Game Theory Relations with Ongoing War Events in Ukraine/Russia
The ongoing war is genuinely a tragedy showing the extent to which some higher members of the Russian government are willing to exert control over the Ukrainians. Currently, there has been an over half-year war going on between Russian and Ukraine in which Russia is invading Ukraine for their land. The following blog explores some relations between the war and the concept of game theory. To preface, game theory is a general term used in networks, economics, psychology, etc… and the comparison to game theory should in no way undermine the severity of the war itself. Millions displaced and many injured or lost are just some consequences of this war.
Game theory focuses on the interactions between certain groups, often two parties, where the actions of both parties affect their own respective gain/loss, and each other’s gain/loss. For example, the commonly cited prisoners dilemma example for game theory follows two prisoners who are isolated presenting with the opportunity to either confess/snitch on the other prisoner or remain silent. When although payouts may vary across different games and situations, the general idea is that by both staying silent, the two prisoners collectively win the most by each needing to serve the least time. However since each individual doesn’t know what the other will do, they might opt to snitch on their partner to get a reduced sentence themselves and/or negate the chance their partner snitches on them and their partner gets away scot-free. Alternatively, if both snitch, they each serve a certain penalty. Some interesting ideas in this scenario is that although the general mind might say both should just know to stay silent in order to serve the least amount of time, the chance that one might snitch is enough to make both decide to confess. This can be referred to as the Nash Equilibrium. A typical pure nash equilibrium is an outcome reached when no player has a better strategy based on what the other person picked and vice versa. In this case, when a prisoner chooses to confess, the other’s best strategy is to also confess, and vice versa, making it a stable equilibrium. In game theory, the choices that a person, group, or entity can choose is their strategy, and the best strategy is one which maximizes payout.
In the case of the ongoing war, the two parties at large are Ukraine and Russia. They can be thought of as two competing figures in an information set of a scenario of game theory. While in this case, each party has many, many, strategies, which each will lead to different best strategies for the opponent. In the timeline of the war as an overview, Russia has been working to claim different parts of Ukraine on their offensive mission. They have been working to take parts of eastern Ukraine for a long time and recently have been losing ground. These choices have been different strategies from which area Russia is willing to attack, for how long, and what types of attacks to use to name a few. Ukraine has many strategies in their own arsenal, from defending specific cities, launching counter attacks, and publicly asking for Western support. One specific example is timing in this war. Russia believes that the European dependency of Russian gas for the wintertime will lead to more favorable results for them if they drag out the war to wintertime. The possible drawbacks of this approach is that many. Russia wants to avoid declaring a draft to continue their vision of this war just being a military operation, and depleting resources till wintertime may make this vision impossible. Ukraine may want to wait longer and deplete Russian resources for this reason while stock piling Western support weapons to launch a bigger counter offensive. Since both parties have reason to believe letting the war run longer may have benefits, this may be an equilibrium where there is no better strategies if either party decides to take this course. Thus this may be a possible Nash equilibruim.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-07-24/game-theory-putin-ukraine
https://www.nytimes.com/article/ukraine-russia-war-timeline.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/business/energy-environment/russia-saudi-oil-putin-mbs.html