“Kids on The Train Tracks” Problem And Design of Social Systems

A thinking exercise. Say there are two railroad tracks. One track is closed for use, another is in use. Five or six children are playing on the open track. One child is playing on the closed track.

A train is coming from away. The train blows the horn, but it’s not working. The train is too close now and the only option the driver has is to switch the tracks. Whether he should continue on the track he is on and hit five kids or whether he should switch temporarily to the closed track and hit the only kid there?

The quick reflex answer, a response grounded in humanity for most people, is to switch the tracks and hit one kid instead of five. Why not? The less casualties, the better. Right?

Here is a risk reward matrix that explains the decision.

Action	Risk	Reward
Take open track	Kill more kids for sure	100% safety of train passengers, 100% guarantee that anyone who has followed instructions is safe.
Take closed track	Risk train passengers, risk future confusion	Kill less number of kids in short term.

On deeper thought, the kid playing on the closed track might have inquired which track is closed before playing there. He/she might have asked the train company and might have trusted in the answer they gave. If the lone kid has done his/her due diligence, then switching the tracks seems something very unfair, an injustice to the kid.

Even if the kid playing on the closed track had not confirmed the track closure, letting the train driver decide who lives and who dies creates a confusing and dangerous situation for future kids playing on the tracks. Kids do not have a firm rule to follow to decide where to play. They have to constantly make sure they are playing with bigger group of kids. Or they have to constantly scan the horizon for the oncoming train.

Also not to mention, the closed track might be dangerous for the train to travel on. When passengers board the train, they place their lives in the hands of train driver. The train driver made an implicit promise to them that he/she will them safe. Had the passengers known that the train driver might switch to a possibly risky tracks for humanitarian reasons, some of them might not have boarded the train.

So if the driver switches the tracks, the train passengers, the driver and collectively all kids are left with no clear strategies, clear rules, to make their life decisions.  There is something peculiar happening here. Any line of thought that insists on the train switching track to hit the lone kid makes the decision process dependent on outcome of the decision, i.e. more kids should survive, and has no place for the interests of people involved in decision making process, i.e. the stakeholders, the driver and passengers in this case.

This makes the decision making process complicated for everyone and opens up areas for conflict of interest. In such case, people feel an acute, unexplained sense of discomfort. They do not feel confident. They do not feel in control of their own destiny, something very detrimental to social trust. It leads to everyone preparing for worst case scenario, taking extra steps to reduce their risk, not putting trust in the rules and systems. This lack of social trust, a sense of unfair world, leads to far more casualties in future.

Why fairness is so important? Because the sense of unfair treatment plays on our very primal instincts. In one of the psychological experiment, researchers rewarded two monkeys differently for the same action. For doing the same task, one monkey was rewarded with one raisin,  and the other with five raisins. The monkey that got one raisin should ideally have taken it, because refusing it earns him nothing. But that monkey refused the raisin, showing that even animals notice unfair treatment.

“Fair” system works far better than a “good” system or “beneficial” system in the long run. This is the primary distinction between the two major types of social systems in the world today. A system that guarantees privilages, like socialism and a system that guarantees freedom, like real capitalism (not bailout capitalism). A system that guarantees “larger group of people will survive” guarantees privilage of survival. Whereas a system that guarantees “if you follow rules, you will not die” guarantees you a level of trust, making your decision making simpler, enabling you more choices and thus guaranteeing your freedom. You can still choose to die, but that is your own choice and other people are not put in danger because of you.

This is why Western societies made so much progress. Ideals advocated in revolutions like French and American revolutions, justice and liberty, stressed more on fairness and guaranteeing freedom. Conversely the socialist slogans like “rule of farmers/workers” attempted to guarantee privilages to particular classes in society for a short term. But the guarantee was artificial and soon collapsed.

Both types of revolutions began to correct a society that was unfair to begin with. But socialism/ communism overcompensated and created unfairness from the opposite direction.

