GPPI: Gaming the Political Economy of Conflict

The Global Public Policy Institute has issued a new report on gaming the political economy conflict.

How do economic factors shape the dynamics of violent crises? To launch and sustain their fighting, conflict actors rely on financial resources and access to physical supplies; economic motives may themselves also be an important driver of violence. There is no lack of academic research describing these dynamics, nor of practice-oriented frameworks for grasping how they play out in a given conflict context. Yet there remains a very large step between better contextual understandings and being able to anticipate the concrete consequences of an external intervention. 

This is a significant challenge for policymakers as they consider intervening in the political economy of a crisis setting. They have a range of interventions at their disposal, from sanctions regimes to fostering peace-positive investments. But the complexity of conflicts means it is crucial to think through the possible impacts – and unintended consequences – of any potential intervention. This project explored how simulation games can serve as a valuable tool for conducting forward-looking analysis in such contexts. It positioned simulation games at the intersection of political economy analysis and serious games methodologies. 

The project’s final publication offers a practical toolbox for developing simulation games tailored to analyzing political economy interventions in stabilization settings, including a step-by-step process and a menu of potential design choices. While these apply to a broad range of settings and themes, the discussion also draws on the project team’s experiences in designing a game on conflict dynamics in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The report is an extremely useful contribution to the literature on confict simulation. You will find both a summary of their work and a link to the full (49pp) report at the link above.

All that’s left is the grading…

Today was the last day of my conflict simulation course at McGill, and as is POLI 452 tradition everyone’s game was on display before being submitted. Here’s a look at what I’ll be playing (and grading) over the next few weeks.

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Black October explores strategic competition and conflict between Israel and Iran (and its allies/proxies). The game tracks political capital, resources, military capabilities, and US and global opinion. Cards are used either to play specific actions or an action chosen from a menu. The yellow cups are used to hide Iranian nuclear enrichment.

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Breacher Up! examines platoon-level suburban operations. Fog of war is provided through blocks, dummy counters, and (uncleared) room tokens. They certainly won the prize for the largest map this year!

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Men of Honor is a game about Sicilian mafia during the Mussolini era. Players (families) compete to control key industries during a time when the fascist state was clamping down on their activities. They can betray each other, even cooperate with the regime at times—but breaking Omertà (the mafia code of silence and code of honor) in this way can have severe consequences.

The meeples used to track honor, influence, and notoriety were a real find.

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The Opium Wars is a two player game about Anglo-Chinese conflict in the mid-19th century. Britain wants to sell opium into China, to offset China’s trade surplus (in tea, china, and other products). The Qing Dynasty China isn’t so keen. However, China opium seizures or port closures may lead the British to use military force. Can China avoid “the century of humiliation”?

Take particular note of the hand-crafted opium bales, the traditional silver ingots, and the jars of tea.

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Polymer Planet is a semicooperative game about plastic pollution. Players assume the role of Carol (CEO of a fashion company), Leo (an oil industry lobbyist), Patrick (a politician), Naomi (an environmental NGO activist), and Carla (the consumer). Each pursues certain goals, and their actions can various contribute to pollution (tracked with coloured bottle caps that accumulate in a central container) or help alleviate it. Can they find a solution that leaves everyone satisfied and saves the planet?

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Red Tide explores a Chinese (PRC) invasion of Taiwan, focusing on how Taiwan were to fare were it to receive no support from allies. Chinese sealift capacity, the seizure of ports, and the damage suffered by those ports has a fundamental effect on how long Taiwan can hold out before defeat.

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Wildfire! is a largely cooperative about wildfire management in Canada. The focus on the federal government, with players assuming the role of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), Public Safety Canada, or the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. You’ll noticed the map coded for fire risk and environment, and the 3D printed stackable fires to indicate severity.

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270! is a two player game about US presidential election campaigns. Players choose various campaign actions (targetable by state), including campaign visits, ad buys, social media, and fundraising. They also respond to current issues, and there’s a presidential debate minigame too. All actions are entered into a an Excel spreadsheet—hence all the laptops—which then determines their impact and updates a PowerPoint map and bar graph.

Wargaming the effects of a Trump presidency on NATO

This article was written for PAXsims by Finley Grimble. He is a former wargamer and strategy advisor to the UK Government having worked at the Cabinet Office, Ministry of Defence and Foreign Office. He particularly focused on NATO defence and foreign policy, Russia-Ukraine strategy, China-Taiwan policy, the US-UK security relationship, and wargames for the 4* National Security Council Officials (highest officials decision-making body in UK). He can be contacted via email  or LinkedIn.

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Donald Trump threatened to withdraw from NATO during his first term based on the idea that the US should not be defending Europe, whilst the Europeans under-invest in their own defence by spending less than the NATO agreed 2%. He has continued to do so in the run up to the 2024 elections. With specialists in defence, intelligence, foreign and security policy hailing from several NATO countries, we conducted a wargame to explore the following questions: 

• How might a Trump administration go about leaving NATO and/or getting all Allies to pay 2% GDP on defence?
• What are the immediate consequences of the United States leaving Euro-Atlantic security to Europe?
• What are the broader global consequences for the United States?

Wargame Format

The wargame commenced on a successful Trump Inauguration Day: January 1, 2025, and running for two years into the presidency. All 32 NATO members, Ukraine, and Russia were represented by participants. These countries with ‘dedicated representation’ were given time to: 

1. Develop a strategy.
2. Negotiate with allies to cohere strategy.
3. Negotiate with adversarial countries.
4. Take a series of military, diplomatic, economic, and intelligence actions for a turn that represented two months. 
5. Any military actions were then carried out using an operational wargame map with bounded adjudication rules. This ran as a minor facet of the wider geo-political wargame to establish correlation of forces and battlefield situations.

