The Arms Race

12 Key excerpts on "The Arms Race"

• 

  eBook - ePub

  Issues in American Political Life

  Money, Violence and Biology

  • Robert Thobaben, Charles Funderburk, Donna Schlagheck(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The context in which world politics is played out had been changed forever by four developments: The practice of total war (such as the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo, air raids on London, and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) converted civilian populations and industrial bases into participants and targets of war strategies. Nuclear weapons had been developed and had proven useful and relatively inexpensive over the course of the war. Ideology (fascism, Marxism-Leninism, liberal democracy) delineated the major lines of political conflict during and after the war. The Cold War quickly took shape, embodying the ideological chasm between the remaining two power centers (the United States and the Soviet Union) and reflecting their intention to compete politically and militarily through a conventional, chemical, biological, and nuclear arms race in lieu of the potential holocaust of another hot war. That arms race would be global in scope and would involve a level of technological competition in the realm of WMD never before seen. Defining The Arms Race What exactly is an arms race? When two or more nation-states consciously participate in a relationship marked by hostility and competition, with high levels of military spending, an arms race can be said to exist between them. Their relationship will be interactive; that is, the countries involved will act and react to each other, to their perceptions of their rivals, and to forces within the nation-state that participate in The Arms Race. An arms race does not have to spiral steadily upward

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Explaining Contemporary Asian Military Modernization

  The Myth of Asia's Arms Race

  • Sheryn Lee(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  As a result, these quantitative studies converted the literature on arms races into a methodology debate: how to prove a correlation between arms and the predilection towards conflict, how to disaggregate the dependent variables and the expenditures of opponents, whether stocks are a better measure than expenditure and what measures provide any particular model with the most explanatory power. This has come at the expense of answering the core puzzle of how states decide which armaments and when and how they interact at the international level. Recent quantitative studies on arms racing often engage in mathematical modelling of a highly complex political phenomenon but shy away from the many factors which contribute to interactive arming but defy reliable quantification. By equating an arms race with the competitive component of an enduring rivalry this literature affixes the term to any armament policy of a state.

  Strategic behaviour and the politics of force

  Arming is a normal strategic behaviour of states—by nature a state’s right to the use and the threat of the use of force. The traditional arms race literature’s attempt to identify arming dynamics as a unique phenomenon often isolates arming dynamics from other strategic behaviour such as hedging, balancing or bandwagoning. Acquisitions are almost always perceived as competitive. This ignores the significant decision-making process involved in assessing a country’s requirements to ensure its survival in a fluctuating geostrategic environment and the necessary planning for the modernisation of an armed force. The dynamics emerging between these countries can be described as interactive arming—arming which responds to a country’s own requirements and is accompanied by other policy initiatives. The modernisation of the armed forces should always be linked to political objectives and does not occur due to apolitical decisions—“a sovereign cannot raise an army because he is enraged, nor can a general fight because he is resentful.”87 Although The Arms Race theories emerged from strategic thinking about conventional naval warfare in the 19th and 20th centuries and the US–USSR Cold War relationship, its current formulation in the international relations discipline often disregards its strategic studies roots—the study of the use of force for political objectives. Strategy and understandings of strategic behaviour inform the considerations of the links between armaments, policy and the use of force. The use of force is integral to policies related to security and foreign affairs because military power has effects even when it is not used forcefully, and “states use their military power more frequently in the peaceful than in the forceful mode.”88

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  National and International Security

  • Michael Sheehan(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Part IIRealism and Security Passage contains an image

  [4]

  The Arms Race Phenomenon

  By COLIN S. GRAY*

  Definitions and Functions

  SINCE the 1850’s there has been intermittent but always renewed interest on the part of politicians, academics, and journalists in the particular aspect of interstate rivalry generally termed an “arms race.” Despite the longevity of concern and the eclecticism of approach, the prime impetus behind the inquiry that has resulted in this article is the sad truth that aside from somewhat banal and highly questionable hypotheses we really know very little about arms race phenomena. This analysis will attempt a systematic investigation of some of the most important aspects of the subject.

