This article studies the rational side of symbolic victories. It opens with the broad question, why are some battles more significant than others? Extending the literature on bargaining and war, it argues that a belligerent can deliberately increase strategic risk in order to communicate its strength. By increasing the information a battle conveys, the belligerent artificially creates the conditions for a symbolic victory. In short, strategic risk becomes a useful, costly signal. This claim is developed in a formal model in which players choose between more and less dangerous military options. Under most conditions, a symbolic equilibrium exists in which both strong- and weak-type players are able to signal their types after only one round. This equilibrium’s rapid information flow is unusual in the rationalist literature: typically, strong types must wait to signal effectively. The article goes on to establish that, when the prior probability a player is strong is sufficiently small, this symbolic equilibrium uniquely satisfies the intuitive criterion. It then applies the model to two famous episodes from military history, the Doolittle Raid of WWII and the battles of Cannae and Capua of the Second Punic War. For both, it highlights how actors deliberately manipulate strategic risk to communicate with adversaries, allies, and their own publics.

本文研究了象征性胜利的理性方面。首先，提出了一个广泛的问题：为什么有些战斗比其他的战斗更重要？它扩展了关于讨价还价和战争的文献，认为交战方可以故意增加战略风险，以传达其实力。交战方通过增加战斗传达的信息，人为地创造了象征性胜利的条件。简而言之，战略风险成为有用的，代价高昂的信号。此声明是在正式模型中提出的，在该模型中，玩家可以在危险程度更高或更低的军事选择之间进行选择。在大多数情况下，存在象征性的平衡，强类型玩家和弱类型玩家都可以在仅仅一轮之后发信号通知自己的类型。这种均衡的快速信息流在理性主义者的文献中是不同寻常的：通常，强类型必须等待有效地发出信号。文章继续证明，当玩家强壮的先验概率足够小时，该符号平衡唯一满足直觉标准。然后将模型应用于军事历史上的两个著名情节，即第二次世界大战的杜利特尔突袭和第二次布匿战争中的卡纳和卡普阿之战。对于两者，它都强调了参与者如何故意操纵战略风险，以便与对手，盟友和他们自己的公众进行沟通。第二次世界大战的杜利特尔突袭和第二次布匿战争中的卡纳（Cannae）和卡普阿（Capua）之战。对于两者，它都强调了参与者如何故意操纵战略风险，以便与对手，盟友和他们自己的公众进行沟通。第二次世界大战的杜利特尔突袭和第二次布匿战争中的卡纳（Cannae）和卡普阿（Capua）之战。对于两者，它都强调了参与者如何故意操纵战略风险，以便与对手，盟友和他们自己的公众进行沟通。