Shall we deploy the nukes...?

Key takeaways from my experience wargaming in a defence think tank

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to attend a Nuclear Deterrence Wargaming session run by Dstl and UK Project on Nuclear Issues at RUSI. Set in the midst of a crisis scenario, it gave fantastic insight into both decision making and the breadth of actions that can be used to try to de-escalate a situation.

After using a mixture of strategies, negotiation tactics and military movements, here are my key takeaways:

1. Strategic cultures matter. Although wargaming certainly has its limitations, it reaffirmed my belief in the importance of understanding strategic cultures when explaining or predicting state behaviour. Hard power is important, but it is critical to understand how that power is viewed and whether its use is likely.

2. Coherence is hard. Navigating and coordinating actions with allies was difficult and complex. Despite having one main goal, varying interests or methods often undermined the success of unified action.

3. In a crisis there is a real temptation to escalate. Even in this relatively small and obviously fake scenario, the amount of information to process was overwhelming. This combined with uncertainty about the intentions of other states made for some reactive and unnecessarily aggressive behaviour. The fog of war certainly had an impact on what decisions were made.

I am under no illusions about the limitations of wargaming. This was a fictitious scenario abstracted from many of the realities and complexities of the real world. That aside, I found the experience fascinating and want to thank DSTL, UK PONI and RUSI NextGen for hosting!