Game Theory and The Cold War
Game Theory and the Cold War term paper due and don't know how to start it? How about like this?
A game theory and the Cold War research paper states that the use of game theory by Cold War policy makers was interesting in sociological terms. By this, an excellent research paper explains that its adoption as an analytical tool by those engaged in the process of formulating defense policy involved a set of presumptions that were peculiar to the cultural milieu in which they worked.
Cultural Milieu and Game Theory
The following two things about that cultural milieu are important with respect to the use that was made of game theory:
- First, there was a great deal of belief (and a great desire that this belief be true) in the efficacy of cold science as a means by which policy decisions could be rationalized and policy outcomes made predictable.
- Secondly, there was a sense of estrangement from the leadership of the Soviet Union, a sense that that leadership could not be induced by considerations of morality and decency to do the right thing.
NSC 68, largely the creation of Paul Nitze and one of the most important policy documents of the early Cold War, was permeated with a sense that the Soviet leaders could not be expected to do the right thing simple because it was the right thing. The foreign policy elites of this country had "given up" on that and their eager embrace of game theory reflects their sense of moral estrangement. Game theory looked at the decisions of the Soviet leadership purely in terms of what their "interests" were.
The Cold War Game
The use of game theory to explain US-Soviet relations and to formulate nuclear policy has not gone uncriticized. Osborne and Rubinstein note that game theory involves two fundamental assumptions:
- That decision makers "pursue well-defined exogenous objectives (they are rational)"
- That they take into account their own expectations of what the opposite side will do, i.e., they think strategically.