Arms race

{{main|Anglo-German naval arms race|World War I naval arms race (disambiguation)|South American dreadnought race}}

File:Naval-race-1909.jpg

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From 1897 to 1914, a naval arms race between the United Kingdom and Germany took place.{{Citation |last=Seligmann |first=Matthew S. |title=The Anglo-German Naval Race, 1898–1914 |date=2016 |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198735267.003.0002 |work=Arms Races in International Politics |pages=21–40 |publisher=Oxford University Press|doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198735267.003.0002 |isbn=978-0-19-873526-7 }} British concern about rapid increase in German naval power resulted in a costly building competition of Dreadnought-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 between Russia and the Ottoman Empire; the Ottomans and Greece; France and Italy; the United States and Japan in the 1930s; and Brazil, Argentina, and Chile.

{{main|Nuclear arms race}}

Image:US and USSR nuclear stockpiles.svg and Soviet Union/Russia nuclear weapon stockpiles]]

This contest of the advancement of offensive nuclear capabilities occurred during the Cold War, an intense period between the Soviet 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 the "missile gap" and "bomber 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 the Middle East, Korea, and Vietnam) in which the superpowers' conventional weapons were pitted against each other. After the dissolution 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.

{{main|Artificial intelligence arms race}}

A military artificial intelligence arms race is an arms race between two or more states to develop and deploy lethal 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,{{Cite journal |last=Geist |first=Edward Moore |date=2016-08-15 |title=It's already too late to stop the AI arms race—We must manage it instead |journal=Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists |volume=72 |issue=5 |pages=318–321 |bibcode=2016BuAtS..72e.318G |doi=10.1080/00963402.2016.1216672 |issn=0096-3402 |s2cid=151967826}}{{Cite journal |last=Maas |first=Matthijs M. |date=2019-02-06 |title=How viable is international arms control for military artificial intelligence? Three lessons from nuclear weapons |journal=Contemporary Security Policy |volume=40 |issue=3 |pages=285–311 |doi=10.1080/13523260.2019.1576464 |issn=1352-3260 |s2cid=159310223}} driven by increasing geopolitical and military tensions. An AI arms race is sometimes placed in the context of an AI Cold War between the US and China.{{cite news |last=Champion |first=Marc |date=12 December 2019|title= Digital Cold War |url=https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/how-u-s-china-tech-rivalry-looks-like-a-digital-cold-war|work= Bloomberg|access-date=3 July 2021}}

An evolutionary arms race is a system where two populations are evolving in order to continuously one-up members of the other population. This concept is related to the Red 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 of computer viruses and antivirus software, or spammers against Internet service providers and E-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.

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• Nuclear arms race
• Arms control
• Arms industry
• Cyber arms race
• Driver safety arms race
• AI arms race
• Lewis Fry Richardson for his mathematical analysis of war
• Second Cold War
• Military–industrial complex
• Missile gap
• One-upmanship
• Revolution in military affairs
• Security dilemma
• Space race
• Weaponization of artificial intelligence
• Saint Petersburg Declaration of 1868

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{{Reflist}}

• Brose, Eric. "[https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/arms_race_prior_to_1914_armament_policy Arms Race prior to 1914, Armament Policy]", in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War (Freie Universität Berlin, 8 October 2014). {{doi|10.15463/ie1418.10219}}.
• Downs, George W.; Rocke, David M.; Siverson, Randolph M. (1985). "Arms Races and Cooperation". World Politics. 38 (1): 118–146.
• Huntington, Samuel P. 1958. "Arms Races: Prerequisites and Results", Public Policy 8: 41–86
• Intriligator, Michael D., and Brito, Dagobert L.. "[https://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~fczagare/PSC%20504/Intriligator.pdf Can arms races lead to the outbreak of war?]". Journal of Conflict Resolution 28.1 (1984): 63–84.
• Mahnken, Thomas; Maiolo, Joseph; Stevenson, David (eds.). 2016. Arms Races in International Politics: From the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century. Oxford University Press.
• Mitchell, David F., and Jeffrey Pickering. 2018. "[http://www.davidfmitchell.com/uploads/4/3/4/0/43400967/armsbuildups_mitchellpickering.pdf Arms Buildups and the Use of Military Force]". In Cameron G. Thies, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of Foreign Policy Analysis, vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 61–71.
• Smith, Theresa Clair. "Arms race instability and war". Journal of Conflict resolution 24.2 (1980): 253–284.

• Barnet, Richard J. 1984. Der amerikanische Rüstungswahn. Reinbek: Rowohlt {{ISBN|3-499-11450-X}} {{in lang|de}}
• Bruhn, Jürgen. 1995. Der Kalte Krieg oder: Die Totrüstung der Sowjetunion. Gießen: Focus {{ISBN|3-88349-434-8}} {{in lang|de}}

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Category:Military terminology

Category:Geopolitical rivalry

Category:Technological races

Category:Weapons

Category:Arms trafficking