The explanatory power of game theory in international politics: Syrian-Israeli crisis interactions, 1951-87

The present paper assesses the usefulness of game theory in explaining crisis interactions between Israel and Syria. We begin with the simplest game-theoretic tool for analyzing strategic situations: the one-shot 2 × 2 game. By analyzing the various episodes of the protracted Syrian-Israeli conflict as one-shot 2 × 2 games, we avoid the multiplicity of equilibria of the infinitely repeated game and the difficulty of specifying an endpoint of a finitely repeated game. The pure strategy Nash equilibria of these one-shot games are treated as theoretical predictions and are compared with the observed outcomes.