Games and Strategy
This simple two-player model shows why individually rational choices can produce collectively bad results.
What is the Prisoner’s Dilemma?
When one state’s defensive buildup threatens another, triggering spirals of fear.
What is the security dilemma?
The ability to retaliate even after suffering a nuclear strike.
What is second-strike capability?
Rules and organizations that structure interactions among states.
What are international institutions?
Using threats or limited force to change another actor’s behavior without all-out war.
What is coercion?
In this model of deterrence, both sides risk disaster to force concessions.
What is the game of chicken (or brinkmanship)?
A state with preponderant capabilities shaping global order.
What is a hegemony?
The Cold War condition in which both sides’ survivable arsenals made nuclear war suicidal.
What is mutual assured destruction (MAD)?
The post-WWII alliance system linking North America and Western Europe.
What is NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization)?
When states connect multiple issues, like trade and security, to gain leverage or enforce cooperation.
What is linkage?
The strategy that yields the best response regardless of what the other actor does.
What is a dominant strategy?
The system condition in which no authority exists above states.
What is anarchy?
An agreement that limits or regulates nuclear weapons rather than eliminating them entirely.
What is arms control?
The 1919 collective-security experiment that collapsed before WWII.
What is the League of Nations?
A shared sense of identity based on common culture, language, or history that binds a people together.
What is nationalism?
The equilibrium point where neither actor benefits from changing its strategy.
What is a Nash equilibrium?
The realist concept that stability results when power is evenly distributed among major states.
What is the balance of power?
A state’s efforts to eliminate or drastically reduce nuclear weapons.
What is disarmament?
The 1945 institution that succeeded the League and still embodies collective security.
What is the United Nations?
Cost-free statements of intent or threats that carry little credibility in international bargaining.
What is cheap talk?
This strategic situation occurs when states repeatedly interact, allowing them to punish defectors and reward cooperators, which helps sustain long-term cooperation.
What is iteration?
In this type of strategic interaction, one actor’s gain is exactly another’s loss, leaving the total benefits fixed.
What is a zero-sum game?
Leaders sometimes start international conflicts to distract the public from domestic problems or boost their popularity, a dynamic known as this.
What is the diversionary incentive (or diversionary war)?
Liberal theorists argue that these reduce uncertainty, facilitate cooperation, and lengthen the “shadow of the future.”
What are international institutions?
Actions like mobilizing troops, forming alliances, or making public threats show seriousness because they involve risks or expenses. These are examples of what?
What is a costly signal?