  It is organized for inquiry into the following areas: typology, strategies, outcomes, and hypothetical explanations of the dynamic elements driving the phenomenon.

  Two observations must preface an attempt at definition. It should be noted that arms races do not occur only between states or coalitions of states. Those whose eyes are firmly fixed on the great issues of interstate politics tend to neglect intrastate violence and preparations for violence. This is probably the mundane yet correct explanation for the interstate focus of practically all writing related to arms races. The concurrent arming of the Ulster and Irish Volunteers between 1910 and 1914 would appear to be as clear a case of a competitive arms relationship as we could wish for. Second, in practice it is extremely difficult to distinguish between decisions taken primarily to have effect upon the external, competitive arms situation of a state and those decisions that are taken primarily for domestic reasons.1 However, these decisions, whether externally or internally induced, may properly be regarded as being of importance to The Arms Race. An arms race competitor, seeking a particular state of military balance, will probably not be able to ignore an opponent’s activity on the ground that he believes it to be inward- as opposed to outward-looking.2

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Economics of Arms Reduction and the Peace Process

  Contributions from Peace Economics and Peace Science

  • W. Isard, C.H. Anderton(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • North Holland

    (Publisher)

  5 Most models of the second and later generations however include a more or less detailed supply side along the preceding lines. 6 All participants in an arms race do not necessarily have the same economic resources at their command. A competitor with a smaller economic base will generally have to allocate a higher fraction of its output to defense, and hence will suffer more. To the extent that investment is crowded out, growth will be impeded and the defense burden will become correspondingly heavier over time - until that 250 J-C. Lambelet burden and the associated welfare loss become too heavy to bear, and the country gives up. Seen in that light, The Arms Race between the Soviet Union and the U.S. - or, more broadly, between East and West - has apparently come to an end, and global peace has seemingly been established after more than forty years of confrontation, essentially because of the superior staying power of the United States and its Allies. Supposedly, the East-West race has thus ended with the U.S. et al. being the economic victors. Granting for a moment that this is what really happened, it can be interpreted as meaning that arms races may - and sometimes actually do - lead to peace. Richardson, who was writing with the pre-1914 and pre-1939 competitions in mind, 7 thought it practically axiomatic that unstable (ie. real) arms races had to end in war. 8 Most analysts who worked immediately after Richardson probably shared this basic view although the issue of the link between arms races and the outbreak of war was practically never addressed explicitly. In 1975 however this writer published a short essay on that question in which he argued that (...) the historical record suggests that unilateral disarmament or a failure to keep up with the other side may at times increase the odds of a war breaking out. Similarly, there are also cases of arms races which increased the stakes so much that an open conflict became less likely.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  The Arms Race in Asia

  Trends, causes and implications

  • Andrew T.H. Tan(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  41

  The technological imperative and arms races

  While there are a number of internal and external factors which underlie and explain the emerging arms race in Asia, the result has been the evident transformation of military capabilities. Barry Buzan has noted, however, that even in the absence of most internal and external factors, states will still continuously modernize their armed forces. This is due to the inherent uncertainties of a fundamentally anarchic international system, which means that states live with the fear that potential rivals could gain a military technological advantage. This drives them to embark on a process that produces an endless flow of new weapons.42

  Buzan contributed to the development of the concept of the arms dynamic in order to better understand The Arms Race phenomenon. He defined the arms dynamic as ‘the whole set of pressures that make states both acquire armed forces and change the quantity and quality of the armed forces they already possess’.43 Furthermore, he clarified that ‘arms racing’ is a term that should be reserved for the most extreme manifestation of the arms dynamic, while the term ‘maintenance of the military status quo’ should be used to describe the normal operation of the arms dynamic. Arms racing and the maintenance of the status quo exist on two ends of a spectrum, with a grey area in between.44

