, specifically from set P, which encompasses every recorded conflict from 1816-2010 between two states. Also, data regarding nuclear weapon counts will be collected from johnstonarchieves.net and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. These two sources are both accurate and reliable, as accurate nuclear weapon counts are extremely difficult to find. The results of these statistical tests will either reject or fail to reject the hypothesis, with either scenario holding serious implications for both the international community and nuclear-armed states.