tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/war-games-36679/articlesWar games – The Conversation2023-03-17T01:09:24Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2020302023-03-17T01:09:24Z2023-03-17T01:09:24ZThe Black Sea drone incident highlights the loose rules around avoiding ‘accidental’ war<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515964/original/file-20230316-1736-koiqqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C276%2C3718%2C1808&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images-US European Command/handout</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/16/us-releases-footage-russian-jet-crashing-into-american-drone-over-black-sea">extraordinary footage</a> of a Russian jet intercepting a US drone over the Black Sea earlier this week demonstrates just how potentially disastrous such encounters outside actual war zones can be.</p>
<p>Released by the Pentagon, the drone’s own video captures the Russian aircraft apparently spraying the drone with fuel, then deliberately colliding with it. The incident matches similar aggressive displays by the Russian air force in the region, the Pentagon claimed.</p>
<p>But beyond such acts of brinkmanship connected to the war in Ukraine, the Black Sea confrontation highlights just how easily these military interactions might lead to war breaking out “accidentally”.</p>
<p>We are seeing these close encounters of the military, naval and aviation kind increasingly often, too. In 2021, it was reported Russian aircraft and two coastguard ships <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57583363">shadowed a British warship</a> near Crimea.</p>
<p>And last year, Australia’s <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-jet-intercept-australia-plane-dumped-debris-into-engine-government-2022-6">defence ministry said</a> a Chinese fighter jet harassed one of its military aircraft in international airspace over the South China Sea. The risk of these dangerous “games” triggering something more serious is clear – but there are few rules or regulations preventing it.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515966/original/file-20230316-28-8uyskz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515966/original/file-20230316-28-8uyskz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515966/original/file-20230316-28-8uyskz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515966/original/file-20230316-28-8uyskz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515966/original/file-20230316-28-8uyskz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515966/original/file-20230316-28-8uyskz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515966/original/file-20230316-28-8uyskz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Pentagon video: drone’s eye view of the Russian jet releasing fuel as it approaches.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images-US European Command/handout</span></span>
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<h2>Reckless behaviour</h2>
<p>All militaries must comply with basic international law on questions of safety, but there are large exemptions and separate arrangements that fill the gaps.</p>
<p>Historically, the US and Soviet Union <a href="https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/isn/4791.htm">led the way</a> in creating some rules to control incidents on and over the high seas during the Cold War. The basic rule was that both sides should avoid risky manoeuvres and “remain well clear to avoid risk of collision”.</p>
<p>To reduce the risk of collisions, craft in close proximity should be able to communicate and, where possible, be visible. They should not simulate attacks on each other. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-recap-fears-of-escalation-after-us-drone-downed-over-the-black-sea-201990">Ukraine recap: fears of escalation after US drone downed over the Black Sea</a>
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<p>Later, Russia copied this agreement with 11 NATO countries, and an Indo-Pacific version – the <a href="https://news.usni.org/2014/06/17/document-conduct-unplanned-encounters-sea">Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea</a> – was added in 2014. While primarily between the US and China, at least half a dozen other countries have promised to abide by it.</p>
<p>Supplementary rules for <a href="https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/US-CHINA_AIR_ENCOUNTERS_ANNEX_SEP_2015.pdf">air-to-air military encounters</a> followed. These usefully added that “military aircrew should refrain from the use of uncivil language or unfriendly physical gestures”. Other rules emphasised professional conduct, safe speeds and avoiding reckless behaviour, “aerobatics and simulated attacks” or the “discharge of rockets, weapons, or other objects”.</p>
<p>The US and Russia added a more specific agreement for <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-russia-usa-idUSKCN0SE2HK20151020">Air Safety in Syria</a> during the time they were operating in very close proximity, and when <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/08/world/middleeast/syria-russia-us-air-war.html">close calls</a> in the air were reported.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515969/original/file-20230316-2171-ieroj6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515969/original/file-20230316-2171-ieroj6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515969/original/file-20230316-2171-ieroj6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515969/original/file-20230316-2171-ieroj6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515969/original/file-20230316-2171-ieroj6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515969/original/file-20230316-2171-ieroj6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515969/original/file-20230316-2171-ieroj6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">No consent or warning: file footage of a North Korean missile launch is broadcast in South Korea, June 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span>
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<p>But these are all “soft” rules. They’re not treaty obligations with compliance mechanisms, and are only voluntarily adopted by some countries.</p>
<p>Furthermore, there are no precise definitions of “safe” speeds or distances. New technologies – such as drones and other interception techniques – add another level of unregulated complexity.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/downing-of-us-drone-in-russian-jet-encounter-prompts-counterclaims-of-violations-in-the-sky-an-international-law-expert-explores-the-arguments-201857">Downing of US drone in Russian jet encounter prompts counterclaims of violations in the sky – an international law expert explores the arguments</a>
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<h2>Missile tests</h2>
<p>Few things are as frightening as missiles travelling <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58784306">towards or over another country</a> without consent or warning. The original <a href="https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/isn/4692.htm">Soviet-era rule</a> involved mutual notification of planned missile launches. But this only ever applied to intercontinental or submarine-launched missiles, not short-range weapons or missile defence systems.</p>
<p>Aside from some <a href="https://www.state.gov/hague-code-of-conduct-against-ballistic-missile-proliferation-hcoc/#:%7E:text=The%20HCOC%20is%20aimed%20at,and%20limited%20confidence%2Dbuilding%20measures.">voluntary UN codes</a>, the only other binding missile notification agreement is between <a href="http://english.www.gov.cn/statecouncil/weifenghe/202012/15/content_WS5fd8c6dec6d0f72576941f3b.html">Russia and China</a>. China and the US do not directly share launch notification information, nor do the other nuclear powers.</p>
<p>Some, like North Korea and Iran, even violate the missile prohibitions directly placed on them by the UN Security Council.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515967/original/file-20230316-1736-dt5jsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515967/original/file-20230316-1736-dt5jsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515967/original/file-20230316-1736-dt5jsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515967/original/file-20230316-1736-dt5jsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515967/original/file-20230316-1736-dt5jsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515967/original/file-20230316-1736-dt5jsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515967/original/file-20230316-1736-dt5jsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Birth of the hotline: President John F. Kennedy with military chiefs during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span>
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<h2>War games and hotlines</h2>
<p>Militaries need to practise. But this becomes risky when pretend can look very like an actual attack – especially when fear and paranoia are added to the mix.</p>
<p>North Korea is a modern example of this, but there have been incidents in the past of large-scale wargames <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-1983-military-drill-that-nearly-sparked-nuclear-war-with-the-soviets-180979980/">almost sparking a nuclear exchange</a>. In 1983, for example, misinterpreted military intelligence led to the US going to DEFCON 1 – the highest of the nuclear threat categories – during a tense period of the Cold War.</p>
<p>There were agreements about the <a href="https://nuke.fas.org/control/start1/text/relatagre.htm">notification of major strategic exercises</a> between the US and Soviet Union, but beyond advance warning, even these failed to set out what best practice actually looks like (such as allowing observers or not allowing an exercise to look identical to a full-blown attack). </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-this-new-cold-war-must-end-before-the-world-faces-armageddon-200376">Ukraine: this new cold war must end before the world faces Armageddon</a>
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<p>More importantly, there is no international law governing such questions – perhaps most critically, how leaders should be able to communicate directly, quickly and continuously.</p>
<p>A “hotline” was <a href="https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/isn/4785.htm">first agreed</a> in 1963 after the Cuban Missile Crisis. While a direct link doesn’t guarantee the phone will necessarily be answered or the subsequent conversation sincere, it does at least offer a channel to avoid confusion and de-escalate quickly.</p>
<p>A second-tier hotline allowing commanders on the ground to communicate directly is also useful, such as the one now linking Russian and American militaries to <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/defense/596789-us-russia-set-up-military-communication-line-to-prevent-accidental-clash/">avoid an accidental clash</a> over Ukraine.</p>