  Buzan drew attention to three models which explain the arms dynamic. The first is the action-reaction model, which looks for the driving force of the arms dynamic in the competitive relationship between states. The second is the domestic structure model, which focuses on the internal factors which drive the arms dynamic. The third is the technological imperative, which focuses on technology as a driving force behind the arms dynamic.45

  It is this third model, i.e. the technological imperative, which Buzan has paid most attention to. According to him, much of arms racing stems from the underlying process of technological advance. Indeed, the technological imperative is an important independent variable since it compels states to behave in a way that is similar to arms racing, even if other internal or external factors are absent. He argued that ‘the technological imperative model is important because it defines a condition that is so deeply structured as to be effectively permanent’. However, he warned that when the pace of technological innovation is high, it will ‘blur the boundary between maintenance of the status quo and arms racing’.46 Buzan also further asserted that ‘technology is a major factor in determining the scope of military options; the character of military force, threats, and symbols; and the shape of world politics’.47

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Logic of Conflict

  Making War and Peace in the Middle East

  • Steven Greffenius(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  PART I

  FOUNDATIONS

  Passage contains an image

  Two

  The (IL)Logic of Arms Race Theory

  The paradigm case of bilateral conflict during the Cold War period was The Arms Race. So long as tensions remained between the superpowers in Europe, arms levels remained high, despite many years of negotiations. The negotiations served to keep the two sides talking during difficult times, but they did not reduce arms levels. While the two sides remained suspicious of each other, they felt more secure with the arms than without them. Once the Soviet Union signaled that it would not use force to preserve its hold on Eastern Europe, one country after another overthrew Soviet control. Then arms control agreements being negotiated could not even keep up with the actual reductions on the ground. The assumption had always been that arms reductions would bring peace, but it turned out to be the other way around. This sequence of events should make students of international conflict skeptical about the extraordinary significance usually attributed to arms races as phenomena that drive states to war.

  The conventional argument about the significance of competitive arms acquisitions is that they engender fear and thereby increase the likelihood of war. Consequently they are not benign tests of strength, a substitute for war, or evidence only of a need for prestige. On the contrary, they often have pernicious effects, creating distrust, fear, and even hatred. These effects, the argument continues, can of themselves bring on wars as states forget the original source of their conflict and focus only on their adversary’s weapons and the intentions they seem to belie. The commonly accepted argument may have a certain degree of validity, but as with all such arguments, we should not accept it without examining it first. When we take a close look at it, we see that it begs the question of why nations should engage in such a dangerous activity in the first place.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Rulers, Guns, and Money

  The Global Arms Trade in the Age of Imperialism

  • Jonathan A. Grant(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Harvard University Press

    (Publisher)

  5 A Tale of Two Arms Races Not all arms races are the same. The Arms Races in South America and East Asia occurred at roughly the same time (late nineteenth century) and largely involved the same private suppliers, but had fundamentally different dynamics. For Chile and Argentina the arms competition re-volved around prestige. Each sought to claim itself as the most powerful republic in South America. Their arms race lacked an underlying strate-gic policy core. The race assumed the form of a naval race because war-ships represented the highest-profile items a state could acquire, and therefore the posturing could be measured in the relative tonnage of the biggest and most modern naval assets acquired. Lacking a serious strate-gic underpinning, the Chilean-Argentine naval race could be resolved peacefully and quickly since no vital issue was at stake for either side. Across the Pacific, Japan pursued a strategic arms buildup of a Clause-witzian sort. Japan initiated wars first against China and then Russia as an extension of its policy goals to dominate Korea and establish itself on the Asian mainland. Japanese leaders developed a specific interest in the Korean peninsula as the key to Japanese defense and Japanese expansion into China. Japan followed concerted plans of industrial development and arms imports, especially naval, to obtain the necessary war tools to achieve its aims. Thus, the Japanese integrated their armaments pur-chases into their overall offensive imperialist strategy, making them-selves more formidable and much more likely to start a war. The differences between the two arms races were also reflected in the methods of financing. The South American states relied on foreign loans to purchase their armaments, and this made it possible for foreign cred-116 itors to apply pressure to facilitate the peaceful end of The Arms Race. Japan paid for its arms buildup by mobilizing domestic resources through higher domestic taxes.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Niels Bohr: Physics and the World

