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You are locked in a public relations arms race with your enemy. Each of you reveals a card from your unplayed hand.

Do this a total of three times.
(Losses are defections to a neutral nation.

In the late 1950s, especially after the launch of Sputnik, Americans started to fret over a perceived "missile gap". Fed by Soviet propaganda (since the Russians knew they could not match the American bomber fleet), people began to believe that the West had fallen behind and now faced a "window of vulnerability" during which the Soviet bloc held an overwhelming advantage in ballistic missiles. John F. Kennedy used the missile gap to defeat Dwight Eisenhower and to reverse Ike's policies on national defense.

Ironically, there was a missile gap... but the Americans held the advantage. The Soviets had neither the number nor quality of missiles to prosecute a credible first-strike war. But that came out only years later.

This card is a classic Prisoner Dilemma. If you and your enemy work together, agreeing not to show missiles, then everyone wins.. But if you trust your enemy and he/she betrays you by showing a missile, then the public outrage in your nation, at your leaving your citizens "defenseless", costs you people. Of course, you can betray your enemy and cause him/her to lose the people. If both of you show missiles, then your populace is mostly mollifed, but a lesser number get very worried about the arms race and defect from both sides.

The three cards are meant to be played in sequence, so that you can deploy Prisoner Dilemma strategies such as tit-for-tat.

-=-BhpG