Arms Race and the Development of Nuclear Weapons Technology

Arms Race phenomenon begins to color the dynamics of politics among nations in an era called Cold War. At that time, for the interest of 2 superpower countries, the United States and Soviet Union try to spread their influence by making regional block. Each power tries to support military needs in each allied countries. History told us that the establishment of the Defense Pact like NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and Warsaw Pact are the media to achieve both superpower countries interest that cause conflict by proxy between countries that include in United States and Soviet alliances.

After Cold War period marked by the collapse of Soviet Union, conflict in conventional notion are absolutely decreased, but in last 10 years the growth up of military technology in some New Industrial Countries starts to increase. This case was marked by the increase of military budget and military technological advance.

To grasp this phenomenon, we may pose this question: What assumption backgrounds the policies made by the countries when they plan to improve their military technology that causes Arms Race Phenomenon?

There are some approaches that can be used to analyze this tendency. One of them is Realism Politics Paradigm. Realism Paradigm says that international political condition is always in anarchism. Country is always assumed as a threatened subject in this anarchism condition. Realism suggests that it is important for every country to build a military capacity in order to anticipate the aggressive behavior of other countries. From this perspective, whenever the improvement of military capacity becomes the chief instrument of many countries in international constellation, so the arms race phenomenon is inevitable. It is said so because every country tries to create a kind of deterrence to avoid military invasion of other countries.

For example, South Korea is enthusiastically improving their nuclear weapon technology in these last 5 years. So are the USA and Russia which are massively and consistently do the same effort such as the developing of intercontinental weapons. This happens due to the policy to secure the country from other’s threat. The perception on threat can be varied in many forms. One of them is the geopolitical consideration and other factors which are assumed can be attained if a country has a good military capability. Nuclear weapons have been proven to the world as the best bargaining power.

How far do we agree with the effort of military improvement? I think it is not ultimately needed due to the deterrence from other countries. I believe in this assumption since the conventional war is rarely happened. Instead of military capability, there are many other factors that can be utilized by Indonesia as the bargaining power in international constellation. One of them is by developing the economic capability. Military improvement must not be the main priority. I think the first attention should go to the social welfare of the members of Indonesian society i.e., the Indonesian citizens.