Terrorism and Game Theory
Yesterday marked the twentieth anniversary of one of the worst terrorist attacks to occur on U.S soil. Many people including myself were impacted by this day in some shape or form and the current events happening in Afghanistan are becoming a growing concern to many. Nine years after 9/11, Kevin Chlebik published the study “Terrorism and Game Theory: From the Terrorists’ Point of View” investigating terrorist motives and how countries’ actions can affect their vulnerability to attacks.
In his study, he includes the work of Todd Sandler and Daniel Arce who “use game theory to describe what they call a “deterrence race” between two countries. If the home country increases domestic deterrence efforts, the terrorists’ costs associated with attacking the home country increase. This poses a negative externality on the foreign country because the relative cost for terrorists to attack the foreign country decreases. As a result, the foreign country must also increase deterrence efforts or face an increased likelihood of being attacked.” When there is a lack of communication between countries and their protective measures are not coordinated despite having a common enemy, a vicious cycle between both countries unravels. Both countries must compete with each other to not be the least prepared against attacks since terrorists will consider their country the least cost choice. Additionally, Sandler and Arce illustrate the advantage of cooperation between two countries working together against a terrorist group by modeling the outcomes of one country trying to freeze the assets of the terrorist group. Unsurprisingly, “the desired outcome is achieved only when both countries choose to freeze assets. If only one country freezes assets, the terrorists will divert their assets to the other country.” Once again, instead of each countries sole focus being on stopping attacks, they have to deviate their efforts to compete with other countries in order to not become the “weakest link” in the game making themselves the easiest least-cost choice for the terrorist.
Lastly and in my opinion, most importantly, the most eye-opening part of this study was the model of The Opposing Nation’s Long Term Military Allocation For Two Terrorist Cells because it explains the “cyclical nature of terrorist attacks is a result of cause and effect”. When enforcement against terrorist activities is lowered, the cost for terrorists is also lowered allowing terrorist attacks to increase. On the other hand, when attacks increase, countries respond by increasing enforcements which deter terrorists since their cost increases, but unfortunately, once the frequency of attacks decreases, countries lower their enforcements and the cycle repeats itself. While it has been twenty years since 9/11 everyone can agree that the fear and grief from that day can still be felt. Al-Qaida’s goal was to bring terror and pain to Americans and as upsetting as it is to say, they succeed. They planned, coordinated, and delivered their plan under the U.S’s radar and many Americans had to pay. In the years following, we formed alliances and heightened our enforcement against terrorists to make sure an attack like this never happened again, but recently it seems we may have forgotten. The consequences of underestimating terrorists and not cooperating with other countries against terrorism are drastic and I hope we don’t allow history to repeat itself.
Chlebik, Kevin (2010) “Terrorism and Game Theory: From the Terrorists’ Point of View,” Pepperdine Policy Review: Vol. 3 , Article 3. Available at: https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/ppr/vol3/iss1/3