Nuclear Warfare III – Nuclear Proliferation And Missile Defense

Date: Sept 26, 1983, Location: Moscow, Soviet Satellite command section.

A few minutes past midnight, Sargent Stanislav Petrov was monitoring the systems as a part of normal routine when suddenly one of the alarms started beeping. The radar system had detected a few missiles launched towards Soviet union.

An inner voice inside his mind was telling Stanislav something was not right. If US wanted to launch a nuclear attack, they would have launched it full scale. They would not have stopped at a few missiles. This was more likely to be a computer glitch.

He faced a tormenting decision. Whether to believe his gut and risk a small chance of destruction of his homeland, or whether to follow proper military protocols and alert nuclear command, which could have resulted in Soviet nuclear missile launch. If he waited a few minutes, the boundary radars would confirm if they are seeing missiles or not. But if they were indeed missiles, it would be too late by then.

At the end, he chose to wait. Boundary radars never went off. There were no missiles. It was a computer mistake. The world came back from a brink of total disaster.

This was not the first incident and the people involved in command and control chains on either side were painfully aware that this would not be the last. While…

The last two posts were dedicated to the understanding of nuclear strategy and strategic countermeasures. This post deals with the latest development, LASER missile defense and its implications of nuclear warfare, especially the phenomena of nuclear proliferation.

Let’s visit the strategic objective equation in the previous post once again.

SOA = SOA1 & SOA2

SOA = ( N1 x PS1 x PH1 x BA > TA ) & (  N2 x PS2 x PH2 x BA > TA )

Where N1,N2 are number of nuclear weapons of first and second strike. PS1 and Ps2 are probability of survival of respective strikes. PH1, PH2 are probability of hitting target, or accuracy of weapons of respective strikes, and BA is area destroyed by each bomb or weapon.

TA is total area of the enemy regions.

As we can see in the initial phase of nuclear race, the nuclear powers were focused on the number of nuclear weapons, N1 and N2. This lead to tremendous increase in number of nuclear weapons. We could call this intra-country nuclear proliferation.

Also there was considerable inter-country nuclear proliferation. This was for two reasons.

One, any nuclear power was happy when one of its allies went nuclear. Russia was willing to deploy weapons in Cuba in 1960s Cuban crisis. America was happy to see Pakistan become nuclear, since it meant some America friendly weapons right at the doorsteps of Russia.

There was second and important reason. Once a country goes nuclear, all countries it had conflict with will also want to go nuclear. South East Asia is good example of this phenomenon. Since China became nuclear, and India had fought war with China, India went nuclear. Then Pakistan felt too vulnerable  and it also went nuclear. Sort of a chain reaction.

Going back to blackboard, let us capture that in an equation. Imagine this as “game of life” simulation.

Let Pc = probability of conflict between two countries.

Nmax  = max number, or total number of countries in the world.

Nx = total number of nuclear countries at iteration no x

Let us say that in every iteration of the game max one conflict happens.

So in x’th iteration, the additional number of countries going nuclear is

delta Nx = probability of conflict x probability of conflict between one nuclear and one non nuclear nation

bool[RND{0-1}(x) > Pc]  gives us whether conflict will happen or not in that iteration, where RND{0-1} is a random number between 0 and 1, Pc is conflict probability (also a fraction larger than 0 and less than 1)

deltaNx = [bool(RND{0-1}(x) > Pc)] * (Nx)C1 * (Ntotal-Nx)C1/(Ntotal)C2

But from the basic permutation combination theory we know that (N) C 1 = N

Thus deltaNx = [bool(RND{0-1}(x) > Pc)] * (Nx) * (Ntotal-Nx)/(Ntotal)C2

Total number of nuclear countries in x’th iteration is summation of countries going nuclear in each iteration from 0 to x.

If we were to actually calculate these using some numbers we would notice one interesting thing. The rate at which the world becomes nuclear increases exponentially with increase in Pc. So if the probability of conflict is doubled, you have four times as many countries going nuclear in the same time, eight times if the probability is tripled and so on.