Once these phases had occurred, the non-military actions were freely adjudicated by a ‘wargame control team’, then the next turn would begin with a new set of starting conditions based on the outcomes of the previous intertwining actions.

Within the wargame control team adjudicating the turn outcomes, China, Taiwan, South Korea, North Korea, Australia, Japan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iran were represented through injects. They were not given a dedicated representative to play a full role in the wargame. We chose to represent these key non-Euro-Atlantic countries as to: 

• Gain their perceptions on Trump’s NATO policy. 
• Prevent Euro-Atlantic Security developing in an unrealistic vacuum.

Adjudication and representation of all countries was performed by specialists in defence, intelligence, foreign and security policy to provide realistic strategies, policies, actions and perceptions by all countries represented.

Key Takeaways 

A turn-by-turn report on how the game developed can be found in the pdf attached to the end of article. Key takeaways from the wargame were:

• The US fully exiting NATO is not realistic given the National Defense Authorization Act for the fiscal year 2024 is in place – The legislation states “The President shall not suspend, terminate, denounce, or withdraw the United States from the North Atlantic Treaty, done at Washington, DC, April 4, 1949, except by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, provided that two-thirds of the Senators present concur or pursuant to an Act of Congress.” Achieving this in the senate was considered highly unlikely by participants. 
• Despite Trump taking tangible steps to reduce the US commitment to defending Europe, Russia’s demands in Ukraine prevent it from realistically attacking a NATO Member.
• If the US reduces its role in European security, it will likely damage investors’ sentiment throughout the continent, especially in Eastern Europe, thus damaging these state’s economies.
• A US reduction in support to Ukraine makes the task of resisting Russia almost unfeasible, given Europe’s inability to adequately support Ukraine with what it needs.
• A US policy of frustrating NATO has the potential to cause the alliance to collapse, with EU as a candidate for eventually replacing NATO’s ultimate function – defending Europe from Russia.
• Trump’s proposed policies of punishment towards NATO will likely force Allies to spend more.

wargaming-a-trump-presidencyDownload

PPCLI QUICK Jr

At his Ludic Futurism blog, Brian train recently discussed the adaptation he has made to his Quick Urban Integrated Combat Kriegsspiel (QUICK) system for the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, to cover action by a single battle group (rather than a division, as in the original version of the wargame).

On X, LCOL Cole Petersen adds some additional detail on how it is working out (read the full thread).

Bn officers conducted urban ops planning and wargame PD today using a system (QUICK) designed by Brian Train and adapted for the Bn/Bde level. We had five games going at once so everyone was involved. 1/6https://t.co/YCgTKOWsZQ

— Cole Petersen (@ColeFPetersen) March 22, 2024

Cultural property protection and wargaming

Back in October, Blue Shield International, Netherlands 1 CMI Command, and the CIMIC Centre Of Excellence hosted a workshop on how to script cultural property protection into wargames and exercises. The report of that workshop is now available.

bsi-1-cmi-cmd-cpp-scripting-workshop-report-sept-2023Download

The School of Wargaming for Management Learning and Training

The following report was written for PAXsims by Philippe Lepinard. A former pilot of the French Army’s light aviation, Philippe completed a PhD on the digitization of the battlefield before joining the University of Paris-Est Créteil in 2015 as an associate professor. He leads the educational and research project in game-oriented learning, EdUTeam

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General Context

EdUTeam is an educational and research project in game-oriented learning at IAE Paris-Est, the school of management of the University of Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC), and at the Institute of Management Research (EA 2354). As part of this we have been deploying educational activities related to wargaming since 2018. These practices primarily take two forms: mandatory courses in undergraduate and graduate programs, and supervised projects for discovering wargames. Their commonality is the exclusive use of commercially available board wargames. This article offers a synthesis of these activities, conducted under name of the “School of Wargaming for Management Learning and Training.”

Wargames as Educational Tools

Three courses are conducted using wargames: an operational management course in the second year of a Bachelor’s program (between 30 and 40 students), a course on the methodology of lessons learned (between 8 and 15 Master’s students or managers in continuing education), and a crisis study course with second-year Master’s students (between 10 and 16 students). 

For the first two courses, wargames are tools designed to simulate management situations in order to study classic managerial concepts (for example: Mintzberg’s 10 managerial roles). With tailored scenarios, the games generate action, responses, and consequences that are then linked to theory during the debriefing. Consequently, any wargame can be used, whether they are historical or set in fantasy universes. 

The course on crisis studies takes a different perspective. Games are used for their specific themes. It is indeed about analyzing historical facts with the models proposed by the games. In this context, the games used are realistic and contemporary, such as the COIN series or those from the South China Sea series.

Discovering Wargames

Since the beginning of 2023, students have been contributing articles to the specially created section, “Students Join the Fight,” in the French bimonthly historical games magazine VaeVictis. The initial goal of this section is to introduce students to the rich diversity of wargames beyond their integration into academic courses. Indeed, while historical or near-futuristic wargames naturally offer a different approach to historical issues or current affairs, they also present real intellectual challenges that are particularly stimulating. Unfortunately, they are little known and sometimes rightly associated with a perception of complexity and long gameplay. 

Our section of the magazine, therefore, aims at democratizing these games and reports on discovery sessions conducted by undergraduate students who are new to or only slightly familiar with the activity of wargaming. Each article, co-written by the students themselves, follows the same format: an introduction to the game, testimonials from the student players, and a summary of the session. These sessions last half a day but include pre-session resources: reading an article, watching a documentary, etc. However, learning the game rules is an integral part of the session. In this regard, the co-authors of the articles also have the responsibility of knowing the rules well to guide their peers on the day. The participants’ testimonials are written immediately after the session ends. These testimonials are often similar regardless of the game: their initial fears are swept away after the session, and the feedback is always positive, even if some participants indicate that it is not their preferred type of game. It is important to note that the collective aspect is one of the elements that stand out the most, whether in the collaborative learning of the rules or in team-based games. In summary, the students all enjoyed the wargame discovery sessions and were themselves surprised by this in their various testimonials!

