The RAND Strategy Assessment System's Green Agent Model of Third-Country Behavior in Superpower Crises and Conflict

This Note, a revision of N-2363, provides improved figures, up-to-date RAND Strategy Assessment System terminology, and includes updated decision rules valid as of July 1986. The authors describe the third-generation, or Mark III, version of Green Agent (formerly called Scenario Agent), the RAND Strategy Assessment Center's (RSAC) rule-based computer model of third-country political-military behavior in conflicts involving one or both superpowers. The national actors modeled by Green Agent acquire data from the rest of the RSAC system and use them to define their situation, evaluate the data according to rules defining their assumed national decisionmaking styles, and produce responses which are the model's output to the RSAC system. An actor modeled by Green Agent integrates this information into a world view with three elements: (1) the extent to which it perceives itself threatened by its political-military environment, (2) how effectively it can cope with the threat, and (3) any superpower requests for the actor's cooperation or involvement. Each actor's behavior is characterized along three dimensions: the extent to which it cooperates with its superpower ally, the extent to which it involves its own armed forces, and the extent to which the actor independently uses its military assets.