With global warming, financial crisis, etc. we have lot more possibilities of conflict. So the risk of world becoming nuclear increases very fast. And as we saw, unless you and your opponents are capable of fully destroying each other, there exists a probability of nuclear war in the game. Two smaller powers could really drop nuclear bombs on each other. A rogue dictator, or terrorist hell bent on destruction, could end up firing a nuclear missile or two.

So in this new world, USA is not only worried about full scale attack from Russia, it is also worried about small scale attacks from rogue nations. A credible missile defense will serve two purposes.

One, it will reduce the PH, the probability of hitting enemy’s weapons. As we have seen a reduction in PH by factor of two will require the enemy to double their arsenal. This could result in prohibitive costs. Instead it is easier for the enemy to develop similar missile defense and have similar effect on PH of the first country.

This lead to the development of next phase of nuclear warfare, strategic missile defense. In the decade of 1980s the Americans considered this seriously for the first time. The original ambitious star wars program was later scaled down and was implemented as an array of radars linked with strategically placed surface-to-air missiles. The whole world watched this at work in 1991 gulf war, where Iraqi SCUD missles were intercepted by USA patriot missiles. Even though the accuracy of intercept was only in the range of 2%, it was proven to be a feasible option.

While patriot missiles were being used as interceptors, the work was under way to use direct energy, aka LASER beams. It faced multiple problems. The missiles were too fast, thus the heating energy quickly dissipated. A particular chemical, readily available in paint shops was found to be very effective in reflecting LASERs, thus reducing effective heating. Any such LASER beam would have to be fired from Airplane, which made it challenging to focus a beam accurately over a long distance.

One by one the problems were worked out. Finally on Feb 11, 2010 the US Airforce successfully carried out first test of Airborne Missile Defense using YAG  LASER ( LASER beam created using Yttrium Aluminum garnet crystals as lasing medium).

Apart from USA, Russia, China and India are working on missile shields. But no other country has made significant progress, especially as far as direct energy (LASER) weapons are considered.

Effective missile defense will shift the weight of strategy away  from more missiles and weapons. In addition, it will discourage small scale nuclear powers from developing weapons. They can see that their weapons have very minimal chance of reaching target. They are not likely to have enough resources to develop and deploy enough weapons to cause legitimate threat. That’s why, if you haven’t noticed, the announcement of successful LASER missile defense came from USA shortly after the news that Iran made significant progress in developing nuclear weapons material.

A credible missile shield is still a far shot, but LASER missile defense is a giant step in that direction. Again the world stands on the brink of new age, the age of reduced nuclear arsenal, and if the luck smiles, perhaps one day a nuclear free world.

Nuclear Warfare II – Technology Developments

We saw the general nuclear strategy was focused around MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. Since attack was the only defense for nuclear war in this phase, each country was maximizing its capability of attack and people were busy minting nuclear weapons left and right. The defense was primarily concerned with preserving the ability of attack rather than minimizing the destruction.  Following were some interesting developments that took place as each country balanced its own arsenal against the threat.

Underground bunkers –

This is perhaps the most widely used, most common measure countries take against possible nuclear attack. A bunker in a mountain is the safest place you can have against nuclear attack. In early 60s Soviet Russia developed technology to build and operate several such nuclear-resistant bunkers. These bunkers were so well dug and developed that if required ,a small scale version of entire government, a command and control cell, could be operated from a bunker.

To counter these bunkers, bunker buster bombs were developed. But they have limitations and no known measure can guarantee destruction of a concrete bunker buried under large amount of clay and and rocks.

Nuclear Submarine:

If missiles and stealth bombers are rooks and bishops of the game of chess of nuclear warfare, nuclear powered nuclear armed submarine is the undisputed queen of this game. You could store your second strike missiles on deep underground bunkers. But if enemy knew the location of your bunkers, they would direct extra firepower or a weapon like bunker buster bomb. Submarine offers you the option of burying your nuclear missiles under the sea.

