Strategic Analysis: Great Power Competition and Small State Survival: A Game-Theoretic Analysis of Proxy War and Ukraine’s Strategic Survival
Keywords:
Great power competition; Proxy war; Game theory; Small state survival; Ukraine war; Strategic interaction; NATO; Euro-Atlantic security; Deterrence; International political economy; Security dilemmaAbstract
By considering the Ukraine war as a contemporary case of great-power competition and small-state survival within the evolving post-Cold War international order, the paper examine the conflict through ideological narratives, security dilemmas, or descriptive geopolitical analysis among great powers and applies a game-theoretic perspective to conceptualise the war as a proxy conflict in which Russia, the United States, and the European Union engage in strategic interaction, while Ukraine acts as a constrained yet strategically adaptive actor. By employing a combined case-study and conceptual game-theoretic modelling approach, the paper includes game-theory frameworks to analyse strategic choices, payoff structures, and shifting equilibria. The analysis demonstrates how great powers consider the strategic choices to deal with the Ukraine war including escalation risks, alliance credibility, and domestic political constraints shape incentives, producing prolonged conflict, tactical cooperation, and limited de-escalation rather than decisive resolution. From a small-state perspective, the paper argues that Ukraine’s strategy can pursue rational hedging behaviour aimed at maximising external support, preserving sovereignty, and enhancing long-term bargaining power under severe structural constraints.
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