Signaling through Battlefield Tactics

• In Event: Advances in Bargaining Models of War

Abstract

This paper studies the conduct of war.
We introduce the idea that one of the adversaries has a single potentially decisive strategic or tactical option (one-time advantage) and they must decide whether and when to use it.
We illustrate in a war of attrition setting with one-sided incomplete information that countries do not necessarily use their one-time advantage as soon as possible.
Our main result shows the existence of equilibria where only weak countries use this advantage while strong countries withhold to signal strength.
We differentiate between three cases and find that weak countries typically use the one-time advantage in the first period.
The only case where they can use it later is when the uninformed country loses to a strong country with higher probability than it defeats a weak country.
The paper also suggests that we should expect shorter conflicts when the uninformed country defeats a weak country with higher probability than it loses to a strong country.
To illustrate the main logic of our model, we analyze Germany's decision to employ unrestricted submarine warfare in the middle of World War I.

Authors

• Naoki Fujiwara

• Marton Szabo, University of Rochester