Prisoners' Dilemma and Foreign Policy

I am very slowly getting through a book entitled "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins. It's been a labor endeavored on and off for the last decade, as has Immanual Kant's "Metaphysics of Morals". But oddly, through these two books, I am finding some clarity to the question of Pre-emption, the Bush Doctrine, and Foreign Policy in general.

Dawkins goes into the Prisoners' Dilemma as a vehicle for exploring altruism, cooperation, and competition among individual members of a given species. For those unfamiliar with Prisoners' Dilemma, please read some of this to become acquainted. The prisoners' dilemma also seems to port well to our own national security and how we ought to handle other emerging threats.

What we find with the PD "game" is that the best strategy is what's known as "Tit for Tat with some forgiveness". To summarize, the best strategy is the assumption of cooperation on the part of your "opponent". If that opponent takes advantage of your altruism, you immediately strike back, just once, and immediately forget the incident. To avoid getting caught in a loop, every now and again - say once in ten turns - Tit for Tat with Forgiveness dictates that you forgive your opponent and on the next move the strategy dictates a cooperative move.

I think this sort of strategy speaks against Pre-emptive strikes like the one we have involved ourselves in Iraq. We must consider that N. Korea now has nuclear weapons, as does India, Pakistan, and soon Iran will have them. It's time to ask ourselves what our strategy will be going forward. In the PD analogy, we have been playing the competetion "hand". In doing so we are stating our assumption that our opponents will play the "competition hand", thereby resulting in the best outcome for us. In other words, we had assumed Iraq had WMD and would use them. I for one believe Iraq has proven that presuming another country's action is foolish. If we were to play International PD with our foreign policy, then we would have waited for Iraq to attack us before invading their country. Admittedly, one could make the argument that the US did indeed engage in Tit for Tat with forgiveness when viewed in the context of Iraq's Kuwait invasion in 1990 and then subsequent violations of UN resolutions.

But for all of Tit for Tat's alluring elegant simplicity and positive "lab" results, I have to wonder what it's efficacy would be if put into practice. What about historical incidents that demonstrate Tit for Tat's lack of feasibility? Are there any? How would a country "Tit" Hitler's "Tat" of invading the Rhineland - or say Poland? How about 9/11 - would the appropriate response have been destroying buildings and planes in Saudi Arabia until the death toll reached about what ours was? What about Kuwait in the '90's? Do we invade them? Actually, do we even get involved since technically the "Tat" was not against us in either situation? What do we do about countries who cannot effect an equal "Tit" against a country who "Tat's" them? Furthermore, what if the two sides can't even agree on the severity of their Tits and Tats and what even constitutes one or the other?

I had set out writing this particular entry thinking that if we just were to look at PD and its most effective solution, we could come to some insight into a more stable foreign policy. While writing I realized its many practical flaws. I still think it has merit. Maybe the lesson here is that if we are not being attacked, why attack at all?

As always, please post comments or just email them. I really would love to know what any of you think about this.