Schelling
The theorist who did more than any other to explore the conundrums of deterrence and nuclear strategy was Thomas Schelling. He was one of a number of figures in and around RAND during the 1950s—including Bernard Brodie, Albert Wohlstetter, and Herman Kahn—who despite their differences contributed to a developing framework for thinking about these weapons that acknowledged their horrific novelty yet tried to describe their strategic possibilities. At the time, Kahn—ebullient and provocative, and one possible model for Stanley Kubrik’s Dr. Strangelove—was the best known. His book On Thermonuclear War forged a link with Clausewitz, at least in its title, although his biographer doubted whether he had ever even done more than skimmed Clausewitz: “He never showed a smidgen of interest in any strategic theorist.”7 Wohlstetter described his prose as “dictated through a public address system.”8
He was nuclear strategy’s “first celebrity,” with his “physical mass and somewhat geeky cast” confirming myths that the ultimate war would be the product of the imaginings of “mad geniuses.” A mass of statistics on the likely character of nuclear war would be qualified by breezy and hardly comforting statements, such as “barring bad luck and bad management,” and led to policy options that were evaluated in terms of possible losses of units of humanity measured in the millions.9 Kahn’s fellow nuclear strategists objected as much to his showmanship and the bad name he gave their new profession as to his claims about emerging victorious from the apocalypse. An enthusiastic advocate of civil defense, Kahn was convinced that control was possible in all types of conflict, even nuclear war.
Schelling was a more substantial theorist, developing ways of thinking about conflict that illuminated nuclear issues while remaining relevant to broader strategic questions. After the mid-1960s, when he felt he had said much of what he wanted to say about nuclear matters, he turned his attention to other issues, ranging from crime to cigarette smoking, but still applied the same essential approach. His achievement was underlined by the award of a Nobel Prize in economics in 2005 for “having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis.”10 Yet Schelling’s relationship to game theory was equivocal. He did not describe himself as a game theorist but rather a social scientist who used game theory on occasion. He hit upon his big idea before he came across game theory as a means through which it could be expressed. He preferred to reason through analogy in ways that purists found maddening. Schelling’s reputation depended on his gifts as a brilliant expositor who wrote with elegance and lucidity, traits for which this particular field of endeavor were not well known.11
Schelling did not claim to have achieved the “science” that had long been sought in strategy or that formal logic could in principle lead to a mathematical solution. He shared the view, growing among the operational research community, that advanced mathematics and abstract models were making their work less accessible to potential users,12 and he always opposed the suggestion that strategy was or should be “a branch of mathematics.”13 He confessed to having learned more “from reading ancient Greek history and by looking at salesmanship than studying game theory.” The greatest achievement of game theory, as far as he was concerned, was the payoff matrix. It was extraordinarily useful to be able to put together in a matrix a “simple situation involving as few as two people and two choices.”14
His equivocation on game theory was not unique. Other nuclear strategists who worked at RAND during the 1950s tended to talk of following the “spirit” of game theory rather than its rules. In a 1949 article, Brodie referred to game theory in a footnote as a source of “mathematical systematization,” adding that “for various reasons” he did not share the authors’ “conviction that their theory could be directly and profitably applied to problems of military strategy.”15 Later, while finding its “refinements” of little use, he acknowledged the value of the “constant reminder that in war we shall be dealing with an opponent who will react to our moves and to whom we must react.”16 Few of the books on nuclear strategy made much, if any, mention of game theory. This absence was notable in a book by one of the founders of game theory, Oskar Morgenstern.17 Bruce-Briggs suggests that the close association between nuclear strategy and game theory was a consequence of the reception of Kahn’s On Thermonuclear War. Although Kahn had used neither game theory nor mathematics, he was accused of being the most extreme example of a game-theory-wielding militarist, a moniker implying great technical capacity but no moral sensibility. Schelling was also included in this category.18 Schelling observed at the time, “I don’t see that game theory is any more involved than Latin grammar or geophysics; but its quaint name makes mysterious and patronizing references to it an effective ploy.”19
Schelling had little background in military issues. Trained as an economist, he worked on the implementation of the postwar Marshall Plan for economic reconstruction in Europe. This led to his general interest in negotiations of all types, particularly the process of finding points that could support an agreed solution, possibly through tacit as much as explicit bargaining. After publishing an article demonstrating the possibility of arriving at common solutions without direct communication,20 he read Luce and Raiffa’s Games and Decisions and saw the potential of game theory.21 His interest in how “nations, people, or organizations go about committing themselves to threats and promises in bargaining positions” led him into contact with RAND in 1956 and he spent a productive year there from 1958 to 1959.22 Schelling was able to test his developing theories in the company of other key thinkers from a variety of disciplines, all trying to make sense of the nuclear age. Although he was offered jobs in the Kennedy administration, he preferred to keep his independence. He did work as a consultant, however.
