Rationality in nuclear deterrence

Thesis/Dissertation · Tue Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1991

OSTI ID:7144336

Park, J

This thesis expounds upon the diverse contents and operations of rationality in the context of nuclear deterrence at both the interwar and intrawar level. Most previous studies in the area of decision making under conflict and crisis either assumed a solid performance of rationality or rejected the competent role of rationality. According to the latter position, a decision maker would make a rational choice under the absence of psychological or organization barriers to an exact cognition or to a reasonable procedure of deliberation. But an important and hard question still remains: what is a rational choice For a decision theory to overcome conceptual naivety and attain methodological rigor, an integrated model of game theory and utility theory needs to be applied to the explanation of nuclear deterrence. The necessity for both game theory and utility theory comes from the substantial feature of nuclear deterrence: accommodation of great risk and unrelenting interests at stake. The combination of game theory and utility theory results in the separation of rationality from the conventional postulate of economic theory, such as the invariance principle of a linear transformation of the payoffs and minimax choice.

• Research Organization: Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH (United States)
• OSTI ID: 7144336
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
290600 -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Nuclear Energy
350200* -- Arms Control-- Proliferation-- (1987-)
98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL PROTECTION
CONSTRAINTS
DECISION MAKING
GAME THEORY
MATHEMATICS
NUCLEAR DETERRENCE
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
RISK ASSESSMENT
STATISTICS
WEAPONS