Arms Races to War: Testing Some Empirical Linkages

This article investigates the impact that arms races have on the probability of major power rivals going to war. Twenty-two enduring rivalries in the years 1816–1980 are the focus of investigation. Military buildups were found to exercise little direct impact on the escalation of militarized disputes to war. They were critical, however, in affecting the relative capabilities of the contending nations. Parity was the escalatory condition for rivalries in the nineteenth century, while preponderance precipitated war in the twentieth century. Arms races and unilateral buildups were dangerous when they caused a shift to each century's escalatory distribution of capabilities or inhibited a shift away from that distribution. The escalatory capability distributions were virtual necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for war Rivalries experienced war under these conditions only after a scries of militarized disputes had occurred between the contending nations, the site of contention was contiguous to one of the rivals, and the defense burden of the target nation of the dispute was high. Implications for the current U.S.-U.S.S.R. rivalry are discussed.