  • Herman Feshbach, Tetsuo Matsui, Alexandra Oleson(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In support of such an approach, it is often affirmed that all military technologies give rise to technological spinoff that is of interest in civilian life. In an ‘open world’ The Arms Race would automatically be avoided and the development of the technologies would naturally be oriented towards civilian goals and could easily be shaped toward the improvement of the living conditions of mankind. In my contribution to this conference I would like to examine some historical aspects of the interrelation between science and technology on the one hand and The Arms Race on the other, within the frame of Western Europe, starting from the end of the Second World War. In Section 2 of my speech, following this Introduction, I will give an outline of the most important organizations that were created, in Europe, to deal with various fields of science and technology immediately after the Second World War. In Section 3 I will try to present the problem of The Arms Race control as viewed by the Europeans. In order to carry out such a difficult task I will lean heavily on the conclusions which emerged during a recent international conference held on this specific subject in Italy. In this presentation I will also touch upon the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) proposed by President Reagan. Finally, in Section 4 I will mention a few, more recent developments, the last of which is the Eureka proposal. As a preamble I shall recall a few facts of an economic nature but which are of considerable importance as a background to what I will say later, in particular in Section 2. At the end of the Second World War the political and economical situation of all European States appeared to be seriously compromised. The central problem of the economic reconstruction of these states led the United States of America to create a plan of economic assistance, called the ‘European Recovery Programme’ but better known as the ‘Marshall Plan,’ from the name of its promoter

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  The Dangers of Nuclear War

  A Pugwash Symposium

  • Franklyn Griffiths, John C. Polanyi(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • University of Toronto Press

    (Publisher)

  One cannot fail to see, however, that these trends of The Arms Race will destabilize the strategic situation and increase the risk of a dramatic, fatal mistake under conditions of acute international crisis. Moreover, another menace may be discerned: The Arms Race could take a course (and to a certain extent is beginning to do so) which would make new agreements on limiting and reducing armaments far more difficult, if not altogether impossible, due to the insurmountable obstacles entailed in verification of some new weapons. This is, for instance, one of the negative conse-quences of the development of the strategic cruise missile or the MX mobile missile. It must be stressed that the continuing arms race is highly unlikely to produce any immediate, let alone long-term, advantages for either side. But it does create grave threats for both parties as well as for world peace and security. This is so because The Arms Race increases the danger of nuclear war even though no government may want such a war or plans deliberately to unleash one. In this sense, the decades ahead may differ sharply from the sixties and seventies. These developments are already under way. We must act and act quickly to avoid the dangers. One has to agree with ambassador George Kennan who recently warned that time is running out for all of us. I believe that there is increasing need to understand that the Soviet Union and the United States, East and West, face in their relations and their negotiations -including arms control negotiations - an impersonal adversary that overrides any specific threat one side may see in the other. This adversary is the looming danger of nuclear war, whatever may be its concrete scenario. With all our differences and contradictions we have an overwhelming mutual interest in seeking to avert the threat of war. This interest compels us to be persistent in our efforts to promote détente and to secure arms control and disarmament.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Rational Theory of International Politics

