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What is "arms race"

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
arms race
noun
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ the nuclear arms race
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A test ban that could not inspire confidence would undermine stability and might even provoke a new arms race.
▪ All the assurances that the treaty would not inaugurate an arms race or cost the United States anything were brushed aside.
▪ Arms races sometimes culminate in extinction, and then a new arms race may begin back at square one.
▪ Further, the arms race between the superpowers has escalated still more.
▪ Nevertheless, the arms race went on.
▪ Scientists, the arms race and disarmament Who is responsible?
▪ They can emphasise the danger of a new arms race.
▪ They say that it could erode existing arms control agreements and lead to a new arms race.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
arms race

1930, in reference to naval build-ups, from arms (see arm (n.2)) + race (n.1). First used in British English.

Wiktionary
arms race

n. A competition for military supremacy between two powers, especially for the most weapons and the best military technology.

WordNet
arms race

n. a competition between nations to have the most powerful armaments

Wikipedia
Arms race

An arms race, in its original usage, is a competition between two or more parties to have the best armed forces. Each party competes to produce larger numbers of weapons, greater armies, superior military technology, etc. in a technological escalation.

International conflict specialist Theresa Clair Smith, defines the term as "the participation of two or more nation-states in apparently competitive or interactive increases in quantity or quality of war material and/or persons under arms."

The term is also used to describe a competitive situation, in which the purpose is only to be more successful than one's competitors.

Usage examples of "arms race".

It's only the rotten Americans and their arms race who stand in the way but soon we'll force even them to lay down their arms and we'll all be equal.

The Golden Asaleny's got himself a fleet of aircraft, which he thinks gives him an upper hand in the arms race.

They'll start the arms race all over again or even pull a pre-emptive strike!

Nixon ended the war, opened the door to dealings with China, capped the arms race, and passed the first serious environmental legislation in seventy years.

Already the international web that had precipitated World War I, financed both the Bolshevik Revolution and the rise of Hitler, manufactured the Middle East and Southeast Asian crises of later years, contrived for a whole world to fund its own blackmail through the nuclear arms race, and been behind a long list of other interesting things found recorded in great detail inside JEVEX, was well on its way to being broken up for good.

That smugness was eroded when the Soviets exploded their own nuclear device, and the arms race was on.