#142 The Games We Play 🎧

<strong><em>Matsyanyaaya</em></strong><strong>: Not So Great Game Theory in Afghanistan</strong><br/><br/><em>Big fish eating small fish = Foreign Policy in action</em><br/><br/>— Guest Post by <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/kianayema?lang=en">Ameya Naik</a><br/><br/>US intelligence agencies considered it <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/cia-warned-rapid-afghanistan-collapse-so-why-did-u-s-n1277026">likely</a> that the Taliban would retake control of all or most of Afghanistan following US withdrawal. Their estimate, however, was that this would take weeks or even months; the idea that Kabul would fall in a matter of days was considered a worst-case scenario. Now that the worst case has played out, analysts are scrambling to explain why. <br/><br/>One narrative thus has it that ANA was so poorly-trained - and its leadership so corrupt - that once U.S. military contractors left the field, Afghan forces had neither the motivation nor the acumen to resist the Taliban advance. As President Biden himself put it "<a target="_blank" href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/08/16/remarks-by-president-biden-on-afghanistan/">...we could not provide them... the will to fight.</a>"<br/><br/>To test that claim, we can turn to Game Theory.<br/><br/>Game Theory stylises any decision involving two or more players as a "game". <br/><br/>Each player can receive some "payoff" (or outcome) from the game. <br/><br/>Payoffs are "contingent", i.e. the payoff a player receives depends partly on their own decisions, partly on the decisions of the other player or players. <br/><br/>One assumes players will act rationally, making choices that maximise their payoffs. <br/><br/>Thus, if we know the payoffs each player can receive, we can predict their choices, and thereby also the outcome of the game.<br/><br/>The most famous example of this is the Prisoner’s Dilemma: a game in which two people suspected of committing a crime are being questioned independent