Suchergebnisse

This article analyzes the circumstances under which conflict leads to the outbreak of war using a formal model which incorporates both the redistribution of resources as an alternative to war and imperfect information. Countries act as rational agents concerned with both consumption and the public bad of a war. In the first period both countries can either consume or build arms, whereas in the second period there can be either the threat or the use of force to reallocate resources. If both countries are fully informed, then there will be no war but rather a voluntary redistribution of resources. In a situation of asymmetric information, however, in which one country is fully informed and the other is not, a war can occur if the uninformed country uses a separating equilibrium strategy, precommitting itself to a positive probability of war in order to prevent bluffing by the informed country.

The possible relationships of an arms race to the outbreak of war are treated in the framework of a dynamic model of a missile war that could be used by defense planners to simulate the outbreak of war between two nuclear nations. It is shown that, depending on the initial and final configuration of weapons on both sides, an arms race could lead not only to war but to peace. Conversely, a disarming race could lead not only to peace but to war. The analytic framework is also applied to a qualitative arms race to show that such a race can promote crisis instability. These results are applied both to questions of disarmament and arms control and to the U.S.-Soviet postwar arms race. A conclusion of this analysis is that the quantitative U.S.-Soviet arms race of the 1960s and 1970s not only reduced the chances of war outbreak but also provided insurance against qualitative improvements in weapons.