Capability and hostile behavior in arms race models

Abstract

The interplay of capability and hostile behavior as indicators of threat is under‐conceptualized in arms‐race research. I propose that the motivation (intentions) attributed to a state's hostile acts depends on its capability: the less capable it is, the stronger the motivation. Controlling for the amount of hostile acts, if a state's capability level rises overtime its intentions would appear less malign, hence the state might seemless threatening (if threat perception is sensitive to intentions). In a static arms‐competition model this implies a hypothesized negative sign for the arms‐reaction coefficient. I support this interpretation primarily by testing a statistical model of the U.S.‐Soviet arms competition and, secondarily by showing that past quantitative research also generated considerable, yet little‐noticed, evidence of negative coefficient signs.