International Politics. Arms Race and Disarmament. Nuclear Arms Race.

                                  

An arms race denotes a rapid, competitive increase in the quantity or quality of instruments of military or naval power by rival states in peacetime. What it connotes is a game with logic of its own.

An arms race is a competition in which two or more enemy nations try to produce the largest possible arsenal of weapons.

There are essentially four main elements to this definition.

First, there's desire and need from all sides. If one is going to do this, the other probably will too.

Second, it's an accelerated process involving a focused effort from a nation. Many resources are dedicated to an arms race.

Next, there are competing sides. It wouldn't make sense to stockpile weapons if no one else does.

Finally, quantity is important. A nation wants to have more than their competitors of course.

Two of the most important early scholars were Lewis Richardson, who published a number of pieces between the World Wars (see, e.g., Richardson, 1939), and Samuel Huntington who produced a systematic examination of arms races from the 1940s through the onset of the Cold War (Huntington, 1958).

There were two key questions addressed in these studies:
What drives arms races?
Do arms races lead to war?

What Drives Arms Races?

Much of the early work on arms races centered on trying to understand what drives the acquisition of armaments. A great deal of this literature was inspired by the Richardson equations (Richardson, 1939). Richardson was interested in understanding what would have an impact on the “defenses” of a pair of states in competition with one another.

Richardson assumed that for two states in an arms competition the changes in their defenses would be a function of three things:

1.      The defenses of the other state. (i.e., increases by one state would lead to increases in the other state).

2.      The state’s own defenses. He assumed that each state would react negatively to its own previous defenses.

3.      The overall relationship of each state towards the other. (i.e., the defenses of each state would increase).

Do Arms Races Lead to War?

The belief that arms races lead to war was one of the main motivations for Richardson’s work; he felt that arms races were a primary cause of World War I. This was also the prime motivation of Huntington’s work (1958).
Post World War II, this was a very important question for the obvious reason that an arms competition between the superpowers that ended in war might result in a nuclear exchange and the killing of millions and millions of people.
While a number of theoretical approaches were applied to this question, the two most prominent approaches were the spiral model and the deterrence model (Levy & Thompson, 2010, pp. 30–31).
In the spiral model, states take actions against each other (increasing their defenses) for defensive purposes. However, while each state regards its own actions as defensive, each sees the other state’s states actions as offensive. Consequently the defensive actions of each state will be misperceived as offensive and lead to war. The spiral model focuses on the unintended consequences of defensive actions.
The deterrence model focuses on the failure of states to take sufficient action to convince other states that if a war is fought they will lose. That is, war comes about if a state fails to increase its defenses sufficiently to dissuade the other state from attacking.

The End of the Cold War and the Decline of the Study of Arms Races

The early work on arms races did not reach firm conclusions.
There was little consensus on whether particular dyads engaged in an arms race of the United States-Soviet dyad reached opposite conclusions.
And if there was little consensus on whether particular dyads were engaged in an arms race, it was of course difficult to determine whether arms races led to wars.
Those studies that followed up on arms race research did not provide a definition of an arms race.
One other aspect of the early studies of arms races—regardless of which of the two main themes was being investigated—was the fact that most were monocausal.
The early studies that were conducted included few control variables, and their central focus was on arms races. This focus was not inappropriate. It made no sense to build and test more complicated models without first exploring simple conceptions.
And then the Cold War ended. It is fair to say that the Cold War—and the United States-Soviet arms race—stimulated a great deal of work on arms races.
There simply was not enough work—and enough variability—to reach firm conclusions.

Arms races since the early 20th century

One example of an arms race is the “dreadnought” arms race between Germany and Britain prior to World War I. In the early 20th century, Germany as a rising power sought to challenge the United Kingdom’s traditional naval dominance. In 1906 Britain launched a new, more-advanced warship, HMS Dreadnought, triggering a naval arms race. Between 1909 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Britain launched a further 19 dreadnoughts and a further nine battle cruisers, while Germany launched 13 dreadnoughts and five battle cruisers. This arms race is often cited as one of the causes of World War I.

Between 1945, when the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II, and 1972, when the first comprehensive nuclear arms reduction treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union was signed, both nations engaged in a race to build and deploy as many nuclear weapons as possible.

When did the arms race start?

A. It started in 1945, when the United States exploded its first atomic bomb on July 16 in Alamogordo, N.M., after a massive research campaign known as the Manhattan Project. The successful test of the bomb led to its use on two Japanese cities in August 1945, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Soviet Union knew of the U.S. work on the atomic bomb and began work on a bomb of its own.

Q. When the Soviets get the bomb?

A. The Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb on Aug. 29, 1949, at their facility in Semipalatinsk in what is now Kazakhstan. U.S officials, who believed they would have a longer monopoly on atomic weapons, detected the Soviet explosion on Sept. 3, when a spy plane flying over Siberia detected signs of airborne radioactive material. President Harry Truman told the American people later that month about the Soviet bomb.

