"Shifting resources from the production of other goods to the production of national security goods may not increase a nation's national security.". Explain

Answer 1

National security is a good unlike a cucumber. If you shift more resources to the production of cucumbers, you obtain more cucumbers. If your neighbor produces cucumbers as well, you still have the ones you produced. That is to say, how many cucumbers you end up with has nothing whatsoever to do with choices other people make. Not so with national security. If a nation produces more national security goods it gets more security only if other nations do not react by producing more security goods of their own. If they produce more, the added security produced initially is lost. That's because one's own security depends on what others do. If an adversarial nation arms itself to the teeth, you're national security is lessened even though you did not reallocate any resources away from security goods. It complicates matters, doesn't it?