Customer Reviews

War Games: The Secret World of the Creators, Players, and Policy Makers Rehearsing World War III Today

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This is a good overview of the history of modern war gaming, including the politics, egos and military culture generated by this practice. However, it is disturbing to learn that it is not customary for American political Big Shots to engage in these crisis simulation games. When informed of this in the 80s, West Germans generals were shocked. What's the point of all this modeling if the real world people who may have to implement crisis actions never participate? The air of unreality associated with efforts to mathematically replicate an army's actual behavior and performance in war is almost amusing. The author's writing style, while not particularly dynamic, does allow readers to glimpse the mindset of some gamers, who seem to be sensitive to accusations that they're playing Avalon games (essentially they are.) This book was published in 1987, so it's themes of USA-USSR global and tactical war seems a bit like fiction, but the ideas and inherent flaws are the same. What I would love to see in an updated edition is whether the Iraq war was war gamed.

A bit dated now, but a good overview of the early days of the US simulation and conflict modeling industry and its development as computers began to take over. This could not have been an easy book to research but Allen does an excellent job and the notes and sources sections are detailed and serve as excellent tools for further learning. Allen points out that, while the humans had difficulty pushing the nuclear button in the earliest games, it seemed to become easier as the decisions in the simulations were being made by computers.