Tag Archives: Game theory

A Fine Theorem offers a very nice description of their work.

Some historians give Adlai Stevenson credit for inventing the word “brinkmanship” as part of his criticism of US foreign policy under Dulles, who said that “if you are scared of going to the brink, you lost.” But surely we can agree that the tactic is as old as civilization.   The idea is you take the issue to the very edge, risking a significant confrontation, to force a deal, is the way it may seem. The Cuban Missile...

In the Washington Post, Henry Farrell writes about Schelling’s work and how it shaped the Cold War. Schelling’s contribution was to show how the two sides could think systematically about coordinating (where they had common interests) and deterring each other from unwanted actions (where they did not). This arguably gave rise to a much more stable world — the world of the Cold War — where both sides struggled with each other for dominance, but tacitly agreed on some of the rules of the...