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  Wargames

  Where did wargames come from? Who participated in them, and why? How is their development related to changes in real-life warfare? Which aspects of war did they capture, which ones did they leave out, how, and why? What do they tell us about the conduct of war in the times and places where they were played? How useful are they in training and preparation for war? Why are some so much more popular than others, and how do men and women differ in their interest? Starting with the combat of David versus Goliath, passing through the gladiatorial games, tournaments, trials by battle, duels, and board games such as chess, all the way to the latest simulations and computer games, this unique book traces the subject in all its splendid richness. As it does so, it provides new and occasionally surprising insights into human nature.

  MARTIN VAN CREVELD is Emeritus Professor at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and one of the world's best-known experts on military history and strategy. He is the author of over twenty books, covering all aspects of these and other subjects, which have now been translated into twenty languages including Chinese, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serb, and Spanish. Professor van Creveld has consulted to the defense establishments of various countries and taught or lectured at many institutes of higher learning, both military and civilian. He has also written hundreds of articles and conducted interviews with newspapers, television, and radio all over the world.

  Wargames

  From Gladiators to Gigabytes

  Martin van Creveld

  CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

  Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City

  Cambridge University Press

  The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

  Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

  www.cambridge.org

  Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107684423

  © Martin van Creveld 2013

  This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

  First published 2013

  Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by the MPG Books Group

  A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

  Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

  Van Creveld, Martin, 1946–

  Wargames : From Gladiators to Gigabytes / By Martin van Creveld.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-107-03695-6 – ISBN 978-1-107-68442-3 (pbk.)

  1. War games – History. 2. Computer war games – History. I. Title.

  U310.V327 2013

  793.9′2–dc23

  2012039203

  ISBN 978-1-107-03695-6 Hardback

  ISBN 978-1-107-68442-3 Paperback

  Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

  For Uri. My son

  Mirror, mirror on the wall:

  What is the most exciting game of all?

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  What is a wargame?

  How are games and war related?

  Why study wargames?

  1 On animals and men

  Hunting, combat sports, and contact sports

  Great fights, nothing fights

  Combat of champions and single combat

  2 Games and gladiators

  Origins and development

  Games, crowds, and emperors

  Decline, demise, and legacy

  3 Trials by combat, tournaments, and duels

  A certain kind of justice

  The rise and fall of the tournament

  A question of honor

  4 Battles, campaigns, wars, and politics

  From squares to hexes

  By a throw of the dice

  The hilt of the knife

  5 From bloody games to bloodless wars

  Toil and sweat (but no blood)

  The road to Fort Atari

  Reenacting war

  6 Enter the computer

  Present at creation

  Onscreen war

  Lost in virtual reality

  7 The females of the species

  To play or not to play

  Play and display

  Men, women, and wargames

  8 Conclusions: The mirrors and the mirrored

  Index

  Acknowledgments

  This volume owes its existence to my one time mentor, Edward Luttwak. It was his brilliant 1987 book, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace, that first made me think about a topic which has now been preoccupying me for a quarter-century. I remember an afternoon spent at his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, when we went over the manuscript together. Both before and after that day Edward has not only astonished me with his intellect but has proved a very good friend too. I am proud and honored to be his.

  I cannot remember all the people who, over the years, have been forced to listen to me expounding my ideas. One is Stephen Glick, another old friend. Along with Ian Charters, he did a wonderful job writing an article on wargames for a special issue of a periodical for which I was responsible (Journal of Contemporary History, 18, 4, October 1983). Another is Seth Carus who himself designed a wargame around the 1973 Israeli−Syrian battle for the Golan Heights; yet another is my friend and former student Robert Tomes. As always, Israel Defense Force Colonels (ret.) Moshe Ben David and Raz Sagi, as well as Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) Eado Hecht, have been generous with their time and interest. Eado also allowed me to use a short paper he has written about the subject. Amihai Borosh has helped me find my way in some rabbinical literature that would otherwise have remained closed to me. Just as he and his partner, Shmuel Alkelai, have long treated Dvora and me as if we were their parents, so she and I have tried to treat them as if they were our sons. Last but not least, I have had the usual splendid arguments with my stepson Jonathan Lewy. Before following in my footsteps and deciding to become a historian, he himself used to be an avid player of wargames.

  Parts or all of the manuscript have been read, and corrected, by Colonel (ret.) Moshe Ben David, Dr. Alex Yakobson, and Dr. Julie Thompson: thank you all for your useful comments.

  Some financial assistance towards the writing of this book has come from the Axel and Margaret Axson Johnson Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden. In particular, it helped me buy books that, since I like the feel of paper and dislike reading from screens, I might not otherwise have been able to obtain or to afford. I wish to thank the Foundation and its director, Mr. Kurt Almquist, for its generous support over the last decade or so, and express the hope that I may continue to rely on it in the future.

  Concerning Dvora, I have already said whatever there is to be said − not once, but many times. Thank you, Dvora, from the bottom of my heart. Not just for what you do – producing wonderful paintings, running a household, looking after grandchildren, generously giving your time and brains to help anyone who asks you to – but for what you are: the best spouse God has ever given a man.