Q. What is the hydrogen bomb?

The thermonuclear, or hydrogen bomb, which some of its developers called the "Super," was first exploded over the Pacific atoll of Eniwetak on Nov. 1, 1952. The Soviets exploded their first true hydrogen bomb on Nov. 22, 1955. Hydrogen bombs are far more powerful than atomic bombs and fuse isotopes of hydrogen to create a more powerful explosion.

Q. What is mutually assured destruction?

A. This was a policy developed during the Kennedy administration in the 1960s in which both the United States and Soviet Union would be deterred from starting a nuclear war because of the knowledge that each side would be destroyed by the other. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union could be assured that the side that struck first would knock out enough of the other's weapons to avoid being destroyed in a retaliatory strike.

Q. What was the peak of the arms race?

A. According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the United States had 32,040 nuclear warheads in 1967, while the Soviets peaked at 45,000 in 1986.

Which treaties curbed the arms race?

On Aug. 5, 1963, U.S., Soviet and British foreign ministers signed the Test Ban Treaty that stopped nuclear tests in the earth's atmosphere. On May 26, 1972, President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, which called for the first reductions in the number of nuclear weapons. A second treaty limiting anti-ballistic missile systems was also signed that day.

Q. What is the Strategic Defense Initiative?

A. SDI, which was popularly known as Star Wars, was first proposed by President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983. It called for a series of satellites and ground-based missiles that would shoot down incoming missiles from the Soviet Union and other nations. Opponents, including the Soviets, believed it would destabilize the anti-ballistic missile treaty of 1972 and encourage the United States to believe it could launch a first strike against the Soviets. One of its major proponents was Edward Teller, the nuclear scientist who helped develop the hydrogen bomb.

What did Ronald Reagan do?

Reagan entered the White House in 1981 after opposing the second round of SALT talks and talking tough about the Soviet Union. He proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative and also referred to the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire. By 1985, however, Reagan was talking openly about the elimination of all nuclear weapons. He met with new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 and 1986 for highly publicized nuclear talks. They signed a treaty in December 1987 limiting intermediate- and short-range nuclear missiles. By 1988, the United States and Soviet Union had agreed to a framework calling for dramatic reductions in nuclear weapons. In July 1991, President George H.W. Bush and Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that locked in those reductions.

How many nuclear weapons do the United States and Russia have?

A. Russia has 7,300 nuclear warheads, U.S. records show, while the United States has 6,970.

The Nuclear Arms Race

The nuclear arms race was central to the Cold War. Many feared where the Cold War was going with the belief that the more nuclear weapons you had, the more powerful you were. Both America and Russia massively built up their stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
The world greatly changed when USA exploded the H-bomb in 1952. This one bomb was smaller in size than the Hiroshima atomic bomb but 2500 times more powerful. The Russians produced an H-bomb in 1953 and the world became a much more dangerous place. However, it is possible that the sheer power of these weapons and the fear that they evoked, may have stopped a nuclear war.
USA produced a bomber – the B52 – that could fly 6,000 miles and deliver a nuclear pay-load. Such a development required massive financial backing from the government – something which America could afford to do and which Russia could not. Russia concentrated on producing bigger bombs – a far more cost effective procedure.
In October 1957, the world was introduced to the fear of a missile attack when Sputnik was launched. This was to lead to ICBM’s :  Inter-continental ballistic missiles. As a result, America built the DEW line around the Arctic – Defence and Early Warning system.
At the end of the 1950’s, American Intelligence estimated that in a Russian missile attack, 20 million Americans would die and 22 million would be injured.
During the 1960’s, the Russians put their money into producing more missiles regardless of quality while America built fewer but better quality missiles – the Atlas could go 5,000 miles at a speed of 16,000 mph. By 1961, there were enough bombs to destroy the world.
Despite this, great emphasis was put on new weapon systems – mobile missile launchers were built, missiles were housed underground in silos and in 1960 the first Polaris submarine was launched carrying 16 nuclear missiles. Each missile carried four warheads which could targeted on different cities; hence one submarine effectively carried 64 nuclear warheads.
In 1967, China exploded an H-bomb. China was a communist country. In the west, NATO felt out-numbered as the table below shows and so had to place her faith in nuclear missiles.
Troops : NATO 2.6 million.  Warsaw Pact 4 million
Tanks : NATO 13,000.  Warsaw Pact  42,500
Artillery : NATO 10,750.  Warsaw Pact 31,5000
During the 1960’s the theory of MAD developed – Mutually Assured Destruction. This meant that if Russia attacked the west, the west would make sure that they would suitably retaliate  i.e. there would be no winners.
By 1981, USA had 8,000 ICBM’s and USSR 7,000 ICBM’s
By 1981, USA had 4,000 planes capable of delivering a nuclear bomb. Russia had 5000.
USA defence spending for 1981 = 178 billion dollars. By 1986, it was 367 billion dollars.
By 1986, it is estimated that throughout the world there were 40,000 nuclear warheads – the equivalent of one million Hiroshima bombs. British Intelligence estimated that just one medium sized H-bomb on London would essentially destroy anything living up to 30 miles away.