Arms transfers and the onset of war part II: Wars in third world states, 1950–1965

This paper analyzes the relationships between actual arms transfers and conflict from a different perspective from the preceding paper. Here we report tests of three hypotheses relating war occurrences with transfers of tanks and jet aircraft by NATO and WTO states to third world states. By using stepwise logistic regression, we find that NATO aricraft transfers and WTO tank transfers predict to contemporaneous wars, and that NATO aircraft transfers predict to lagged wars. No strong association is found between wars and transfers either leading or lagging wars. The contemporaneous causation model provides a basis fox estimating the increase in war probability associated with a non‐marginal increase in specific types of arms transfers. Directions for future research on these data are suggested.