<p>But such dual systems are the exception, not the rule. Nor are hotlines particularly stable – the one <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58784306">between North and South Korea</a>, for example, has been cut and restored numerous times. And they are not mandated by international law – emblematic of a wider situation where the risks of getting it wrong are very real indeed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202030/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Gillespie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Dangerous war games, such as the Russian interception of a US drone over the Black Sea, have the potential to trigger real conflict. But there is no international law governing such behaviour.Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of WaikatoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1984302023-02-01T12:36:54Z2023-02-01T12:36:54ZSouth Africa and Russia: President Cyril Ramaphosa’s foreign policy explained<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507115/original/file-20230130-6879-11w5zo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cyril Ramaphosa, President of South Africa. </span> </figcaption></figure><p>January was a busy diplomatic month for South Africa. The country <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/russias-lavrov-visits-ally-south-africa-amid-western-rivalry-2023-01-23/">hosted</a> Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and US treasury secretary <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/us-treasury-secretary-yellen-meet-president-ramaphosa-south-africa-trip-2023-01-24/">Janet Yellen</a>. Josep Borrell, vice-president of the European Commission, was also <a href="https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/media-advisory-high-representative-josep-borrell-travels-south-africa-and-botswana_en">in town</a>.</p>
<p>The biggest talking point, though, has been Lavrov’s visit, which met with criticism in the west. Similarly, the South African-Russian-Chinese joint maritime exercise, <a href="https://www.defenceweb.co.za/sea/sea-sea/sandf-on-ex-mosi/">Operation Mosi</a>, scheduled for February off the South African Indian Ocean coast. Critics have slammed South Africa’s hosting of the war games in the light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-orders-military-operations-ukraine-demands-kyiv-forces-surrender-2022-02-24/">in February 2022</a>. </p>
<p>South Africa has been reticent to criticise Russia openly for invading Ukraine. The country <a href="https://theconversation.com/african-countries-showed-disunity-in-un-votes-on-russia-south-africas-role-was-pivotal-180799">abstained during each vote</a> criticising Russia at the United Nations. Some have read this as tacit support of Russia.</p>
<p>The visits and South Africa’s position on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have put the spotlight on the country’s foreign policy.</p>
<p>I follow, study and have published extensively on South Africa’s foreign policy. In a recent publication, <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/south-african-foreign-policy-review-volume-4">Ramaphosa and a New Dawn for South African Foreign Policy</a>, my co-editors and I point out that South Africa’s voting pattern in these instances should be read in the context of its <a href="https://pmg.org.za/briefing/28596/">declared foreign policy</a> under the stewardship of President Cyril Ramaphosa. </p>
<p>Like his predecessors, Ramaphosa’s policy encompasses at least five principles:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>pan-Africanism </p></li>
<li><p>South-South solidarity </p></li>
<li><p>non-alignment </p></li>
<li><p>independence </p></li>
<li><p>progressive internationalism. The governing ANC <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/anc-npc-discussion-document-on-foreign-policy">defines</a> this as</p></li>
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<p>an approach to global relations anchored in the pursuit of global solidarity, social justice, common development and human security, etc. </p>
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<h2>Evolution of South Africa’s foreign policy</h2>
<p>In the era of Nelson Mandela, the first president of democratic South Africa, the country, once a pariah state, returned to the international community. Under him, the country saw a significant increase in its <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.10520/EJC88112">bilateral and multilateral relations</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/history-may-explain-south-africas-refusal-to-condemn-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-178657">History may explain South Africa's refusal to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine</a>
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<p>It enjoyed global goodwill and Mandela was recognised for his <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-russian-visit-says-about-south-africas-commitment-to-human-rights-in-the-world-188993">outspoken views</a> on international human rights abuses. His involvement in conflict resolution efforts in, for example, <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2013/07/22/mandela-indonesia-and-liberation-timor-leste.html">Timor Leste</a> (East Timor) and Africa also received <a href="https://www.un.org/en/exhibits/page/building-legacy-nelson-mandela">international acclaim</a>. The UN declared 18 July <a href="https://www.un.org/en/events/mandeladay/">Nelson Mandela International Day</a>. </p>
<p>Mandela’s tenure was followed by the aspirational era of President Thabo Mbeki’s <a href="https://journals.co.za/journal/aa.afren">African renaissance</a>. Mbeki’s foreign policy aspired to reposition Africa as a global force as well as to <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330614094_Mbeki_on_African_Renaissance_a_vehicle_for_Africa_development">rekindle</a> pan-Africanism and African unity.</p>
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<span class="caption">Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, (left), with South African foreign minister, Naledi Pandor, in Pretoria on 23 January 23.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Phill Magakoe/AFP via Getty Images</span></span>
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<p>His successor <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26976626#metadata_info_tab_contents">Jacob Zuma’s era</a> could be described as indigenisation of South Africa’s foreign policy, driven by the values of <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-archbishop-tutus-ubuntu-credo-teaches-the-world-about-justice-and-harmony-84730">ubuntu</a> (humanness). In giving effect to ubuntu – equality, peace and cooperation – as a foreign policy principle, South Africa gravitated towards the global south, rather than just Africa. Yet the continent remained a focus of South Africa’s foreign policy.</p>
<h2>Ramaphosa’s foreign policy</h2>
<p>South Africa’s <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/south-african-foreign-policy-review-volume-4">foreign policy</a> under President Cyril Ramaphosa has shifted to a strong emphasis on economic diplomacy. This is joined by a commitment to <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/National-Policy-Conference-2017-International-Relations.pdf">“progressive internationalism”</a>.</p>
<p>Progressive internationalism formed the basis for South Africa’s vocal position on UN reform, global equity and ending the dominance of the global north. The global north could view this as challenging to its hegemonic power and dominance in the UN. </p>
<p>This has challenged South Africa’s declared foreign policy principles. It maintains strong economic and political relations with the global north. But it also maintains strong relations with the global south (including Cuba, Venezuela and Russia). For this, it has been <a href="https://gga.org/south-africas-foreign-policy-decisions-ambiguous-or-misunderstood/#:%7E:text=South%20Africa%20has%20been%20criticised,means%20deployment%20is%20more%20rapid">criticised</a> by the west.</p>
<p>South Africa’s quest for global status in line with its declared foreign policy principles continues under Ramaphosa. It has adopted several roles to achieve this: balancer, spoiler and good international citizenship. </p>
<p>As a balancer, it has attempted to rationalise its relations with both the north and south in accordance with the principles of non-alignment and independence. As a spoiler, it has failed to condemn, for example, China for its poor human rights record, claiming it is an internal Chinese matter. This could be read as an expression of its south-south solidarity with China. Its role as a good international citizen has made it an approachable international actor. It has promoted the rule of international law and upholding international norms. This speaks to its progressive internationalism principle.</p>
<h2>At home and abroad</h2>
<p>The Ramaphosa era set off in 2018 with less emphasis on foreign policy. But by the time the COVID pandemic broke out <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30211-7/fulltext">in December 2019</a>, his foreign policy really came to the fore as he led both the South African and African pandemic responses.</p>
<p>South Africa has been attempting to capitalise on the geostrategic changes in the balance of forces on the world stage. Blatant realpolitik has returned. During the past year, for example, the country has conducted joint multilateral military exercises with several states, most notably with France (<a href="https://www.defenceweb.co.za/featured/ex-oxide-2022-will-be-west-coast-based/">Operation Oxide</a>), a permanent member of the UN Security Council.</p>
<p>South Africa’s soft diplomacy has <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2020-09-22-jerusalemadancechallenge-south-africas-display-of-soft-power-amid-covid-19/">made some inroads</a> at UN agencies and through its cultural diplomacy. But this has not necessarily resulted in material gains – such as more leadership in multilateral organisations.</p>
<p>Moreover, its gravitation towards strong non-western military powers such as Russia, China and India has met with western disappointment. Its foreign policy position of solidarity, independence, non-alignment and <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/remarks-president-cyril-ramaphosa-south-african-heads-mission-conference-7-apr-2022-0000">progressive internationalism</a> has not translated into material foreign policy benefits either, such as increased foreign direct investment as envisaged by Ramaphosa’s <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/remarks-president-cyril-ramaphosa-south-african-heads-mission-conference-7-apr-2022-0000">economic diplomacy</a>.</p>
<p>Trade with states such as China, Turkey, Russia and India has <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2022/06/20/cyril-ramaphosa-brics-partnership-has-great-value-for-south-africa">increased</a>. But it is not enough as the country requires massive investment to update infrastructure and start new development projects in line with Ramaphosa’s vision of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-new-dawn-should-be-built-on-evidence-based-policy-118129">“new dawn” </a> for South Africa.</p>