Project Avenues

The results of our pedagogical and research work related to the deployment of wargames at IAE Paris-Est demonstrate their value: with their great depth and agency, these games offer perfectly adapted experiential learning for management students and provide numerous elements of general culture as well as intellectually stimulating challenges. With the proven learning outcomes of three courses (Lépinard, 2023), we are considering the creation of a fourth one focused on information systems project management. The students’ work will involve a case study on the theme of the digitization of the battlefield. The games under consideration are Armageddon War or Heroes Against the Red Star. 

However, the main perspective of the project is to continue the democratization of wargames use. In this regard, and after a very positive first year, especially in terms of feedback from readers of the magazine VaeVictis (we have received many supportive messages), we have decided to evolve the section to include in each article an enriching side aspect that enhances the interest in the tested wargames. To do this, each session brings an original element related to wargaming in general or the game in particular. For example, we studied, with one of the authors (Guillaume Prévost), a real military decision-making method while discovering the game CO-OPS. 

The game library of the GamiXlab^[1], the game lab of IAE Paris-Est, includes more than a hundred wargames and is regularly expanded with the release of new games. Consequently, it is certain that wargaming will also take on an even more important role in our pedagogical practices, even if the training programs concerned have no direct link with the military world or wargaming (Bourguilleau et al., 2020; Lépinard, 2020).

Philippe Lepinard

References

Bourguilleau, A., Lépinard, P., & Wojtowicz, N. (2020). Wargames for training future managers. Management et Data Science, 5(1).

Lépinard, P. (2020). Table-top wargames to train business school students. Ludogogy, 8.

Lépinard, P. (2023). L’apprentissage expérientiel par le jeu pour l’acquisition des connaissances théoriques managériales. Recherches en sciences de gestion, 158, 489-516.

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^[1] The news from the GamiXlab game lab (Facebook): https://www.facebook.com/gamixlab/.

NPEC: Gaming Israeli use of nuclear weapons

The Nonproliferation Policy Education Centre recently released an occasional paper, entitled Gaming Israeli Nuclear Use: Pandora Unleashed.

With the continued fighting in Gaza, a nuclear rubicon of sorts has been crossed: Elected Israeli officials — a deputy minister and a ruling party member of Parliament—not only have publicly referenced Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons, but suggested how such weapons might be used to target Gaza. This is unprecedented.

More recently, Iran directly attacked an Israeli-manned intelligence outpost in Iraq and publicized a staged missile strike against a mock Israeli air base. Iran also has inched within weeks of making several nuclear weapons and made its military ever more immune to first strikes against its key missile and nuclear facilities. Iran and its proxies also now have long-range, high-precision missiles that can easily reach key Israeli targets.

None of these developments is positive. For decades, most security analysts assumed Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons were only deployed to deter attacks and that Iran would not dare to attack Israel directly. The attached war game report, “Gaming Israeli Nuclear Use: Pandora Unleashed,” directly challenges these assumptions.

The game starts in 2027 with Israeli intelligence reporting that Iran is mating nuclear warheads to its long-range missiles. This prompts Israel to ask Washington to collaborate in a conventional military strike against key Iranian nuclear facilities and missile bases. Not wanting to be drawn into a major war with Iran, the United States, however, demurs and instead offers Israel U.S. standoff hypersonic missiles. Several moves later, Israel, isolated and desperate, launches two nuclear strikes against Iran to which Iran replies with a nuclear strike of its own.

The game raised several basic questions. Would Israel or Iran conduct further military nuclear operations? Might Israel target Tehran with nuclear weapons? Might Iran target Tel Aviv with nuclear arms? Would Russia or the United States be drawn into the war? These and other unknowns informed the game’s key findings. These included:

1. The strategic uncertainties generated after an Israeli-Iranian nuclear exchange are likely to be at least as fraught as any that might arise before such a clash. 

2. Although Israel and Iran might initially avoid the nuclear targeting of innocents, such self-restraint is tenuous. 

3. Multilateral support for Israeli security may be essential to deter Israeli nuclear use but will likely hinge on Israeli willingness to discuss regional denuclearization. 

4. Little progress is likely in reducing Middle Eastern nuclear threats if the United States continues its public policy of denying knowledge of Israeli nuclear weapons.

You’ll find full details at the links above.

The CNN Academy 2023 journalism simulation

Earlier this month, CNN Academy once again hosted a week long journalism simulation at the Yas Creative Hub in Abu Dhabi. Some 110 participants from 30 countries were involved, consisting of both journalism students (from Ireland, Spain, the UAE, Malaysia, and Hong Kong) as well as other content creators from across global south. I designed the scenario, and ran it together with Jim Wallman (Stone Paper Scissors) and my CNN colleagues.

Last year’s simulation emphasized crisis reporting and investigative journalism. This year, by contrast, the focus was on climate change story-telling. The first day of the week was spent with a visit to the COP28 global climate summit in Dubai. Thereafter, everyone was organized into reporting teams and given their assignment: produce a 3 minute video report on how climate change is affecting the (fictional) low income, post-conflict country of “Brynania.”

