Putin Rolls The Dice ...

'Blue on Blue' as the Coalition player forgets that Poland is now

a member of NATO and orders the air suppression of the Polish

army outside of Riga, which is occupied by the Russians.

We are currently working through a series of geopolitical futures centred around a more expansionist and aggressive Russia. The time frame is the near future - possibly the next ten years or so - and the focus is on what might encourage or discourage President Putin to gamble on a swift seizure of a number of former Soviet Socialist Republics. This is the sort of exercise that is well suited to gaming.

It would be entirely possible to design a bespoke game to explore the issues here, but I naturally gravitate towards a number of commercial games that could be modified to fit the purpose of the exercise. One such game is 'Putin's War' by Ty Bomba. The political premise of the game is that President Putin decides to roll the dice and to move from hybrid war to a full scale military operation to recover the 'lost' former Soviet Socialist Republics in eastern Europe. This fits the bill, so we decided to give the game a try out.

The initial try out was designed just to examine the game mechanism. From a purely military perspective, the game seemed to work reasonably well. The Russian forces made great progress over the 30 day window for the scenario, but didn't have sufficient impetus to achieve their military objectives. That's the sort of result that we felt intuitively would be a fair result. In our try out, the Russian forces became bogged down in Kiev and didn't have enough impetus to over-run Vilnius in Lithuania. The 30 day window is significant because it is estimated that would be the length of time needed for US reinforcements to arrive in appreciable strength to have an impact upon any military confrontation, should Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty be invoked and America honour it's treaty obligations. Of course, this has the effect of moving the review from the military arena to that of the political.

The game lends itself to being deconstructed from the political perspective. It contains a number of political assumptions that can be changed. For example, the game assumes that the Baltic States, Belarus, and Moldova are equal and willing participants of the anti-Russian coalition. I would characterise things as slightly different. The Baltic States are NATO members, with the right of protection under Article 5. Belarus is more closely aligned to Russia than NATO, although it admittedly has a foot in both camps. Moldova has close links to the US, but also has a breakaway region of Transdniester, which has close links to Russia and represents a frozen conflict zone. The point here is that there are quite a lot of working parts within the framework to render a number of scenarios useful.

The political dimension of the commercial game is inadequate for our use. However, it does lend itself to having a matrix game grafted onto it to account for the political dimensions. For example, what if the starting point is a joint Russian/ Belarussian military exercise on the borders of the Baltic States? This is one scenario that does have credence with NATO planners. Alternatively, what if the Baltic States invoke Article 5, but, say, Germany refuses to honour the commitment? This is one scenario that the governments of the Baltic States have in the back of their minds. Yet again, what if Russian aggression is limited to a full scale invasion of Ukraine, which, not being a member of NATO, is unable to invoke Article 5? Would NATO be prepared for a full scale military conflict with Russia for the sake of Ukraine? It is quite possible for the game to be replayed, each time varying the political assumptions that are brought to the game.

There is no allowance in the commercial game  for a nuclear exchange. An interesting question arises over whether or not to introduce it. Having played the commercial version, I do feel that there could be grounds for including a nuclear option, especially when the Russian forces reach the high water mark of their advance. The temptation for a tactical nuclear strike to keep the Russian advance rolling forward was quite strong. It would be interesting to model that option into the game. It could provide an additional political dimension to an accompanying matrix game played alongside the commercial game.

I would question the extent to which the Russian forces can be seen as monolithic. It would be interesting to introduce a set of rivalries and jealousies between the various Russian army groups, and have those feed back into the game through the availability of replacements of personnel and resources. The game is designed for a four week period, but the Russian military keeps a three week inventory. With supply lines extended across Ukraine to Moldova, across the Baltic States to the Polish border, I do think that questions of Russian resupply are likely to arise in the final three or four turns of the game. Rivalries within the Russian side are likely to manifest themselves over the availability of supply, and it would be interesting to model these into the political game.

One final point of interest concerns what is happening elsewhere while the game is going on. An actual or potential conflict between Russia and NATO is a newsworthy item. What is China doing? What is happening at the UN? How does this impact on the Middle East? East Asia? Africa? The commercial game looks at the conflict abstracted away from the rest of the world. When producing scenarios, this is something that cannot be overlooked easily. For example, would the reaction of the bond market cause the NATO nations to seek a negotiated settlement at the earliest opportunity? There are a large number of moving parts, each important in their own right, and each systemically important. A political game would need to accommodate these.

In our run through of the commercial game, Russia secured control of Moldova, Estonia, and Latvia. Most of Ukraine was occupied, with the exception of Kiev. From this perspective, Putin rolled the dice and lost. However, the game did allow us to question the political assumptions of the game and some useful scenario building can come from this. For example, the willingness of other NATO nations to honour the commitment under Article 5 did come into question. This underlines the importance of the NATO enhanced forward presence programme. Not only does it reassure the frontline nations of the commitment of the more distant nations, it also sends a message to potential aggressors of that commitment.

Of course, there can be a game within a game here. One in which the leader of a NATO nation, who may or may not be beholden to Russian interests, who suggests that the commitment to Article 5 is purely transactional, and who undermines the basis on which the North Atlantic Treaty is founded. That, as they say, is anther story.

Stephen Aguilar-Millan

© The European Futures Observatory 2017