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.