If we are to use a game framework as a learning experience, then it does no harm to consider what the lessons learned from the experience might be. This game was an experiment in producing a top level geopolitical game to feed a timeline into a mid-tier economic and financial game. How well did that go?
We can examine this question on two levels. First, how did this game play as a game? What changes would we want to introduce of we were to play the game again? How could we refine the game even further? Second, how useful was the timeline the game produced? Does it capture a reasonable flow of events? Are there other factors that we might want to add to the game to derive a better timeline? Let's think about these questions.
The main premise of the game was to give Russia an advantage by starting from Belarus. I'm not sure that advantage was fully used in the game. Russian forces did start at Brest, but didn't enter the game until Turn 4 (D+12). I felt that was a bit late in the day. I think that it would have played better if the Russian forces had entered the game at the outset. Perhaps an amendment might be that Russian forces can start Turn 1 in Belarus, but have to vacate Belarus by the end of Turn 1? That would bring the advantage to the foreground.
I'm not sure that we got the Russian reinforcements right. We rolled a dice to see when reinforcements could arrive through Crimea, and it came out at Turn 3 (D+9). I feel that this was a bit late in the day. I think that in future games, we ought to allow Russian forces to come through Crimea at the start of Turn 2. Equally, we rolled a dice to determine when Russian reinforcements from the Central and Far Eastern Military Districts would arrive. This came out as Turn 6 (D+18). Once again, I felt that this was a bit late in the day. In future games, we ought to allow for these reinforcements to arrive sooner - possibly at some point in the first three turns.
The Blue Team military structure would always present a problem. There are three parts to the Blue Team - NATO, the EU Common Defence and Security structure outside of NATO, and the rest of the Blue Team (Ukraine and Moldova). Perhaps the way to deal with this issue is for three players to act for the Blue Team? Failing that, there will always have to be a degree of flexibility in representing the Blue Team. In this game, the EU Nordic Battlegroup was eager to get to grips with Russian forces. There is scope for another game where it is less so, and there is scope for yet another game where some elements are keen to be involved (the Baltic States) and others less so (Sweden and Finland). The operation of the Blue Team gives us great scope to mix and match varying operational conditions to generate a set of very different games.
The central object of the game was to generate a convincing timeline. Did we do that? In many respects we did, but the timeline needs to be adjusted to account for factors outside of the game. The big question surrounds the attitude of China towards events in Europe. Would conflict in Eastern Europe lead to Chinese adventurism against the US in the western Pacific? Or against Russia in the Siberian Far East?
These are great questions that the game doesn't answer. I am not at all certain that it should. We had to assert a degree of containment within the game. We did not allow Russia or the US to advance to the nuclear threshold, although the actions of the Nordic Battlegroup made that more likely. A small tactical nuke on arriving Swedish and Finnish forces through Riga would have slowed the advance into north western Russia considerably. However, it would have led to a very different game to the one we wanted to play, so neither side was allowed to escalate to the nuclear threshold. That was an umpire assertion which could be changed in future games, especially if the Russian forces in Kaliningrad were to play a greater role.
In producing the timeline, we have added a set of reactions from China and Japan, who would feature in an economic and financial game, but not in the geopolitical game. This is an act of converting the result of the geopolitical game into a format that could be used for the economic and financial game. Whilst there is scope to improve the geopolitical game, it has yielded a timeline that we can put to good use in an economic and financial game. In that respect, it has served the purpose for which it was played.
Stephen Aguilar-Millan
© The European Futures Observatory 2020
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