Prior to being “sent” to Brynania, participants were provided with background materials on the country, including a video documentary and a wikipedia-type factbook. We also provided B-roll video and basic mobile journalism equipment. During the week they then had the opportunity to attend (simulated) press conferences and media scrums; interview (simulated) local officials, business leaders, experts and activists, and others; acquire (simulated) reports and backgrounders, and take part in a field visit to a (simulated) fishing village in Brynania’s world-famous “Mangrove National Park.” We also had a fully-functioning Twitter-like social media platform, where many hundreds of related and unrelated items were posted by (simulated) citizens, corporations, political parties, media, government agencies, and others.

There were a great many ways all of this could be reported. We identified almost twenty themes for which we had provided adequate information, sources, and potential audio-visual content.

• technical and scientific aspects
  • deforestation
  • green energy transition
  • ecosystems/biodiversity
  • agriculture/food security
  • extreme weather
• social-economic and political aspects
  • grassroots impacts (fishing villagers, others)
  • gender
  • social class/ethnicity/inequality
  • jobs/growth vs sustainability
  • state capacity and corruption
  • local politics
  • violence
  • activism/change-makers
• COP28 tie-ins
  • climate change mitigation and international responsibility
  • climate finance
  • global trends and trajectories
  • fossil fuels

Given that a three minute report might develop two or three major themes, there were hundreds of possibilities for each team to choose from. It was absolutely essential, therefore, for them to acquire information and then develop a focus and associated storyline that would be accurate, engaging, and informative.

We applied quite a lot of pressure and distractors. Deadlines. Emails from their producer. Late-night developments. The cacophony of social media, including rabbit-holes and conspiracy theories. Team management (most of the teams were diverse and multinational, meaning most of the students didn’t know their teammates until it all started).

It helped too that most of our roleplayers were themselves journalists. They knew all the complications that an interviewee can throw at a journalist, and did an outstanding job of challenging participants without overwhelming them.

Interspersed with all of this were workshops on a broad range of professional topics, from core skills (data management, scripting/paper edit) through to climate change reporting, gender dimensions, and the impact of generative AI on newsgathering. We also maintained a sort of mobile journalism help desk, the “MoJo Emporium.”

It all went very well again this year. In a post simulation survey, students overwhelmingly reported that they they were highly engaged, acquired relevant and useful skills, enjoyed interacting with teammates from around the world, and would strongly recommend the experience to others.

Almost a full day was devoted to devoted debrief and discussion. In this, two general themes stood out to me:

• Storytelling as an art and craft. The best teams addressed an important element of global climate change in a way that was clear, informed, and engaging.
• Soft skills. Under time pressure, teams could forget some key interpersonal skills. Teams had to work on establishing a connection with interviewees, treating them respectfully, and developing relationships and sources.

Even though the simulation very much took place in the context of modern digital journalism, it was interesting to me that neither of these are new skills. Effective storytelling is more than two million years old, first expressed by stone age communities through the tales and experiences they recounted around the campfire. The second skill is as old as journalism itself.

And here, perhaps, a key value-added of simulations like these. All of our students knew this. All of them had attended classes and lectures and read books and articles. They were smart and motivated. But it is one thing to read and hear about journalism, and another to practice it under pressure and then be able to reflect on one’s performance—which is what CNN Academy is all about.

“Wargaming doesn’t work”

Earlier this month the Washington Post published a lengthy, two-part article on planning and execution of Ukraine’s 2023 offensive (here and here). In these they explore differences between the US and Ukraine over how narrow the primary focus of the planned offensive should be, issues regarding weapons supply and training, the challenge of breaching defensive positions and fortifications, and the effect of UAVs, mines, plentiful ATGMs, air power, and other weapons systems on the modern battlefield.

The articles also address wargaming. According to the Washington Post,

The sequence of eight high-level tabletop exercises formed the backbone for the U.S.-enabled effort to hone a viable, detailed campaign plan, and to determine what Western nations would need to provide to give it the means to succeed.

“We brought all the allies and partners together and really squeezed them hard to get additional mechanized vehicles,” a senior U.S. defense official said.

During the simulations, each of which lasted several days, participants were designated to play the part either of Russian forces — whose capabilities and behavior were informed by Ukrainian and alliedintelligence — or Ukrainian troops and commanders, whose performance was bound by the reality that they would be facing serious constraints in manpower and ammunition.

The planners ran the exercises using specialized war-gaming softwareand Excel spreadsheets — and, sometimes, simply by moving pieces around on a map. The simulations included smaller component exercises that each focused on a particular element of the fight — offensive operations or logistics. The conclusions were then fed back into the evolving campaign plan.

Top officials including Gen. Mark A. Milley, then chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, commander of Ukrainian ground forces, attended several of the simulations and were briefed on the results. …

Ukrainian officials hoped the offensive could re-create the success of the fall of 2022, when they recovered parts of the Kharkiv region in the northeast and the city of Kherson in the south in a campaign that surprised even Ukraine’s biggest backers. Again, their focus would be in more than one place.

But Western officials said the war games affirmed their assessment that Ukraine would be best served by concentrating its forces on a single strategic objective — a massed attack through Russian-held areas to the Sea of Azov, severing the Kremlin’s land route from Russia to Crimea, a critical supply line. …

The rehearsals gave the United States the opportunity to say at several points to the Ukrainians, “I know you really, really, really want to do this, but it’s not going to work,” one former U.S. official said.

At the end of the day, though, it would be Zelensky, Zaluzhny and other Ukrainian leaders who would make the decision, the former official noted.

Officials tried to assign probabilities to different scenarios, including a Russian capitulation — deemed a “really low likelihood” — or a major Ukrainian setback that would create an opening for a major Russian counterattack — also a slim probability.

“Then what you’ve got is the reality in the middle, with degrees of success,” a British official said.

The most optimistic scenario for cutting the land bridge was 60 to 90 days. The exercises also predicted a difficult and bloody fight, with losses of soldiers and equipment as high as 30 to 40 percent, according to U.S. officials.

