‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ in international relations
Recently, in an address at the Goa Maritime Conclave, Indian Defence Minister referred to the concept of “Prisoner’s Dilemma” to underscore the need for countries to collaborate with each other instead of working at cross purposes.
Prisoner’s Dilemma
- Self-Interest of Individuals: A paradox in decision analysis in which two individuals acting in their own self-interests do not produce the optimal outcome.
- Understanding the Behavior: It refers to one of the most popular ‘games’ in Game Theory, a branch of science that helps understand how people behave under different circumstances. It also shows how to achieve the best outcome.
Prison’s Dilemma in International Relations
- Analyze the Challenge: It can explain and analyze various situations where countries face strategic decision-making challenges.
- For example, when two or more countries engage in an arms race, they often do so out of mutual fear and mistrust.
- Benefit to Use: To find solutions that promote cooperation, build trust, and mitigate the risks associated with the Prisoner’s Dilemma situations in international relations.
An Illustration: Suppose two people, A and B committed a crime together and are brought in for questioning about that crime.
- If the police don’t have more credible evidence and both don’t confess their crime, then they can achieve jail maximum for a year each.
- So the police officer puts both A and B in separate rooms and provides both of them an option if one prisoner says the other is involved in the crime, he can get-free and the other will be given a 10-year jail term.
- If both confess, then their jail times will be 10 years each.
- Here, the prisoner’s dilemma is whether to confess or stay silent.
- Hence, the best outcome is to cooperate and receive 1 year of jail.
Prisoner’s Dilemma Matrix:
| |
A Stays Silent
|
A Confesses
|
|
B Stays Silent
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A: 1 year, B: 1 year
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A: 15 years, B: 0 years
|
|
B Confesses
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A: 0 years, B: 15 years
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A: 10 years, B: 10 years
|
The best outcome lies in co-operation. Countries should set some ground rules in geopolitics to ensure they don’t enter an arms race that will eventually prove ruinous for their own economies and people.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma concept is often applied to international relations to understand situations where countries face choices with conflicting interests. It helps explain why nations may not always cooperate for the best collective outcome. For example, in arms races, two countries may each choose to arm themselves (confess) to gain a competitive advantage, even though disarmament (remaining silent) would be collectively better by reducing the risk of war and saving resources.
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