More Than a Game: How Computer Gaming Results Can Improve Interagency Cooperation

Abstract

Since the inception of the National Security Council in 1947, the United States has struggled with consistently integrating the diplomatic, informational, military, and economic instruments of national power in planning and executing a whole-of-government approach to military challenges. As the world continues to be more complex, dynamic, and competitive, the United States military recognizes the necessity of integrating global operational and contingency planning across the combatant commands, the joint force, and interagency partners. Interagency cooperation will be fundamental for successful global campaign planning and execution. This monograph hypothesizes that interagency cooperation can be improved at the agent-based (individual) level by applying the winning concepts from the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Game of Chicken constructs. These concepts derive from Robert Axelrod's and Thomas Schelling's findings scoped down to four basic facets of cooperation: conditional benevolence, proportionate reprisal, empathetic leniency, and deliberate transparency. The case studies in this monograph will explore the winning phenomena further and demonstrate their interactions and application between belligerents in real-world occurrences. The first case study will explore the Prisoner's Dilemma construct seen during trench warfare in World War I through the cooperation phenomenon of "live and let live." The second case study examines the Cuban Missile Crisis through the Game of Chicken between two national leaders United States President John F. Kennedy and the Soviet Premiere Nikita Khrushchev. The monograph concludes with recommendations for interagency cooperation at the individual level aligned with the four winning cooperation principles of conditional benevolence, proportionate reprisal, empathetic leniency, and deliberate transparency.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 21, 2020
Accession Number
AD1159403

Entities

People

  • Calvin W. Lockhart

Organizations

  • School of Advanced Military Studies

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy
  • Biomedical
  • Human Systems
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Agreements
  • Case Studies
  • Computers
  • Contingency Operations (Military)
  • Department Of Defense
  • Game Theory
  • Governments
  • Interagency Coordination
  • International Organizations
  • International Relations
  • Military History
  • National Security
  • New York
  • Political Science
  • Recreation
  • Security
  • Unified Combatant Commands
  • United States
  • Ussr
  • War
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Game Theory.
  • Joint Military Operations and Doctrine.
  • Strategic Security Studies