The numbers “can be sobering,” the senior U.S. defense official said. “But they never are as high as predicted, because we know we have to do things to make sure we don’t.”

U.S. officials also believed that more Ukrainian troops would ultimately be killed if Kyiv failed to mount a decisive assault and the conflict became a drawn-out war of attrition.

But they acknowledged the delicacy of suggesting a strategy that would entail significant losses, no matter the final figure.

“It was easy for us to tell them in a tabletop exercise, ‘Okay, you’ve just got to focus on one place and push really hard,’” a senior U.S. official said. “They were going to lose a lot of people and they were going to lose a lot of the equipment.”

Those choices, the senior official said, become “much harder on the battlefield.”

The Washington Post goes on to note Ukrainian dismay with wargaming as a military planning tool.

On that, a senior Ukrainian military official agreed. War-gaming “doesn’t work,” the official said in retrospect, in part because of the new technology that was transforming the battlefield. Ukrainian soldiers were fighting a war unlike anything NATO forces had experienced: a large conventional conflict, with World War I-style trenches overlaid by omnipresent drones and other futuristic tools — and without the air superiority the U.S. military has had in every modern conflict it has fought.

“All these methods … you can take them neatly and throw them away, you know?” the senior Ukrainian said of the war-game scenarios. “And throw them away because it doesn’t work like that now.”

There are several important take-aways here.

Wargaming can fail—and fail badly—when either data or embedded models are wrong. Perhaps, as some Ukrainians suggest, the wargame failed to take account for the dramatic increase in ISR capabilities that tactical drones can provide, or their use as a weapon system? Or perhaps game assumptions about breaching operations were based on less dense defences, a less skilled defender, or a better-trained and better-equipped attacker? Or perhaps the problem was that Russia’s real world response differed from the way RED responded in games and simulations?

Wargamers like to say that wargames aren’t predictions, and it is certainly true that no wargame nor series of wargames can fully address all assumptions and all choices, and hence explore all of a given problem space—even when the underlying data and models are correct. However, in many ways this caveat is also an evasion. Wargames are often asked to anticipate likely outcomes or responses. That is indeed a form of prediction, even if it is highly contingent and rests on sometimes shaky foundations. And military decision-makers may treat wargames as a sort of crystal ball, regardless of whatever caveats are attached.

The fact that the offensive didn’t unfold as the wargames suggested also may have nothing to do with the wargames—which might have been excellent—but rather divergence between the plan that was gamed and the plan that was executed. We have no way of knowing, for example, whether Ukraine would have been more successful if it had concentrated its forces in a single major thrust as the US and UK apparently preferred. (It should be noted that Ukraine’s multi-prong approach was also driven by political concerns—which a wargame may well not have addressed.) After all, it’s hardly an uncommon human response for a user to blame their tool for disappointing results.

Finally, it is possible that all of these factors, and others beside, may have been at work. Professional wargaming is full of historical lore about the successes and failures of major wargames, recounted in presentations, conversations, and conferences: the gaming of the Schlieffen Plan (1914), Pearl Harbour (1941), and Midway (1942), the interwar wargaming of the US Naval War College, the work of the Western Approaches Tactical Unit during WWII, or the problems encountered by Millennium Challenge (2002). In almost all cases, the reasons for success or failure were far more complex than the lore suggests, or the success or failure was much less clear and absolute than makes for a good story.

Rarely does either uncritical (war)gaming evangelism or knee-jerk methodological cynicism illuminate what happened, why, or what we can do better. Instead, what is required is a long and detailed examination (internal, and inevitably classified) review that accounts for complexity and multi-causality. One hopes that the Ukraine wargames of 2022 will receive just such a thoughtful, sober, and constructive review. There is likely much to learn.

Disaster in Concordia

The follow item was written for PAXsims by Brian Phillips, a retired Canadian Army officer who has been employed as an Intelligence Specialist and Activity Lead for Calian in support of the Canadian Army Simulation Centre (CASC) since 2017. Brian introduced Matrix Games to CASC in 2018 and his current responsibilities include War and Serious Games as well as Red Teaming.

Introduction

In support of the Canadian Military Training and Cooperation Program (MTCP) the Directorate of Military Training and Cooperation (DMTC) conducted a Civil Military Inter-Agency Planning Seminar (CMIPS) at the Indonesian Center of Peacekeeping Training (PMPP-TNI) in Jakarta from 18 to 22 September 2023. The seminar participants were primarily military officers from the rank of major to colonel from Australia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, The Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. The participants were from a variety of military backgrounds; they brought with them their regional knowledge and a wealth of experience.

The aim of the seminar was twofold. First, it was intended to develop greater understanding of civil military cooperation among the participants. More importantly, it was intended to facilitate networking and build relationships between the regional participants. There were three components to the seminar. One third of the seminar was networking through breaks and three host nation organised social events. Another third of the seminar was a combination of lectures and panel discussions. The last third of the seminar was playing the serious game Disaster in Concordia.

Disaster in Concordia is a game that provides a limited role-playing experience in a Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response (HADR) scenario. The game is set on the fictional island of Concordia which was already struggling having shortfalls in food, water, and medical care, and before it suffers a series of disasters from an earthquake and tsunami, through a cholera outbreak, and a fire in an internally displaced persons’ camp, over the course of six turns. Throughout the participants play one of nine roles struggling to bring in resources and allocating them in a manner that best alleviates suffering. The game is intended to show the benefits, challenges, and complexities of cooperation among the military, government, and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). While this could be achieved in a traditional seminar discussion or tabletop exercise (TTX), the game was designed to build greater dynamic interaction and engagement among the players.

