Breaking the Stalemate in the Study of the Relationship of Mutual Military Buildups, Arms Races, and Militarized Disputes: The Greece-Turkey/Ottoman Empire Cases

Year 2023, Volume: 12 Issue: 2, 175 - 194, 16.06.2023

Ioannis Nioutsikos Konstantinos Travlos Magdalini Daskalopoulou

Abstract

The most recent surveys on the study of the connection between mutual military
buildups, arms races, and military interstate disputes (MID) warn of research
projects, especially in the case of the Greece-Turkey dyad, that have reached a
stalemate. This is due to the difficulty of capturing motivations, which constitute
the main variable that turns mutual military buildups into arms races. Using the
Greece-Ottoman Empire and Greece-Turkey dyads as proof-of-concept cases, we
advance a novel approach for analyzing the interrelation between mutual military
buildups, arms races, and MIDs that can overcome that stalemate. We suggest a
two-stage approach that focuses on the dyad as a unit of analysis. In the first
stage, which we preset here, we use rivalry to divide dyad history into periods of
differing subsistence military spending. We then locate periods of mutual military
buildups in the different rivalry periods of a dyad history. We argue that this
process provides a more nuanced and detailed grasp on the presence of mutual
military buildups in a dyad. It also provides the foundation for the future second
stage of analysis, where qualitative research can focus on the specific periods of
mutual military buildups to unearth indicators of motivation.

Keywords

Rivalry, mutual military buildups, arms race, Greece-Turkey, Greece-Ottoman Empire

Supporting Institution

The research project was supported by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I.) under the “2nd Call for H.F.R.I. Research Projects to support Post-Doctoral Researchers”

Project Number

00789, ARCADE