Brinkmanship

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Brinkmanship ( English for "playing with fire" or "politics on the edge of the abyss") describes the strategic threat to go to extremes in politics or in games .

The name is derived from the English word "brink" ("edge [of an abyss]"). What is meant is the ability to go to the ultima ratio in order to get the opponent to give in - that is, to symbolically go with the opponent to the edge of an abyss, whereby the opponent is to be made to give in for fear of falling together.

origin

The term brinkmanship originated during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union . It goes back to John Foster Dulles , the former United States Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower . Eisenhower and Dulles wanted to stop the expansion of the communist bloc without further embroiling US ground troops in wars in Asia, because they believed it would permanently overstretch the US economy. As a result, they tried to dissuade the communist regimes from further armed expansion projects by threatening the use of strategic nuclear weapons. The strategy largely failed in Asia because China and the Soviet Union did not take seriously US threats to risk nuclear war over an Asian country.

Dulles explained US policy of deterrence to maintain peace in an article in Life Magazine of January 16, 1956, with the words: "The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art. (...) if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost. ”The quote translates as“ The ability to go to the brink of war without getting into war is a necessary art. (...) if you are afraid of going to the edge of the abyss, you are lost. ”As a result, the term“ brinkmanship ”was established as a synonym for this type of strategy. Thomas Schelling in particular , through his book The Strategy of Conflict , published in 1960, shaped the idea of ​​brinkmanship extensively.

Characteristic

In game theory , brinkmanship belongs to the strategic move category and in turn to the threat subcategory . Brinkmanship is the name for the strategy and for the game as such.

Brinkmanship is the strategy of threatening the player with the risk - not with the certainty - of a result that is bad and undesirable for both sides ( disaster ) if the opponent does not comply with the threatening player's request to withdraw ( probabilistic threat) . Brinkmanship means the deliberate creation of a risk that cannot be fully controlled. In practice, brinkmanship is the gradual increase in the risk of mutual misfortune over the course of time.

Game theory representation

A game of brinkmanship involves two players. Both players can choose between brinkmanship and yielding strategies . A brinkmanship game can basically be played over several rounds. The end of the game is reached when the disaster has actually occurred or a player has retreated. The payouts of the players (in utility units) for the end of a Brinkmanship game can, for example, be represented by the following payout matrix:

Player B
Options Give in Brinkmanship
Player A Give in 10/10 −10/10
Brinkmanship 10 / −10 −100 / −100 *

(* The disaster has occurred.)

In this example, the cost of disaster is −100, the cost of losing −10, and the benefit of winning is 10. If no player gives in in a round, the disaster (payout −100; −100) has a certain probability of occurring. The timing of the disaster is unknown and random. If both players give in, the game ends in a draw (payout 10; 10). If only one player gives in, he is the loser of the game and the opponent is the winner (payout −10; 10 or 10; −10).

The brinkmanship game is similar in principle to the possible payouts Feiglingsspiel (Engl. "Chicken Game"). The Brinkmanship game is a real-time coward game , as the players have to make their decision to withdraw under the time pressure of the increasingly likely disaster.

The decision between brinkmanship and giving in is made by players based on their expected payouts. A player will use the brinkmanship as soon as he expects a greater benefit from the brinkmanship than from giving in. Conversely, the brinkmanship of one player can only be successful if the other player expects higher costs from the brinkmanship than from giving in. The problem is that the expected payouts from the Brinkmanship strategy in the case of a probabilistic threat always depend on the probability of the disaster. This means that the players can only weigh up between brinkmanship and yielding once the probability of a disaster has been determined beforehand.

In the probabilistic threat, the probability of a disaster (q) is determined by a lower limit - from this q the threat is successful - and an upper limit - up to this q the threat is tolerable. Due to incomplete information about the opponent, it is imperative to estimate the influencing variables of q. When calculating the lower limit, the opponent's payouts are to be estimated and when calculating the upper limit, the probability that the opponent is a hardliner and as a result will never give in must be estimated. The expected payouts of the players are determined by the character of the player (low or high risk tolerance) and the more rounds an opponent does not give in, the greater the probability that he is a hardliner.

Principles of application

Brinkmanship is a risky strategy because it can end in disaster for everyone involved. Because of the risk of failure - an unsuccessful threat or a misunderstanding - the brinkmanship player must always reduce the threat of disaster to the absolute minimum.

In the event of a threat, the occurrence of the disaster is not announced with certainty to the opponent. This threat would have no credibility because its actual implementation is very unlikely due to the drastic consequences for the threatening player. Brinkmanship requires small steps to be taken - the game begins with the weakened threat of small risk and this is gradually increased over time.

