Arms races, militarization, and war

The main purpose of this dissertation is to propose and test a link between arms races and war. The statistical study of arms races, beginning in 1979, had by the mid-1990s, reached a consensus that there was a moderately significant relationship between arming and war. A survey of traditional approaches to the study of arms races concludes that the quantitative approach had failed both to link a specific pattern of arms racing to war, or to provide a theoretical link between arms racing an war. The literature survey concludes that the case study approach provides the best promise.; The dissertation argues that the link between arms races and war can best be understood through the effect arms races have on the militarization of a state's decision-making process. Militarization increases the likelihood of war through five normative and structural consequences, each of which is developed as an individual hypothesis and tested. The cause of the militarization is controlled for in order to determine whether it was the result of the arms race or preexisting conditions relating to the state's civil-military relations. The militarization as the explanation for war is juxtaposed against two competing explanations: the availability of offensive-alliances, and the speed of the preceding arms race conflict spiral.; The hypotheses are applied to seven monadic cases of arms racing and war: Pakistan and the 1965 war, India and the 1971 war, Israel and the 1956 war, Israel and the 1967 war, Egypt and the 1971 war, Iran and the 1969--1975 war, Iraq and the 1980 war. The dissertation concludes that there is evidence for a moderate relationship between militarization and war; that weapons can be constituted a cause of war under only very rare circumstances; that arms control is most fruitfully focused on demilitarization in the context of arms races.