So a traditional submarine could offer you a good second strike option. But traditional diesel or electric submarines need to come on surface every now and then to get breathable air. So they cannot travel far from the border.

A nuclear submarine, with a few kgs of nuclear fuel can remain operational for months at stretch. It can recycle its own water and air as it has abundant energy. This means it can travel far, even to the doorsteps of your enemy if required.  Given that sea covers 70% of earth surface, more than double the land area, it offers the nuclear submarine huge roaming field, making it impossible to locate positively at all times. The nuclear submarines can be quite large, carry more crew and weapons than their traditional counterparts. Considering the strategic objective equation in last post again,

SO : N x PS x PH x BA > TA,

where N = no. of nuclear weapons,

PS = probability of survival of the weapons,

PH = probability of weapons hitting the target and BA = area destroyed by the bomb,

Nuclear submarine is difficult to detect, thus maximizing it chances of survival, thus high PS.

Nuclear submarine can be taken almost to enemy shore, thus maximizing chances of the missiles hitting the target, thus high PH.

Nuclear submarine can carry much large number of weapons, thus high N.

So nuclear submarine scores high on three of the four counts, thus making it the queen of the game of nuclear-chess.

Thats why nuclear powers with small geographical footprint , namely Britain and France, have all their nuclear arsenal mounted on nuclear submarines. With wide coverage and  excellent stealth capability compared to other nuclear delivery mechanisms, nuclear submarine is an ace in hand. The nuclear war is not over till you destroy your enemy’s last nuclear submarine.

The  Internet:

If I were to give stars to to each development, this development would unequivocally be worth five stars.

Believe it or not. Internet was born as a countermeasure to nuclear war. In fifties and sixties the architecture of the communication infrastructure in USA was “hub and spokes”. So for each city, there was a big central telephone exchange, which handled all the traffic for that city as well as traffic from that city to the rest of the world. This central exchange made ideal target for a nuclear weapon. If such an exchange were to be destroyed, an entire city would be disconnected from the world.

So DARPA, one of the defense research body of USA Government, launched a project to experiment a network where several nodes would be connected to several nodes forming a complex map. We know that in a mathematical map, the redundancy level of connections between different nodes increases inverse- logarithmically with the number of connections between the nodes. So even if you destroy a few nodes from this map, still most of the nodes will remain connected with the other nodes.

What started as a network to connect universities was later expanded to include commercial organizations, government offices and well, very soon pretty much the whole world.

Global Positioning System, aka GPS –

Consider the old strategic objective equation again.

AOA2: N2a x PS2a x PH2a x BAa > TAr

As we observed, if you could increase the probability of your missiles hit their target by a factor of two, you cut down the required number of missiles by half. So what better way could be there to increase the accuracy than to devise a system that tells the missiles very accurately where it is now and where it is headed.

GPS achieves this by using a constellation of satellites. At any point no less than 23 GPS satellites are active in orbits around earth. This number ensures that at any point a GPS receiver device located anywhere on earth or in space around earth could have at least 4 and maximum 7 satellites in line of sight. The GPS satellite transmit signals containing valuable information, such as the exact time the signal was transmitted. The receiver calculates the distance from the satellite using the time at which it received the signal and calculating the time difference , which when multiplied by speed of signal (speed of light) gives distance from satellite.

We live in three dimensional world, so ideally only three satellites would be enough. But every measurement has some error. If the three satellites seen by the device are orthogonal to each other, then this error would be minimum. But if they are very close to each other ,say all of them are to the east of the device, then the measurement in one dimension would be accurate, whereas measurement in other two dimensions would be highly inaccurate as co-axial measurement errors amplify each other. Thus we need 4th satellite to correct errors because most likely your locator satellites will not be orthogonal to each other.

Need is the mother of invention, and the need to win or at least survive nuclear war was mother of lots of inventions. But rapidly expanding number of nuclear countries poses a new challenge, nuclear proliferation. More on that in the next post.

