by Wagner » 26 May 2009, 13:46
The Strategic Value of Precommitment
We consider here the “game” of global thermonuclear war. Consider the situation facing U.S. military planners in the early 1950's. “We” had the bomb; “they” would have it soon. “We” were developing intercontinental ballistic missiles; “they” were doing the same. Wisely, the U.S. planners looked into the future, to see what this all might mean in a time of high international tension.
A working assumption was that the U.S. would not be the first to launch a strategic nuclear strike, but that retaliation to a first strike was a viable alternative.
What would be the payoffs to each party from the various choices of actions? If the Soviets chose not to launch, then the crisis would be resolved conventionally: Let the payoffs to both sides be 0 (the nonnuclear status quo). If they launched, and the Americans chose not to retaliate, the result would be a victory for the U.S.S.R.: Represent this by a payoff of +10 to them, and -10 to the Americans. (The numbers need not be assigned dimensions: They simply represent a better-than-status-quo outcome to the U.S.S.R., and a worse-than-status-quo outcome to the U.S.)
What of the launch-and-retaliate outcome? Both countries would be devastated. Assign a (worse-thanstatus-quo) payoff of -10 to the Soviets. And the payoff to the Americans? This number has been the topic of heated debate for four decades. The early fears of radioactive fallout encircling the earth and destroying mankind were replaced in the seventies and eighties by the specter of “nuclear winter.” Consistently over time, there have been many who have believed that life itself would not survive a full-scale, two-sided exchange of nuclear weapons. Let us take a payoff of -15 for the Americans, to reflect this view. [There is no need here, or in the subsequent analysis, to compare the Soviet and American payoffs. We simply take the destruction of all life to be viewed by the U.S. as a worse outcome than the loss resulting from acceptance of an attack without retaliation. The rallying cry of nuclear disarmament advocates in the 50's and early 60's — “Better Red than dead!” — reflected the payoffs used here.]
How might this situation be analyzed by the Soviets? With strategic wisdom, they would put themselves in the Americans' shoes, and predict the American response to a launch. The Americans would face an unattractive choice between payoffs of -10 and -15 (life isn't always fair), and their only rational response would be to take the -10, yielding a payoff of +10 to the U.S.S.R. Assuming the Americans to be rational, the Soviets could then return to their own choice problem, which presents them with an expected payoff of +10 if they launch, and 0 if they don't. Obviously, the better choice is to launch.
As one might imagine, this analysis frightened the American planners. But what could they do? One approach would be to ensure that the U.S. never again elected a rational leader. This seemed somewhat unattractive. Fortunately, they found another alternative. They built a “Doomsday Machine.” In the film Dr. Strangelove, an American SAC commander “goes a little funny in the head,” and sends a wing of U.S. nuclear bombers to attack the Soviet Union. Unable to obtain the recall codes, the American president calls the Soviet premier, and offers to provide the information necessary to shoot down the planes. The Soviets reveal to the Americans the existence of their “Doomsday Machine,” a gigantic bomb buried under their own country, large enough to destroy the world. The bomb is connected to a network of computers and seismographs. If a nuclear attack against the U.S.S.R. is detected, or if an attempt is made to disconnect or reprogram the computers, the bomb will automatically be detonated. The “Machine” was, of course, built as a deterrent. The mistake made by the Soviets (in the film) was in keeping its existence a secret.
Of course, the Americans didn't bury a bomb. Instead, they restructured the U.S. strategic nuclear command-and-control network, in order to make retaliation unavertable: They implemented the policy known (officially) as “MAD” — mutual assured destruction. The strategic triad (land-based ICBM's in hardened silos, strategic bombers carrying nuclear weapons, and, most importantly, submarines carrying nuclear missiles (SLBM's)) formed a decentralized retaliatory system, “programmed” to strike back under prespecified conditions. [The Polaris submarine project was the source of PERT techniques for project management: Those techniques were developed in order to make the third leg of the triad operational as quickly as possible.]
Putting themselves in the Russian's shoes, the Americans anticipated that once MAD was implemented (and the implementation announced!), the Russians would choose not to launch (and take a payoff of 0) rather than launch (and take a payoff of -10). Given this, the Americans were better off implementing MAD (and obtaining a payoff of 0) rather than not implementing (and eventually obtaining a payoff of -10). Should this analysis seems simplistic, please note: Since MAD was implemented, nuclear weapons have not been fired in anger. [It might also be noted that the film came after the policy, and was inspired by it.]
The main lessons are:
1. the value of anticipating conflict before it actually arises.
2. the need to “put ourselves in our opponent's shoes” in order to properly analyze strategic problems.
3. the usefulness, at times, of binding precommitments.
With respect to the third lesson, note that having one's choice of actions restricted is never of positive value
in a single-person decision problem. This is one important way in which strategic problems differ from
those involving only one person.
Source: Professor Robert Weber - DECS-452 (Strategic Decision Making) - Kellogg School of Management (so para evitar problemas de copyright se alguem pesquisar no google)