Honours Thesis Game Theory and the Metaphor of Chess in the late Cold War Period o Student number: 6206468 o Home address: Valeriaan 8 3417 RR Montfoort o Email address:
[email protected] o Type of thesis/paper: Honours Thesis o Submission date: March 29, 2020 o Thesis supervisor: Irina Marin (
[email protected]) o Number of words: 18.291 o Page numbers: 55 Abstract This thesis discusses how the game of chess has been used as a metaphor for the power politics between the United States of America and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, particularly the period of the Reagan Doctrine (1985-1989). By looking at chess in relation to its visual, symbolic and political meanings, as well in relation to game theory and the key concepts of polarity and power politics, it argues that, although the ‘chess game metaphor’ has been used during the Cold War as a presentation for the international relations between the two superpowers in both cultural and political endeavors, the allegory obscures many nuances of the Cold War. Acknowledgment This thesis has been written roughly from November 2019 to March 2020. It was a long journey, and in the end my own ambition and enthusiasm got the better of me. The fact that I did three other courses at the same time can partly be attributed to this, but in many ways, I should have kept my time-management and planning more in check. Despite this, I enjoyed every moment of writing this thesis, and the subject is still captivating to me.