Nuclear Warfare I – Strategy Of Assured Destruction

On 11 February 2010, the newspapers worldwide reported a newsflash. An airplane based LASER had brought down a missile fired far away. It raised some eyebrows and provided an item for cheesy geek discussions around water coolers. But for the most part the world missed the vision behind this weapon and the potential of this weapon to begin a new era in strategic warfare worldwide.

To understand the importance of that event, we have to travel back in time for about 65 years.  On July 16, 1945, the words of Bhagwad Gita reverberated through Robert Openheimer’s mind  “Shining light of thousand suns, I span the space between the sky and the earth. Then I become death, destroyer of this universe.” He was watching the first nuclear test, Trinity test, in the deserts of New Mexico and he and his fellow scientists were in disbelief as they witnessed the lethal power of the weapon they had just created. A new age started on earth. Atomic age.

Atomic weapons are strategic weapons. They have far reaching impact on war. The warfare using atomic weapons is very much a game of chess, where brain is as important as might. The missiles, bombers and submarines are new knights, rooks and queens of this game.

To understand the nuclear strategy, let us analyze that as a very simple two player, two choice game between two countries, America and Russia. Each country has a strategic objective, to defend themselves from the nuclear attack from the other country. Each country does that by guaranteeing the other country a complete reciprocal nuclear wipeout, termed Mutually Assured Destruction, in case the nuclear war is started by another country.

Each country has two choices, whether to attack another country, or to remain quiet.

Let us say NA means no attack, A means America, R means Russia. Then the game is described in a table as follows.

A-NA, R-NA	A-A, R-NA
A-NA, R-A	A-A, R-A

America will try to deny the third choice (America-No Attack, Russia-Attack) to Russia by ensuring that if Russia attacks using nuclear weapons, America will retain enough nuclear weapons to launch a second strike and destroy Russia. Russia will do the same to America. So as long as each country guarantees the other forcing to fourth choice, the world always remains in first choice. So a very simplistic Nash equilibrium of this game exists at A-NA, R-NA.

What is meant by destroying a country? Let us say to make sure that country suffers maximum damage, we drop nuclear bombs all over. Let us try to put it in equation.

Total area of  USA is 10 million sq km. Say one nuclear bomb destroys 50 km x 50 km, that is 2500 sq km. That means to destroy 10 mil sq km, Russia will need 10,000,000 / 2500 = 4000 bombs.

But if these bombs were being launched from missiles, with the probability of the missile hitting the target being 0.5, you would need twice as much bombs to achieve the strategic objective of nuclear destruction. So Russia needs 8000 bombs.

But if America strikes first, not all bombs will survive the destruction. So to be able to launch attack after first attack by your enemy, you need more weapons. Say the probability of survival of your nuclear weapon was 0.5, then now you need 16000 nuclear weapons to assure guaranteed reciprocal nuclear destruction of America.

In reality one nuclear power will not plan to carpet bomb the other power across the entire nation. Things will more complex and will be planned differently. But we are just creating a simple mathematical model here.

Lets try to put it in equation. Say each country prepares for two attacks. First attack is your plan to destroy them before they hit you, either because you think you are invincible or because you know for sure they are launching nuclear attack soon. Second attack is when you have been caught off guard and suffered heavy destruction and now you are all out to teach a lesson to your enemy.

Let’s assume the following,

TAa = total area of USA

N1a, N2a  = no. of first strike and second strike weapons with USA.

PS1a, PS2a = probability of survival of  first strike and second strike American nuclear arsenal in case of enemy attack.

BAa = area destroyed by one American bomb.

PH1a, PH2a = probability of successful target strike of first and second strike weapons of USA.

So now we have an equation for the strategic objective.

Strategic objective for USA = SOa = have enough capability to destroy Russia in first strike as well as second strike.

Super simplified SO:  area destroyed by one bomb x number of bombs > total area of enemy. Ensure this much and your enemy will be scared of you.