  The Logic of Competition and Cooperation

  • Charles L. Glaser(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  These issues are addressed briefly in chapter 4; for cita- tions on preventive war, see notes 19 and 20 in that chapter. The Theory • 77 The Arms Race will provide benefits, but also worry about its risks. Conse- quently, whether arms racing or cooperating will be a state’s best option depends on other variables, including both material and information variables. A weaker state faces a severe security dilemma because efforts to improve its military capabilities are unlikely to succeed and could gen- erate reactions that leave it less capable. The impact of power on the security dilemma becomes more compli- cated once we include signaling, but the basic conclusions stand under a wider range of assumptions. Launching a military buildup that provides large military advantages is likely to signal malign motives because a greedy state will tend to be more likely than a security seeker to require military advantages. 55 Consequently, although an arms buildup would increase a more powerful state’s military capability, the dangers of reduc- ing its adversary’s security do create incentives for the state to limit its arms buildup. 56 A state with a power advantage may want to restrain its buildup, forgoing or at least limiting military advantages to avoid under- mining the adversary’s military capability and to signal its benign mo- tives. 57 The signaling should be effective because the state’s power advan- tage makes clear its potential to win a quantitative arms race and therefore its restraint. Recent arguments that the United States can best manage its unipolar position by adopting restrained military and foreign policies re- flect this basic logic, applied to a situation in which there are a number of less powerful states that could balance against the United States.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Arms Control for the Third Nuclear Age

  Between Disarmament and Armageddon

  • David A. Cooper(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Georgetown University Press

    (Publisher)

  Alternatively, if military budgets are squeezed in the years ahead, this could actually foster greater reliance on nuclear weapons that offer more bang for the military buck. Moreover, even a budgetarily constrained arms race—particularly if it is more a technology than numbers race— will produce strategic effects that could significantly imperil deterrence stability. 113 In sum, a dangerous and unprecedented multipolar nuclear arms race is more likely than not over the coming decade and beyond. Nuclear Arms Racing Returns with a Vengeance Prospective budget woes aside, few experts foresee today’s arms race mirroring the Cold War numbers competition that saw the rival superpowers produce over sixty thousand nuclear weapons. 114 However, most experts believe that a spiraling technol-ogy race is already underway. 115 As a leading Russian analysist notes, “numbers are no longer the issue; it is capabilities, which are much more difficult to control.” 116 This technology race already displays offense-defense/action-reaction patterns. For example, knowledgeable insiders see Russian and Chinese strategic nuclear mod-ernization over the past decade as direct reactions to US missile-defense programs that were reacting to North Korea. One longtime State Department official opines, A New Arms Race 137 “What we’re seeing now is a long-delayed but direct consequence of our pulling out of ABM. This set Russia on its current course, exploring novel technologies that are now just coming to fruition.” 117 US attempts during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations to reassure Russia and China that its missile-defense programs were aimed at limited threats like North Korea fell on consistently deaf ears. 118 In turn, the Pentagon’s 2019 Missile Defense Review explicitly reorients US missile defenses to counter the new strategic delivery technologies that Russia and China are fielding.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Understanding Security

  • Mike Bourne(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  Finally, it discusses the body of practices related to arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation. This explores the logics and limits of international cooperation on arms matters and the evolution and challenges of controlling military technologies. In doing so, it shows how weapons and the politics of arms reflect and produce the global structures within which states seek security. The arms trade The global trade in conventional arms is largely understood as a legitimate and essential part of states’ military, strategic, political and economic rela-tions. The arms trade is not a completely free market: states exercise some control over what arms companies based in their countries do, or at least which other countries they sell weapons and military technologies to. States also participate in the arms trade as manufacturers and exporters for political and financial reasons. Arms transfers between states have been used to bolster Arms Trade, Arms Control and Disarmament 159 alliances, support friendly regimes, and engineer or alter balances of power within conflicts and in regional systems. However, states do not exercise full control over the arms trade, and like other trade regulations, controls involve a complex mix of competing interests and perceptions. Today, most policy debate on conventional arms relates to what restrictions should be applied to particular weapons or particular recipients: what the exceptions to the general rule of legitimacy of arms transfers should be, and how they should be decided. This has not always been the case. In the early 20th century, international arms trading was relatively free and largely private. Private companies, such as Vickers and Armstrong in the UK and Krupp in Germany, supplied their own governments and engaged in exports, partly to recoup the research and development costs of new technologies in a period of rapid technological change.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book