Iraq, Texas Holdem, and Decision Making

My last posting used chess as a metaphor for foreign policy decision making. Let me use another game to extend the metaphorical comment.

Texas Holdem is a poker game with tournaments that are getting a lot of attention via television. The game is very simple, and you can click here if you need the rules. For a given hand in Texas Holdem, there are four rounds of betting. In most games, most players fold their hands on the first round. The tactics used by a player on a given hand depend on the cards he has drawn, the size of his chip stack and of he players he faces, the size of the pot, the bets of his opponents, and his reading of those opponents. Compared to chess, games are short and simple, but depend less on skill on reading the board and much more on skills of reading the opponent. Note that the best hand does not always win the hand, and the best hand at a specific time is often bluffed out by a weaker hand played with strong tactics.

Winning tournaments is not just about winning hands, and indeed the winning strategy must be based on knowledge that chance plays a role in each hand, and that even the winner must lose a lot of bets during the course of a tournament. Winning strategy depends on accumulating chips during the course of the tournament, accumulating knowledge of the opponents at the table (their tactics and tells), and not taking imprudent risks. Early in the tournament, winning players protect their limited resources; later in the game, when they have accumulated large amounts of chips, they can use that financial power to take risks and bully opponents.

Texas Holdem winning players know that the tournament is not won in the opening hands, but in a process which leaves the player in better position hour after hour, day after day of the tournament. Moreover, a winning tournament player knows how to adapt his tactics as the tournament progresses, reflecting his competitive position and the changes in the tactics of his opponents and the growing knowledge of those opponents.

In Iraq, the professional soldiers recommended invading with a larger force than the politicians actually used. A winning Texas Holdem player would see that as wise, since doing so would reduce the early risk and provide more "bullying power". The winning poker player might also have avoided high risk plays early in the process, such as putting tactical control of the Transition Authority in the hands of ideologically driven neophytes, and radical departures from the status quo ante such as radical deBathification, disbanding the forces of order (military and police), and big-bang economic reforms, or a radically new constitution and legislature.

As an aside, I heard General Ricardo Sanchez on the Charlie Rose show say that the Bush decision to stop the invasion of Fallujah during the 2004 election season in order to improve his election prospects cost the lives of American soldiers. That was a profoundly immoral act by those in the White House, and should have occasioned the resignation of the civilian authorities who were tasked with carrying out the order. (The military, in our system, are charged with carrying out the directives of their civilian chiefs, whether or not they agree with them.)