Considering probabilities, SO:  (probability of survival of a bomb) x (probability of a bomb hitting the targt)  x (area destroyed by one bomb) x (number of bombs) > (total area of enemy).

This is strategic objective of any one strike.

SO for USA , SOa:  SOa1 (first strike strategic objective) & SOa2 (same for second). Note the use of “AND” boolean operation and not “OR”

SOa = SOa1 & SOa2

SOa1 = (N1a x PS1a x PH1a x BAa > TAr )

SOa2= ( N2a x PS2a x PH2a x BAa > TAr)

We could obtain strategic objective of Russia, SOr by interchanging prefix “a” with prefix “r”.

One country will not attack another if it knows for sure that the second country is meeting its strategic objective. So putting it back in game table again.

SOa = true & SOr = true, so R-NA & A-NA	SOa = true & SOr = false, so A-A, R-NA
SOa = false& SOr = true, so R-A & A-NA	SOa = false& SOr = false, so R-A & A-A

What the above table shows us is that the probability of small scale nuclear war between USA and Russia was higher if each country had only a limited nuclear weapons. But the world remained peaceful because both powers had enough nuclear weapons to wipe out the other one.

Let’s examine the strategic objectives equations again.

SOa1 : N1a x PS1a x PH1a x BAa > TAr

SOa2: N2a x PS2a x PH2a x BAa > TAr

SOa = SOa1 & SOa2

SOa = (N1a x PS1a x PH1a x BAa > TAr)  & (N2a x PS2a x PH2a x BAa > TAr)

We make two interesting observations here.

1. As we see, if you do not have enough control over PS, probability of survival of your weapons, the only strategy for you to ensure SO = true is to increase N, the total number of weapons you have. Thus number of nuclear weapons worldwide increased drastically throughout sixties and seventies.
2. The increased number N gives you strategic advantage, but only to certain extent. After you have comfortably passed the condition, with safety margin, there is not much strategic advantage by building more nuclear weapons. So the making of nuclear weapons peaked in eighties and nineties. Not because suddenly the powers wanted peace, just because there was not much strategic gain.
3. If you are not yet attacked, you have all your weapons, so probability of survival is 1. Thus you need less weapons for first attack objective. But probability of survival of your weapons is lot less if you are attacked, which is the case for second attack. What it means then is, every country allocated far more weapons for second attack capability than first attack.
4. Also doubling the probability of survival means you need half the weapons. It is a factor with high sensitivity to strategic objective.

It is interesting that even a simple mathematical model can show us so many things. It highlights the factors of high sensitivity. It can spot and explain trends, like we saw this model explained the trend in number of nuclear weapons. It can drastically improve the quality of your guesses.

This post completes the analysis of first phase of nuclear weapons race. In second post we will some interesting technological developments that happened in parallel with nuclear race.

Game Theory and The Battle of Sinhgad

Game theory and battle of Singhad

In March of 1670, in the middle of one night, Tanaji Malusare attacked Singhad on Shivaji’s orders. He , his brother Suryaji and his maternal uncle Shelar mama, and the soldiers climbed the cliffs to enter the fort and caught the fort army by surprise. In the battle that ensued, Tanaji was killed. The soldiers started running back to the ropes they used to climb. At this time, Shelar mama ordered to cut the ropes, cutting the only retreat option of soldiers. Soldiers turned back and Maratha army won the fort.

All kids in Maharashtra read this story in history books. The story is discussed more for heroics and pride then for the excellency in military tactics and leadership.

Today Let’s do a little analysis of this battle using basics of game theory.

Explaining basics of game theory is outside the scope of this post. For those of you who do not know what is game theory, please google search game theory or visit Wikipedia article on game theory. Go ahead and read it. Trust me, game theory is fun mathematics.

In short, this relatively new branch of mathematics explores the way individuals or group of individuals evaluate their choices, prioritize and make decisions. No matter the difference in our personalities, it is surprising to find that when faced with a problem and multiple choices, almost all of us resort to some common strategies.

