CLAREMONT, CALIFORNIA ¨C I don¡¯t know whether U.S. President Joe Biden, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and their foreign policy advisers have read Robert Axelrod¡¯s classic book on international relations, ¡°The Evolution of Cooperation.¡± But they should heed Axelrod¡¯s central insight about how countries can benefit from cooperation and punish cheating.
Through countless simulations, Axelrod ¡ª now a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan ¡ª found that the most beneficial long-term strategy for an actor such as a nation-state is to cooperate first and then play tit-for-tat. In other words, a country will gain in the long run if it offers a goodwill gesture and then responds in kind to its opponent¡¯s subsequent moves.
This insight is especially applicable to today¡¯s U.S.-China stalemate. Although both Biden and Xi know that their countries are in an open-ended geopolitical rivalry, they also want to put guardrails around it in order to avert potential catastrophes, such as a runaway arms race or a direct military conflict.
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