Many of the ideas and concepts Schelling developed along with his colleagues at RAND became familiar and entered the strategic vernacular, but it is important to note just how novel and radical they were. Critics complained, with some justice, that the methodology allowed talk about dreadful possibilities in dispassionate terms and contemplated moves that should never be countenanced by a civilized people. Their models did not offer a way of transcending the Cold War conflict and failed to accommodate the ideological and geopolitical issues. These were important limitations, but they should not hide the achievement of developing a way to think about conflict that could also accommodate cooperation.
Schelling started with the special features of a game of strategy, compared with those of chance or skill: “Each player’s best choice depends on the action he expects the other to take, which he knows depends, in turn, on the other’s expectation of his own.” Strategy was all about interdependence, “the conditioning of one’s own behavior on the behavior of others.” This could cover any social relationships in which there was a mixture of conflict and cooperation. All partnerships were to some degree precarious, just as all antagonisms were to some degree incomplete. The combination of conflict and cooperation was at the heart of the theory. It became irrelevant when there was an absence of either. Schelling noted that the theory “degenerates at one extreme if there is not scope for mutual accommodation, no common interest at all even in avoiding mutual disaster; it degenerates at the other extreme if there is no conflict at all and no problem in identifying and reaching common goals.”23
On this basis the role of force could be rethought. Traditionally it had been used by countries to take and hold what they wanted: “Forcibly a country can repel and expel, penetrate and occupy, seize, exterminate, disarm and disable, confine, deny access, and directly frustrate intrusion or attack. It can, that is, if it has enough strength. ‘Enough’ depends on how much an opponent has.”24 In setting up an alternative to brute force, Schelling made one of his most startling assertions: “In addition to weakening an enemy militarily it can cause an enemy plain suffering.” Contrary to prevailing views—and established international law, for that matter—that stressed the importance of avoiding unnecessary suffering, Schel
ling claimed that the ability to hurt was “among the most impressive attributes of military force.” Its value lay not in actually doing so, which would constitute a gross failure of strategy, but in what opponents might do to avoid it. So long as the violence could both be anticipated and avoided by accommodation, it had coercive value. “The power to hurt is bargaining power. To exploit it is diplomacy—vicious diplomacy, but diplomacy.” Under this proposition, strategy moved from considerations of conquest and resistance to deterrence, intimidation, blackmail, and threats.
Coercion was therefore at the heart of the theory. The hurt did not have to be nuclear. The same framework could work with less punitive forms, for example, economic sanctions. It could also take in the traditional distinction between offense and defense, although not in the sense of being able to be certain of either conquering territory or stopping any invasion at the borders. The point about coercion was that it involved influencing through threats rather than controlling the opponent’s behavior. The defensive equivalent was deterrence, persuading an enemy not to attack; the offensive equivalent was “compellence,” inducing withdrawal or acquiescence. Deterrence demanded an opponent’s inaction; compellence demanded action or ceasing adverse actions. Deterrence was about the status quo and had no obvious time limits; compellence projected forward to a new place and could be urgent. Deterrence was easier because all that was required was that an action be withheld. The target could deny that one was ever contemplated. Compliance was more conspicuous with compellence, more evidently “submission under duress,” less “capable of being rationalized as something that one was going to do anyhow.” The two could merge. Once an initial deterrent threat had failed and an opponent was acting in a hostile way, the next threat must be compellent. In a conflict in which both sides could hurt each other but neither could forcibly accomplish its purpose, and in which the balance of advantage kept changing hands, the requirement to deter and to compel could shift, depending on who was on top at any time.25
Nuclear threats had a special character. Executing them would be an unusually horrible thing to do, but a state with a nuclear monopoly might feel that it was not too difficult to gain strategic advantage by threatening others. What made the difference was that something equally horrible might come back in return. How could one benefit from threats that lacked credibility because of the risk of retaliation and could thus be exposed as bluff at the first challenge? Again, Schelling addressed this conundrum by turning traditional concepts upside down. The aim of strategy, it had been supposed, was to exert the maximum control over the course of an unfolding conflict. Schelling asked a different question: could there be strategic advantages in accepting a loss of control? Coercive threats worked by influencing an opponent’s choices. Perhaps their choice could be made more difficult by limiting one’s own. To inject credibility into an apparently irrational stance, why not work to create an essentially irrational situation?
The idea was to shift the onus of decision onto the other side, so that it was the opponent who was obliged to choose between continued combat and backing down. Only “the enemy’s withdrawal can tranquilize the situation; otherwise it may turn out to be a contest of nerves.”26 There were precedents: the Greeks burning their bridges to show they would stand and fight against the Persians; the Spanish conqueror Cortez conspicuously burning his ships in front of the Aztecs. By removing retreat as an option, your men had no choice but to fight, while the enemy would be discouraged by an apparent display of confidence.
