Can War Games Prevent Actual War?
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Geopolitics are always changing, but the world has felt particularly unstable lately with ongoing wars and expanding conflicts. And this global instability has increased demand for tabletop war games. These are simulations used to predict how the U.S. might fare in a war with, say, China over Taiwan.

Even people with classified information are taking part in these low-tech exercises. NPR's Emily Feng takes us along as she watches one such war game. This war game involves three roundtables and on each a large map of Taiwan and China. There

There's little blue and red pieces representing submarines, warplanes and ships, and more than a dozen men all here to play a game, imagining what could happen if China blockaded Taiwan. If they shoot at us, we shoot back. The think tank running this game series is the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. They want to figure out how to counter China if it blocked all food, fuel and arms from getting to Taiwan.

Webb Ewell is one of the players. This thing can devolve into a global economic war rather than a military shooting war if the Chinese choose to blockade route. Ewell directs a wargaming division at the Center for Naval Analyses, which advises the U.S. Navy.

Today, he's playing Team Taiwan, and he's playing alongside Raymond Dubois, another player for Team USA today. I'm having a lot of fun. Dubois is a former acting Undersecretary of the Army, and at one point, he was the most senior administrator at Pentagon headquarters. The thing about what we've done over the last three years...

is that these are unclassified games. Then he mouths to me, no, they're not. Those of us who are playing come from a background where we're very aware of what's not only on the planning policy side...

but on the system side. Meaning the players often have access to classified information and are aware of the latest weaponry the U.S. commands. Last year, Du Bois played another version of today's game simulating a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

In that series, he played Team China. And we won. Today's game is messier. The players, including Team China, soon discover how difficult it is to de-escalate from even a blockade. Japan gets roped in. The U.S. attempts to airlift in supplies and cut off trade routes. And it all gets bloody. What?

Taiwan does the surface to air. We do the air to surface. And things in real life also get heated. I'm getting no information. I don't even know where the maritime militia is. That's Yule from the Center for Naval Analysis. He says the arguing shows the game is working. You've got to get at the human aspects of these problems, in particular risk preferences and things like that. So the whole point is to get people's heads into a situation thinking about how they would actually act if they were in it. A few hours in, Taiwan offers a support

prize truce to China. They offer to have their president resign, to kick out American troops, and to open their coveted semiconductor industry to China. Here's Eric Hagenbotham, a research scientist at MIT's Security Studies program and a coordinator today for Team China. So no compliance with U.S. export controls. In return... What they're asking for is a commitment to not invade the island.

Ever? Ever. Mark Kianzian from the hosting think tank helped design today's game. Out of the four times it's been played so far, two ended in vicious retaliation.

He says today's ending was more peaceful. I would say less violent outcomes because we still ended up with a couple dozen ships sunk and aircraft shot down and thousands of casualties, but not as much as in some of the previous games where the casualties were much higher. China's hyped up military drills and military harassment around Taiwan. Military analysts warn China could be practicing for a real blockade.

So, Dubois argues wargaming is more needed than ever. The more that people actually really talk to each other about, what do you think the other side will do? If we do this, what are they going to do? If they do this, what are we going to do? I think that's healthy, because I think ultimately it prevents a war. As in, wargames don't just help us test out new defense strategies. They also act as a deterrent, because the games show just how deadly war actually is.

Emily Fang, NPR News, Washington. That's the state of the world from NPR. Thanks for listening. The Middle East is dominating this week's headlines. On Consider This, we dive into what's at stake in a war between Israel and Iran. Plus, we take a look back at the Iraq War and lessons from 2003. Listen now to the Consider This podcast on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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