Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Journals
  3. Politics and the Life Sciences
  4. Volume 7
Journal Home
Refine listing

Refine listing

Access:
Publication date:

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×
< Back to all issues

Volume 7 - August 1988

Contents

Page 2 of 4

Book Reviews

Articles and Commentaries

Book Reviews

Articles and Commentaries

  • The Nuclear Arms Race: An Evolutionary Perspective*1

  • Arthur A. Joyce
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    17 May 2016, pp. 186-202
    • Article
      • You have access
    • PDF
    • Export citation

  • This paper uses a Darwinian perspective to examine the nuclear arms race in the context of “arms races” in evolution and throughout human history. The rise of human “arms races,” or escalatory intergroup competition, is traced to a variety of environmental triggers initiated during the Terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene. These triggers removed extraspecific environmental constraints to escalatory intergroup competition in some areas of the world, making it reproductively advantageous for individuals to live in increasingly larger and more competitive groups. This process is linked to the development of social complexity and the intensification of intergroup competition, warfare, and arms production, culminating in the nuclear arms race. Historically, escalatory intergroup competition has been reproductively advantageous to elites because it enables them to acquire a disproportionately large share of resources. It is argued that the continuation of the nuclear arms race past a level of mutual assured destruction results from the benefits it provides to elites as well as a variety of evolved behavioral mechanisms that encourage in-group affiliations, out-group hostilities, and obedience to authority.

Commentaries

Articles and Commentaries

Book Reviews

Commentaries

Articles and Commentaries

Book Reviews

Commentaries

Articles and Commentaries

Book Reviews

Page 2 of 4