Tit-for-Tat versus Tat-for-Tat

How to think about hitting back

You get punched in the face. It stuns you. You didn’t see it coming. With every millisecond that passes, your body’s natural defense mechanisms provide you with counterpunch calculations. You pivot, look and confirm no weapons, step to close distance to target, and hit back with all you’ve got.

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Fist for fist. Blow for blow. Fire with fire. There are so many expressions for striking back they’ve become cliche. Cliche indicates pattern, and patterns can instruct.

Why do we so-often select the same strike in response to an adversary? Not just individuals, but countries too. I live and work in national security, the land of Mutually Assured Destruction and escalation ladders, which are essentially a series of ever-increasing reciprocal strikes.

If pushed, my gut tells me we do this out of some deeply-embedded instinct to copy others. A memetic impulse, mirror-imaging, a bigger version of the doctor hitting a knee to provoke reaction.

I doubt there’s much thought to it at all. Some might argue that a Tat-for-Tat response communicates resolve and a willingness to hit back. But if that’s all it communicates, and you’re willing to hit back in the first place and risk a response—then why not select a strike more likely to get you something in addition to a mere signal?

The truth is Tat-for-Tat responses are about as successful as two kids trading jabs on the playground. They get you nowhere.

Tat-for-Tat responses don’t work because they’re the most tactical behavior imaginable. Physical blow begets physical blow begets physical blow, and so on. There’s no thought to endgame, only momentary trigger and response.

Tat-for-Tat responses don’t work because they don’t communicate anything except anger and a willingness to hit back.

Tat-for-Tat responses don’t work because they are mostly thoughtless. What’s worse, they show the adversary a lack of thought. Unveiling stupidity like that invites future strikes because it shows you to be predictable and gullible.

Tat-for-Tat responses don’t work because their aim is to, at best, hurt the adversary and not defeat the adversary. If your strike is calibrated against the adversary’s blow, then as their blow was unable to defeat you, your in-kind response is unlikely to either. The aim/goal/objective is a wasted response.

Tat-for-Tat is childish copycatting that won’t get the strategist what they want.