by Jim Rose in Thomas Schelling, war and peace Tags: arms races, deterrence, disarmament, mutually assured destruction, peace movements, Robert Aumann

Thomas Schelling (and Robert Aumann) did terrible things such as work out how not to blunder into wars and how to deter wars rather than have to actually fight them.

Schelling’s unique contribution at the Rand Corporation involved viewing strategic situations as bargaining processes.

Focusing on the stand-off between the United States and the Soviet Union, Schelling observed that the two superpowers had both shared and opposing interests.

Their shared interests involved avoiding a nuclear war, while their opposing interests concerned dominating the other. Conflict and cooperation became inseparable.

Iran and Israel are moving down that same path if both have nuclear weapons.

Schelling focused in particular on how the United States and Soviet Union could arrive at and stick to bargains by means of deterrence and compellence.

Deterrence involves dissuading the other from doing something, while compellence referred to persuading the other to do something.

Deterrence and compellence are supported by threats and promises.

Threats are costly when they fail and successful when they are not carried out.

Promises are costly when they succeed and successful when they are carried out. A threat is cheaper than a promise because you do not have to carry it out if your threats work in intimidating others to do what you want.

Since the exploitation of potential force is better than the application of force, it is key to use threats and promises while avoiding having to act upon these.

The challenge is to communicate threats and promises in a credible manner.

The ability to hurt people is conducive to peace, while the ability to destroy weapons increases the risk of war. This is the paradox of deterrence. A country needs a credible second-strike capacity to deter a pre-emptive first strike. A country needs its missiles to survive such an attack.

Populations are better protected by protecting the missiles. By protecting the missiles rather than their cities, each side was offering their populations as a hostage to the other.

With each side holding the other’s cities as hostage, neither has an incentive to strike first. This is much safer than having each side worried about their weapons been destroyed and they therefore use them before they are destroyed in some minor crisis.

That is one of Schelling’s many contributions to peace.

What were the contributions of the peace movements?

Robert Aumann argued well that the way to peace is like bargaining in a medieval bazaar. Never look too keen, and bargain long and hard. Aumann argues that:

If you are ready for war, you will not need to fight. If you cry ‘peace, peace,’ you will end up fighting… What brings war is that you signal weakness and concessions.

Countries are more likely to cooperate if they have frequent interactions and have a long time horizon. The chances of cooperation increase when it is backed by the threat of punishment.

Disarmament, Aumann argues, “would do exactly the opposite” and increase the chances of war. He gave the example of the Cold War as an example of how their stockpiles of nuclear weapons and fleets of bombers prevented a hot war from starting:

In the long years of the cold war between the US and the Soviet Union, what prevented “hot” war was that bombers carrying nuclear weapons were in the air 24 hours a day, 365 days a year? Disarming would have led to war.

Aumann has quoted the passage from the biblical Book of Isaiah:

Isaiah is saying that the nations can beat their swords into ploughshares when there is a central government – a Lord, recognized by all. In the absence of that, one can perhaps have peace – no nation lifting up its sword against another. But the swords must continue to be there – they cannot be beaten into ploughshares – and the nations must continue to learn war, in order not to ﬁght!