The reconnaissance strike complex is synonymous with modern military power, and prominent realist theories would have predicted rapid proliferation after its successful debut in the Gulf War. Instead, the complex has proliferated slowly. To explain this puzzle, we theorize that interstate security threats significantly impact proliferation, but not in the way traditionally presumed. Although the literature on weapons proliferation has largely assumed a monotonically increasing relationship should hold between the capabilities of a state’s adversaries and a state’s own capability, we draw from the economics literature and game theoretic insights from political science to argue that the relationship should resemble an inverted-U. When states have rivals with moderate reconnaissance strike capabilities, they have security incentives to compete with them. However, when states face highly advanced adversaries, it becomes more difficult to escape or match their competition, making symmetrical acquisition less appealing. While most prior research focuses on narrower aspects of the reconnaissance strike complex like missiles or smart bombs, we test our theory on a novel dataset tracking country-level acquisition of eight aspects of the complex from 1980 to 2017: Ballistic missiles; bombers; cruise missiles; fighter aircraft; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets; precision-guided munitions; satellites; and submarines. We find strong support for our inverted-U argument. States that have rivals with moderate reconnaissance strike capabilities have over double the reconnaissance strike capabilities themselves than states that have rivals with very low or very high capabilities. Our findings hold for broader measures of the complex that closely proxy a state’s general military capabilities, narrower measures of the complex, and alternative measures of general military sophistication, indicating our theory has broad applicability. This article explains why some states invest heavily in conventional capabilities despite an already-large lead over their adversaries, and why other states instead opt to invest in alternatives rather than balancing symmetrically.

中文翻译：

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竞争还是战略撤退？侦察打击的全球扩散


侦察打击综合体是现代军事力量的代名词，著名的现实主义理论预计它在海湾战争中成功亮相后会迅速扩散。相反，该建筑群却在缓慢增殖。为了解释这个难题，我们推测国家间安全威胁对扩散有重大影响，但不是以传统假设的方式。尽管有关武器扩散的文献在很大程度上假设国家对手的能力与国家自身的能力之间应该存在单调递增的关系，但我们从经济学文献和政治学的博弈论见解中得出结论，这种关系应该类似于一种倒置的关系。 -U。当国家拥有具有中等侦察打击能力的竞争对手时，它们就会有安全动机与之竞争。然而，当国家面对高度先进的对手时，逃避或匹配其竞争就变得更加困难，从而使得对称收购的吸引力降低。虽然大多数先前的研究都集中在侦察打击综合体的较窄方面，如导弹或智能炸弹，但我们在一个新的数据集上测试了我们的理论，该数据集跟踪 1980 年至 2017 年国家级对该综合体的八个方面的获取：弹道导弹；轰炸机；巡航导弹；战斗机；情报、监视和侦察资产；精确制导弹药；卫星；和潜艇。我们发现倒 U 型论点得到了强有力的支持。拥有中等侦察打击能力的竞争对手的国家本身的侦察打击能力是拥有非常低或非常高能力的竞争对手的国家的两倍以上。 我们的研究结果适用于密切代表国家一般军事能力的更广泛的综合体衡量标准、更窄的综合体衡量标准以及一般军事复杂性的替代衡量标准，表明我们的理论具有广泛的适用性。本文解释了为什么一些国家尽管已经远远领先于对手，但仍大力投资常规能力，以及为什么其他国家选择投资替代方案而不是对称平衡。