In the nuclear sphere, at one extreme, choice could be wholly conceded to the opponent by making the threatened action automatic, beyond recall unless stopped by an act of compliance. That was the notion of the “doomsday machine”: pass a line and nothing could be done to stop the detonation and the shared calamity. Removing all choice was unacceptable, so Schelling posed the problem in terms of progressive risk. The opponent would know that even if the threatener had second thoughts, the threat might still be implemented. This set up the possibility of a “competition in risk-taking” which could turn war into a contest of “endurance, nerve, obstinacy and pain.” This would be not quite a doomsday machine, but the threatened would know that the threat could not be wholly bluff because the threatener was not completely in control. Schelling called this “The Threat That Leaves Something to Chance.” The feature of such threats was that “though one may or may not carry them out, the final decision is not altogether under the threatener’s control.”27 In his version of Clausewitz’s friction, Schelling emphasized the ubiquity of uncertainty that gave this type of threat credibility:
Violence, especially in war, is a confused and uncertain activity, highly unpredictable depending on decisions made by fallible human beings organized into imperfect governments depending on fallible communications and warning systems and on the untested performance of people and equipment. It is furthermore a hotheaded activity, in which commitments and reputations can develop a momentum of their own.28
Whereas Clausewitz saw friction as undermining all but the most dogged of strategies, Schelling saw how these uncertainties might be used creatively, if recklessly. The uncertainty would grow as a crisis turned into a limited conflict and then moved toward general war, getting out of hand “by degrees.”29 Skillful tactics would exploit this fact, not shrink from it. The assumption was that it was worth letting a “situation get somewhat out of hand” because the opponent would find such circumstances intolerable. Deterrence was possible because of a situation in which terrible things might happen (which was credible because of human irrationality) rather than a specific threat to do those things (which was incredible because of human rationality).
The potential rationality of irrationality was illustrated using the game of “chicken.” Two cars were driven toward each other by delinquent teenagers, Bill and Ben, anxious to prove their toughness. The first to swerve lost. If both swerved, nothing was gained; if neither swerved, everything was lost. If Bill swerved and Ben did not, then Bill suffered humiliation and Ben gained prestige. The matrix appeared as shown below.
TABLE 13. 1
The minimax strategy dictated that they both swerved as the best of the worst outcomes. This represented the natural caution displayed by both sides during the Cold War. Timing, however, made a difference. Bill was prepared to swerve, but Ben swerved first. Bill won because he delayed his commitment. He kept his nerve longer. Perhaps he was confident that Ben would swerve because he knew him to be weak-willed. Suppose that Ben was aware of this impression and sought to correct it. He wanted Bill to think him reckless or even a bit crazy. A number of ruses might reinforce such an impression: swaggering, boasting, or feigning drunkenness. Irrationality became rational. If Ben could persuade Bill that he had taken leave of his senses, Ben might just prevail.
This illuminates the basic problem with this line of argument. Even if one was apparently committed to a patently irrational course to impress the opponent, a foot would still hover close to the brake pedal and hands would stay firmly on the steering wheel. What might work for two individuals was less likely to work for governments who needed to convince their own people that they knew what they were doing. Even if the internal audience was tolerant of ruses designed to suggest a loss of control, such stunts could not be a regular feature of crisis management. Whether the game involved individuals or states, it was difficult to pretend irrationality consistently, in one game after another. Like deceptive strategies, pretended irrationality would be difficult to repeat as it would affect perceptions of behavior next time round. Indeed it could be counterproductive if the other side overcompensated. The more often the game was played, the more dangerous it could become. The full importance of any strategic encounter lay not only in the implications for the matter at hand but also in the long-term impact on the relationship between the two adversaries. The results of strategies adopted in a particular game would affect their potential success if used in subsequent games. Game theory presented simultaneous
decisions by players. Schelling understood that the moves often took place sequentially, so that the structure of the game changed each time.30
The mutual learning process was important to Schelling’s schema. It was almost a mission to reorient game theory to take account of the fact that “people can often concert their intentions or expectations with others if each knows that the other is trying to do the same.” Unlike theorists who argued that equilibrium points could be found using mathematics, Schelling insisted that points would suggest themselves as being obvious or natural. This required “some common language that permits them to hold discourse.” Communication of this sort between adversaries would not allow for great subtlety or sophistication, especially if the language did not emerge through formal negotiations or declarations. It could be tacit as much as explicit, dependent on prominent symbols and values in a shared culture, guided by tradition and precedence, with mutual understandings created and reinforced through deeds as much as words. It would draw “on imagination more than on logic; it could depend on analogy, precedent, accidental arrangement, symmetry, aesthetic or geometric configuration, casuistic reasoning, and who the parties are and what they know about each other.”31 Certain focal points would become salient. They would need to be simple, recognizable, and conspicuous. In Arms and Influence, Schelling gave examples of features that might suggest themselves to opposing forces who could not communicate directly:
National boundaries and rivers, shorelines, the battle line itself, even parallels of latitude, the distinction between air and ground, the distinction between nuclear fission and chemical combustion, the distinction between combat support and economic support, the distinction between combatants and non-combatants, the distinctions among nationalities.32
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