Chicken Game

The chicken game (sometimes called hawk-dove) is a foundational model in non-cooperative game theory used to analyze crisis bargaining, deterrence, and brinkmanship in international relations. Two players each choose between swerve (concede) and straight (stand firm). Mutual concession yields a tied, moderate outcome; unilateral concession humiliates the swerver but rewards the firm player; mutual firmness produces the worst payoff for both—a crash.

Unlike the prisoner's dilemma, chicken has two pure-strategy Nash equilibria (one player swerves, the other does not) plus a mixed-strategy equilibrium. The strategic problem is therefore one of coordination under conflict: each side wants to credibly commit to the "straight" strategy so the opponent swerves first. Thomas Schelling, in The Strategy of Conflict (1960) and Arms and Influence (1966), argued that visible commitments, burned bridges, and even apparent irrationality can be rational tools to win such contests—what he called the "rationality of irrationality."

In IR, the model is most frequently applied to:

• Nuclear brinkmanship, especially the Cuban Missile Quarantine of October 1962, where Kennedy and Khrushchev faced mutually catastrophic payoffs if neither backed down.
• Trade wars and tariff escalation, where both economies suffer if neither de-escalates.
• Border standoffs, such as militarised disputes where troop withdrawal carries reputational cost.

Critics note that real crises rarely reduce cleanly to two strategies, that payoffs are subjective and shift with domestic politics, and that information asymmetries make commitment signals ambiguous. Robert Jervis and others have shown that misperception can cause both players to believe the other will swerve, producing inadvertent escalation. Still, the chicken framework remains a standard heuristic for thinking about credibility, resolve, and commitment in high-stakes confrontations where neither side wants the worst outcome but each prefers the other to yield.