The very model of the major modern military: world system influences on the proliferation of military weapons, 1960-1990

This dissertation investigates this rapid militarization by identifying and examining factors affecting the adoption of a variety of force structures (e.g. an independent air force) and weapons systems (e.g. supersonic aircraft, main battle tanks) by nation-states in the 1945-1990 period. Three broad arguments are taken from the literature in efforts to understand this trend. These are the superpower manipulation, national security, and internal political process arguments. Each stresses that weapons acquisition and military force structures are the result of rational calculation by actors in the pursuit of their own self-interest, but vary in their identification of central actors and actor motives. This dissertation adds and emphasizes ideas drawn from institutional theory to develop arguments emphasizing the impact of world-level cultural models of the nation-state on the proliferation process. These analyses demonstrate clearly that institutional arguments provide substantial insights into the process of weapons proliferation. Despite reasons for believing that the world military system may function in a unique way, these results demonstrate that it does not. Weapons proliferation, and the spread of modern forms of military organization, are shaped by the same institutional processes that shape the spread of human rights, welfare systems, science policy boards, and conceptions of individualism.This research has demonstrated that that responsiveness does not end in the military realm. National militaries, just as other parts of the nation-state, occupy a constructed identity that shape their structure, practices, purposes and contents. The acquisition of a canonical modern military organization, including modern weaponry is, like the acquisition of a flag, at least in part a product of world-level cultural definitions of the modern nation-state. Like a flag, a military its weaponry are enactments of sovereign status. The results of this research demonstrate that the more a nation interacts with the larger world cultural system, the more it visibly asserts and confirms its sovereign status with the ultimate symbol of nationhood: a military.