ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 (“The ‘Arms Race’ Fallacy”) traces the use of the terms arms racing, action–reaction dynamics and spiral model in Western strategic thinking and debate. These terms were used to explain the conventional arms build-up between France and the British Commonwealth (1840–66), the First and Second World War, the US–Soviet nuclear competition and the increase in Asian defence expenditures in the 1980s. Despite the differences in these cases, increasing armaments were considered “lethal,” “dangerous” and destabilising to a security order. The contested definitions of the terms in the scholarly literature have been created by a methodological divide in qualitative and quantitative approaches to measuring military capabilities and expenditure. The focus on methodological rigour has resulted in the conceptual stretching of the term arms race to construct a universal theory. Instead, by examining the decision-making process of arms, this chapter argues that all arming is inherently interactive and not necessarily competitive. Consequently, an “arms race fallacy” exists because the concept in Western international relations and security studies attempts to be a universal theory across all cases, as opposed to understanding the context-specific decisions to arm.
