Next week Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu will visit Washington to rally his supporters at AIPAC and in Congress. He will also visit with President Obama to demand that the U.S. commit to a military strike on Iran. (See here and here.) Faced with this mounting political pressure in an election year, Obama has already become more forceful in his commitment to military action. In an interview with Jeffery Goldberg of The Atlantic, Obama said, “I think that the Israeli government recognizes that, as president of the United States, I don’t bluff.” (The whole story is here.) As the clamor for war increases the nature of the game between U.S./Israel and Iran is changing.
Over the decades of conflict and confrontation the two adversaries have been playing a game described by game theorists as “Prisoner’s Dilemma”. In this scenario, the two players are prisoners trying to decide if they should confess or remain silent. They are unable to talk to each other. The game matrix looks like this:
|
| Prisoner B stays silent (cooperates) | Prisoner B confesses (defects) |
| Prisoner A stays silent (cooperates) | Each serves 1 month | Prisoner A: 1 year |
| Prisoner A confesses (defects) | Prisoner A: goes free | Each serves 3 months |
In the optimum solution each player stays silent and serves one month. This solution requires communication and trust between the players. The equilibrium solution is that each player serves three months, being punished more than they would have been if there were communication and trust. This outcome is particularly likely if there are multiple iterations and one player has lied to the other. For three decades the U.S. and Iran have played this game multiple times with the same sub-optimal outcome.
Unfortunately, we seem to be changing to the “Chicken Game”. British philosopher Bertrand Russell described this game, as it played out between the West and the Soviet Union during the Cold War (particularly during the Cuban Missile Crisis) like this, “Since the nuclear stalemate became apparent, the Governments of East and West have adopted the policy which Mr. Dulles calls 'brinkmanship'. This is a policy adapted from a sport which, I am told, is practiced by some youthful degenerates. This sport is called 'Chicken!'. It is played by choosing a long straight road with a white line down the middle and starting two very fast cars towards each other from opposite ends. Each car is expected to keep the wheels of one side on the white line. As they approach each other, mutual destruction becomes more and more imminent. If one of them swerves from the white line before the other, the other, as he passes, shouts 'Chicken!', and the one who has swerved becomes an object of contempt. As played by irresponsible boys, this game is considered decadent and immoral, though only the lives of the players are risked. But when the game is played by eminent statesmen, who risk not only their own lives but those of many hundreds of millions of human beings, it is thought on both sides that the statesmen on one side are displaying a high degree of wisdom and courage, and only the statesmen on the other side are reprehensible. This, of course, is absurd. Both are to blame for playing such an incredibly dangerous game.”
The matrix looks like this:
| Swerve | Straight | |
| Swerve | Tie, Tie | Lose, Win |
| Straight | Win, Lose | Crash, Crash |
One strategy in this game is to tell your opponent that you have tied your steering wheel and thus cannot swerve. Obama appears to be trying this strategy. The problem arises if your opponent does not believe you and you end up in the lower right hand corner.
Bertrand Russell concludes like this, “The moment will come when neither side can face the derisive cry of 'Chicken!' from the other side. When that moment is come, the statesmen of both sides will plunge the world into destruction.” The stakes may not be as high now, but they are still pretty high.
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