Theory of Moves: Overview and Examples

“We discussed what the Soviet reaction would be to any possible move by the United States, what our reaction with them would have to be to that Soviet reaction, and so on, trying to follow each of those roads to their ultimate conclusion.†Theodore C. Sorensen about the deliberations of the Executive Committee during the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis (Holsti, Brody, and North, 1964: 188). “What are you going to do after that? Look ahead, look ahead-two or three or four steps ahead.†Mikhail S. Gorbachev to emissaries of the junta that staged the August 1991 attempted coup in the Soviet Union (Clines, 1991).