The bi-polar confrontation between the Soviet Union and the USA involved many leading game theorists from both sides of the Iron Curtain: Oskar Morgenstern, John von Neumann, Michael Intriligator, John Nash, Thomas Schelling and Steven Brams from the United States and Nikolay Vorob’ev, Leon A. Petrosyan, Elena B. Yanovskaya and Olga N. Bondareva from the Soviet Union. The formalization of game theory took place prior to the Cold War but the geopolitical confrontation hastened and shaped its evolution. In our article (...) we outline four similarities and differences between Western GT and Soviet GT: 1) the Iron Curtain resulted in a lagged evolution of GT in the Soviet Union; 2) Soviet GT focused more on operations research and issues of centralized planning; 3) the contemporary Western view on Soviet GT was biased and Soviet contributions, including works on dynamic stability, non-emptiness of the core and many refinements, suggest that Soviet GT was able to catch up to the Western level relatively fast; 4) international conferences, including Vilnius, 1971, fostered interaction between Soviet game theorists and their Western colleagues. In general, we consider the Cold War to be a positive environment for GT in the West and in the Soviet Union. (shrink)

Deterrence is the backbone of military strategy. Dissuading an opponent from taking a specific action by threat of violence is the definition of deterrence. From the outset of the Cold War there has been a strong link between the study of deterrence and game theoretic analysis. There are compelling epistemic reasons for studying deterrence as a game. By doing so, the strategic interaction between actors is placed at the centre of the analysis, mapping the possible outcomes and revealing the strategies (...) available to the actors. Discussions about various models’ appropriateness and model comparison therefore play a central role in deterrence research; from underlying assumptions and deterrence representation to theory and evidence. This dissertation treats aspects of all of these topics. Article I, “Prospects of Deterrence – Deterrence Theory – Representation and Evidence”, analyses the relationship between model and theory and what happens to a deterrence theory when the rationality assumption is switched to a prospect theoretical utility function. Article II, “A Misfit Model – Bounded Rationality and Deterrence Representation”, defends and remodels Schelling’s idea of irrational threats for effective deterrence. Article III, “Comparable Deterrence – Target, Criteria and Purpose”, treats the issue of how one can compare game theoretic models with one another and proposes a meta-model for how this can be done. Article IV, “Deterring the Dauntless – Appraising the Effects of Naval Deterrence against the Somali Piracy”, estimates whether and to what extent Somali piracy was deterred by the naval intervention. (shrink)