The “game” of war?
The intervention of Russia in the Eastern European countries has all but waned from the news headlines of the United States, one cannot help but look at the event through another lens, a lens which, according The Economist, can easily elucidate the situation through the use of game theory. The article seems to act as a treatise on NATO, particularly NATO article 5 which states, “An attack on one is an attack on all.” Thus, if Russia were to invade any country that is under the NATO banner, the United States would mobilize as if they themselves were attacked to defend. At first, that sounds fairly threatening. You have the United States, a strong superpower, threatening war against anyone who attacks a country in NATO. But is it really? Here, the article suggests that this supposed “threat” towards aggressive nations may not be, in truth, threatening at all.
Unfortunately, this article utilizes the thought process of backward induction, a process that we did not cover in class, but the general game theory ideas that contribute to their reasoning is nonetheless relevant to this class. To quickly define backward induction, it is the process of comparing the payoffs of the final decision first, then working our way back to the first decision. This is the crux of this article’s argument, saying that if we play the game forward, the odds seems to not favor Russia at all. If Russia chooses to invade, NATO will respond with a massive counterattack which is clearly unfavorable.
But, if the process of backward induction is used, the question no longer becomes, “should Russia invade?”, instead it becomes, “should NATO respond to an invasion by counterattacking?” Here the outcome seems completely different. If NATO were to counterattack, another war of varying severity, from conventional weapons to, in the worst case scenario, nuclear weapons, would occur, with inevitably thousands of men and women on both sides of the fronts dying. But, should NATO choose not to counterattack, the outcome for NATO seems much less severe, with Russia taking over a few sovereign nations in Eastern Europe. I find it particularly interesting that the article chose to logically dissect the outcomes for the sake of game theory outcome rather than let politics guide their words, arguing that losing Eastern European territory to Russia is empirically better than risking the integrity of key NATO governments. Thus, in this payoff matrix, it seems as if the payoff to not counterattack seems much better than to counterattack.
Though the article continues to list many factors that can play into this decision, such as who is actually making the decision in this payoff matrix. Though a Russian invasion would lead to an unfavorable payout to the welfare of the Russian people, to Putin it may be justified as favorable. Hence the title of the article, “War: This is not a game theory”. Nevertheless, the topics discussed are very relevant to the topics we learned in Networks, with the discussion of favorable and unfavorable outcomes relating heavily in our discussions about payout matrices. For instance, with the example for these questions, the payoff matrix would look something like this:
Russia I= Invade NI= not invade C= Counterattack NC= Not Counterattack
I NI
NATO C Heavy casualties/ This box would not
Heavy Casualties occur
NC lose some sovereign nations/ nothing/
gain some territory nothing
In the case of this payoff matrix, assuming that Russia will choose to invade, NATO best choice is clearly to not counterattack. This process clearly coincides with the topics taught in Networks, as using game theory and the payoff matrix help us understand the (brief) conflict that occurred in Eastern Europe.