Game theory and the Cuban missile crisis

2014

This study surveys and evaluates previous attempts to use game theory to explain the strategic dynamic of the Cuban missile crisis, including, but not limited to, explanations developed in the style of Thomas Schelling, Nigel Howard and Steven Brams. All of the explanations were judged to be either incomplete or deficient in some way. Schelling's explanation is both empirically and theoretically inconsistent with the consensus interpretation of the crisis; Howard's with the contemporary understanding of rational strategic behavior; and Brams' with the full sweep of the events that define the crisis. The broad outlines of a more general explanation that addresses all of the foundational questions associated with the crisis within the confines of a single, integrated, game-theoretic model with incomplete information are laid out.

Economies, 2014

This study surveys and evaluates previous attempts to use game theory to explain the strategic dynamic of the Cuban missile crisis, including, but not limited to, explanations developed in the style of Thomas Schelling, Nigel Howard and Steven Brams. All of the explanations were judged to be either incomplete or deficient in some way. Schelling's explanation is both empirically and theoretically inconsistent with the consensus interpretation of the crisis; Howard's with the contemporary understanding of rational strategic behavior; and Brams' with the full sweep of the events that define the crisis. The broad outlines of a more general explanation that addresses all of the foundational questions associated with the crisis within the confines of a single, integrated, game-theoretic model with incomplete information are laid out.

This paper will analyze one of the most tense superpower confrontation in history-The Cuban Missile Crisis-which occured in October of 1962 and it is seen as the most dramatic stage of the Cold War (Seibert, E. W.,2003). The latest being a spiral conflict between the two nuclear giants, the United States and the Soviet Union, due to the probability of the crisis to escalate until the catastrophic point of a third world war namely a nuclear one. The mainly goal of the two parties was to take position and possession of land where the other could become vulnerable in order to defend each other interests and emerge as the superpower. As a matter of fact this episode chose Cuba as the battleground, in this small Caribbean island nation, the Soviet Union installed offensive ballistic missiles pointing at the United States. It was only when John F. Kennedy realized via a photographic mission the presence of those destructive missiles that the crisis started and thirteen days from there the whole world lived a time of disquietude, tension and fear; the globe trembled. During this short but horrendous period the presidents managed to give a peaceful solution to the conflict. They knew the dangerous consequences of a counterattack or a retaliatory blow despite both contenders had the opportunities, the power and the means to contest.

Countries within the international political arena are more often than not likely to endure different instances of conflicts among them emanating from their foreign policy practices. Conflict situations were even more likely to happen during the period coming after the end of the Second World War and most importantly during the Cold War period. This is because the international political scene was more polarized during that time with states aligning themselves with either the US or the Soviet Union.

The Cuban Missile Crisis under the Impact of Nuclear War Threat, 2015

This paper analyses the Cuban missile crisis.

2021

Recent studies in nuclear deterrence show that nuclear punishment is infeasible in most cases due to the opponent's second-strike capability, tactical redundancy, and the logic of self-deterrence. However, if the challenge against nuclear deterrence is expected to go unpunished, the deterrent policy is not credible and will likely fail. Can the defender violently punish the challenger possessing nuclear weapons? If it can, under what conditions? Thanks to President Kennedy's tape recordings, the Cuban Missile Crisis provides researchers an exceptional laboratory for testing various theories on the defender's policy choices after deterrence failure. This article derives a research hypothesis and its competing counterpart and examines their respective explanatory power via a process-tracing analysis of key members within the Executive Committee during the crisis. The study finds that the challenger's feasibility of retaliating with atomic weapons is a crucial predictor for the defender's policy choices.

