Exemplar Essay On What Stopped The Nuclear Arms Race? To Write After

In a world where every country has nuclear arms at its disposal, no one wins. While it may benefit individual countries to be in possession of nuclear weapons, no country benefits from having neighbors that possess them. The reason why, in contrast to the predictions of President Kennedy 50 years ago, there are only nine countries that have nuclear weapons, is because our world leaders understand that to resolve the international strategic dilemma posed by the arms race, the majority of countries must assent to being non-nuclear weapons states.
The cold war nuclear arms race can be described in terms of an analogy to a game theory concept known as “chicken.” This game of chicken can be visualized as two cars that are on are on course with each other, one coming from the north and the other coming from the south, and that are about to collide. The driver of each car can take one of two possible actions. The driver can choose to cooperate, or divert the course of the vehicle so it misses the other vehicle, or the driver can choose to not cooperate, or continue on its course without veering to the left or right.
Thus, in the game of chicken, there are four possible combinations of driver actions that lead to four possible outcomes. If the drivers of both cars decide to cooperate, with one driver veering to the left and the other driver veering to the right, then both drivers achieve the same degree of utility from their choice. They are both rewarded, because they have both managed to avoid a collision; on the other hand, they are both somewhat penalized, because they have both had to make an expenditure (veering) to do so. In another scenario, the driver of one car decides to cooperate, while the driver of the other decides not to cooperate. In this case, the drivers of both cars receive utility because a collision was avoided, but the driver of the car that veers – the “chicken” – receives less utility than the other car. In the last possible scenario, both cars decide not to cooperate, and both cars receive no utility, because they are both destroyed. In this case, the payoff for both cars is also the same – that is, it’s zero.
During the cold war, the players of the chicken game were all of the countries that had nuclear proliferation capabilities. The leaders of these countries knew that the only winning strategy was the one where all of the countries cooperated. This meant that they would all have to agree to refrain from stockpiling nuclear weapons. If one country decides not to cooperate, that country has maximized its utility at the expense of other countries’. However, if all countries decide to cooperate, then all countries derive an equal amount of utility from their choice. In other words, by collectively choosing to cooperate, all of these countries have chosen the course of action that will lead to the greatest public good. When every country cooperates with each other, everyone benefits from the deterrence of nuclear war. This is a public good: everyone enjoys the same level of security, having avoided the “collision” that comes about from the utilization of nuclear weapons, and everyone forfeits the same amount of power that comes from possessing nuclear weapons. Everyone is rewarded equally, and everyone is penalized equally, when every country cooperates with each other in the nuclear arms race.