Weapons of Mass Destruction

Reflective Essay on Weapons of Mass Destruction
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I am writing a reflection to a paper done by Michael Horowitz and Neil Narang on Weapons of mass destructions. It is looking at the usage of a weapon of mass destruction. The two authors question if nuclear and chemical and biological weapons rate of adoption is affected by similar factors. I agree with them that biological and chemical weapons are used complementary for host countries to achieve their agenda.
I find it interesting that this research used the cross elasticity of demand to ascertain if CBWs atomic weapons are used either as complementary or as substitutes. It measures the change in demand in percentage due to the change in the price of the other good. It is difficult to find the cost of the weapons of destruction due to a fast fluctuation of prices. I found that they had to consider willingness to purchase these weapons to cover for prices. In such a model researcher estimates the effect of pursuing and holding WMD on the risk of a nation pursuing other types of weapons. I found it interesting on the strategies that these researchers used to determine the correlation between their two factors.
Through this paper, I found that CBWs weapons serve as complements to nuclear weapons as their demand varies simultaneously when the other category demand changes. There is a high correlation between the ability and willingness to purchase WMDs among countries on different types of weapons. I also noted that when a country is pursuing a nuclear weapon, it has a higher chance by 2.

25 times to pursue biological weapons. Chemical weapon stimulates biological weapon pursuit that they plan to possess and thus this fits to the fact that CBWs weapon were used complementary to nuclear weapons. I was interested in knowing the relationship between CBWs and nuclear weapons.
At last, I understood that CBWs are used complementary with nuclear weapons and not as a substitute as I thought. This perception changed the way I viewed countries ways of pursuing CBWs and atomic weapons.
Bibliography
Horowitz, Michael C., and Neil Narang. “Poor Man’s atomic bomb? exploring the relationship between “weapons of mass destruction”.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 58, no. 3 (2014): 509-535.