A blameless world

The Strategy Toolkit - May 2022 edition

Excerpt:  Strategy and Politics, part one - Thomas Schelling and Nuclear Brinkmanship

In 2022, we are once again in a time of mass murder.  And once again we must contemplate the unthinkable, as our forerunners did at the close of World War Two.  Thus begins this chapter on strategy and politics, with the most serious topic of geopolitics – nuclear brinkmanship, “the deliberate creation of a recognisable risk”* of the use of nuclear weapons.  The unthinkable made thinkable.

* Nalebuff, Barry, “Brinkmanship and Nuclear Deterrence:  the Neutrality of Escalation,” Conflict Management and Peace Science, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp 19-30, Spring 1986, Princeton University

            Nalebuff elegantly argued that, in a situation of nuclear brinkmanship, the risk of escalation would not be altered by “changes in conventional military position and posture, changes in command and control, and changes in military technology” (he used the deployment of nuclear submarines near Norway as one example).*  Using the analogy of investment portfolio management, whereby investors dynamically and relatively frictionlessly adjust their mix of investments across categories of financial assets, Nalebuff maintained that countries can adjust their portfolio of military assets in response to the actions of their opponents to cancel out any asymmetry in perceived strength.  A contemporary example is the use and deployment of hypersonic missiles, for instance.

* Ibid, p20

            So how should a strategist approach conflict of this nature?