La Estrategia y los Juegos de Simulación.

Se dice que el ajedréz, en sus orígenes, no fue otra cosa que un juego de simulación estratégica. En ese camino se han intentado multiples variables sobre un mismo tema. Desde las más sencillas hasta la más complejas. Siempre se les ha pretendido asignar dos capacidades: la anticipar una posible situación futura, una que es imposible o difícil de replicar en la práctica; y la de aprender o enseñar algo a partir de ellas.

Over the Horizon: Teaching Crisis Decision-Making Through Simulations

Ulises y Ajax en alguna forma de juego.

By Robert Farley | 29 Feb 2012

Last week, the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, where I am an assistant professor, conducted its annual crisis simulation, which has traditionally attempted to put students in critical decision-making situations under conditions of stress, asymmetric information and lack of sleep. This year’s scenario saw Mexican cartel gunmen attacking the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas, where Brad Pitt, George Clooney and the rest of the cast of “Ocean’s Eleven” had gathered for a reunion. Unfortunately for Pitt and Clooney, there was no Hollywood ending in the Patterson School’s script -- suffice it to say at least Andy Garcia managed to escape from the attack unscathed. While such pyrotechnics may seem out of place so far from the studio lot, the use of simulations to evaluate policy and train policymakers is expanding across the archipelago of institutions dedicated to preparing young people for public service.






Juego de simulación de tablero.

War games have played a role in operational and strategic training for a very long time. The purpose of a war game is twofold. On the one hand, it produces data on a proposed course of action, with the quality of data dependent on the expertise of the players and the verisimilitude of the simulation. War gaming may reveal, for instance, that an invasion or offensive makes little sense given the options and resources available to both sides. On the other hand, war gaming provides training in strategic and operational thought under relatively safe and controlled conditions. A war game cannot replace the tension of battle or the responsibility of genuine decision-making, but it can help remedy certain kinds of common errors. Consequently, war games have been part of military training since at least the Napoleonic Wars. In a recent Naval War College Review article, Peter Perla and Ed McGrady argued that the power of war games stem from their association with narrative and storytelling. In a good war game, victory, defeat, gain and loss carry psychological weight that gives the players a stake in outcomes and makes their decision-making more realistic.

What goes for war goes for policy other than war. Public and foreign policy programs have increasingly used simulations as training and teaching tools. Policy initiatives, whether foreign or domestic, generate strategic dynamics; players respond to how other players have changed the game environment. Consequently, playing games can help students develop expertise regarding how to manage strategic dynamics, as well as more specific skills such as crisis negotiation.



Juego de simulación digital

At the same time, foreign and public policy schools have become attractive to serious simulators because of the presence of a large number of relatively knowledgeable graduate and advanced undergraduate students with time on their hands. The Army War College -- which runs two negotiation simulations, one involving Nagorno-Karabakh and the other Cyprus -- has taken advantage of this by running its simulations at several major universities, adapting the structure of the game for different groups of players. Last summer, the strategic forecasting firm Wikistrat -- for which I am an analyst -- ran a grand strategy competition involving a large number of major foreign policy programs.

Accordingly, the universe of potential policy simulations and “war games” is virtually limitless. The Paxsims blog, co-edited by WPR contributor Rex Brynen, focuses on the serious use of international political and military simulations, listing dozens of different games played to inform public policy decisions. These simulations include modeling relief efforts following the Haiti earthquake, refining peacekeeping and civilian protection in hostile environments, “replaying” the 2007 Surge in Baghdad, rethinking the partition of India and Pakistan, and -- of course -- sketching out an Israeli bombing campaign against Iranian nuclear facilities.

As in many other fields, the Internet has transformed the development process of policy-oriented simulations. Widely available information and modern information technology makes it possible to bring together subject matter experts with designers, and crowdsourcing helps demonstrate and correct problems and flaws with the simulation. Indeed, the Wikistrat model is built directly on the idea that smart crowdsourcing can produce better policy analysis than reliance on relatively isolated expert opinion.

Patterson School simulations focus on the teaching and training aspects of gaming rather than on verisimilitude. Previous Patterson School simulations have involved a revolution in Belarus, a pirate attack off Somalia, the aftermath of the death of Fidel Castro, an Israeli strike on Iran and a nuclear accident in North Korea. The purpose of these games is to force decision-making under difficult circumstances, hopefully modeling the conditions under which policy professionals produce recommendations and make decisions.

This is not to say that nothing can be learned from the course of the game. In the 2012 simulation, members of the Sinaloa drug cartel launched simultaneous large-scale attacks on the Bellagio in Las Vegas as well as on several targets in Acapulco. All the attacks involved car bombings followed up by teams of heavily armed gunmen employing automatic weapons and hand grenades. The Patterson student cohort was divided into teams representing the Mexican and American national security bureaucracies, regional governments and cartels, with the exercise simulating the government response in the 24 hours immediately following the attack. The simulation ended in an abortive meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon. Domestic political pressures played a role on both sides, with Texas Gov. Rick Perry launching a blistering series of attacks against Obama’s handling of the crisis, and the Mexican police consistently undercutting the efforts of the Mexican army.

Our simulation highlighted the problems of bureaucratic competition, indistinct boundaries of responsibility, and mistrust between agencies and governments. The game also gave students an appreciation of the difficulties of dealing with an active and independent media, which remained largely outside their control. Most importantly, it gave students a taste of the difficulty in arriving at coherent, cohesive action even when policy objectives remained broadly in agreement. While students may never face this precise crisis in their subsequent professional careers, they undoubtedly will face situations where policymakers demand options, sleep be damned.

Increasingly realistic simulations involving larger and larger numbers of interested, well-informed players will help structure public policy decision-making for the foreseeable future. Someday, strong performance in such simulations, as well as the ability to craft useful games, may even prove a pathway to success in a public policy career.

Dr. Robert Farley is an assistant professor at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His interests include national security, military doctrine and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination. His weekly WPR column, Over the Horizon, appears every Wednesday.