The problem with that is that it risks slow escalation. As gilch says, tit for tat has no stability margin for an accidental defect, which isn’t so great when rights aren’t perfectly defined. 1.1*tit for tat is even worse, since now the problem actively escalates.
The problem with nuclear war isn’t that someone loses, it’s that everyone loses. Getting a city of 900 thousand blown up after you blow up after you nuke a million of theirs isn’t a good trade and does not make you think “That went well, let’s do it again!”. Even if you see your initial nuke as justified and their retaliation as not justified, you can at least tell that they’re putting effort into de-escalating into escalating. If the next nuke that flies only targets 810k, then 729k, at least the total damage will be finite.
My thought with the “1.1*tit for tat” is simply it makes the aggressor always come out in a losing position for initiating. My thought is they can see the diverging series and know the eventual outcome and either choose to stop or not. But you are possibly right, maybe 0.9 * (tit for tat) is a better policy to pre-commit to.
And yeah, reading the rest of your argument: you’re right, no winners. The aggressor isn’t really going to feel they came out ‘ahead’ dealing with the disaster from losing a slightly worse city than the one they killed from the enemy. For that matter, recent events show that popular opinion of other nations is relevant. The country with slightly more damage who was not the aggressor may enjoy far more foreign aid, which it’s going to need for it’s citizens to survive.
The problem with that is that it risks slow escalation. As gilch says, tit for tat has no stability margin for an accidental defect, which isn’t so great when rights aren’t perfectly defined. 1.1*tit for tat is even worse, since now the problem actively escalates.
The problem with nuclear war isn’t that someone loses, it’s that everyone loses. Getting a city of 900 thousand blown up after you blow up after you nuke a million of theirs isn’t a good trade and does not make you think “That went well, let’s do it again!”. Even if you see your initial nuke as justified and their retaliation as not justified, you can at least tell that they’re putting effort into de-escalating into escalating. If the next nuke that flies only targets 810k, then 729k, at least the total damage will be finite.
My thought with the “1.1*tit for tat” is simply it makes the aggressor always come out in a losing position for initiating. My thought is they can see the diverging series and know the eventual outcome and either choose to stop or not. But you are possibly right, maybe 0.9 * (tit for tat) is a better policy to pre-commit to.
And yeah, reading the rest of your argument: you’re right, no winners. The aggressor isn’t really going to feel they came out ‘ahead’ dealing with the disaster from losing a slightly worse city than the one they killed from the enemy. For that matter, recent events show that popular opinion of other nations is relevant. The country with slightly more damage who was not the aggressor may enjoy far more foreign aid, which it’s going to need for it’s citizens to survive.