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The Strategic Triangle: An Elementary Game-Theoretical Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Lowell Dittmer
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Abstract

The concept of a“strategic triangle” is useful in an analysis of the internal logic of the relationship between the United States, the Soviet Union, and China. The preconditions for a triangular relationship are that each player recognize the strategic salience of the three principals, and the relationship between any two will be affected by each player's relationship to the third. Within the triangle, there are three distinct pattern dynamics: the ménage à trots, consisting of mutually positive relationships among all three; the stable marriage, consisting of a bilateral relationship excluding the third, and the romantic triangle, consisting of one pivot player playing off two suitors. Each of these pattern dynamics has specific rules of rational play. The shift from one pattern dynamic to another is a function of the attempts of the players to freeze a given configuration through commitment to a treaty or a common ideology, interacting with periodic crises that test their commitments.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1981

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References

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2 I am taking what Graham Allison would call a “rational actor” approach, ignoring all but international payoffs. A country's foreign (or domestic) policy may be analyzed in terms of its constituent pressure groups, bureaucratic interests, resource constraints, and other internal determinants, just as an individual decision maker may be psychoanalyzed in terms of constituent drives and complexes. But the focus of this analysis is on the inherent logic of specific patterns of relationships among nation-states; the reasons motivating a particular nation-state to adhere to (or deviate from) any particular pattern is irrelevant to the validity of that logic.

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20 Garver (fn. 1) offers evidence to this effect gleaned from content analysis of official statements and shifts in trade flows, as well as “Kremlinological” inferences.

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39 One of the reasons for the deterioration of Soviet-American relations is to be found in recent changes in the nuclear balance, which have led some Western observers to infer that the Soviet Union is on its way to a disabling first-strike capability; these may plausibly have led Soviet observers to the reverse conclusion. Among the technological innovations that make the pre-emptive destruction of land-based hardened missile silos feasible are MIRV capability and the more recent improvements in missile accuracy (which have resulted from unanticipated advances in such areas as computer and engine microminiaturization, order-of-magnitude acceleration of data processing, inertial navigation, American Navstar satellite position fixing of submarines to within 10 meters in three dimensions regardless of weather, gravity and geodesy positioning, real-time satellite reconnaissance of ground information, preprogrammed terminal homing computers in warheads, terrain-matching, and rapid retargeting of both ICBMS and SLBMS). If either side were to achieve a unilateral breakthrough in laser defense against missiles, this could also radically alter the strategic balance.