The arms race is an intrinsic game theoretical property of a multi-adversarial-actor scenario involving exponential growth of a universally potent technology. It's almost certainly winner-take-all, on a global scale, which behooves everyone to participate.

And no, I don't think it will end well.

The entire problem with arms races is that any individual entity cannot avoid participating.

sama and his cadre are uniquely evil captains in this race, but they're completely replaceable and the dynamic would remain the same.

Just like the rest of military stuff.