Background

The Civil Military Interagency Planning Seminar originated during the war in Afghanistan when it was created to help better prepare the military and civilian (government) members of Canadian Task Forces for deployment.  Following the end of the Canadian participation in Afghanistan, the seminar fell into disuse before being revived in 2017. The 2019 iteration featured one group of participants playing a matrix game to the envy of the other three groups who completed a traditional seminar discussion.  In 2020, the Directorate of Military Training and Cooperation added it to its international course offerings and endorsed the use of a serious game for all groups. In 2020, the seminar was delivered remotely using an Interactive Narrative as the basis for the table-top exercise portion of the seminar. In 2022 the seminar was delivered in Bogotá Colombia using Disaster in Concordia.

Disaster in Concordia was designed by Bart Gauvin assisted by Dave Banks at the Canadian Army Simulation Centre (CASC). It is the latest iteration of a game that started as a matrix game in 2019 and was converted to an interactive narrative in 2020 due to COVID before being further developed into its current form in 2022.

Conduct

The seminar was four and a half days long generally with lectures and panel discussion in the morning with 1 to 2 turns of game play in the afternoon. Following the conclusion of the game, each group briefed the entire seminar on their insights gained throughout the week. 

There were 4 groups of 9 participants each. The seminar is optimised for a 50/50 split of military and civilian participants but in practice there has been very limited civilian participation. This is unfortunate as one of the keys to success in Indonesia was the presence of members of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) who in one case played alongside the military participants and in the other groups observed the game. They made an invaluable contribution to the discussions.

Each section had two facilitators. One facilitator focused on the conduct of the game while the principal facilitator focused on deriving the Civil Military Cooperation themes and lessons from game and from previous experience. Two of the facilitators came from the Canadian Armed Forces Influence Activities Task Force while the remainder were retired senior military officers working as contractors for Calian at CASC. The contractors brought a wealth of experience to the seminar including a former defense attaché (Mexico), a former Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) Commanding Officer who led the DART on two missions.

Each turn featured 60 minutes of game play initiated by a video updating the situation. Following the video, one player was selected to run a planning meeting with the other players which was a springboard to discuss real world United Nations cluster meetings. After the meeting, the meeting chair would back brief the host nation government official. Players then acted independently either in accordance with the decisions from the meeting or differently if they either miscommunicated or acted in their own interests.  Once game play was completed and adjudicated the facilitators had 30 minutes to discuss themes and findings coming out of the turn before moving on to the next turn.

Conclusions and Insights

Overall, the participants found the serious game to be preferable to both PowerPoint presentations and more traditional seminar discussions. It was fun, engaging, and realistic enough to spark insightful conversations. Conducting a seminar with non-native English speakers is always going to be challenging. Disaster in Concordia was simple enough for the participants to understand the gameplay after a short practice turn. While the language challenge would have made a matrix game problematic, most of the participants readily embraced Disaster in Concordia. Given the nature of the interaction required by the game, it is fair to say that the game went further to addressing the goals of improving mutual understanding of civil military cooperation and of building relationships among the participants than a traditional TTX or seminar discussion would have achieved.

Brian Phillips

First Contact matrix game

The First Contact is a matrix game developed by Joseph Chretien and David Runyon as a tool to demonstrate wargaming to students and faculty at the College of William and Mary as they stood up a wargaming club. As such, the goal was to create a strategic, decision-making game that would force the players to think critically while working a global event. The scenario, humanity identifying and contacting an Unknown Alien Culture (UAC), was initially chosen because it would be a fun topic to cover with new wargamers.

You’ll find a description of game development, a playtest report, and the full rules below.

first-contact-matrix-game-article-and-rulesDownload

Tweedy and McKechnie: Assessing wargaming at the company level

At The Maneuverist blog of the Warfighting Society, Matthew Tweedy and Taylor McKechnie have written a very important piece that seeks to empirically assess the value of relatively simple wargaming as a training tool.

With the extensive focus, resources, and discussions dedicated to wargames in the US military, the DOD should prioritize determining wargaming’s tangible impact on training and readiness. An experiment conducted by the 2d Battalion, 2d Marine Regiment (2/2), in December 2019 offers an insightful case study.

Two-Two conducted the experiment at the Camp Schwab Beachhead Club in Okinawa, Japan. It marked the culmination of seven months of preparation across various countries and combatant commands. It attracted the attention of senior officers in divisions, Marine Expeditionary Forces, and Headquarters Marine Corps. A group of 37 Marines, spanning lance corporal to sergeant, and representing military occupational specialties (MOS) from combat arms, communications, intelligence, and logistics, played in a March Madness-style tournament. The purpose was to determine the best Memoir ’44 player in the battalion and to make an empirically inspired assessment of board games as training tools.

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Thirty-six Marines and one Sailor played in the March Madness-style tournament. (The odd number of participants resulted in an early round bye and a latter-round semi-final “play-in.”) Matches consisted of three games. To maintain tempo, each game lasted no more than 30 minutes. The bulk of collected data comes from the early rounds of the tournament (more players, more matches, more games). To control for variables, all participants played the same scenario during each round.

Players and observers recorded match data. The players completed data sheets and used stop-watches to record turn time, turn action, and game summaries. Observers evaluated performance in real-time (not post-game) using performance indicators like risk assessment, enemy analysis, and terrain use, concluding each evaluation with written comments. In addition, all participants completed a survey about their opinions of using games – both video and board games – as professional military education (PME) tools. These efforts resulted in over 14,000 collected data points.

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We found that board games provide a decision-rich experience. On average, each player made roughly 42 tactical decisions an hour. We consider a “decision” an active game action, such as moving, attacking, or using a Command Card. Our tournament lasted 12 hours, and most players made between 68-204 decisions. Half of the players were eliminated in 1.5 hours and made 42-135 decisions. Several players who made it to the latter rounds made over 500 tactical decisions.