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<img alt="A man and a woman smile for the camera while sitting. Miniature South African and America flags are on the table." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507110/original/file-20230130-14-90njg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507110/original/file-20230130-14-90njg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507110/original/file-20230130-14-90njg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507110/original/file-20230130-14-90njg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507110/original/file-20230130-14-90njg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507110/original/file-20230130-14-90njg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507110/original/file-20230130-14-90njg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">South African finance minister, Enoch Godongwana, meets his American counterpart, Janet Yellen, in Pretoria on 26 January.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS</span></span>
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<p>The post-pandemic international political economy has also adversely affected the country. This has been amplified by the <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bloomberg/news/2022-08-05-donor-fatigue-could-mean-starvation-for-900000-in-west-africa/">economic impact of the Ukraine crisis </a>. Massive Western financial commitments are <a href="https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2022/12/10/council-adopts-18-billion-assistance-to-ukraine/#:%7E:text=The%20Council%20reached%20agreement%20on,its%20possible%20adoption%20next%20week">directed towards Ukraine</a>. This leaves South Africa in a vulnerable economic position as it <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.CD?locations=ZA">needs foreign development assistance</a>.</p>
<h2>Looking forward</h2>
<p>As our South African Foreign Policy Review volume 4 has shown, Ramaphosa’s “new dawn” <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/south-african-foreign-policy-review-volume-4">has been deferred</a>. This as his party and government jump from crisis to crisis. This kind of instability often seeps into the diplomatic landscape. Investors are aware of the investment risks posed by <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/">state capture</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-power-crisis-five-essential-reads-187111">power</a> crises.</p>
<p>Globally, the age of soft power has somewhat waned since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. South Africa needs to be proactive – not only reactive – to emerging international geostrategic conditions. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/russia-in-africa-can-it-offer-an-alternative-to-the-us-and-china-117764">Russia in Africa: can it offer an alternative to the US and China?</a>
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<p>Besides its current leadership of the <a href="https://infobrics.org/">BRICS bloc</a> (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), the country needs to be bolder. It should, for example, campaign for a fourth term <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13533312.2022.2144250?journalCode=finp20">on the UN Security Council</a>, and for leadership in multilateral organisations. In these, it can actively achieve its foreign policy objectives in support of the country’s national interests.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198430/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jo-Ansie van Wyk has taught at the Diplomatic Academy of the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation. </span></em></p>South Africa’s foreign policy under Ramaphosa emphasises economic diplomacy and ‘progressive internationalism’, which promotes global equity and ending the dominance of the global north.Jo-Ansie van Wyk, Professor in International Politics, University of South AfricaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1261042019-10-31T04:12:20Z2019-10-31T04:12:20ZRobots can outwit us on the virtual battlefield, so let’s not put them in charge of the real thing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299622/original/file-20191031-187934-1axfejq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C5%2C3339%2C2082&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">DeepMind's artificial intelligence-powered AlphaStar (green) repels an attack in the virtual world of StarCraft II.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">DeepMind</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Artificial intelligence developer DeepMind has just <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1724-z">announced</a> its latest milestone: a bot called AlphaStar that plays the popular real-time strategy game StarCraft II at Grandmaster level. </p>
<p>This isn’t the first time a bot has outplayed humans in a strategy war game. In 1981, a program called <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0004370283800058">Eurisko</a>, developed by artificial intelligence (AI) pioneer Doug Lenat, won the US championship of Traveller, a highly complex strategy war game in which players design a fleet of 100 ships. Eurisko was consequently made an honorary Admiral in the Traveller navy. </p>
<p>The following year, the tournament rules were overhauled in an attempt to thwart computers. But Eurisko triumphed for a second successive year. With officials threatening to abolish the tournament if a computer won again, Lenat retired his program.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/if-machines-can-beat-us-at-games-does-it-make-them-more-intelligent-than-us-60555">If machines can beat us at games, does it make them more intelligent than us?</a>
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<p>DeepMind’s PR department would have you believe that StarCraft “has emerged by consensus as the next grand challenge (in computer games)” and “has been a grand challenge for AI researchers for over 15 years”. </p>
<p>In the most recent StarCraft computer game tournament, only four entries came from academic or industrial research labs. The nine other bots involved were written by lone individuals outside the mainstream of AI research. </p>
<p>In fact, the 42 authors of DeepMind’s paper, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1724-z">published today in Nature</a>, greatly outnumber the rest of the world building bots for StarCraft. Without wishing to take anything away from an impressive feat of collaborative engineering, if you throw enough resources at a problem, success is all but assured.</p>
<p>Unlike recent successes with computer chess and <a href="https://theconversation.com/googles-new-go-playing-ai-learns-fast-and-even-thrashed-its-former-self-85979">Go</a>, AlphaStar didn’t learn to outwit humans simply by playing against itself. Rather, it learned by imitating the best bits from nearly a million games played by top-ranked human players. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/googles-new-go-playing-ai-learns-fast-and-even-thrashed-its-former-self-85979">Google’s new Go-playing AI learns fast, and even thrashed its former self</a>
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<p>Without this input, AlphaStar was beaten convincingly by 19 out of 20 human players on the StarCraft game server. AlphaStar also played anonymously on that server so that humans couldn’t exploit any weaknesses that might have been uncovered in earlier games. </p>
<p>AlphaStar did beat Grzegorz “MaNa” Komincz, one of the world’s top professional StarCraft players, <a href="https://deepmind.com/blog/article/alphastar-mastering-real-time-strategy-game-starcraft-ii">in December last year</a>. But this was a version of AlphaStar with much faster reflexes than any human, and unlimited vision of the playing board (unlike human players who can only see a portion of it at any one time). This was hardly a level playing field.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, StarCraft does have some features that makes AlphaStar an impressive advance, if not truly a breakthrough. Unlike chess or Go, players in StarCraft have imperfect information about the state of play, and the set of possible actions you can make at any point is much larger. And StarCraft unfolds in real time and requires long-term planning.</p>
<h2>Robot wars</h2>
<p>This raises the question of whether, in the future, we will see robots not just fighting wars but planning them too. Actually, we already have both. </p>
<p>Despite the many warnings raised by AI researchers such as myself – as well as by founders of AI and robotics companies, Nobel Peace Laureates, and church leaders – fully autonomous weapons, also known as “killer robots”, have been developed and will soon be used. </p>
<p>In 2020, Turkey will <a href="http://ehamedya.com/turkey-to-start-operating-kamikaze-drones-near-syrian-border-in-2020_28626.html">deploy kamikaze drones</a> on its border with Syria. These drones will use computer vision to identify, track and kill people without human intervention.</p>
<p>This is a terrible development. Computers do not have the moral capability to decide who lives or dies. They have neither empathy nor compassion. “Killer robots” will change the very nature of conflict for the worse.</p>
<p>As for “robot generals”, computers have been helping generals plan war for decades.</p>
<p>In Desert Storm, during the Gulf War of the early 1990s, AI scheduling tools were used to plan the buildup of forces in the Middle East prior to conflict. A US general told me shortly afterwards that the amount of money saved by doing this was equivalent to everything that had been spent on AI research until then. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299623/original/file-20191031-187934-fadi53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299623/original/file-20191031-187934-fadi53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299623/original/file-20191031-187934-fadi53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299623/original/file-20191031-187934-fadi53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299623/original/file-20191031-187934-fadi53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299623/original/file-20191031-187934-fadi53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299623/original/file-20191031-187934-fadi53.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">US fighters flying over Kuwait in 1991. Positioning military hardware is complex and costly.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">US Air Force</span></span>
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<p>Computers have also been used extensively by generals to war-game potential strategies. But just as we wouldn’t entrust all battlefield decisions to a single soldier, handing over the full responsibilities of a general to a computer would be a step too far. </p>
<p>Machines cannot be held accountable for their decisions. Only humans can be. This is a cornerstone of international humanitarian law. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, to cut through the fog of war and deal with the vast amount of information flowing back from the front, generals will increasingly rely on computer support in their decision-making. </p>
<p>If this results in fewer civilian deaths, less friendly fire, and more respect for international humanitarian law, we should welcome such computer assistance. But the buck needs to stop with humans, not machines.</p>
