| Abstract: | The purpose of this paper is to develop a formal model of the arms export process that incorporates the complementary ideas of a fuzzy decision‐making goal and a fuzzy decision‐making constraint. The model is formulated as a control problem: The decision‐making actor—in this case, a hegemonic exporter—will attempt to control the evolution of its political relationship with a prospective importer by choosing, over time, a sequence of arms transfer strategies. The exporter's strategic choices will be influenced by its fuzzy goal (a fuzzy set of political relations outcomes between the two states that the exporter seeks to maximize) and its fuzzy constraint (a fuzzy set of arms options that the exporter is constrained to choose by virtue of the preferences of the importer's neighbors). The solution to the control problem is the exporter's optimal policy sequence, and this is uncovered via the dynamic programming optimization technique. The model is illustrated by the multistage decision‐making of the U.S. for Egypt in the years 1968–1971 and 1974–1977. |
