The arms race is the struggle that some countries have to obtain and maintain world dominance in their military weapons parks. These countries seek to have the largest armies with the best training and capacity for action and reaction, both tactically and technologically.
The fight can take place between countries or between blocks of States. The effects of this interaction can be real and direct, and also symbolic and indirect. Two nations (or two blocs of nations) that increase their firepower and military strength will have a real and direct effect, with concrete, objective and measurable results.
Furthermore, this interaction carries a type of symbolic influence that refers to the demonstration of superiority of one bloc over another or of one nation over another, as the case may be. The main objective in an arms race is none other than to surpass other countries or blocks in number and quality of weapons.
The interaction will also lead to geo-strategic intimidation and political pressure, and its influence will be indirect, since it will affect regions and world institutions, which will alter the balance of supranational coexistence.
It is about obtaining more and better weapons, and developing technology that allows the army to have more power. The arms race can be divided into four stages that are described below: World War I, World War II, Cold War, present.
Arms race in World War I
The twentieth century began with a tense atmosphere among nations that disputed the fruits of industrialization.
In Europe this situation unleashed an arms race. Countries gradually increased their military arsenals and gradually gathered more and more troops in their armies. National borders were beginning to move.
Years before the outbreak of the First World War, the countries that exercised the hegemonic figure in the field of world geopolitics were the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the British Empire, France, the Russian Empire, the German Empire, the Turkish Empire, the Japanese Empire and the Kingdom of Bulgaria.
All these countries developed increasingly ostentatious, technical and numerous weapons programs.
The United States, from its isolationist position, placed special emphasis on increasing its military industrial complex by raising its status to the level of world power. However, it did not make a formal appearance on the international relations game board.
The geopolitical context of that nascent century was characterized by permanent tension between nations. These tensions became more and more latent and the rise of nationalisms, added to the intransigence of supremacist positions and territorial ambitions, generated rivalries considered irreconcilable.
Then, an unprecedented escalation in the production of weapons machinery took place.
Armed peace
As contradictory as it may sound, the term “armed peace” became popular, which justified the increase in spending on weapons.
The British Empire went from £ 44,000,000 in 1899 to £ 77,000,000 at the dawn of 1914. Germany raised its military budget from £ 90,000,000 in 1899 to £ 400,000,000 in the decade before World War I.
Many countries joined with others, thus forming strategic alliances that resulted in greater arms race.
Second World War
The humiliation to which Germany was subjected with the elimination of its military power after the First World War, the reduction of its territories and the economic fines to compensate the material damages caused to the attacked countries exacerbated nationalist sentiments and prepared the fertile ground for the rise of the Nazi machine.
Chancellor Adolf Hitler began his administration with the restructuring of the German army, the development of a state-of-the-art war tank park, and the full-time dedication of scientists and technicians to the recreation of the most modern air forces of the time.
All of this dramatically increased the warlike status of Germany in the 1930s and achieved important victories during World War II.
In response to this Nazi German effort, the governments of the other countries that had geographic, economic and political interests in the western European territories, began to update their military arsenals.
The countries once again began to form alliances in order to increase their territorial possessions and increase their weapons capabilities.
Cold War
After the Second World War, another deployment of political movements emerged to penalize the belligerent nations considered guilty of the recently ended world conflict.
For this, a distribution of supervised territories was made in the manner of peaceful armed occupations by the nations that had won the war.
Within the victorious bloc, internal struggles arose that provoked an antagonism between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States of America as the main protagonists. That rupture led to a new conflict: the Cold War. It sparked a new, wilder wave of arms.
The fierce confrontation took place in the political, cultural, economic, social, sports, artistic, technological and even educational fields, without ever occurring a military confrontation.
During the Cold War period (from 1945 to 1989) the arms race made the industrial military complexes of these international powers grow to levels never imagined.
Among the structures created are nuclear arsenals, space satellites, chemical weapons of destruction and the development of digital space, dominated by multimillionaire communication complexes capable of destabilizing governments, countries, regions and accessing any territory in favor of their geostrategic interests.
Present
At present, efforts to have better armies and military arsenals are characterized by an overwhelming imbalance.
Some examples are the unusual nuclear power and the projection of non-human armies, hand in hand with the increasingly perfected development of robotics, unmanned vehicles, ships with remote-controlled firepower and the manipulation of forces of nature.
Figures from 2016 indicate that world investment in weapons reached 1.68 trillion dollars. Specialists affirm that the boom in the acquisition of weapons responds to the anticipation of the possible appearance of internal crises in the countries that generate unstable scenarios, as well as possible attacks by terrorist groups.
In mid-2017, the United States was positioned as the country with the highest investment in the arms field, and data from the Barack Obama administration indicate that 611 billion dollars were invested in new weapons during 2016 alone.
Currently the most powerful army in the world is that of the United States, with 1,400,000 active military personnel, more than 1,000,000 in the reserve, and a budget dedicated to the defense field that exceeds 500,000 million euros. They are followed by the armies of Russia and China.
References
- Pearson, Paul N. (2001) Red Queen hypothesis. Rescued from: Encyclopedia of Life Sciences els.net
- David Zucchino (March 18, 2012). "Stress of combat reaches drone crews". Los Angeles Times. Rescued from: articles.latimes.com
- Melvin P. Leffler (2008). The war after the war. The United States, the Soviet Union and the Cold War. Review.
- What is the most powerful army in the world? Rescued from elheraldo.es
- Berruga Filloy, E. (June 25, 2017). Start a new arms race in the world. Restored from eluniversal.com.mx