<p>Here’s a final question to ponder. If tech companies like Google really don’t want us to worry about computers taking over, why are they building bots to win virtual wars rather than concentrating on, say, more peaceful e-sports? With all due respect to sports fans, the stakes would be much lower.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/robots-will-be-fifa-champions-if-they-keep-their-eyes-on-the-ball-11238">Robots will be FIFA champions – if they keep their eyes on the ball</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126104/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Toby Walsh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>StarCraft II is the latest complex game to be conquered by artificial intelligence. But if robots now reign supreme at virtual war, where does that leave us when it comes to real conflict?Toby Walsh, Professor of AI at UNSW, Research Group Leader, Data61Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1136312019-04-19T10:46:16Z2019-04-19T10:46:16ZWar games shed light on real-world strategies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268469/original/file-20190409-2931-2n3fgx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1024%2C768&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A board for the Prussian wargame of 'Kriegsspiel.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kriegsspiel_1824.jpg">Matthew Kirschenbaum/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Want to try your hand at negotiating during a crisis? Think you have a plan that could get the U.S. out of Afghanistan? Confident you could keep a nation secure when multi-party international diplomacy is more important than warfare? Strategy-based board games let you test your political and military acumen right at your kitchen table – while also helping you appreciate how decision-makers are limited by the choices of others.</p>
<p>For centuries, military trainers have used board games as tools to help recruits and leaders alike understand fundamental principles of warfare. In the early 19th century, for instance, the Prussian military required its officers to play a board game called “<a href="https://militaryhistorynow.com/2018/05/01/kriegsspiel-the-19th-century-war-game-that-changed-history/">Kriegsspiel</a>.” The high command realized that while individual officers might understand the principles of combat, they might not know how to apply them when facing an actual opponent. And in stepping back and analyzing what happened after a game was over, they might see what factors really mattered, and how the players’ choices influenced each other. </p>
<p>In the 1920s and 1930s, the U.S. Navy used war games to design military plans against potential adversaries. By the time World War II arrived, U.S. Admiral Chester Nimitz observed, the conflict “<a href="https://news.usni.org/2013/09/24/brief-history-naval-wargames">had been reenacted in the game rooms</a> at the Naval War College by so many people and in so many different ways, that nothing happened during the war that was a surprise … absolutely nothing except the kamikaze tactics toward the end of the war.”</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268468/original/file-20190409-2927-4byb6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268468/original/file-20190409-2927-4byb6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268468/original/file-20190409-2927-4byb6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268468/original/file-20190409-2927-4byb6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268468/original/file-20190409-2927-4byb6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268468/original/file-20190409-2927-4byb6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268468/original/file-20190409-2927-4byb6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268468/original/file-20190409-2927-4byb6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Military officials and scholars use war games regularly to evaluate strategies and tactics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.doncio.navy.mil/CHIPS/ArticleDetails.aspx?ID=7350">U.S. Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Shawn J. Stewart</a></span>
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<p>War gaming continues to offer opportunities for scholars to <a href="http://doi.org/10.1126/science.aav2135">better understand security dynamics</a>. A growing cadre of experts have turned to war games to show how a <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1253.html">Russian invasion of the Baltics</a> might play out or how a <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2019/01/game-of-drones-what-experimental-wargames-reveal-about-drones-and-escalation/">shift to robotic warfare</a> might lead to fewer military crises. In <a href="https://www.american.edu/sis/faculty/banks.cfm">my own research</a>, I have used war games to better understand and prepare for what are sometimes called “low-frequency, multi-factor” events – security scenarios that have lots of variables but have rarely, or never, happened, such as a full-scale cyber-conflict between the U.S. and China. </p>
<p>War games are useful intellectual aids because they force players to <a href="http://doi.org/10.1126/science.aav2135">make decisions under pressure</a>. While people may intellectually understand a problem, gaming forces them to think even harder. As the Nobel Prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling put it, “<a href="https://www.prgs.edu/research/methods-centers/gaming.html">one thing a person cannot do</a>, no matter how rigorous his analysis or heroic his imagination, is to draw up a list of things that would never occur to him.” By facing off against opponents over a well-designed war game, people can come to see how <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/03/the-cia-uses-board-games-to-train-officers-and-i-got-to-play-them/">political and military structures interact</a> and appreciate the trade-offs and complications that come with <a href="https://slideplayer.com/slide/9739077/">making decisions in a competitive environment</a>.</p>
<p>With this in mind, I present some of my favorite war games. They not only are gripping to play but also offer players a window into some core elements of modern security politics. They are rated for players, time and complexity (where “Monopoly” would score a 1 out of 5). I have no financial or professional relationships with any of the game publishers listed; these games are just personal favorites.</p>
<h2>Asymmetric warfare – ‘Washington’s War’</h2>
<p><strong>2 players, 2-3 hours, complexity: 2.5</strong></p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268470/original/file-20190409-2914-191y58h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268470/original/file-20190409-2914-191y58h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268470/original/file-20190409-2914-191y58h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268470/original/file-20190409-2914-191y58h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268470/original/file-20190409-2914-191y58h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268470/original/file-20190409-2914-191y58h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268470/original/file-20190409-2914-191y58h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268470/original/file-20190409-2914-191y58h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">‘Washington’s War.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gmtgames.com/p-735-washingtons-war-3rd-printing.aspx">GMT Games</a></span>
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<p>Wars between big global powers and smaller nations don’t always go the way planners expect. For instance, the Trump administration has decided to take a <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/24/the-day-after-the-iranian-nuclear-deal/">very hard line with Iran</a>, and there is an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/02/07/trump-is-moving-us-closer-war-with-iran/">increased possibility of war</a>. But assuming the U.S. goliath would automatically win underestimates the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1162/016228801753212868">advantages that invaded states have</a>. In “<a href="https://www.gmtgames.com/p-735-washingtons-war-3rd-printing.aspx">Washington’s War</a>,” the British player has a large army and purse, and the ability to bludgeon almost any colonist on the board – if only he could engage them. The problem is that the colonial player can move across the board like a fish through water and needs to do less to win. “<a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/38996/washingtons-war">Washington’s War</a>” shows that warfare is fundamentally about domestic and international political support, and that given the right leadership and hit-and-run tactics, smaller players can run out the clock and prevail.</p>
<h2>Nuclear brinkmanship – ‘13 Days’</h2>
<p><strong>2 players, 45 minutes, complexity: 2</strong></p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268472/original/file-20190409-2901-14a33ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268472/original/file-20190409-2901-14a33ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268472/original/file-20190409-2901-14a33ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268472/original/file-20190409-2901-14a33ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268472/original/file-20190409-2901-14a33ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268472/original/file-20190409-2901-14a33ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=654&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268472/original/file-20190409-2901-14a33ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=654&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268472/original/file-20190409-2901-14a33ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=654&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘13 Days.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://jollyrogergames.com/game/13-days/">Jolly Roger Games</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Continued U.S. <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-u-s-and-north-korea-on-the-brink-a-timeline/">concerns about North Korean</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/20/world/europe/russia-missile-threat.html">Russian threats</a> mean that the terror of nuclear annihilation sadly remains present. But this threat is also puzzling. Considering the <a href="http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/history/cold-war/strategy/strategy-mutual-assured-destruction.htm">suicidal damage of a full exchange</a>, how can anyone make <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300143379/arms-and-influence">believable threats with nuclear weapons</a>? “<a href="http://jollyrogergames.com/game/13-days/">13 Days</a>” offers a <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/177590/13-days-cuban-missile-crisis">window into this process</a>. Playing the role of either the USSR or the U.S. during the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cuban-missile-crisis">Cuban Missile Crisis</a>, players attempt to take control of the political, military and media situation and emerge with the most prestige at the end of three rounds. But beware! Overplay your hand in any of the three areas without holding back, and you may go over the brink into full nuclear war.</p>
<h2>Modern infantry combat – ‘Combat Commander: Europe’</h2>
