The collective security dilemma of preemptive strikes

Abstract

Players who are targets of potential raids can sometimes preempt some of these raids and neutralize the raiders. These threatened players have different values to the attackers as raid targets, and they act independently of each other and sometimes sequentially. The order in which the threatened players make their neutralization decisions turns out to be critical to the number of raids and the resulting probability of being attacked. The lowest number of raids results when the threatened players act in ascending order of attractiveness as targets for preemptive strikes. The analysis characterizes game-theoretic equilibrium as a function of action sequencing. It also discusses variations in the game situation, such as if the same threatened player can make multiple preemptive strikes, or if threatened players all act simultaneously rather than in a sequential order. The results are relevant in many contexts, including cybercrime, military threats from revisionist states, international terrorism, sabotage among employees in firms and other organizations, and defense of corporations against hostile takeover attempts.