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Anarms race occurs when two or more groups compete in military superiority.[1] It consists of a competition between two or morestates to have superior armed forces, concerning production ofweapons, the growth of amilitary, and the aim of superiormilitary technology.[2] Unlike asporting race, which constitutes a specific event with winning interpretable as the outcome of a singularproject, arms races constitute spirallingsystems of on-going and potentially open-ended behavior.[3]
The existing scholarly literature is divided as to whether arms races correlate withwar.[4] International-relations scholars explain arms races in terms of thesecurity dilemma, engineeringspiral models, states withrevisionist aims, anddeterrence models.[4][5][6]
From 1897 to 1914, anaval arms race between theUnited Kingdom andGermany took place.[4][7] British concern about rapid increase in German naval power resulted in a costly building competition ofDreadnought-class ships. This tense arms race lasted until 1914, when the war broke out. After the war, a new arms race developed among the victorious Allies, which was temporarily ended by the Washington Naval Treaty.
In addition to the British and Germans, contemporaneous but smaller naval arms races also broke out betweenRussia and theOttoman Empire; the Ottomans andGreece;France andItaly; theUnited States andJapan in the 1930s;[4] andBrazil, Argentina, and Chile.
This contest of the advancement of offensive nuclear capabilities occurred during theCold War, an intense period between theSoviet Union and the United States and some other countries. This was one of the main causes that began the Cold War, and perceived advantages of the adversary by both sides (such as themissile gap andbomber gap) led to large spending on armaments and the stockpiling of vast nuclear arsenals.Proxy wars were fought all over the world (e.g. in theMiddle East,Korea, andVietnam) in which the superpowers' conventional weapons were pitted against each other. After thedissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, tensions decreased and the nuclear arsenal of both countries were reduced.
Charles Glaser argues that numerous cases of arms races were suboptimal, as they entailed a waste of resources, damaged political relations, increased the probability of war, and hindered states in accomplishing their goals. However, arms races can be optimal for security-seeking states in situations when the offense-defense balance favors offense, when a declining state faces a rising adversary, and when advances in technology make existing weapons obsolete for the power that had an advantage in the existing weaponry.[4]
A militaryartificial intelligence arms race is an arms race between two or more states to develop and deploylethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS). Since the mid-2010s, many analysts have noted the emergence of such an arms race between global superpowers for better military AI,[8][9] driven byincreasing geopolitical and military tensions. An AI arms race is sometimes placed in the context of anAI Cold War between the US and China.[10]
Anevolutionary arms race is a system where two populations areevolving in order to continuously one-up members of the other population. This concept is related to theRed Queen's Hypothesis, where two organisms co-evolve to overcome each other but each fails to progress relative to the other interactant.
In technology, there are close analogues to the arms races between parasites and hosts, such as the arms race between writers ofcomputer viruses andantivirus software, orspammers againstInternet service providers andE-mail software writers.
More generically, the term is used to describe any competition where there is no absolute goal, only the relative goal of staying ahead of the other competitors in rank or knowledge. An arms race may also imply futility as the competitors spend a great deal of time and money, yet with neither side gaining an advantage over the other.
For the purpose of this study an arms race is understood as the participation of two or more nation-states in apparently competitive or interactive increases in quantity or quality of war material and/or persons under arms.
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