<p><strong>1-2 players, 2-4 hours, complexity: 4</strong></p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268474/original/file-20190409-2931-12edk4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268474/original/file-20190409-2931-12edk4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268474/original/file-20190409-2931-12edk4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268474/original/file-20190409-2931-12edk4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268474/original/file-20190409-2931-12edk4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268474/original/file-20190409-2931-12edk4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268474/original/file-20190409-2931-12edk4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268474/original/file-20190409-2931-12edk4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Combat Commander: Europe.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gmtgames.com/p-703-combat-commander-europe-4th-printing.aspx">GMT Games</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although set during World War II, this game gives the player an insight into the chaos of tactical combat. Taking the role of U.S., Soviet or German commanders leading units of about 120 soldiers, players draw cards and play them to maneuver and engage their squads of men. Although the presentation is a little dry, “<a href="https://www.gmtgames.com/p-703-combat-commander-europe-4th-printing.aspx">Combat Commander: Europe</a>” has many <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/7764.html">features of modern warfare</a>: suppression fire, mortars, snipers, machine gun nests, smoke, artillery call-ins and command confusion. The <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/21050/combat-commander-europe">rules are intricate</a> but clear and logical, while hands of cards help to simulate the strengths and weaknesses of each side. For instance, the tactically adaptive German player can adjust on the fly by discarding her whole hand, while the aggressive Soviet player receives more ambush cards. Ultimately, the game forces players to work with the resources they have, not the ones they wish for.</p>
<h2>Counterinsurgency operations – ‘A Distant Plain’</h2>
<p><strong>1-4 players, 4 hours, complexity: 5</strong></p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268476/original/file-20190409-2931-3urd2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268476/original/file-20190409-2931-3urd2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268476/original/file-20190409-2931-3urd2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268476/original/file-20190409-2931-3urd2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268476/original/file-20190409-2931-3urd2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268476/original/file-20190409-2931-3urd2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268476/original/file-20190409-2931-3urd2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268476/original/file-20190409-2931-3urd2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘A Distant Plain.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gmtgames.com/p-656-a-distant-plain-3rd-printing.aspx">GMT Games</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite recent talks with the Taliban, there appears no easy way out for forces participating in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/26/world/asia/afghanistan-taliban-peace-deal.html">the U.S.’s longest war</a>. Why? Designed by a former CIA operative, “<a href="https://www.gmtgames.com/p-656-a-distant-plain-3rd-printing.aspx">A Distant Plain</a>” offers an answer. Players take on the roles of the Kabul regime, warlords, the Taliban or U.S.-led NATO forces, each able to engage in different tasks and each subject to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26469109">different</a> – but <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/counterinsurgency-9780199737499?cc=us&lang=en&">interlinked – pressures</a>. Should the local government agree to allow the warlords to grow opium so long as they agree not to ambush travelers on the roads? Should the Taliban try to move deep into the interior or hover at the Pakistani border? And how can the coalition player meet her competing goals of stabilizing the local regime while also drawing down troops? Undoubtedly a <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/127518/distant-plain">complex game</a> and not recommended for beginners, this game makes it clear that “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/magazine/29wwln_safire.html">whack-a-mole</a>” is not a meaningful strategy.</p>
<h2>Emerging bipolarity – ‘Twilight Struggle’</h2>
<p><strong>2 players, 4 hours, complexity: 3.5</strong></p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268478/original/file-20190409-2927-127wduc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268478/original/file-20190409-2927-127wduc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268478/original/file-20190409-2927-127wduc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268478/original/file-20190409-2927-127wduc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268478/original/file-20190409-2927-127wduc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268478/original/file-20190409-2927-127wduc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268478/original/file-20190409-2927-127wduc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268478/original/file-20190409-2927-127wduc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Twilight Struggle.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gmtgames.com/p-588-twilight-struggle-deluxe-edition-2016-reprint.aspx">GMT Games</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many war gamers consider this <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/the-cold-war-themed-board-game-that-feels-more-relevant-than-ever/2018/07/16/45be9be4-7a4e-11e8-93cc-6d3beccdd7a3_story.html">the very best game</a> ever made. The U.S. and USSR square off over 40 years of history and attempt to dominate as much of the rest of the world as possible while avoiding coming to blows directly. Drawing from three decks of cards over the course of play – early, middle and late <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war">Cold War</a> – players receive a history lesson replete with <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/12/23/the-cia-says-russia-hacked-the-u-s-election-here-are-6-things-to-learn-from-cold-war-attempts-to-change-regimes/">coups</a>, communist revolutions, <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/marshall-plan-1">Marshall Plan aid</a>, proxy wars, oil crises, space races and the all-important <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-jan-04-mn-60348-story.html">China card</a> (literally, <a href="https://twilightstrategy.com/2012/10/31/the-china-card/">a card</a>). Rising tensions on the “DEFCON” track make it harder and harder to make big changes to the <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12333/twilight-struggle">game board</a> without also triggering nuclear war. Perhaps, in 80 years, “<a href="https://www.gmtgames.com/p-588-twilight-struggle-deluxe-edition-2016-reprint.aspx">Twilight Struggle</a>” will be republished with the U.S. and China as the antagonists.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113631/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Banks does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>War games let you test your political and military acumen right at your kitchen table – while also helping you appreciate how decision-makers are limited by the choices of others.David Banks, Professorial Lecturer of International Politics, American University School of International ServiceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1095402019-01-22T21:27:38Z2019-01-22T21:27:38ZMore than just ‘war games,’ military exercises require transparency<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254219/original/file-20190116-163289-145kr24.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Military action during the NATO-led military exercise in Trondheim, Norway on Oct. 30, 2018. The NATO exercises included some 3,000 troops, 20 ships, several tanks and about 50 aircraft from various nations.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Gorm Kallestad/NTB scanpix via AP)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In October 2018, NATO commenced what’s known as <a href="https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/157833.htm">Trident Juncture 18</a>, its largest exercise since the Cold War. Russia responded with missile testing amid <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46178940">accusations it had jammed the GPS of NATO forces in northern Finland</a>. </p>
<p>Attempting direct engagement with exercising forces is a dangerous provocation, and the mere suggestion that it occurred reveals the potential dangers of such “war games.”</p>
<p>Despite the risk that military exercises can heighten tensions, they are critical to enhancing NATO’s unity and military capability. But if exercises aren’t aimed at causing conflict, it’s essential that NATO is transparent and has open channels of communication with Russia, regardless of Russian aggravation.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254221/original/file-20190116-163274-2kfj5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254221/original/file-20190116-163274-2kfj5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254221/original/file-20190116-163274-2kfj5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254221/original/file-20190116-163274-2kfj5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254221/original/file-20190116-163274-2kfj5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254221/original/file-20190116-163274-2kfj5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254221/original/file-20190116-163274-2kfj5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, left, and military leaders pose together to take a selfie during a visit to the NATO-led military exercise in Trondheim, Norway, in October 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Gorm Kallestad/NTB scanpix via AP)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The potential for exercises to exacerbate tensions was recognized during the Cold War, and from the mid-1970s, a regime of <a href="https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/files/RR/SIPRIRR18.pdf%20%22%22.">“Confidence and Security Building Measures” (CSBMs) was put in place</a>. The intention was to prevent military exercises from leading to conflict. </p>
<p>The CSBMs required members of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (later the <a href="https://www.osce.org/">Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe</a>) to provide prior notification of an exercise, and facilitate observation by other members if exercises were bigger than expected.</p>
<p>Over the long term, it was hoped that repeated communication through CSBMs would result in the development of trust between antagonists. More immediately, the measures were intended to ensure that an exercise did not result in a pre-emptive attack from an external party who mistook it for a genuine assault. </p>
<h2>Military exercises on the rise</h2>
