States of play: evaluating the renaissance in US military wargaming

Hirst, Aggie

doi:10.1080/23337486.2019.1707497

Cited by 9 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…These models are not standard in matrix games but introduced with the pedagogical objective of increasing the cadets' meta-awareness of implicit biases and assumptions in decision-making processes (Rønnfeldt, 2020). Overall, the learning goals align with typical arguments currently being put forward for the relevance of wargames for military education: critical thinking, reflection, and decision-making skills are seen as a way of training for and managing the complexity and uncertainties of 21st century security environments (Hirst, 2020;Curry, 2020b;Harrigan & Kirschenbaum, 2016). This matrix game is an argument-based game in which players, or groups of players, embody a character/role in the game scenario, and in each round propose an action with arguments for why this will succeed.…”

Section: Background: Game Monusco Learning Goals and Matrix Game Formatmentioning

confidence: 58%

“…Wargames have a long history as a military training method (for an overview, see, for example, Smith, 2010;Curry, 2020b) and are currently experiencing a resurgence in popularity as a military pedagogical tool (Curry, 2020a;Hirst, 2020). 1 The distillation of the dynamics of conflict into a simplified and playable yet realistic model make wargames convenient for bridging the difficult gap between experiential knowledge and theory (Sabin, 2015;Bartels, 2016;Fjaellingsdal & Klöckner, 2020;Curry, 2020b;Sabin, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Learning (Better) From Stories: Wargames, Narratives, and Rhetoric in Military Education

Hagen

2022

Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies

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Wargames have a long history as a military training method. A typical explanatory framework for their efficacy is their narrative aspect. There remain, however, questions concerning the ways narrative functions in context, and how it can be analysed to assess the educational value of wargaming in Professional Military Education programmes (PME). The article offers a case study of how officer cadets employed narrative elements during a matrix game which aims to test their knowledge of peacekeeping operations and to develop their critical thinking and argumentation skills, focusing on how these narrative elements functioned rhetorically. Using positioning analysis buttressed by insights from argumentation studies and expanded with approaches from literary narratology, this study uncovers the extensive and subtle ways players employed narrative persuasion to further their goals, and the extent to which argumentation in matrix games relies on narrative. The study suggests that this aspect of matrix game argumentation has been understudied, and that attention to narrative can have a range of benefits: it helps shed light on how players shift between participatory frameworks or narrative levels in the game, how meaning is negotiated, and how professional reflection and identities are initiated. Demonstrating how subjectivity and experience can be employed as data in military sciences, the study also offers educators an interpretive framework for analysing game interaction. It further suggests that the matrix game's educational value in PME can be extended by incorporating awareness of the rhetorical functions of narrative into the post-game reflection; knowledge of how stories are told could enhance student learning.

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Section: Background: Game Monusco Learning Goals and Matrix Game Formatmentioning

confidence: 58%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning (Better) From Stories: Wargames, Narratives, and Rhetoric in Military Education

Hagen

2022

Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies

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“…The study of recreational games in critical security studies and international relations has proliferated over the last decade (Berents and Keogh, 2018;Brown, 2017;Ciută, 2016;Jarvis and Robinson, 2021;Robinson, 2015Robinson, , 2016Salter, 2011). More recently, scholars have begun to examine the military applications of gaming (Hirst, 2020(Hirst, , 2021(Hirst, , 2022Öberg, 2020;Robinson, 2019), an area of study that had broadly lain dormant since the publication of the second edition of James Der Derian's book Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network in 2009. Outside the field, important work has similarly traced the relationship between the military and entertainment spheres (Lenoir, 2000;Stahl, 2010).…”

Section: Pharmacotic Wargamesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Capitalizing on the skillset of the young gamers, commanders and instructors have begun to appreciate the power of gaming as a communication, pedagogical, and therapeutic tool. Officially beginning with the Department of Defense–wide memos issued by then US Secretary of Defense Hagel (2014) and Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work (2015), this wargaming renaissance played a significant part in the Third Offset Strategy (3OS) that focused on closing the gap with near-peer adversaries across technological and human domain/dimension capabilities (Hirst, 2020). Gaming has thus become a key element of service members’ experience from the beginning to the end of their careers (Hirst, 2022).…”

Section: Pharmacotic Wargamesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pharmacotic wargames: Military play as ritual sacrifice

Hirst,

George

2024

Security Dialogue

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This article argues that the analytic of pharmacotic war can render visible a logic of ritual sacrifice in the US military’s use of games to attract, produce, and recycle war-fighters. Identifying the ancient framing of the pharmakon – a substance or process that functions as at once drug, poison, and cure – it shows how games function paradoxically to draw in, produce, and rehabilitate military life. The article makes this case by tracing the roots of Kenneth MacLeish’s ‘churn of mobilization and demobilization’ beyond the military’s instrumental calculations of institutional self-perpetuation, showing that this churn functions according to a logic of pharmacotic sacrifice that is not incidental to, but rather built into, their routine operation. It argues that (ex-)war-fighters function as a contemporary equivalent of the ancient pharmakoi, scapegoated and sacrificed figures into whom a polis poured its guilt and dysfunction in an act of ritual purification. Though rejecting any linear genealogy or transhistorical Western way of war, it identifies powerful resonances between the ancient pharmakoi and (ex-)war-fighters today. Drawing on extensive interviews with US military gamers and veterans, the article sheds light on the growing influence of games on the attraction, production, and recycling of (ex-)war-fighters in the 21st century. At the same time, by tracing the purificatory expulsion of war-fighters, it contributes a novel theorization of the pharmacotic logic of the US military’s war-making apparatus.

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“…Yet data about decision-making, especially involving rare events and the elite decisionmakers associated with security and foreign policymaking, can be difficult to obtain. In recent years, there has been a revival of interest in wargaming as a way to both generate and obtain these behavioral insights (Bartels, 2020; Colbert et al, 2017; Dorn et al, 2020; Hirst, 2020; Jensen and Valeriano, 2019; Pauly, 2018; Reddie et al, 2018; Schneider, 2017). 1 Long the territory of policymakers, IR scholars are beginning to leverage archival data from historical wargames and have also fielded their own games to test theories on decision-making and conflict dynamics.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Wargaming for International Relations research

Lin-Greenberg

Pauly

Schneider

2021

European Journal of International Relations

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Political scientists are increasingly integrating wargames into their research. Either by fielding original games or by leveraging archival wargame materials, researchers can study rare events or topics where evidence is difficult to observe. However, scholars have little guidance on how to apply this novel methodological approach to political science research. This article evaluates how political scientists can use wargames as a method of scholarly inquiry and sets out to establish a research agenda for wargaming in International Relations. We first differentiate wargames from other methodological approaches and highlight their ecological validity. We then chart out how researchers can build and run their own games or draw from archival wargames for theory development and testing. In doing so, we explain how researchers can navigate issues of recruitment, bias, validity, and generalizability when using wargames for research, and identify ways to evaluate the potential benefits and pitfalls of wargames as a tool of inquiry. We argue that wargames offer unique opportunities for political scientists to study decision-making processes both in and beyond the International Relations subfield.

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States of play: evaluating the renaissance in US military wargaming

Cited by 9 publications

References 31 publications

Learning (Better) From Stories: Wargames, Narratives, and Rhetoric in Military Education

Learning (Better) From Stories: Wargames, Narratives, and Rhetoric in Military Education

Pharmacotic wargames: Military play as ritual sacrifice

Wargaming for International Relations research

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