Cuban missile crisis game theory. Cuban Missile Crisis 2022-11-01
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The Cuban Missile Crisis was a pivotal moment in history that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. At the heart of the crisis was a series of complex negotiations and decision-making processes that were influenced by game theory.
Game theory is a branch of economics that studies strategic decision-making in situations where the outcomes depend on the actions of multiple players. It is based on the idea that individuals will act in their own self-interest, and that the optimal outcome for any given situation can be determined through analysis and calculation.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, game theory played a key role in the decision-making process of both the United States and the Soviet Union. The two sides were locked in a Cold War standoff, and both were motivated to avoid a nuclear conflict. However, they also both wanted to protect their own interests and assert their dominance on the global stage.
On one side, the United States was faced with a difficult decision. If they took military action against the Soviet Union, they risked starting a nuclear war. If they did nothing, they would be seen as weak and potentially lose the Cold War. In order to protect their interests, they needed to find a way to negotiate with the Soviet Union without appearing weak or giving in to their demands.
The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was motivated to protect its own interests and establish itself as a global power. It had secretly installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, as a way to deter the United States from taking military action against it.
The two sides engaged in a series of negotiations and threats, trying to find a way to deescalate the crisis without losing face or compromising their interests. At the heart of these negotiations was a complex game of strategic decision-making, with each side trying to predict the other's moves and anticipate the consequences of their own actions.
Ultimately, the crisis was resolved through a series of secret negotiations and a public agreement in which the Soviet Union agreed to remove its missiles from Cuba in exchange for a secret promise from the United States not to invade the island.
The Cuban Missile Crisis serves as a powerful example of the role that game theory can play in international relations and decision-making. It shows how strategic thinking and careful calculation can be used to avoid catastrophic outcomes and find mutually beneficial solutions to complex problems.
Game theory in Cuban missile crisis : Networks Course blog for INFO 2040/CS 2850/Econ 2040/SOC 2090
In effect, TOM, by describing the payoffs in a single game but allowing players to make successive calculations of moves to different positions within it, adds nonmyopic thinking to the economy of description offered by classical game theory. The pay-off are -1 for the Soviet Union and 4 for the United States. So too the Soviet Union was worried of a potential invasion of their communist counterparts as the Bay of Pigs showed the hostility towards Cuba and here lies the mutual goal, Cuba to not be invaded. Withdrawal W Maintenance M United States U. Needless to say, the strategy choices, probable outcomes, and associated payoffs shown in Figure 1 provide only a skeletal picture of the crisis as it developed over a period of thirteen days.
However when you do expand to show progression of possible moves, in the Cuban Missile Crisis example, knowing the reactions of what the other side would choose in this case, and logically working through all possible paths, you will come to the same conclusion as before. They both have a few strategies, but they have to give great consideration on thinking all possible decision made by the other nation. However since a player can only move one dimensionally on any sized grid , with each player alternating in moves, there must be an even number of moves to return the game back to it's original state. Backward Induction To determine where play will end up when at least one player wants to move from the initial state, I assume the players use backward induction. Whilst implied, this isn't explicitly stated in the rules, causing my brief confusion. Not only is the answer yes, but it is also in the interest of U.
Game theory is applicable on either two or more parties refereed to as players are in a situation referred to as games are trying to make decisions between two or more options of actions known as strategies. He felt that Kennedy did not have the expertise or power to resist any Soviet military build-up in Cuba. They also agree that neither side was eager to take any irreversible step, such as one of the drivers in Chicken might do by defiantly ripping off the steering wheel in full view of the other driver, thereby foreclosing the option of swerving. Therefore, based on above consideration, air strike would never be the first choice for USA. My only issue was that I took exception to your explanation of rule 5 ii , as I believed that a couple of crucial points had been missed. The formality of jointly signing the treaty is the culmination of their negotiations and does not reveal the move-countermove process that preceded the signing.
the cuban missile crisis and the game webapi.bu.edu
He was motivated by the Domino Theory, which suggested if one state fell to communism, the neighbouring countries would follow. Cuba-Soviet alliance As relations with the US deteriorated, Cuba looked to the 1960. These rankings and interpretations fit the historical record better than those of "Chicken", as far as can be told by examining the statements made at the time by President Kennedy and the U. Not restricting to a 2x2 board, the second player may well have alternatives than the first move that the original player used, which could lead the game in a different direction. Suppose then Player 1 may want to consider the possibility of taking a different route? Although it never came to nuclear war, the missile crisis still had long-lasting effects.