The most notable difference between winners and losers was their tempo of decisions. As the median turn times in Figure 1 show, victors unambiguously out-cycled their opponents. The faster players moved on to later rounds, and the fastest advanced to the final rounds.

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While our participants played the game, we assessed their tactical decision-making ability in six areas: gap analysis, enemy analysis, use of key terrain, understanding purpose, ability to sequence actions, and risk analysis. Results are shown in Figure 2. The assessment criteria are derived from two concepts familiar to all Marines: the framework of METT-TC (mission, enemy, terrain, troops available, time, and civilian considerations) and the OODA (observe, orient, decide, act) Loop.

Figure 2 shows a clearly detectable and statistically significant difference in decision-making trends between victors and losers. As the tournament progressed, the significance of a single determining factor for victory diminished. We assert this shift can be attributed to the proficiency of the later-round competitors in employing the OODA cycle and METT-TC analysis. But notably, the skill of discerning enemy surfaces and gaps retained statistical significance until the fourth round.

A takeaway from Figure 2 is that personnel who do not grasp these concepts can be easily identified in a short period (60 minutes or less). Additionally, the fact that these concepts were less significant in later rounds does not indicate the game is a poor teaching tool. Rather, it suggests these concepts can be trained using the game and that small failures and setbacks become more significant as the competition increases. For instance, although we judged our later round participants as generally astute at applying the OODA/METT-TC concepts, small slip-ups came with high costs since their competitors were also good at applying those same concepts.

Finally, while certain assessment feedback downplayed the importance of a competitor’s risk assessment ability, an examination of Figure 2 unequivocally demonstrates that an inadequate risk assessment guarantees defeat.

As Yuna Wong once noted, there are striking few robust empirical studies that seek to assess whether (and how) wargaming actually works. This is a rare exception, and a substantial contribution to the broader professional literature.

What would happen if Russia invaded Finland?

The Guardian this weekend has an article this weekend about a recent wargame at King’s College London, designed and run by David Banks:

It is 10am. Banks asks everyone present to imagine they are on the threshold of geopolitical catastrophe, somewhere a little beyond, though not that far beyond, our current perilous state. He fleshes out a scenario. Prolonged and humbling conflict in Ukraine as well as Finland’s recent accession to Nato has tested Russian pride to breaking point. Worsening matters, Nato has decided to press its advantage in the region by staging a military exercise on the Finnish-Russian border. China, Iran and India have made it plain: they’re not impressed by Nato. The Swedes are jangly, too. Spy planes, satellites and troop carriers are in play. A few wrong moves and all this posturing and provocation could ignite into something far worse. It is up to the players assembled in Bush House to try to war-game us back from the brink.

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By the time Banks calls an end to the game, Finland has been utterly destabilised, the UN and Nato are barely on speaking terms, and billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment has been deployed or destroyed. Zlatan and Tim rise to shake hands, hitching up their trousers, pleased at how their day has turned out. Starting to recover their manners, they drift over to commiserate with their counterparts on the Nato table. Curious, they stare down at the neatened cards, finally able to see what it was this Nato lot were trying to achieve behind a haze of missed diplomatic signals and exploded-satellite debris. “We were playing to win,” Tim notices. “They were playing not to lose.”

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Things almost went badly wrong today, Banks tells the players from the stage. The way he designed his war game, there was room for both sides to accumulate 115 tokens between them “without plunging the world into nuclear horror”. There are gasps when Banks says they accumulated 114 tokens today. “The game escalated precipitously at the end,” he explains. “You all got very eager. You missed crossing the threshold by the narrowest of margins the game will allow.”

Perhaps it counts as a sort of achievement. It certainly leaves us lots to ponder as we file out of Bush House. I glance up at the eighth-floor balcony, glad to be back on solid ground. I buy a pasty from Greggs and wolf it down, feeling obscurely grateful for the opportunity. A few days later, at the weekend, Banks sends me an email. He’s embarrassed. He made a mistake. Either he or one of his students botched the count. The final tally of escalation tokens in the game wasn’t 114, it was 116.

Boom, boom, boom.

For more about wargaming at KCL, see the King’s Wargaming Network as well as this earlier (2022) article in the Guardian.

Dungeons & Dragons as professional training

Earlier this week on the social-media-formerly-known-as-Twitter I extolled the professional value of gaming, in response to a piece by James Marriott in The Times.

https://twitter.com/RexBrynen/status/1691432089051090945?s=20

It’s not the first time I’ve pointed to D&D in particular as a useful way of developing important professional skills. As if to underscore the point, two other pieces have just been published making similar arguments.

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The first, an article by Ian Strebel and Matt McKenzie at War on the Rocks, argues that Dungeons & Dragons helps to develop narrative and story-telling skills that are essential to briefing intelligence material.

Wargaming has seen a resurgence in professional military education, something we wholeheartedly support; games make learning fun, effective, and memorable. But integrating games into this education isn’t enough. The armed services only send a military intelligence professional to formal training a few times over a long military career. Comparatively, tabletop role-playing games can provide regular practice for the skills needed in exercises, wargaming, and the real world. After all, as James Sterrett, chief of the Simulation Education Division at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, said, “Experience is a great teacher and well-designed games can deliver experiences that are tailored to drive home learning.”

If you are interested in integrating tabletop role-playing games into training for military intelligence professionals, it will likely prove challenging to convince commanders that subordinates should spend work hours “playing a game.” However, if games are structured like training, commanders could perhaps be brought around. First and most important: create a training plan. There would need to be learning objectives, measures of performance and effectiveness, lesson plans, and a schedule. Have the required materials ready; convert them from the standard Dungeons & Dragons style (filigree and stylized dragons in the margins) into something that looks like a Department of Defense form. Don’t plan an epic, multi-year campaign. Instead, take and edit short adventures that can be completed in around two hours.

