International Conflict as a Decision System

Recent conflict studies that combine the behavioral decision-making approach with quantitative systems theory are yielding new insights and new verification methods in policy analysis. They can be characterized as "decision system" studies. The present study proposes and quantitatively verifies several hypotheses about how the British Navy budget was decided over a seventy-year period before World Wars I and II. It concludes that actual decisions can be very precisely modeled in terms of an arms budget race with goals that shifted intermittently due to (a) changes in the countries identified as antagonists, and (b) changes in relative aspiration levels. The levels and changes of goals are validated by reference to known historical incidents. Although technological and strategic military factors were prominently discussed in public debates, they had little direct influence on budget levels. Similarly, domestic economic and political party factors were often mentioned in connection with the naval budget, but the model shows that they were only occasionally influential.