arms race

The continual accumulation in terms of numbers and capacity of military weapons by two or more states, in the belief that only by maintaining a superiority will their national security be guaranteed. Many maintain that, in such a situation, the continual growth in weapons becomes a threat to security by increasing international tension and distrust.

For example, one such competition manifested itself in the rapid development by the United States and the Soviet Union of more and better nuclear weapons during the Cold War (see: nuclear arms race). The Soviet Union devoted their command economy to the arms race and with the deployment of the SS-18 in the late 1970s achieved first strike superiority.

More generically, the term "arms race" is also used to describe any competition where there is no absolute goal, only the relative goal of staying ahead of the other competitors. Evolutionary arms races are common occurrences, e.g. predators evolving more effective means to catch prey while their prey evolves more effective means of evasion. In addition to predators, parasites can force their hosts into an arms race.

In technology, there are close analogues to the arms races between parasites and hosts, such as the arms race between computer virus writers and anti-virus software writers, or spammers against Internet Service Providers and E-mail software writers.

Lewis Fry Richardson made an arms race model, trying to retrodict World War I, where he showed how two countries would go to war if more money was spent in the arms race than in trade.