<p>Although the frequency and scope of exercises dropped markedly when the Cold War ended, <a href="https://www.europeanleadershipnetwork.org/policy-brief/preparing-for-the-worst-are-russian-and-nato-military-exercises-making-war-in-europe-more-likely/">they are rising again</a>, and there is a pressing need to ensure that participants reaffirm their commitment to the spirit of the CSBMs if they want to avoid an escalation to conflict.</p>
<p>Despite NATO’s seemingly strong adherence to the CSBM regime, Russia’s recent engagement has been questioned. Notably, Russia has been accused of <a href="https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_147976.htm">understating the size of its Zapad 17 exercise</a> and, by doing so, avoiding full formal observation.</p>
<p>But this must not lead to NATO abdicating its adherence to a policy of openness and transparency. Instead, NATO must remain steadfast in its commitment to the agreed CSBMs. Otherwise, it risks a rapid acceleration in the breakdown of relations with Russia.</p>
<p>Russia’s alleged exploitation of the loopholes within the CSBMs is problematic not because it represents an overt security threat, but because it raises questions about their political intentions. </p>
<p>But if NATO were to similarly attempt to stretch the spirit of the CSBMs, it would signal that such behaviour is acceptable.</p>
<p>Consequently, NATO must keep up its pressure on Russia by remaining consistent in its approach to the existing agreements. If Russia also demonstrates transparency, the potential for escalation is reduced. If it does not, it serves as a reminder of NATO’s military significance.</p>
<h2>Using military exercises as a deterrent</h2>
<p>This is not to suggest that NATO should not use exercises as a deterrent, and a senior military commander within NATO acknowledged that <a href="https://nationalpost.com/news/world/canadian-led-nato-exercise-with-more-than-36000-soldiers-a-dramatic-show-of-force-aimed-at-putin">deterrence was one objective of NATO’s 2015 Trident Juncture 15 exercise</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254439/original/file-20190118-100292-t47hht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254439/original/file-20190118-100292-t47hht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254439/original/file-20190118-100292-t47hht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254439/original/file-20190118-100292-t47hht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254439/original/file-20190118-100292-t47hht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254439/original/file-20190118-100292-t47hht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254439/original/file-20190118-100292-t47hht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">British Royal Marines and Portuguese fuzileiros exit amphibious boats during the NATO Trident Juncture 15 exercise south of Lisbon in November 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Steven Governo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Engaging in a multilateral exercise is a demonstration of resolve and commitment to continued military engagement. As such, NATO’s exercises can be a powerful signal that the alliance is willing and able to respond to an attack against it.</p>
<p>For such a demonstration to be effective, however, the exercise must be visible. Inviting observation, therefore, can be beneficial on multiple levels. </p>
<p>When provided with appropriate access, observers are given a demonstration of the capability of the exercising force without being able to gather enough information to gain a tactical advantage if conflict occurs. </p>
<h2>Secrecy is dangerous</h2>
<p>It’s when exercises occur under a veil of secrecy, and therefore suggest that there’s an attempt to hide something, that the possibility of conflict is most likely to rise.</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/dylanpwhite/status/1057231421461446657">Russia’s missile tests close to NATO forces</a> in response to the Trident Juncture 18 exercise demonstrated Russian displeasure, but it was nothing more than contained posturing. And such posturing is distinctly preferable to a pre-emptive strike.</p>
<p>The exercises in which NATO and Russian forces are currently engaging, however, are more than simple training. The way in which they are designed and conducted are signals of intent and capability. </p>
<p>However, if conflict is to be avoided, they must not be used as provocation for provocation’s sake. </p>
<p>The line between deterrence and provocation is narrow, and NATO must remain committed to openness and transparency, while maintaining pressure on Russia to follow suit.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109540/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Hughes is affiliated with the Centre for International and Defence Policy at Queen's University. </span></em></p>Military exercises are more than just ‘war games’ – they’re aimed at signalling military capability and intent. But NATO must honour its commitment to transparency, and pressure Russia to do the same.Thomas Hughes, PhD Candidate, Queen's University, OntarioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/843462017-09-29T12:14:34Z2017-09-29T12:14:34ZWhat would it take to trigger war between Russia and NATO? Just a spark<p>This September in Europe was a tense month of military posturing and preparations. Sweden recently <a href="http://www.government.se/articles/2017/09/swedish-armed-forces-exercise-aurora-17-will-increase-military-capability/">began</a> a three-week war game, its largest since the Cold War. Even as it did so, across the Baltic Sea, Russian and Belarusian forces concluded the <a href="http://eng.mil.ru/en/mission/practice/more.htm?id=12140115@egNews">Zapad</a> military exercises – which NATO officials <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-zapad-2017-military-exercise-belarus-preparation-for-a-big-war-nato/">called</a> “serious preparations for a big war”.</p>
<p>Major war games such as these bring a risk of real conflict. But neither the Russian <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-nato-wargames/russia-seeks-to-reassure-over-war-games-denies-invasion-plans-idUSKCN1B90ZS">invasion</a> that Russia’s neighbours fear, nor the NATO incursion implicit in the Zapad <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/09/14/what-you-need-to-know-about-russias-huge-military-exercise/">scenario</a>, are likely events. Our research on conflict escalation suggests that the US, Russia and Europe should worry about a far riskier contingency: what if a separate crisis emerged at the same time that large numbers of troops and equipment are already deployed in the region?</p>
<p>A crisis could be precipitated from at least three different types of events: unattributable attacks, unilateral actions by anxious allies, and military accidents. Such dangerous situations could quickly produce unintended consequences that slip Russia and the West into armed confrontation.</p>
<p>Major cyber-attacks, such as the one that <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/39655415">shut down</a> Estonia’s government in 2007, could be particularly dangerous during an ongoing military exercise. Russia’s use of so-called <a href="https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/testimonies/CT400/CT468/RAND_CT468.pdf">hybrid warfare</a> in Ukraine have fuelled NATO fears that a Russian military attack might be presaged by offensive actions against information systems, while Russian military planners now <a href="http://www.ndc.nato.int/news/news.php?icode=995">assume</a> “information wars” will be part of the initial phase of every conflict.</p>
<p>NATO members <a href="http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_145415.htm">agreed</a> in 2016 that a cyber-attack could trigger Article 5, the alliance’s mutual defence clause, just as a conventional military assault would. But attributing cyber-attacks is very difficult; just consider last year’s <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-greece-cenbank-cyber/anonymous-attack-greek-central-bank-warns-others-idUSKCN0XV0RR">crowd-sourced denial-of-service attack</a> against Greece’s national bank by the hacktivist collective Anonymous, which could not be chalked up to a single formally organised perpetrator. </p>
<p>It is even harder for governments to provide credible evidence that exposes offenders without compromising intelligence sources and methods. Still, allies fearing a military fait accompli like the annexation of Crimea might feel compelled to act quickly and decisively despite limited information.</p>
<h2>On the edge</h2>
<p>NATO takes decisions based on the unanimity of its 29 members, meaning it might be slow to respond. Nevertheless, an anxious NATO ally – assured or even emboldened by Article 5 guarantees – might take unilateral actions that it considered purely defensive. </p>
<p>Any such actions could turn a tense situation into a shooting war and drag the alliance into a conflict it would rather avoid. This seemed all too close to happening in 2015 when Turkey <a href="https://theconversation.com/could-downing-of-russian-jet-over-turkey-really-lead-to-a-wider-war-51207">downed a Russian jet</a> that crossed into its airspace from Syria. Fortunately, the two countries were ultimately able to <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkey-and-russias-relationship-is-strong-enough-to-survive-ambassadors-murder-70681">patch up their relationship</a>.</p>
<p>Even if military force is not used deliberately, the probability of accidents rises in proportion to the number of manoeuvring troops and military hardware. As with previous war games, Zapad 2017 involved both Russian and Belarusian forces not only conducting military manoeuvres, but perhaps even simulating attacks against European states. </p>
<p>These sorts of situations make close calls quite probable. Russian jets have been known to <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/16/us/russia-us-ship-fly-by/index.html">fly dangerously close to US ships</a> – and whenever military assets come into close contact, there is a risk of unintended collisions. Information on such an event could be limited and ambivalent, at least initially, but either the US and Russia might feel compelled to initiate a rapid military response.</p>
<p>A major and unattributable cyber-attack, a risky action by an anxious ally or a serious military accident could each open a path to crisis and conflict between NATO and Russia, in which neither side is the clear aggressor but both have compelling reasons to use force. The players are in place – all that’s needed is a misfired starting gun.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84346/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ivanka Barzashka receives funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York for research on disruptive technologies and nuclear risk, which includes the design of a wargame held at the UK Defence Academy in May 2017.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wyn Bowen receives funding from the MacArthur Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.</span></em></p>It might not happen today or tomorrow, but the risk of a major European conflict is very much there.Ivanka Barzashka, Research Associate, Centre for Science and Security Studies, King's College LondonWyn Bowen, Professor of Non-Proliferation & International Security, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/838522017-09-21T12:30:21Z2017-09-21T12:30:21ZIf Russia gets its war games wrong, Europe could be in big trouble<p>Tensions are running high in a region with a history of paranoia and mistrust. The rhetoric being used raises the concern of a military escalation. And now there are massive war games that will only add to the combustible situation. No, this isn’t the Korean peninsula: it’s the northeastern corner of Europe.</p>
