Game Theory in Nuclear War with North Korea
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/08/16/what-game-theory-tells-us-about-nuclear-war-with-north-korea/?utm_term=.4bc28c383e5c
Korea was affected by the influence of the Cold War. The United States controlled South of the 38th parallel while the Russians invaded the North. Therefore, South Korea was divided into two opposing spheres. This phenomenon reflects the conceptual description of a balanced network since it has two groups of mutual friend in complete antagonism.
Due to the continuous division of Korea and increasing development of nuclear weapons from North Korea, the chances of a nuclear war cannot be predicted. In order to analyze such military strategy, the Game theory is introduced. As mentioned in the course, the nuclear war has a similar characteristic to that of a prisoner’s dilemma. In this case, attacking would account for confessing while not attacking would be the same as not confessing. Assuming that the United States has a higher chance of winning, a plausible payoff chart can be formed. Setting N as North Korea, U as United States as the players and representing a as attack, n as not attack for the strategies, four possible strategically outcomes can be listed: (a,a), (a,n), (n,a) and (n,n). Similar to the prisoner’s dilemma, the dominant strategy would be to confess or attack. However, since a political affair is not a one time incident, but a long term thing, we have to account for a chance of retaliation. Therefore, some can conclude that the increasing development of nuclear weapons by North Korea is the cause of both countries not attacking each other due to the increase of fear of retaliation on both sides, making it harder for them to attack. Also, other factors such as lack of interaction and vagueness of the payoffs for each strategy, makes it difficult to determine the dominant strategy. Therefore, through various interactions among North Korea and the United States through summits, such as the 2018 North Korea-US Summit in Singapore, we can possibly estimate the payoffs for each strategy and make the right decision.