By Michael F. Duggan
One can only assume that Western foreign policy makers and diplomats these days are not poker players.
If news stories from the past few days are correct, it is likely that US-made, long-range, tactical ballistic missiles fired from Ukraine, will soon be hitting targets deep inside Russia. The Kremlin is warning that this would be regarded as a direct attack by the United States and NATO on Russia and therefore, an existential threat. They are saying that it would mean a great powers war between the US/NATO and Russia.
In other words, the West would be pursuing a policy that could result in World War III based on the assumption that the other side, which has until now been portrayed as an unreasonable, murderous aggressor, will now act with caution, moderation, reason, restraint, and perhaps timidity. It assumes that all of the warnings coming from Russia are just bluffs. Thus the decision of whether or not to go to war is being surrendered to the discretion of a potential adversary.
But as any competent poker player will tell you, the problem with a strategy that assumes the opponent is always bluffing, is that it only works until it doesn’t. It only works if the opponent is bluffing. As the great Prussian realist, Otto von Bismarck, is supposed to have observed, “Russians are slow to saddle, but fast to ride.” If Western policy is based on the “rational choice” assumptions of game theory, then Western policymakers would do well to examine how well such theories served the US during the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, and unlike the Cuban Missile Crisis, there is little conspicuous evidence that the US and Russia are even talking to each other. What could possibly go wrong?
At this point, with Russia winning the war in eastern Ukraine, they may not retaliate directly and disproportionately against the West (especially, as other have noted, in light of the many other ways they can retaliate less dramatically). Why upend the chessboard if you are winning? But again, this assumes that people are predominantly reasonable, and as some commentators have observed, we now stand closer to thermonuclear war than at any other point in history. The US and Russia have a little under 6,000 nuclear warheads each, with 1,419 and 1,549 (respectively) deployed on land based missiles, submarine launched ballistic missiles, and on strategic bombers.
The relevant question to those who believe that Russia is bluffing is: What if you are wrong?