<p>Flying deep under the radar amid the ongoing crisis in Asia, the Russian “war games” known as <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/9/19/16330004/zapad-2017-photos-russia-belarus-putin-cold-war">Zapad 2017</a> have been largely overlooked. Conducted across Belarus, which borders several EU states, the exercises have by some estimates involved <a href="https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21726089-instead-biggest-exercises-europe-cold-war-will-be-conducted-amid-secrecy-and">more than 100,000 troops</a>, raising hackles among NATO military planners and Eastern European governments who fear that military exercises could be cover for an offensive deployment of Russian power.</p>
<p>This worry about a Russian threat has only risen in recent years. Russia used war games as cover for the beginning of the war with Georgia in 2008, and did so again during its annexation of Crimea, from Ukraine, in 2014. During these engagements, it was the subversive nature of Russia’s non-traditional military actions that unnerved many EU states. The use of irregular military forces and special forces operating without insignia to infiltrate and annex parts of Ukraine has led both the Baltic states and Poland to bolster their own military activities.</p>
<p>In response, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/us-special-forces-russia-border-lithuania-latvia-estonia-putin-scared-to-death-a7509736.html">NATO has stationed troops</a> and military hardware in the Baltic States as a message to Russia. The abiding principle of NATO is that an attack on one is an attack on all – and recent history seems to support the need for this deterrent. </p>
<p>The hysteria surrounding the potential sudden appearance of so-called <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26532154">“little green men”</a> on the borders of the EU was compounded by Russia’s refusal to allow NATO military personnel to observe Zapad in action. Claiming that Zapad 2017 involves fewer than 13,000 soldiers, Russia argues it is not in breach of the OSCE’s Vienna convention, which stipulates military observers must be present in the event of war games conducted on a larger scale.</p>
<p>But these concerns about an intentional Russian military attack are misguided. When it comes to NATO member states, Vladimir Putin’s attempts to reestablish the Soviet sphere of influence will not be conducted by force. Putin is a realist; he understands that even after a decade of modernisation, the Russian military is clearly outgunned by NATO. </p>
<p>No, the real risk of conflict comes from secrecy and miscalculation by those on the other side. Again, history can provide us with a warning that many in eastern EU and NATO member states seem to have forgotten. </p>
<h2>To the edge and back</h2>
<p>In 1983, at the height of the Cold War, the world came terrifyingly close to nuclear conflict when NATO members engaged in their own large-scale war games. Codenamed <a href="http://www.iiss.org/en/publications/survival/sections/2016-5e13/survival--global-politics-and-strategy-december-2016-january-2017-4557/58-6-02-barrass-5ba9">Able Archer</a>, the exercise was designed to simulate a response to a Soviet invasion of Eastern Europe. </p>
<p>In the build-up to Able Archer, the US and its NATO allies had been probing the Soviet Union’s airspace and testing their military’s response. Combined with the imminent arrival of the American Pershing II nuclear missiles in Europe, this had left Soviet leaders increasingly paranoid about NATO’s intentions.</p>
<p>When Able Archer began, the sheer size and scale of the operation led Soviet leaders to believe it was a ruse designed to cover a preemptive strike by NATO against the Soviet Union. In response, Soviet leaders prepared to strike first. Barring the Cuban Missile Crisis, this incident is seen by many as the closest the world has come to nuclear war.</p>
<p>Today, Russia has been probing NATO members’ airspace and possibly making <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/27/sweden-wreckage-russian-submarine">submarine incursions</a> into EU countries’ territorial waters. Combined with the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the scale of Zapad 2017, this has brought eastern NATO members to a level of paranoia not seen since Cold War days.</p>
<p>The real risk is not a Russian attack, but a misunderstanding of Russian intentions. The war games have already shown a risk of human error, with the Russians <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/19/russian-helicopter-accidentally-fires-rocket-onlookers-zapad-war-games">accidentally firing live rounds on their own military observers</a>. A misdirected armoured column or accidental missile launch could be misinterpreted by tense military forces in Poland, Lithuania or Latvia as the start of an attack, resulting in a military response by a NATO member. That would put Europe in a whole new ball game. </p>
<p>Paranoia, secrecy and fear are all catalysts for crisis. But <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/18/russia-zapad-military-drill-enters-final-phase">Vladimir Putin’s real intentions</a> are clear enough. Just like the actions of NATO and Able Archer in 1983, the Zapad war games were not designed to provoke a conflict, they were designed to send a message: the Russian bear is back, and the West should not forget that it has claws.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83852/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gregory Stiles receives funding from the ESRC.</span></em></p>A round of ominous war games might not be cover for military action, but it could raise tensions to an explosive level.Gregory Stiles, PhD Researcher in Politics, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/715592017-03-09T19:23:44Z2017-03-09T19:23:44ZFriday essay: video games, military culture and new narratives of war<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158843/original/image-20170301-29924-112szhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Detail of a production still from Baden Pailthorpe 's MQ-9 Reaper III (Skyquest) 2015
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When I was 19, in the autumn of 1918, I was private Harvey Nottoway, serving in Kitchener’s Army on the Western Front in France. In my final, desperate moments, squatting beneath a wall in the mud, I reloaded my rifle, aimed down the sights and fired until the “ping” of the bolt told me I was out of ammunition and the knife at my throat told me I was out of time. </p>
<p>In 1918, I was also machine gunner Dean Stevenson, ordered to defend the ruins of a village church, before it was engulfed in flame. I was Paul McClaren, a Lewis gunner in a Mark IV tank, when it was annihilated by a German field gun. I was Wyeth Wright and then Needham Jackson. Through their eyes, I was all of them and none. </p>
<p>In the opening sequence of Electronic Arts’ blockbuster game <a href="https://www.battlefield.com/en-au">Battlefield I</a> – released in 2016 to coincide with the centenary of the First World War – I am told I am not expected to survive. It feels real, but in spite of the bullets and the mud, Battlefield I is not war, merely a convincing replica. Everyone is a hero, nobody really dies. My Lee-Enfield rifle bucks and jams and spits fire, but the game does not simulate the tap of hard tack on billy tin, or the taste of the weevils inside. </p>
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<p>Yet the relationship of video games to history, politics and modern military cultures is no mere child’s play. Battlefield I is making a point, brutal and violent and pornographic though it is. That point is that in video games, enactment is akin to remembrance. </p>
<p>These links are deeply embedded in contemporary visual culture and their operations can be observed and exploited. Take, for example, a slick 2014 advertisement for Royal Australian Air Force pilots, viewed over 430,000 times on the RAAF’s official YouTube channel, as well as broadcast widely on TV. </p>
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<p>In it, graphic overlays mimicking the heads-up display (HUD) of a fighter jet augment scenes of young Australian gamers playing Xbox and chess, and pursuing each other in go-karts like dogfighting aces. The tagline? Take your skills up a notch. </p>
<p>There is a young but sophisticated history of the use of video games as military recruitment and training tools, and much has been written about the success of pioneering games such as America’s Army and <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/in-the-army-now-the-making-of-full-spectrum-warrior-140">Full Spectrum Warrior</a> as both PR platforms and commercial enterprises. Literacy and education historian Corey Mead’s book <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17415011-war-play">War Play: Video Games and the Future of Armed Conflict</a> traces the methods by which modern soldiers are trained through interactive media.</p>
<p>Others have analysed the relationship between <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/games-of-empire">video games, capitalism and militarism</a> and the role of <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Virtuous-War-Mapping-the-Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment-Network/Der-Derian/p/book/9780415772396">entertainment media</a> in disseminating military doctrines and creating a latent acceptance of military might in popular culture.</p>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ADF website</span></span>
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<p>The Australian Defence Force <a href="http://www.defence.gov.au/Games/">website</a> alone lists an impressive array of games with titles such as Rise & Command, Army Artillery, Strike Fighter and Secure the Deck, inviting gamers to “battle online against your opponents in this Army Artillery warfare game”. </p>
<p>“Could you airdrop people from a swinging rope attached to your Seahawk helicopter?” it asks. Another, less exciting, option: “Learn how to tie Navy knots, the proper way”. Clearly, there is utility in gamifying life in the military. </p>
<p>Let’s put aside for the moment the awkward ethics of recruiting through the enculturation of play-based violence. While the relationship of war gaming to violent behaviour is still yet to be fully understood, we know that games and war orbit each other in a relatively predictable cosmology, each supporting the other.</p>
<p>But what happens when the system turns inward, when the physics of this cosmology becomes the subject of critical enquiry by both artists taking games as their medium, and gamers themselves forging narratives through play? How can the network of war and games be gamed?</p>
<h2>Playing serious games</h2>
