Global military spending has tripled since the beginning of the century to around three trillion dollars in 2025. Arms control treaties, such as those on missile defense, medium-range missiles, and Open Skies, have been terminated. The New START-Treaty has been suspended.
There is a wealth of statistical data on global and regional arms build-ups. This article instead examines the conceptual causes of armament. It argues that these causes are a combination of external and internal drivers. Arms build-ups are often justified as a means to maintain peace, yet very frequently they pave the way for war. The most effective way to slow an arms race is to interrupt the underlying security competition and to prevent war.
The driving forces
What are the driving forces behind the arms build-up? Thucydides, who observed the Peloponnesian War, sees three causes for war and the preparation for it: fear, honor, and utility.
In principle, this view corresponds to the general trends in the arms race. These are the pursuit of security, perceptions of threat, prestige, the belief in armament—indeed, in war—as a guarantee of security, and multiple interests.
Arms race processes have external and internal causes. Security competition and the associated uncertainties are influenced by external factors such as perceptions of threat. The internal dynamics of armament result from the autism of a wide variety of actors.
The pursuit of greater security on the part of one side can create a dynamic that leads to greater insecurity on the part of others. This is due to the concept of the security dilemma. A security dilemma arises from the fear of an attack for which one believes one must prepare. This security competition means that the security of one state is based on the threat to another. The security dilemma is more than mutual military armament. It is a delicate balance between armament efforts, perceptions of threat, and intentions. Threats provoke counter-threats, mistrust feeds mistrust, and armament investments lead to counter-investments.
Fear of attack gave rise to the supposed Roman proverb that one must prepare for war in order to secure peace. Apart from the fact that this quote does not appear in Latin literature, it is incorrect. The security dilemma carries the risk that preparing for war through armament can also lead to war. If you talk about war for a long time, it will come. The First World War is tragic proof of this insight.
The now widely used term “hybrid warfare” also gives the impression that a large number of non-belligerent actors are already involved in a war. This creates the danger of a general climate of war, which would require a higher level of armament. War no longer has any boundaries; it is everywhere. In fact, however, there are clear definitions of war. These involve the active involvement of centrally organized armed forces with a certain degree of continuity; and, above all, there are large numbers of deaths. None of this applies to “hybrid warfare.” When the term hybrid warfare is used inflationary in the context of war, it trivializes war.
A kingdom of armaments
The interest in and benefits of armament have developed a kingdom of armaments that sustains itself through autism and momentum. Armament perpetuates a system of actors who are involved in this process and also benefit from it. These include armament companies, defense institutions such as ministries and general staffs, think tanks, and scientific projects. Technology is another driving force. Armament planning is based more on anticipating what an enemy might plan than on what it has already produced. Gaps, whether real or not, are identified. Metaphorically speaking, one could argue that the arms race would continue if one side disappeared but the other side was unaware of this.
The illusion of war and deterrence
Arms races produce illusions. At the beginning of a war, the enemy is usually underestimated and one’s own strength overestimated. No one starts a war when the enemy is considered to be decisively superior. “We’ll be home for Christmas” was the slogan for the soldiers who went to war in August 1914, a war that would last another four years. Similar illusions about resolving political conflicts through armament and war currently exist in all parts of the world, including Europe. The honor of not losing a war or not achieving the war aims prolongs wars to an irrational length. Examples of this are the wars in Vietnam, Iran-Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ukraine.
A particular form of armament is nuclear deterrence. This is a state of mind caused by a credible counter-reaction to an unacceptable threat. To be credible, nuclear weapons must also be deployable. This means that they not only serve as a deterrent, but must also be weapons of warfare. The strategy of deterrence developed during the East-West conflict and was the cause of the arms race, because of always emerging gaps (bombers, missiles, etc.) had to be constantly rearmed. Both sides strived for escalation dominance, i.e. the capability to strike the final blow. True nuclear disarmament will probably only happen if the concept of mutual nuclear deterrence, which was responsible for the massive arms race during the Cold War, is fundamentally questioned.
Polarization means armament – war prevention arms reduction
The security dilemma can be mitigated by reducing threat behavior. This can be done through changing the language of threat, through confidence-building measures, and through arms control and disarmament agreements. Above all, war prevention restrains armament. Its aim is to prevent violent conflict from emerging and/or escalating. Any polarized international system without such measures inevitably unleashes new dynamics of armament.
Security can be either the absence of threat or the capability to be able to repel threats. Therefore, there are also different views on the ways in which security can be achieved. Either, in order to increase security military capacities can be enhanced, or the environment in which threats can develop must be changed.
A major attempt to break the security dilemma and to change the security environment was made in 1975 with the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE). In contrast to current security strategies, that document deliberately avoided labels such as enemy, opponent, competitor, challenger, or rival. It was drafted at the height of bloc confrontation, marked by armament, mutual distrust, accusations of expansionism, and deep ideological divides. Today, the world again faces a renewed security competition — whether multipolar or bipolar.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Univ. Prof. Dr. Heinz Gärtner is lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Vienna and at Danube University. He was academic director of the Austrian Institute for International Affairs. He has held various Fulbright Fellowships and the Austrian Chair at Stanford University. He was Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC. Among other things, he chairs the Strategy and Security advisory board of the Austrian Armed Forces and the Advisory Board of the International Institute for Peace (IIP) in Vienna. Watch his Interviews here.
CHIEF EDITOR
Univ.-Ass. Josef Mühlbauer is a peace schoolar at the University of Graz and scientific researcher at Empowerment for Peace (EfP). He serves as the host of the YouTube channel Varna Peace Institute, a platform that addresses contemporary debates on peace, security, and international affairs.
