In today's society, winning the war by winning a majority of the fronts is not enough.  For example, if the terrorists beat the United States on ANY one front, many will consider that a failure on the part of the United States.  This changes the entire dynamic of the Blotto game because it forces the United States to have an absolute resource advantage at EVERY front; in other words, and in a simplistic sense, America must have the amount of resources equal to the number of resources the terrorists have TIMES the number of fronts.  Which leads us to our next question...

 

(Example from Page Lecture)

 

Lets say America has 150 troops, and the terrorists have 96.  America does not know where Al-Qaeda will strike, and will evenly allocate resources.  Al-Qaeda will try its best to win 2 fronts.

 

If there are three fronts...

 

                                          F1              F2              F3

 

United States                      50              50               50

 

Al-Qaeda                            48              48               0

 

In this case, the terrorists cannot win.  But let's say there are the same number of troops, but more (5) fronts.

 

The United States does not know where the terrorists will strike, so it will evenly allocate resources.

 

                                F1      F2      F3      F4      F5

 

United States            30      30      30       30      30

 

Al-Qaeda                  32      32      32         0        0

 

Terrorists win.

 

Claim:  As the number of fronts increases, the country needs a larger relative resource advantage to guarantee victory (Page)

 

That begs the philosophical question:  Should the United States look to increase the amount of resources it has, or decrease the number of fronts of the War on Terrorism?

 

In reality, few games are played in today's interconnected world with only two players.  Let's say we have three players playing the classic game, Rock, Paper, and Scissors.  This game is in best-of-three format.

 

                                 1st Hand        2nd Hand        3rd Hand

 

Player One                 Rock             Paper             Scissors

 

Player Two                 Scissors        Rock              Paper

 

Player Three               Paper            Scissors         Rock

 

 

Result:

In this game, Player One beats Two, Player Two beats Three, but Player Three beats One.  There is no clear winner.  "Being the best is contextual.  It depends on the choices made by the other candidates [players, in this case]" (Page).