Coevolutionary Gaming Theory Can Facilitate Decision Making

Over the course of history, the strategic environment has changed rapidly and is now more complex than ever before – it is currently characterized by unpredictability and disorder, and may yet manifest itself in the collapse of nuclear armed nations, destabilizing conflict in geo-politically vital regions, and humanitarian crises. A world of disparate actors – not all nation states – now exists. Unpredictable events will continue to cause strategic surprise. The widespread effects of past conflicts such as World War II, Vietnam and the Iraq war are still being felt and have created significant strategic repercussions. The failures of these conflicts are the result of our military and political leaders’ failure to quickly adapt to wartime conditions. This occurs because of a general refusal to commit to a military culture of learning that encourages serious debate, critical assessments of our military operations, and challenges to our doctrine in the face of emerging change. Additionally, leaders have struggled with the critical responsibility of forecasting and providing for a ready force, one that is well-resourced and prepared to conduct future operations. It is the responsibility of our military and political leaders to send our military to war with a ready force, and a strategy that will ultimately result in victory. But understanding war and warriors is critical if societies and governments are to make sound judgments concerning military policy.

The purpose of this essay is to apply the four steps of battle analysis to evaluate a historical battle using intellectual standards and the elements of reasoning to provide an alternate outcome for the Chosin Reservoir Campaign, which took place during the Korean War. The alternate outcome will be based upon different factors, to include the utilization of intelligence assets and how the alteration might have changed the actual outcome. I will start this essay with an introduction, review the setting, and compare the principle antagonists.

The concept of war as a static and unchanging occurrence is an outdated and dangerous miscalculation. More accurately, war is a fluidic, evolving and shifting phenomenon constantly reinventing itself, rendering stagnant, inflexible principles potentially disastrous. Consequently, as students of war and future players in this transforming theatre, the study of eras of significant development is an extremely relevant pursuit. Recognizing the need for adaptation and the creation of doctrine is now a prerequisite for any effective modern commander. War is unpredictable in nature and particularly so in current theatres of operation, in which change is rapid

Thompson, Arthur A. , Gamble, John E. , & Strickland, A. J. (2006). Strategy: w

War is a phenomenon of organized violent conflict, typified by extreme aggression, societal disruption and adaptation, and high mortality. Usually a war is a pre-planned activity to begin with by one group or one nation and the group initiates the war by means of violence against the other. The primary feature of this behaviour pattern is a certain state of organized conflict that is engaged in between two or more separate social entities. Such a conflict is always an attempt at altering either the psychological hierarchy or the material hierarchy of domination or equality between two or more groups. In all cases, at least one participant (group) in the

Clausewitz who was convinced that no theory of war could be taken seriously unless it included the psychology of commanders and soldiers and their relations to one another (Peter Paret, Napoleon and the Revolution in War, pg. 134). The human factor within the nature of war is the most complex and difficult to predict a sure outcome without addressing psychological state of the enemy and environment in with you are about to conduct operations. Boyd integrates the key ideas of two primary theorists, Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz, and hypothesizes that making sense of one’s environment, making military decisions, and acting on those decisions is a respective, competitive process (OODA loop) in which one seeks to make faster and better decisions than one’s adversary, overwhelming his ability to make sense of his environment and cope with change. (Module 3, John Boyd and A Discourse on Winning and Losing, pg. 6). This thought process is relevant today through our military war games, operation plans, and TDG’s providing an opportunity for multiple levels of outcome based scenarios fundamentally rooted in understanding the

The notion of an American way of war informs how scholars, policymakers, and strategists understand how Americans fight. A way of war—defined as a society’s cultural preferences for waging war—is not static. Change can occur as a result of important cultural events, often in the form of traumatic experiences or major social transformations. A way of war is therefore the malleable product of culturally significant past experiences. Reflecting several underlying cultural ideals, the current American way of war consists of three primary tenets—the desire for moral clarity, the primacy of technology, and the centrality of scientific management systems—which combine to create a preference for decisive, large-scale conventional wars with clear objectives and an aversion to morally ambiguous low-intensity conflicts that is relevant to planners because it helps them address American strategic vulnerabilities.

Your task is to constantly increase the power of the army, to conquer enemy territory and defend their land. All happening is portrayed as a board game. Each warring camps have a few moves.

There are no universal theories to explain the true nature and character of war, and any war theories are not a fact or absolute truth. All strategic principles are dynamic and contextual, so “every age had its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions, and its own peculiar preconceptions.” The battlefield environment of the 21st century will be the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, and nature of war will be completely different because of the Revolution in Military Affairs. Highly advance communication and information technologies, a dramatic increase in computing capabilities, developed of precision munitions, dominant air and space power ‘war could be waged by the projection of

Today’s strategic environment, whether government or corporate, is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) often times characterized by “wicked problems” or unsolvable problems. Compiled during the early 19th century, Clausewitz’s manuscript “On War” arguably posited the same conclusion in relation to the strategic level of war. He described war as uncertain, unpredictable, and marked by chance. The more the scale moved from the tactical realm to the strategic realm, the more complex war became due to the aforementioned variables. Society today must contend with the impacts of globalization, which has led to significant changes in economic, social, and cultural norms. These changes have resulted in compressed timelines and reduced decision space. With so much information available, the risk of information overload has presented challenges to how individuals approach problem solving. As a result, society has become over reliant on what Guy Claxton defines as deliberate mode (d-mode), “a way of knowing that relies on reason and logic.” (Claxton, p2)

The Kaliningrad wargame was very useful to apply RSP learning outcomes and understand the roles and responsibilities of different international actors in complex challenge environment. Coming from the Region with same complex security challenges helped to reflect in more international and bigger conflict. The simulation exercise was flexible with possibility to apply the DIME, international organization, frame strategy, generate strategic options and decision making during in a complex environment.

Coevolutionary war gaming is an unconventional scenario planning process put forward by Jeff Cares and Jim Miskel in their article "Take Your Third Move First" which essentially builds on the argument that planning and subsequent decision making should not be conducted in a vacuum, i.e., it is not enough to just look at the current facts and historical data to make decisions and plans and just assume that those who will be affected (e.g., competition) will just take them sitting down. Plans and decisions made using this "vacuum" process are characteristically shortsighted at best, because they normally do not take the impact of the counterplans and actions that

Military coercion strategy has long since existed as a means to enforce a desired set of outcomes, behaviours, or policies. The definition of coercion covers a lot of theoretical ground, including both compellence and deterrence. The successes and failures of military coercion can be seen through the mechanisms of, Destruction, Punishment, and Denial that theorists have argued are part of the methods of coercion. The effectiveness of military coercion may be linked to the credibility, capability and communication of a threat. These factors that determine what military coercion is are highlighted through historical examples, including the Cuban Missile Crises, nuclear warfare, counterinsurgency and the Kosovo air campaign.

In the year 1944, with John Von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern publishing their paper on Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, foundations of Game Theory was laid. This paper is an attempt at condensing the fundamentals required to help decision-making at early stages of Project Procurement. With the advent in implementation of Game Theory in real world, new theories have emerged with Game Theory as their stepping stone. Simple yet important concept such as Nash Equilibrium, Payoffs will be discussed to give the reader and idea they can improve and customize upon according to their scenario. One strong recommended reading is a great introductory book on the topic, Game Theory: A

Game Theory, the analysis of the concepts used in social reasoning when dealing with situations of conflict (Rubinstein, 1991), is one of many methods used to provide rational strategies towards the making of decisions. Game theory provides logical and mathematical models towards decision-making which are applied to real-life situations such as