So I know the last couple posts have been kind of lengthy, but it’s another one of the papers I am writing for my discussion group. The economic (or somehow related) ideas keep coming, but most of them aren’t getting written down. Anyway, here’s this installment of “random thoughts with Nathan.”
Game Theory and the Schliefen Plan
Game theorists talk glibly about many applications of game theory; how humans, unconsciously, go through life applying game theoretic techniques to many choices we make. What interests me are the applications of game theory to international relations – particularly those of the “strong” flavor; war and armed conflict.
Many conflicts, both their origins and their continuance, can be analyzed using game theoretic methods, but one conflict in particular begs to be examined and promises to, through its examination, throw light on many other conflicts. The war, for such it is, that so readily lends itself to game theory is World War One, the Great War, the War to End All Wars.
Vastly, and unfairly, simplified, basic game theory runs thus: You, the rational individual, given the information you have, make the decision or series of decisions that will maximize your benefit given constant or certain expected action by the other relevant entities. Expectations of the other’s actions change as expectations of information and other circumstances change.
Europe at the beginning of World War One was a messy place, made so by the tangle of alliances and treaties that bound each nation to others. Mutual defense pacts pledged that if either nation A or B was attacked, the other would declare war on the aggressor. These treaties, pacts, and accords grew from the incessant warfare that had covered much of Europe, the logic ran that if there were enough interweaving alliances, no one would go to war with anyone. While a bane for the strategist and politician, these treaties are a boon to the game theorist, with each nation generally being expected to keep these treaties, lending a certain measure of predictability and stability to the behavior of the political and military mess.
These treaties at the beginning of the war can easily be seen as a method by which a nation would attempt to firmly commit to a course of action that, were circumstances ever actually warrant application of the treaty, would seem too not be in national interest, in the hopes of ensuring that such conditions never actually arose. In other words, nations committed to war under certain conditions, hoping that the reliable and very real threat of war would dissuade aggressor nations from attacking allies. Each European nation participated in these treaties with one or more other nations and often with one of the “great powers”, and each European nation expected every other nation to follow through on their treaty obligations. There was stability in this system of pledged mayhem, just as game theory predicts will happen when the commitments are believable and punishments severe enough. What no one expected was a shock from outside the system of mutual defense treaties to set a match to the powder keg.
A non-governmental group provided that match, and the assassination of the Archduke Austria provoked a chain reaction of regrettable, but predictable given how the European nations had pre-committed themselves, events. Briefly, Austria went to war with Serbia. Russia, allied with Serbia, prepared to go to war with Austria. Germany, Austria’s ally, warned the Russians to stand down, then prepared for war themselves. Germany’s only war plan was rigidly dependant on fighting both France and Russia at the same time, knocking France out of the war within six weeks so as to bring the entire German armed forces against the Russians before the Russians could fully mobilize. To quickly knock France out of the war required that Germany invade through Belgium, activating England’s mutual defense treaty with Belgium. Thus, every major power in Europe was embroiled in war, those that were required to fight by treaty and those that simply saw an opportunity to strengthen their position in Europe, acquire natural resources and prestige, or reinvigorate a dying empire (the Ottoman-Turks).
In an attempt to banish war from European soil, the nations instead ensured that, once war started, it would engulf the continent. If a nation not directly threatened with invasion and fairly near the beginning of the chain of events, say Russia or Germany, had instead done the game theoretically unthinkable, and cheated, the Great War would never have occurred and the world would be a very different place.
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