Let’s talk about Sinhgad battle as a game. On battlefield, there is actually a slight conflict in the objective of individual soldier and the army he/she is in. For the viewpoint of individual soldier, his/her own contribution is very insignificant. If others run away, individual cannot make any difference. But if the individual runs away, the others can still win. So seemingly there is no problem if an indivudual runs away.

But if he/she loses life, then the loss to the individual is huge. Thus the risk in running away is less than the risk in fighting. So the default choice of individual soldier is to run away.

If every individual thinks like this, that is the end of the army.

Enter a leader in the picture, Tanaji in this case. Leader will oversee the army, will enforce discipline and will punish if somebody runs away. So this fear of enforcer added to the motivation of winning the battle stops the soldier from running away. So as long as there is enforcer, there is this added risk to running away. So total risk of running away now becomes more than risk of fighting. Thus soldiers fight.

When Tanaji fell, for an individual soldier, the risk of fighting suddenly became more than risk of running away. Thus most of the soldiers started running away.

Now Shelarmama comes in picture. At this point, he had several choices. He could have continued doing he was doing, fighting and hoping soldiers could come back and follow his example. Or he could have stopped fighting and started trying to stop the soldiers who were running away.

Shelarmama did not do any of the above. He did exactly what an excellent military commander would have done in this case. He went and cut off the ropes to retreat.

Now no need of talking. The only two choices faced by soldiers were to jump off the cliff and die or to turn and fight back. The risk of running away suddenly increased to infinity, while the risk of fighting the battle remained the same. So soldiers turned back and fought.

Purely from humanitarian viewpoint, the decision made by Shelarmama is actually against humanity. Because he increased average risk to human life. However as a army commander, at that time and place, this was very right thing to do.

The chart below shows the risks in fighting and risk in running away for individual soldier at different states. When Tanaji was dead, three hypothetical choices Shelarmama are analyzed. It is clear that the choice Shelarmama made is the best choice for winning the battle.

Choice Tables:

case 1:- Tanaji Alive

Soldier’s Choice	Risk
Fight	Medium
Run	High

Most rational choice for a soldier: Fight

Case 2:- Tanaji Dead

Shelarmama choice 1: Leave fight and try to convince soldiers

Soldier’s Choice	Risk
Fight	High
Run	Low

Most rational choice for a soldier: Run

Shelarmama choice 2: Focus on fighting and hope soldiers follow the lead

Soldier’s Choice	Risk
Fight	High
Run	None

Most rational choice for a soldier: Run

Shelarmama choice 3: Leave fight and try to threaten soldiers with punishment

Soldier’s Choice	Risk
Fight	High
Run	High

Most rational choice for a soldier: Uncertain

Shelarmame choice 4: Cut off the ropes

Soldier’s Choice	Risk
Fight	High
Run	Extreme

Most rational choice for a soldier: Fight

There is no question about dedication and bravery of Tanaji. However the award for excellent military tactics goes to Shelarmama. This shows why bravery is not the most important quality of a commander. General MacArthur said once “The excellent military leader has two things. Clear sight of objectives and clear understanding of his forces. Bravery is what results after that.”

The similar technique was used by General Montgomery in WW-II when fighting against German General Romel in Africa. The day Montgomery arrived to take charge, he burned all the bridges and trenches built for retreat. The same technique was used by Alexander the great in his battle against Porus. Alexander made his forces cross the river to attack Porus army. Thus, their back pressed to river, Alexandar’s forces knew that retreat was not an option.

This technique almost always has an adverse secondary effect on the opponent army. When they see that their attackers reduced to a desperate state, they expect fierce fight. So their morale goes down.

Sadly after 100 years, Maratha army lacked any Shelarmama on the battleground of Panipat. When Vishwasrao fell, Maratha army dissolved, leaving giant wound on Marathas that would take decades to heal.

May it be battleground, or may it be personal life. One thing is clear. History cannot be made unless the ropes to retreat are cut off.