<p>This network is the subject of the late German filmic essayist <a href="http://www.harunfarocki.de/installations/2000s/2009/serious-games-iii-immersion.html">Harun Farocki’s series Serious Games</a> (2009-10): four video works that explore the relationship between game simulation, combat training and traumatic reconciliation. Farocki’s works are often built from the stuff of surveillance – tapes, archival materials – and real-life footage of soldiers being trained using video game technology. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.moma.org/collection/works/143767?locale=en">Serious Games</a> was mostly filmed at Marine Corps Base 29 Palms in California in 2009. Between them, the first three works unveil a narrative that describes the trajectory of a soldier’s tour of duty. The footage can barely be described as aesthetic; the images are documentary, raw, somehow staid in spite of the spectacle of their subject. Farocki describes his material as “operative images” not intended for individual consumption out of context. </p>
<p>In Serious Games I: Watson is Down, on one side of the screen we see the crew of a Humvee at laptops as they play out a training mission in digitised Afghanistan. On the other side, we see their actions in the virtual world. An instructor simulates insurgents and IEDs and, at one point, shoots one of the men dead. They are being taught how to respond in real life. </p>
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<p>Serious Games II: Three Dead documents a real-life military exercise undertaken at Base 29 where 300 extras played the roles of Afghani and Iraqi locals and insurgents in a town manufactured for the purpose from shipping containers. Farocki himself remarked on the blurring of visual languages between real life and virtual simulation. </p>
<p>In Serious Games III: Immersion, filmed at Fort Louis, Seattle, an army veteran describes combat while ensconced in a virtual reality headset. It is in fact a meta-memory, a simulation of actual events he experienced during his service in which he relives – with what appears to be genuine trauma – the death of his comrade. The denouement reveals the exercise to be a demonstration of new software that has been developed for the army to treat PTSD in returned soldiers. </p>
<p>Interrogating the links between gaming, simulation and reality in this way is instructive. In training, these soldiers are literally able to view themselves in the third person as digital avatars. They are disembodied and reconstituted in a world that has confusing boundaries between action and consequence. </p>
<p>Just as in Battlefield I on Playstation 4, what does it mean for these soldiers to be killed in a virtual Afghanistan on a laptop in California? How does this condition their responses to real combat and its aftermath? </p>
<p>This has civic implications too: what happens to democratic governance when wartime sacrifice – the greatest burden of the body politic – becomes disassociated from the sacrifice of the individual body? </p>
<h2>The economies of war</h2>
<p>In some sense, this disassociation is a necessary part of the prosecution of modern wars. War consumes. It consumes raw materials, people, nations. It facilitates industries – technological, logistical, financial, medical, governmental – that maintain the consumption of goods and services. </p>
<p>There is a vast economy to war that hides behind the edifice of its moral and political imperatives. And there is also a positive social feedback loop that we are often loath to admit. It is hard to envisage the Apollo missions, nuclear medicine, radar, microwave ovens or the internet without war. </p>
<p>War consumes and it is also greedily consumed by us in newspapers, on film, TV and online. It is streamed in real time to handheld devices, archived on servers, mapped, simulated and replayed. All this must necessarily happen at some distance. </p>
<p>War games form a link in this chain, but they can also expose its loops. In his recent work <a href="http://www.badenpailthorpe.com/mq-9-3.html">MQ-9 Reaper III (Skyquest)</a> (2015) Australian new media artist <a href="http://www.andrewyip.org/?p=1809">Baden Pailthorpe</a> references the language of video games to visualise the complicit economies of war. </p>
<p>Over a mountainscape that evokes the Hindu Kush of Afghanistan as much as it does the backdrop of Marine Corps Air Station Miramar made famous in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092099/">Top Gun</a>, hovers a microcosm of capitalist activity. A surreal structure formed from a resource extractor, drone control room and luxury apartment with wifi access is inhabited by an ambiguous figure who may be a drone pilot.</p>
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<span class="caption">Full-size production still from Baden Pailthorpe ‘s MQ-9 Reaper III (Skyquest) 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney</span></span>
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<p>HUD graphics intermittently flash across the screen – they might be the visualisations seen by an F-35 pilot, but occasionally they are filled with consumer products – a pram, a spa, recliner chairs – so they may alternatively be the home shopping network. </p>
<p>Giant, floating billboards twirl across the sky. Sometimes soldiers appear, sometimes scientists. At one point an F-14 Tomcat flashes through the screen, a nod to the <a href="https://segaretro.org/After_Burner">1987 Sega Master System game Afterburner</a>. If the imagery is baffling, dense and difficult to unpack it is because the network of production between games, industry and war is less a single chain link than a dense chain mail. </p>
<p>In video games, players mold the narrative, reforming the system to suit their purposes. But this is sometimes difficult in a creative realm with a visual culture that is often self-referential and heavily influenced by the conventions governing representations of the military in history and pop culture. </p>
<h2>Enshrining military politics</h2>
<p>For example, Campbell Simpson, a writer for the gaming website Kotaku, reported that <a href="https://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/10/battlefield-1-is-not-a-game/">“Battlefield I isn’t a game, it’s a history lesson”</a>. I think about this as I return to one of Battlefield I’s narrative vignettes, which takes place on the shores of Gallipoli. In it I play the role of Frederick Bishop, a message runner who lands amongst the carnage of <a href="http://www.anzac.govt.nz/gallipoliguide/capehelles.html">Cape Helles</a> from the doomed collier SS River Clyde. </p>
<p>Surely, I wonder, this role is a homage to Mark Lee and Mel Gibson’s characters in Peter Weir’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082432/">Gallipoli</a>.</p>
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<p>I have asked the same question before about Mark Lee’s Archy Hamilton, the golden-haired runner machine-gunned in no man’s land at the Nek and the strikingly-similarly blonde interlocutor murdered in artist <a href="http://www.andrewyip.org/?p=1826">George Lambert’s</a> 1924 masterpiece of war art <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/ART07965/">The charge of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade at the Nek, 7 August 1915.</a></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160082/original/image-20170308-4078-12pw58b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160082/original/image-20170308-4078-12pw58b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160082/original/image-20170308-4078-12pw58b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160082/original/image-20170308-4078-12pw58b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160082/original/image-20170308-4078-12pw58b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160082/original/image-20170308-4078-12pw58b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160082/original/image-20170308-4078-12pw58b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160082/original/image-20170308-4078-12pw58b.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George Lambert’s The charge of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade at the Nek, 7 August 1915.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memorial</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I’m reminded that the River Clyde, that modern day Trojan horse from which I leap as Bishop, disgorged its victims at the Hellespont, mere miles from the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Troy-ancient-city-Turkey">city of Troy</a>. It was also the site of another great naval landing – <a href="http://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/structural/floating-bridge1.htm">the thousand boat bridge built by Xerxes</a> in the 5th century BC to invade Europe. Further up the peninsula, Australian troops landed at Anzac Cove under the watchful gaze of <a href="http://www.gallipoli.gov.au/anzac-battlefield-sites-walk/site-1-north-beach.php">a promontory they named “The Sphinx”</a> after its resemblance to the Egyptian wonder. </p>
<p>Kotaku had it a little wrong. Battlefield I is not a history so much as a scaffold built from the cultural myths to which we have been conditioned in order to find purpose in the act of war. Perhaps more than any game before it, we are made to understand the horror of total war - the tone is not triumphant, though it is certainly valedictory.</p>
<p>Simpson writes that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the player doesn’t win. There’s no medal ceremony and kiss from a pretty girl for the player in the missions, most of which end with friends and comrades dead and dismembered on the battlefield… in a very self-aware, un-game-like nod to the fact that wars don’t play out like the movies say they do.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is true. Battlefield I doesn’t glorify war per se, but it reinforces nationalist narratives with zeal – the endgame sequence informs us that the Turkish heroes of Gallipoli went on to found the Republic, and that “tales of heroism and mateship were pivotal in forging [Australian national identity]”. </p>
<p>As an experiment, as Bishop, I attempt to exact vengeance on the inept British officer who has ordered me to my certain death, only to discover that in the virtual world, treason to the Anzac legacy is as impossible to commit as it is to contemplate in the real. </p>
<p>This, in short, is how military politics are enshrined in games. </p>
<p>Still, the great history lesson to be learnt from video games is that narratives are constantly in the processes of being written. New generations of artists and players find ways to reconcile themselves to the meanings of war and new ways of questioning the messages propagated by the system.</p>
<p>Homer played out the great narratives of <a href="http://www.ancient-literature.com/greece_homer_iliad.html">the Illiad</a> in the poetic medium of his time. And so it is with the great war stories of the 21st century, whose characters are partially recorded in this world, and partially written by us in a virtual one of our own making.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71559/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Yip does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Video games such as Battlefield I encourage players to find purpose and meaning in war. But a new generation of artists and gamers is starting to question the messages they propagate.Andrew Yip, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Laboratory for Innovation in Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (iGLAM), UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.