Modeling Choices in Nuclear Warfighting

Abstract

Two classroom simulations-SUPERPOWER CONFRONTATION and MULTIPOLAR ASIAN SIMULATION-are used to teach and test various aspects of the Borden versus Brodie debate on the Schelling versus Lanchester approach to nuclear conflict modeling and resolution. The author applies a Schelling test to segregate high from low empathic students, and assigns them to hard case positions in three simulations to test whether high empathy students can engage in tactic bargaining and whether low empathetic students are necessarily as escalation prone. He has a bipolar nuclear simulation that is an easy case for the Brodie set of assumptions about nuclear war, avoidance, and Schelling-esque tacit bargaining. He expects the system structure and high empathy leader selection to contain escalation, despite the temptation of relying on accelerated Single Integrated Operational Plan solutions and the counterincentive of diminished tacit bargaining through decapitation attacks. The second simulation is a multipolar nuclear simulation set in the near future of Asia, and emulates the Borden-esque logic of nuclear war as artillery exchanges, with a Lanchester square law logic encouraging rapid escalation, coupled with a selection for the most autistic leadership. The author expects rapid nuclear escalation under these structural and decision-making conditions. His conclusions are anecdotal, but seem to indicate, from student feedback during class discussions, that the failure to model fear may be a factor in undermining successful tacit bargaining by players, suggesting that Borden rather than Brodie better conceptualized nuclear conflict. Therefore, peace is about restraining war initiation, as there are great pressures for escalation once war is initiated.How would NATO employ nuclear weapons in the event of war? Two contrasting approaches, the slow escalation versus massive retaliation, each with their own rationales and intellectual and political proponents, have received the most theoretical attention. Classroom simulations, both to teach and test the competing hypotheses of their alternative approaches, have generally shown that after initial attempts at tacit bargaining fail, players will resort to massive retaliation. About 20 seminar students are assigned positions based on an empathy test to create most likely outcome conditions for two simulations, or tests, of these contrasting approaches. The findings suggest that under the best of circumstances, escalation is notoriously difficult to control. States should be very careful about initiating conflicts and then assuming that nuclear deterrence will hold up as well within in-war situations. If state decision makers are aware of this, then they will be reluctant to begin using nuclear weapons, and nuclear deterrence is therefore robust and peace enhancing.The simulations are also for the purposes of dynamic and interactive classroom teaching of three topics. First, students are taught two methods of warfighting, and then asked to choose between them and apply their choice in a simulatio...

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