Russia in Global Affairs

This article conceptualizes the current crises around Ukraine and Taiwan as "a reverse Cuban missile crisis." The Cuban missile crisis was a turning point in the history of the Cold War. The two superpowers found themselves at the brink of mutual annihilation and turned to negotiations to prevent it. Today the transformation of the world order and escalation of the great power competition can culminate in a new crisis like the Cuban one, and with a similar outcome. However, in contrast to the USSR which ultimately recognized the United States' red lines, today the U.S. does not recognize Russia's and China's red lines, denying the very legitimacy of red lines as such. The U.S. plans to retain its hegemony and seeks to achieve it with the help of its regional allies. This strategy of "offshore balancing" has proven to be quite useful for the U.S., which seems to ignore any discontent coming from Russia and China. It appears that the only viable option for the latter RUSSIA IN GLOBAL AFFAIRS 28 A Reverse Cuban Missile Crisis: Fading Red Lines two great powers is to maintain their interests without interacting with the U.S., which fiercely rejects any pleas for negotiations.

2019

The body of unclassified and declassified documents and eyewitness testimony from participants on both sides of the Cuban missile crisis has revealed numerous instances of potential escalation to nuclear war. Some of the potential escalations resulted from incomplete information, others from inappropriate subordinate action, and still others from actual missteps. It can be argued that these represent "close calls" that provide an evidentiary basis for inferring the risk of failure of nuclear deterrence. On the other hand, according to the declassified Defense Department assessment of military operations during the crisis, "The military establishment responded to a threat to our national security promptly, with imagination, vigor, and an exemplary degree of professional competence and skill. " This statement is consistent with the optimistic view that the US deterrence system in place during the crisis had such a degree of reliability that close calls were either manageable or of such low risk that they did not jeopardize the system's overall performance.

The Cambridge History of the Cold War, 2010

was undertaken by a monopoly trading ministry, so sales were subject to government-to-government negotiation and had to fit into the requirements of the five-year economic plan or else was regarded as outright aid. The real 'battleground" of the Cold War after the early I960s was thus competition for influence in developing countries through trade, financial and technical aid, and military assistance in the form of equipment and training. Both the USSR and the United States also had programs for bring ing students to their respective universities. The Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatolii Dobrynin, lamented, in his memoirs, published many years later, that "detente was to a certain extent buried in the fields of Soviet-American rivalry in the Third World."'4 Recession and recovery From the perspective of Soviet leaders, the Soviet Union in the mid-1970S was doing very well in its economic competition with the United States. Its aggregate production had risen slowly but steadily relative to US production, and output of products of special interest, such as steel, had come to exceed US production. The major hard-currency exports of the Soviet Union, crude oil and gold, had enjoyed substantial increases in price on the world market. At the same the "capitalist" world economy was in ronnoil, experiencing in 1975 its worst recession since the 1930S. The Bretton Woods system of financial cooperation was in disarray, and the onset of "stagflation" created serious dilemmas of policy in most market-oriented economies. In short, Communists still confidendy expected the ultimate victory of Communism against the ailing capitalist system. This self-satisfaction neglected the fundamental recuperative capacities of market capitalism. Incentives for adaptation, innovation, and private initiative remained strong. To take only one example, the integrated circuit, introduced in the early 1970s, was to revolutionize computation, communication, and much else, including military applications." 5 While the Communist system could dictate heavy investment in traditional products, it did so inefficiently and inflexibly, without extensive innovation. It could not adapt well to changes in technology and to changes in the composition of demand. By the mid-1 980s, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev would declare, "We cannot go on like this," and inaugurated his ultimately unsuccessful economic reform of the Soviet system of Communism.

2019

The body of unclassified and declassified documents and eyewitness testimony from participants on both sides of the Cuban missile crisis has revealed numerous instances of potential escalation to nuclear war. Some of the potential escalations resulted from incomplete information, others from inappropriate subordinate action, and still others from actual missteps. It can be argued that these represent "close calls" that provide an evidentiary basis for inferring the risk of failure of nuclear deterrence. On the other hand, according to the declassified Defense Department assessment of military operations during the crisis, "The military establishment responded to a threat to our national security promptly, with imagination, vigor, and an exemplary degree of professional competence and skill. " This statement is consistent with the optimistic view that the US deterrence system in place during the crisis had such a degree of reliability that close calls were either manageable or of such low risk that they did not jeopardize the system's overall performance.