Next, present the plan and justification to the chain of command. Be ready to answer a lot of questions. Be ready to be told “no.” Emphasize professional development — this is always a viable reason in the military. Wargaming is already built into the upper echelons of military learning; tabletop role-playing games are simply more advanced, if smaller, wargames.

In the face of extreme skepticism, ask for this to be a pilot program: As a possible measure of effectiveness, offer to have a subordinate give an intelligence brief to the unit both before and after the tabletop role-playing game training cycle with surveys to see what the audience remembers. Lieutenant von Reisswitz also faced initial skepticism about integrating wargames into military training, when a general was reported to have said, “You mean we are to play for an hour on a map!” And now, due to the history of Prussian military success, wargames, both large and small, are an accepted part of military culture. Tabletop role-playing games may eventually be as well.

As the U.S. military moves from counter-insurgency toward great power competition, military intelligence professionals must be ready to deal with complex and dynamic adversaries acting in an increasingly complex and dynamic world. Now is the time for experimentation to learn new skill sets and find new ways to fulfill the intelligence professional’s mandate. Dungeons and Dragons is a powerful tool to do just that. 

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D&D also gets a shout-out (at 09:20) in a longer War Room podcast on simulating diplomatic disaster. In that piece, podcast editor Ron Granieri discusses with Giovanni Corrado, Ian Hopper and Kent Park a strategy simulation exercise they have developed as part of the Carlisle Scholars Program at the US Army War College.

Carana: Adapt! Game as “holding environment”

President Langata calmly explained that the traditional donors were no longer necessary—this is the dawn of a new age of prosperity and self-reliance for Carana—and then she promptly rolled a 9: success!  Even with the modifiers imposed for the complexity of the proposed action, the dice predicted       success—and I marvelled at the smiles and shouts of celebration around the table.  Four hours ago when we started, few of these people knew each other well and no one knew Carana… and who would have predicted they would care this much in this amount of time?       

How did we get here, you ask?  Now that my friend Laura and I don’t work for the World Bank anymore, we recently dusted off Carana and updated it with our friend Marc for use in an experience we’ve designed that introduces the concepts of adaptive leadership to people working in fragile and conflict-affected developing countries – we’re calling it Carana: Adapt!  

Gary and Laura SimMastering (standing) for a recent delivery for the UN at NYU-Silver

Where the old Carana had a (rather clunky but fun) post-conflict needs assessment exercise designed to teach the basics of security and development mandates and sequencing in a complex developing country, the new Carana is lean and light, built on a super-simple matrix game, with some pretty sweet tokens and chips representing power and influence and a nice simple map and board to draw players in.  The whole design gives us the ability to quickly switch between scenes we keep ‘in our back pocket’ and choose scenes that offer the greatest simulation of real-world drama based on player actions … all unfolding over a six-scene story arc we deliver in a day.  And while players engaged pretty enthusiastically in the ‘old’ Carana, this one creates much more energy, and the pause between each scene lets players assess and adapt how they’ll pursue their goals.

What I found most interesting about the success we’ve enjoyed so far with Carana: Adapt! is how easily it serves as a holding environment. In adaptive leadership, a holding environment is the “cohesive properties of a relationship or social system that serve to keep people engaged with one another in spite of the divisive forces generated by adaptive work”. That is a little technical for me, I think of a holding environments as the artificial constructs that people create to explain why they are willing to stick through some occasionally painful work.  The foundations for a holding environment can be as simple as norms or rules – “golf has 18 holes”, as practical as timelines – “the meeting ends when lunch comes at 1” or as profound as values – “a family sticks together through thick and thin” or, as my grandparents used to say “never go to sleep angry” (creating some late night holding environments).  There was something intuitive that I think Laura and I sensed when we started designing Carana: Adapt from our 14 previous deliveries of Carana – when people get in a game, they care.  So we set out to figure out how to design a game immersive enough that people would care enough to do hard adaptive work.  

I think this is an important point.  Here on PAXsims, we have a lot of reflection on the value of games and simulations for experiential learning and for analysis, admittedly with limitations. But, I think, as gamers, we often take for granted the immersive quality of games – they make people care.  

And it isn’t just that they care – they invest. They get a light introduction to a fictional country and      information about their roles (we encourage players to inhabit their roles inspired by their professional experience, without deep roleplaying or regression to cliché).  What we see is that even with a fairly low threshold built for scoring or victory like ours has, suddenly people care about chips, about die rolls, about problem-solving in the fictional country … and they’re willing to invest their energy and time. Most interestingly, they’re not just invested in ’winning’, but they zero in on pursuing better outcomes, taking risks and applying what they are learning from the introduction to adaptive leadership that is embedded into the experience.  

In formulating the concept of the holding environment, Heifetz and others are telling us how difficult the work of adaptive leadership can be – if the holding environment isn’t strong enough to maintain the “pressure cooker” people will abandon the work. Somehow a game contributes to that resilience – perhaps the tokens remind people that it is not real, perhaps the play of inhabiting a role gives them more space to take chances, or maybe the catharsis of a die roll for victory (or loss!) gives them the release they need to accommodate that stress – whatever the case, games don’t just make people care, games keep people engaged.  

This engagement is an important and often overlooked element of gaming.  We’re using it to wring every ounce of energy and attention out of our participants and at every Carana:Adapt! delivery we’ve done so far people stand around and talk for an hour after.  Our next challenge is to begin to build a network of Carana: Adapt! veterans who support each other in trying out some of those risky interventions in real life.  Let us know if you want to visit Carana.

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Comments from Laura Bailey and Marc Manashil are gratefully acknowledged.