TRANSITION FROM ADVERSARIAL TO COOPERATIVE STRATEGIC INTERACTION

Abstract

This note extends the game theoretic analysis of strategic conflicts begun in earlier Seminars on Planetary Emergencies to interactions with and without defenses between two or more adversaries with more realistic target structures. It reviews the essentials of game theory as applied to the analysis of strategic decisions, the application of first and second strike costs as payoffs, and solution optimization, which resolves several inconsistencies seen with earlier metrics. The stability of the current bilateral offensive configuration is shown to be high and insensitive to deep reductions in offensive forces, the deployment of limited defenses, and the exchange of significant offensive forces for defenses. The transition from adversarial to cooperative interaction is represented by the progressive reduction of the parameters representing each side's preference for damaging or deterring the other, which monotonically improves stability. Estimates of strike incentives in bilateral and trilateral configurations are reduced by the inclusion of high value targets in both sides' force allocations, which dominates the details of offensive and defensive forces. The shift to high value targets stabilizes trilateral offensive configurations, a result that differs with that from analyses based on military costs only. When defenses are included, they lead to a balance between amore » large defended side and small undefended side that resembles the balance between two large sides. Including the large side's preference for defense of high value targets in the analyses reduces its strike incentives and thus the small side's incentive to preempt. However, it also removes the large sides' ability to deter, so the stability of multi-polar configurations continues to be controlled by the least stable dyad, which places constraints on the size of defenses that can be deployed stably that could be more stringent than those from the bilateral balance.« less