Naval arms race

A naval arms race is a situation in which two or more countries continuously construct warships that are consistently more powerful than warships built by the other country built in the previous years. These races often lead to high tension and near-wars, if not outright conflict.

Examples include:

• The Austro-Italian ironclad arms race between the Kingdom of Italy and the Austrian Empire (and later Austria-Hungary) from 1860 to 1885.
• The Argentine–Chilean naval arms race between Argentina and Chile from 1887 to 1902.
• The South American dreadnought race between Argentina, Brazil and Chile from 1907 to 1914.
• The Anglo-German naval arms race, between Imperial Germany and the United Kingdom from 1898 to 1912.
• The Cold War nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union, which involved both land and naval nuclear expansion.