The role of expectations in arms acquisition processes: The U.S.‐U.S.S.R. case

Abstract

Recent empirical studies of arms races have led to the disturbing conclusion that for several important arms races, particularly the U.S.‐U.S.S.R. case, there appears to be no interaction. Instead arms acquisition appears to be driven only by internal factors. A number of interpretations for these results have been provided. They include, inappropriate model specification, inappropriate operationalization of military threat, and error ridden military expenditure data. Recent results, coupled with our more descriptive understanding of arms processes, suggest that expectations of current and future arms expenditures by the opponent are relevant to an understanding of current arms expenditures. This implies that such expectations must be taken into account in the arms modeling process. In this paper several alternative expectations mechanisms are formulated and tested for the U.S.‐U.S.S.R. case. The extent of measurement error in Soviet military expenditures and its effect on the empirical tests of the expec...