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Arms race

An arms race occurs when two or more groups compete in military superiority.[1] It consists of a competition between two or more states to have superior armed forces, concerning production of weapons, the growth of a military, and the aim of superior military technology.[2] Unlike a sporting race, which constitutes a specific event with winning interpretable as the outcome of a singular project, arms races constitute spiralling systems of on-going and potentially open-ended behavior.[3]

For similar terms, see Nuclear arms race and Evolutionary arms race.

The existing scholarly literature is divided as to whether arms races correlate with war.[4] International-relations scholars explain arms races in terms of the security dilemma, engineering spiral models, states with revisionist aims, and deterrence models.[4][5][6]

Other uses[edit]

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.

Brose, Eric. "", in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War (Freie Universität Berlin, 8 October 2014). doi:10.15463/ie1418.10219.

Arms Race prior to 1914, Armament Policy

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.. "". Journal of Conflict Resolution 28.1 (1984): 63–84.

Can arms races lead to the outbreak of war?

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. "". In Cameron G. Thies, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of Foreign Policy Analysis, vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 61–71.

Arms Buildups and the Use of Military Force

Smith, Theresa Clair. "Arms race instability and war". Journal of Conflict resolution 24.2 (1980): 253–284.