Worldwide Nuclear Coalition Games: A Valuation of Strategic Offensive and Defensive Forces

Jerome Bracken and Martin Shubik
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Jerome Bracken: Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

Operations Research, 1993, vol. 41, issue 4, 655-668

Abstract: Methods are proposed for the valuation of strategic offensive and defensive force structures, with emphasis on the consideration of incentives for the formation of coalitions. Coalitions consist of subsets of the nuclear weapons states, together with the nonnuclear weapons states taken as components of the total value target inventory. The basic approach is to formulate and solve two worldwide nuclear coalition games. In the first game, the first striking coalition is retaliated against by the surviving weapons of the second striking coalition, minimizing the objective function of the first striking coalition. In the second game, the surviving weapons of the second striking coalition are used to maximize its own objective function. The objective function in both models is the percent of surviving value. The games differ substantially. Computational results are presented for all possible coalitions of nuclear weapons states and neutrals. Offensive weapons, defensive weapons, and value target data bases are varied. Results are very sensitive to coalition composition, the number of value targets, and the number of offensive and defensive weapons.

Keywords: games/group decisions: incentives to initiate nuclear warfare; military; warfare models: strategic offensive and defensive nuclear warfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1993
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