A game of brinkmanship
Brinkmanship is a game of deliberate risk creation. As Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff write in The Art of Strategy, it is “a slippery slope [that gets] gradually steeper” – a game of “chicken in real time”. We can find many examples of brinkmanship in real life. In industrial relations, for example, unions might demand higher wages, and management might deny their requests. Unhappy unionists then turn to strikes of increasing intensity. In this war of attrition, the player who faces relatively lower costs at each stage of escalation is likely to enjoy greater bargaining power during negotiation.
A contest in risk taking
The Cuban Missile Crisis is probably the most vivid and extreme example of brinkmanship. When the Soviet Union placed nuclear missiles in Cuba, the United States responded with a naval blockade around the region. The U.S. message was clear, if the Soviet Union chose further aggression, tensions would escalate towards nuclear exchange. Both nations approached the brink, saw the risks too great, and agreed to withdraw their missiles – the U.S. from Turkey and the Soviets from Cuba.
In Arms and Influence, Thomas Schelling describes the Cuban Crisis as “a contest in risk taking”. Of course, neither side wanted nuclear warfare. But each, in their attempt to outdo the other, set-in motion the “risk of unintended disaster”. Indeed, the Cuban Crisis became “genuinely dangerous” because both sides “[were] not fully in control of events”. Had the Soviet submarine B-59 launched its nuclear torpedo after the U.S. Navy dropped depth charges on them, we might not be writing about brinkmanship today.
Unpredictable and uncontrollable
Uncertainty is an inherent feature of brinkmanship and the game of chicken. If both sides know who will lose, the rational loser will concede before escalating their expected losses. In many cases, however, adversaries don’t fully know who stands to lose and win. Brinkmanship and limited wars, as deplorable as they are, confer information to both sides. Clarity amidst uncertainty brings forth a resolution.
In this sense, brinkmanship is more favourable to the player best prepared for risk tolerance, one-upmanship, and extended attrition. If both players are equally stubborn (or stupid), then the point-of-no-return becomes a distinct possibility. The cost of brinkmanship then is the “risk of mutual disaster”. And it is the plausible risk of war that makes brinkmanship a credible threat, even if war itself is outright insanity.
Emotional commitments and inertia
Of equal concern is the emotional risk of brinkmanship. Politicians and war generals, for example, may find it difficult to separate their personal reputation, commitments and hotheadedness from the grander strategy at hand. What’s more, “not everybody is always in his right mind”. As history has shown, commitments and brinkmanship can generate so much inertia that things “get out of hand” before we know it.
“Commitments and reputations can develop a momentum of their own. … Nations, like people, are continually engaged in demonstrations of resolve, tests of nerve, and explorations for understandings and misunderstandings. … There is just no foreseeable route by which the United States and the Soviet Union could become engaged in a major nuclear war. This does not mean that a major nuclear war cannot occur.”
Thomas Schelling. (1966). Arms and Influence.