War Against Terror and Game Theory
To a certain degree, we all know instinctively what terrorism is. As it turns out though, the terrorism is actually harder to define in absolute concrete terms. There are hundreds definitions for the simple term. In his article, “Terror and Game Theory: From the Terrorists’ Point of View,” Chlebik uses the definition, “Terrorism is the premeditated use, or threat of use, of extranormal violence to obtain a political objective through intimidation or fear directed at a large audience.”
http://publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/policy-review/2010v3/content/terrorism-and-game-theory.pdf
This past Sunday marked the ten-year anniversary of one of the most horrific acts of terror in the world. Undoubtedly, September 11 resonates with everyone as a day that forever changed their lives. Even more obvious though is that that fateful day a decade ago completely changed the world we are now living in. As a result of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, the United States has been actively engaged in the war against terror. In fact, there are some people in the world who have lived their entire lives now being in war. This war against terror is a prime example of game theory, and more specifically the game called “Prisoner’s Dilemma.”
In the war against terror, we actually have two games: one with terrorists and one with the country being attacked. In the first game, Chlebik outlines the game of two terrorists in the same group but act separately. This game can also be applied to two different terrorist groups with the same target. In this model, the two strategies are to attack (A) or do not attack (N). In a four by four matrix, if the Terrorist 1 was represented on top and Terrorist 2 was on the side, the top row would be: (5,5), (4,1), while the bottom row would be (1,4), (0,0). Assume going clockwise from the first box, the four boxes represent the following strategies: (A,A), (A,N), (N,A), (N,N). Comparing these strategies, it is apparent that the dominant strategy is (A,A), where both terrorists attack their target. Applying to real world situation, this would make sense since collaboration decreases the total costs of an attack (resources, personnel, time, etc).
The second game involves the country being attacked. The two strategies for this country are as follows: increase military strength and attack or do not attack. Using the Prisoner’s Dilemma game again, he suggests that in both the short and long run, the dominant strategy would be for the defending country to not attack. In the short run, this would be the case because each of the Terrorist cells can actually improve their payoffs by not attacking. If Terrorist A stops attacking, it would be beneficial to them because they can use more of Terrorist B’s resources, and vice versa. Therefore, if Terrorist A stops attacking, Terrorist B would also have the incentive to stop attacking. However, once this is the case, the dominant strategy changes back to “attack, attack”. According to Chlebik, because the terrorist cells improve by not attacking, “do not attack” is therefore the dominant strategy for the defending country. In the long run, though the optimal strategy is to not attack, there is an incentive to increase military strength to decrease the chances of a successful terrorist attack.
Chlebik concludes that countries can decrease the frequency of terrorist attacks by increasing military strength to intercept the resource flow between supporting terrorists. However, as 9/11 demonstrated, real world situations can never be fully predicted, especially as in the case for the war against terrorism.
I appreciate your interest in my paper, and am compelled to contribute a few notes:
(1) The quote this blog attributes to me, “Terrorism is the premeditated use, or threat of use, of extranormal violence to obtain a political objective through intimidation or fear directed at a large audience,” is actually a quote from Todd Sandler and Walter Enders, “An Economic Perspective on Transnational Terrorism,” European Journal of Political Economy 20, no. 2 (2004): 302.
(2) The second game involving the country’s military allocation does not pertain to any direct decision by the country. Instead, the game illustrates how a country will reallocate military strength dependent on whether or not, and which, terror cell attacks. The dominant strategy of “do not attack” for each cell stems from the assumption that the cell’s only goal is to evade the country’s military attention. In short, this game demonstrates that if a terror cell wishes to not increase the attention they receive from a country’s military, they should not attack.
(3) The two games mentioned in this blog, combined with a few more games in the paper, are blended together to conclude with a generalized game having outcomes dependent on expected values and costs of an attack.
-Kevin Chlebik