The disturbing new relevance of theories of nuclear deterrence

SIXTY YEARS ago, a dispute over the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba pushed Washington and Moscow perilously close to all-out war. The crisis provided history’s most extreme example yet of nuclear brinkmanship, situations in which governments repeatedly escalate a very dangerous situation in an attempt to get their way. It also demonstrated the extraordinary value of the work of Thomas Schelling, an economist then at Harvard University, who used the relatively new tools of game theory to analyse the strategy of war. The war in Ukraine has made Schelling’s work, for which he shared the economics Nobel prize in 2005, more relevant than ever.Game theory came into its own in the 1940s and 1950s, thanks to the efforts of scholars like John von Neumann and John Nash, who used mathematics to analyse the strategies available to participants in various sorts of formal interactions. Schelling used game theory as a prism through which to better understand war. He considered conflict as an outcome of a strategic showdown between rational decision-makers who weighed up the costs and benefits of their choices. If a would-be attacker expects to gain more from aggression than any cost his adversary can impose on him, then he is likely to go through with the aggressive act.