Arms+Race+with+the+United+States

By Jennifer B.

The term arms race in its original usage, describes a competition between two or more parties for military supremacy. The period preceding [|World War I], when Germany, Britain, France and Italy were competing to build the most powerful [|battleship]. [|Lewis Fry Richardson] made an arms race model, trying to [|retrodict] [|World War I], where he showed how two countries would go to war if more money was spent in the arms race than in trade. At the [|geopolitical] level of the 20th century, the [|United States] and the [|Soviet Union] developed more and better [|nuclear weapons] during the [|Cold War]. After World War II the united states was behind the soviet union the area of intermediate range missiles, but they managed to catch up.The soviet union committed their command economy to the arms race. However, the strain of competition against the great spending power of the United States created enormous economic problems during [|Mikhail Gorbachev] 's attempt at [|konversiya], the transition to a consumer based, [|mixed economy] , and hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Richard J. Barnet: //Der amerikanische Rüstungswahn.// Rowohlt, Reinbek 1984, [|ISBN 3-499-11450-X]  **(German)** Jürgen Bruhn: //Der Kalte Krieg oder: Die Totrüstung der Sowjetunion.// Focus, Gießen 1995, [|ISBN 3-88349-434-8]  **(German)**