Global War Game

This report deals with practical issues and major themes identified during the second Global War Game (GWG) Series. Its focus is on various general topics, specific force employment issues, and discrete game events. Because of the interplay of themes and issues among several theaters, some repetition is necessary to provide a more complete discussion. The Global War Game was conceived in 1978 to build a structure to explore warfighting issues in a larger perspective than the tactical view prevalent in the Navy at that time. These games constitute a research project that ranges from policy through strategy to operations (campaigns). It was and is an opportunity to investigate ideas and concepts that may vary from current policy or strategic "wisdom." With the understanding that game simulations were but an approximation of the behavior of governments in global war, the scenarios should be considered as a context for issues to be explored. The first game (1979) had a distinctly naval focus, but the series quickly evolved, by obvious necessity, into a much broader military and political forum. Throughout the first series, GWG was utilized as a test bed or crucible for an emerging maritime strategy. A brief summary of these initial games and an overview of some of the major issues examined in them is included in this volume for those who do not have access to Global War Game: The First Five Years (Newport Paper Number 4.) While the first series involved several different geographical areas to confront current, real-world events or to test a specific concept, the second series picked up where the first terminated, with a major war between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact (WP). It was a natural extension of the first series, designed for the purpose of exploring issues that would arise in waging protracted warfare in the decade of the 1990s. Effort has been made throughout this paper to preserve the terminology that was in use when the games were conducted and to relate faithfully actual strategies pursued and campaigns implemented as well as the rationale behind them. Thus, while some of the terminology may seem archaic and some of the operations ill-advised, it is necessary to look at these efforts as learning experience that reflects how our thinking about global war, our concepts, and our practices matured during the series.