Alliance Building versus Independent Action

Abstract

An important international security question is whether nations in an anarchic competitive world system are more likely to ensure their security by pursuing policies of complete independence or of alliance building. The question is addressed using the paradigm that “strong chaos” in an arms-race model is equivalent to crisis instability and war in the international system being modeled. Nonlinear recursion relation models of competitive arms procurement are constructed for independent arming and for alliance building policies in a world system of three symmetric nations. The results are that alliance building always preserves a peaceful world from perturbations in the relationships between the competing member states whereas independent courses of action may allow such perturbations to build up to strong chaos and presumably war.