Modeling of arms races and limitation of armaments

Abstract

This article is an attempt to combine two ways of modeling arms races. There is no doubt that the classical approach based on Richardson's differential equations simplifies the real process too much as it does not take into consideration a political interaction process between the competing sides. On the other hand, game theory offers wide variety of methods for modeling and analyzing interactions, but game theoretic models of the arms race do not consider the evolution of economical and arms potentials. In our model we split each round of an arms race into three main stages: the dynamic evolution of the arsenals (Richardson's model), threat assessment and diplomatic negotiations. Each of the two opponents goes through such a cycle. The cycles are linked by the diplomatic interaction process. The submodel of political interaction is based not only on the game-theoretical consideration but also includes elements of cognitive theory, in particular the concept of confidence levels. During negotiations both sides determine their cooperation level and their arms levels will evolve accordingly. Computer simulation of the extended Richardson model is presented. Basic cases, which are known from other arms race models, are simulated on the basis of this new method. The simulation runs are compatible with the results of other more simple models. So the method can be extended to more complicated cases. (orig.)SIGLEAvailable from TIB Hannover: RR 839(11-94) / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekStiftung Volkswagenwerk, Hannover (Germany)DEGerman