UNCERTAINTY AND THE ROLE OF THE PAWN IN EXTENDED DETERRENCE

This paper develops an incomplete information model of extended deterr ence relationships. It postulates players who are fully informed about the costs of war and all other relevant variables, save for the value s their opponents place on the issues at stake, i.e., the pawn. We pro vide consistent and intuitively satisfying parallel definitions for tw o types of players, Hard and Soft, in terms of the parameters of our m odel. We also answer several particular questions about the strategy c hoices of players in an extended deterrence relationship and, by ident ifying all the Perfect Bayesian Equilibria of the game model we constr uct, specify typical behavior patterns. Our most general finding is th at an Extended Deterrence Game always has a unique Perfect Bayesian Eq uilibrium with a rather simple form. A challenger initiates for certai n if the pawn is valuable enough to it and never challenges otherwise, Likewise, a defender always resists if the pawn is valuable enough an d never resists otherwise. In addition to identifying threshold values for optimal strategic choice, we provide existence conditions for the two distinct types of Perfect Bayesian Equilibria. This permits us to identify the exact set of conditions associated with bluffing strateg ies and to develop a theory of the necessary and sufficient conditions for extended deterrence crisis initiation and its resolution.