The brinkmanship player deliberately lets the situation get partially out of control in order to trigger an unbearable state for the opponent. This requires a controlled relinquishment of control - without control over the result, the threat becomes credible, but at the same time sufficient control must be retained so that the risk of disaster never becomes too great.

danger

The danger of brinkmanship consists in the continuous increase in the risk of mutual damage, as a result of which the players can unintentionally exceed their maximum tolerance limit for this risk over time and as a result the mutual damage occurs. With the moves and counter moves of the players, the boundary between safety and danger is in reality not an exactly definable line, but rather comparable to a smooth slope that becomes steeper and steeper downwards. The longer the strategy of threatening the risk of disaster is maintained, the more the risk increases that the matter actually gets out of control and the mutual damage actually occurs.

Examples

Brinkmanship using the example of the Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 is an example of the application of the Brinkmanship strategy. In response to the stationing of American nuclear missiles in Turkey, the Soviet Union (Prime Minister Khrushchev ) begins to station nuclear weapons in Cuba. The US government (President Kennedy ) absolutely wants to prevent this. To this end, Kennedy imposed a sea ​​blockade on Cuba. The US uses brinkmanship to resolve the conflict - Kennedy threatens Khrushchev with the risk of nuclear war if the Soviet Union does not withdraw its nuclear weapons from Cuba. In the background, however, the withdrawal of American missiles from Turkey against the withdrawal of Russian missiles from Cuba was agreed.

In the game theory model, the threatened disaster is nuclear war. The first round of the game is determined by the sea blockade. If Khrushchev does not withdraw nuclear weapons from Cuba, the game will move to the next round. Then Kennedy would have to step up his threat. The situation would get more and more out of control and the risk of nuclear war would increase. Ultimately, this game ended after the first round with Khrushchev giving in and withdrawing nuclear weapons from Cuba because Khrushchev did not want to risk the situation further escalating.

The behavior of the Central Powers during the July crisis of 1914 is also assessed accordingly today: “The improvement in one's own position that was found necessary should be implemented with the help of a 'policy of limited offensive', while accepting a 'calculated risk' […] The terms 'limited offensive' and 'calculated risk' do not fully express the irresponsible and cryptic of the German position. In contrast, the term 'brinkmanship' used by younger historians describes a daring policy of 'uncalculated risk', of walking on the edge of the abyss. "

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John Spanier: American Foreign Policy Since World War II. 2nd edition. New York, 1966, pp. 103-110.
  2. ^ Dulles Formulated and Conducted US Foreign Policy for More Than Six Years. In: The New York Times. May 25, 1959 (accessed January 27, 2016).
  3. ^ Uproar Over a Brink. In: Time Magazine. January 23, 1956 (accessed January 27, 2016).
  4. ^ Avinash K. Dixit, Susan Skeath: Games of Strategy. 2nd Edition. New York 2004, p. 12.
  5. ^ Avinash K. Dixit, Susan Skeath: Games of Strategy. 2nd Edition. New York 2004, pp. 487,631.
  6. ^ A b Thomas Schelling: The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge 1980, p. 200.
  7. ^ A b c Avinash K. Dixit, Susan Skeath: Games of Strategy. 2nd Edition. New York 2004, p. 493.
  8. ^ Avinash K. Dixit, Susan Skeath: Games of Strategy. 2nd Edition. New York 2004, p. 489 f.
  9. ^ Avinash K. Dixit, Susan Skeath: Games of Strategy. 2nd Edition. New York 2004, pp. 489 f., 492.
  10. ↑ Barry O'Neill: Honors, Symbols, and War. New York 2001, p. 69 f.
  11. ^ Avinash K. Dixit, Susan Skeath: Games of Strategy. 2nd Edition. New York 2004, p. 472.
  12. ^ Avinash K. Dixit, Barry J. Nalebuff: Thinking Strategically. New York 1991, pp. 209 f.
  13. ^ Avinash K. Dixit, Susan Skeath: Games of Strategy. 2nd Edition. New York 2004, p. 488.
  14. ^ Avinash K. Dixit, Barry J. Nalebuff: Thinking Strategically. New York 1991, pp. 206 f.
  15. ^ Avinash K. Dixit, Susan Skeath: Games of Strategy. 2nd Edition. New York 2004, p. 479.
  16. ↑ Jürgen Angelow: The way to the great catastrophe. The disintegration of old Europe 1900–1914. be.bra, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-89809-402-3 , p. 27.

literature

  • Avinash K. Dixit, Barry J. Nalebuff: Thinking Strategically . WW Norton & Company, New York, NY 1991, ISBN 0-393-31035-3 .
  • Avinash K. Dixit, Susan Skeath: Games of Strategy. 2nd Edition. WW Norton & Company, New York, NY 2004, ISBN 0-393-92499-8 .
  • Barry O'Neill: Honors, Symbols, and War . University of Michigan Press, Ann-Arbor, MI 2001, ISBN 0-472-08786-X .
  • Thomas Schelling: The Strategy of Conflict . Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 1980, ISBN 0-674-84031-3 .
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on January 20, 2009 .