Observe that 2,2 at state AM is worse for both players than 3,3 at state BW. There are good reasons to believe that U. By 1960, the US government had started planning to help overthrow Castro. Consequently, play of a game starts in an initial state, at which players collect payoffs only if they remain in that state so that it becomes the final state, or outcome, of the game. This, of course, is exactly what happened in the crisis, with the threat of further escalation by the United States, including the forced surfacing of Soviet submarines as well as an air strike the U. Instead of starting with strategy choices, TOM assumes that players are already in some state at the start of play and receive payoffs from this state only if they stay.
Game Theory and the Cuban Missile Crisis : Networks Course blog for INFO 2040/CS 2850/Econ 2040/SOC 2090
From the early 1900s, the US maintained a strong influence in Cuba, controlling its main export, sugar. First, Withdrew W all of its missiles or Maintained M its missiles. To be sure, game theory allows for this kind of thinking through the analysis of "game trees," where the sequential choices of players over time are described. Any alternatives not mentioned, that had been options to the US or the Soviet Union, would have led to unfavourable consequences to both sides, or back circular again to the original starting point, and hence then why they then chose the moves that they did. Embargo An official ban on trade with a particular country in this case, the embargo means the US did not permit the sale or purchase of arms with Cuba. The American government became confronted by the issue because it posed a nuclear warfare and therefore, they were forced to take an immediate action to diffuse the condition.
The Cuban Missile Crisis demonstrated the dangers of brinkmanship. To assume otherwise would require that payoffs be numerical, rather than ordinal ranks, which players can accumulate as they pass through states. By postulating that players think ahead not just to the immediate consequences of making moves, but also to the consequences of countermoves to these moves, counter-countermoves, and so on, TOM extends the strategic analysis of conflict into the more distant future. The Cuban missile crisis started after an American plane revealed that the Soviet Union led by Premier Nikita Khrushchev were making an effort to mount intermediate-range-nuclear- prepared ballistic missiles in Cuba. But if, say, two countries are coordinating their choices, as when they agree to sign a treaty, the important strategic question is what individualistic calculations led them to this point.
The plan centered around blockading a naval approach to Cuba, to ensure that no ships carrying firearms may come in to the country. In the second backward-induction calculation, for example, it is hard to imagine a move by the Soviet Union from state 3 to state 4, involving maintenance via reinstallation? This would mean that the USSR would have significant first and second strike power over the US, being able to potentially hit many major cities. On the other hand, given no such evidence, a U. But in many real-life games, payoffs cannot easily be quantified and summed across the states visited. Fascinating article, and a brilliant illustration to the Theory of Moves.
Cuban Missile Crisis through Game Theory : Networks Course blog for INFO 2040/CS 2850/Econ 2040/SOC 2090
American Mathematical Society, 1999. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Public Choice Society, a Guggenheim Fellow, and was a Russell Sage Foundation Visiting Scholar and a President of the the Peace Science Society International. It turns out that 3,3 is a "nonmyopic equilibrium" in both games, and uniquely so in Alternative, according to the theory of moves TOM. Rule 5 termination rule says when a player will not move from an initial state. What events led to the Cuban Missile Crisis? Another game more accurately represents the preferences of American and Soviet leaders, but even for this game standard game theory does not explain their choices.
In politics, for example, the payoff for most politicians is not in campaigning, which is arduous and costly, but in winning. In the article, he is quoted as saying, The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art. However, unlike Chicken, Alternative has no outcome at all that is a Nash equilibrium, except in "mixed strategies". Pointedly, Robert Kennedy claimed that an immediate attack would be looked upon as "a Pearl Harbor in reverse, and it would blacken the name of the United States in the pages of history," which is again consistent with the Alternative since the United States ranks AW next worst 2 - a "dishonourable" U. This is because world opinion, it may be surmised, would severely condemn the air strike as a flagrant overreaction - and hence a "dishonourable" action of the United States - if there were clear evidence that the Soviets were in the process of withdrawing their missiles anyway. However, adversity was circumvented when the US agreed to Nikita to eliminate the Cuban missiles and then the US not to invade Cuba. As you have said, if player one knows that his original move will result in the same set of moves as occurred before, then he will not choose it.
