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Hazardous Weapons? Effects of Arms Transfers and Defense Pacts on Militarized Disputes, 1950-1995

Aside from alliances, major powers may use arms transfers to provide military assistance to other states. Guided by bargaining scholarship, I argue that arms transfers, unless they are part of defense pacts, aggravate and militarize information asymmetries, making their recipients more likely to experience militarized disputes. Using probit and two-stage conditional maximum likelihood (2SCML) with data on all states between 1950 and 1995, I find that, absent quo acceptance, increased arms transfers from major powers make states more likely to be initiators and targets of militarized disputes. Defense pacts with major powers not only reduce the chance that states will be militarized dispute initiators due to major power arms transfers but also lessen their risk of being militarized dispute targets.