arms races
Competitive weapons stockpiling
Arms races are competitions between nations or groups to build up military capabilities, each side responding to the other's advances.
The Cold War arms race between the United States and Soviet Union centered on nuclear weapons.
The term extends to any escalating competition: an arms race between hackers and security firms, a technological arms race in artificial intelligence.
- deterrencePrevention via threatened consequences
- nuclearOf atomic energy
- nuclear warheadsFissile explosive devices
- mutually assured destructionReciprocal nuclear annihilation threat
- competitionStruggle for supremacy
diplomacy · escalation · brinkmanship · power politics · rivalry · ballistic missiles · containment · militarization · defense spending · missile defense · proxy wars · balance of power · Manhattan Project · weapon systems · Cold War · iron curtain · Sputnik · Star Wars program
- competitionscontests, tournaments, match, matches, game
- geopoliticsbalance of power, bipolarity, bloc, blocs, brinkmanship
arms racesdisarmament
Reducing or eliminating weapons
arms reduction · demilitarization · nuclear disarmament · arms control · denuclearization
arms racespeace treaties
Formal agreements ending wars
détente · peace agreements · diplomatic engagement · collective security · rapprochement
arms racespacifism
Antiwar moral stance
antimilitarism · peace movements · nonviolence · demilitarization · war resistance
race, arms, armor, unarmed, disarming, armory, armistice, disarmament, rearmament