  Introduction

  Where did wargames come from? What purposes did they serve? Who participated in them, why, and what for? What forms did they take? What factors drove their development, and to what extent did they reflect changes in the art of war itself? What did they simulate, what didn’t they simulate, how, and why? What do they reveal about the conduct of war at the times, and
in the places, where they were played? How useful are they in training for war and preparing for it? Why are some so much more popular than others, how do men and women compare in this respect, and what can the way the sexes relate to wargames teach us about the relationship between them? Finally, what does all this tell us about real war, fake or make-believe war, and the human condition in general? These are the sorts of questions the present volume will try to answer. Before it can do so, however, it is first of all necessary to say a word about what wargames are, where they stand in relation to other kinds of games on the one hand and to “real” war on the other, what has been written on them, what may be learnt from them, and where all this may lead.

  What is a wargame?

  Games, including wargames which form the subject of this book, are all around us. Even the most superficial observation will soon conclude that not only humans but many kinds of animals engage in games, i.e. play. The great Dutch historian Johan Huizinga has argued, to my mind with very good reason, that not economic needs (as Karl Marx thought) but play and games represent the real source from which all human culture, everything beautiful, true and good, springs.1 In his view, a game is an activity characterized above all by the fact that it creates its own little world. To this end it is carefully and often ceremoniously separated from “real life,” standing to the latter as the terrarium or tableau in a glass paperweight does to the room in which it is positioned. Within the space where the game is held, and for as long as it lasts, cause and effect are abolished. The nature of the activity does not matter much. Provided it is done for its own sake, for “fun,” as people say, almost anything may be turned into a game.

  Another way of putting the same idea would be to say that men (in all that concerns wargames women are a separate species, and will be considered toward the end of this volume) and animals (as far as we can judge) engage in play primarily because doing so provides them with some kind of thrill. A thrill, in turn, results when we are engaged on, or have accomplished, something that is not too easy. Even if that something is, “realistically” speaking, of no value whatsoever, such as driving a ball over a net or into a goal; and even if it does not involve any activity but simply confronting danger, real or simulated, in a passive way, like people riding a roller coaster. Again it is apparent that, depending on personality, age, experience, and the culture of which the individual forms a part, almost any activity that is neither too easy nor impossibly hard – in which case it will lead to frustration or despair – can produce a thrill. To the extent that it does, some people will turn it into a game and enjoy it as such.

  The variety of games found in nature and among humans is almost infinite and there is no point in trying to list them here. They range from the simplest to the most complex, from the unstructured to the highly structured, and from those that require little more than imagination and creativity to those that demand equipment worth hundreds of millions of dollars. One very good way to classify games is to distinguish between those that involve chance, those that require physical skill and/or force, and those that involve strategy. Some anthropologists have tried to link each type to a certain kind of society, but these attempts are not very convincing and need not preoccupy us here.2 Concerning games of chance, presumably no explanation is needed. Think of a game of dice, think of roulette. Such games do not require either physical or intellectual resources. Usually they are considered childish, unless, that is, they are played for high stakes, in which case they turn into tests of character. Games of physical skill or force are just what the name implies. However, the more strenuous among them also test such emotional qualities as determination (“grit”), endurance, and the ability to cope with pain. This fact goes far to explain why, from the ancient Olympics on, they have often drawn crowds of spectators and generated tremendous excitement.

  This brings us to the third kind, i.e. games of strategy. According to Clausewitz’s classical definition, strategy is the art of using battles, which themselves are the province of tactics, in order to achieve the objectives of a campaign.3 Nowadays it is often used to describe a carefully planned series of steps needed to achieve an objective. Here I shall employ it in a different sense suggested by Sun Tzu, Thomas Schelling, and Edward Luttwak:4 namely, the art of seeking to achieve your objectives in the face of an opponent who thinks and acts. That opponent is allowed not just to try to achieve his objectives but to actively prevent you from doing the same – by killing you, if appropriate and necessary. Strategy, in other words, does not just mean planning one’s own moves, as in a bicycle race or a swimming contest. It is that, of course; but it is also, and above all, a question of trying to detect, predict, interfere with, and obstruct those of the opponent. Briefly, it consists of the interplay between the two sides. Whether that interplay takes place on a board, or in a court, or on a computer screen, or between two squads, or between two army groups, is immaterial. So are the kinds of weapons used and the state of military technology in general.

  In the present context, the most important of the three elements is strategy. No exercise that does not involve the kind of interplay just mentioned can be considered a wargame. This is true even if it is used, as a great many are, by the military in order to prepare men for war. For example, attacking a stake with a sword, as was the practice of Roman legionaries and gladiators; or riding a galloping horse and using a lance to hit an object suspended on a rotating pole, as medieval knights, the Mongols and the Mamluks all used to do; or having thousands of troops pretend to “storm” a beach. Many such exercises require a very high degree of skill and take years to master. However, in them the stake, or the object, or the beach, cannot hit back. Unlike flesh and blood humans and, nowadays, some kinds of computer programs, they have neither intentions that must be discovered nor capabilities which they can bring to bear. Hence such exercises will be mentioned in this volume only for purposes of comparison. Also excluded is the kind of exercise where an individual or team plays not against an opponent similar to themselves but against some sort of “control” which determines the course of the game but cannot be influenced in return. Such games may have their uses; however, they involve not strategy but a puppet-master and his puppet.

  Since the number of possible combinations is limited, the strategy required in one-on-one engagements is relatively straightforward. Conversely, the more numerous the participants and the more heterogeneous they are – in other words, the more differentiated their capabilities and the larger the number of possible ways of combining those capabilities – the harder the problem of developing a strategy and applying it against the opponent becomes. The substitution of complex terrain for a simple arena or court adds to the difficulties. That is even more the case when each participant must make his moves while only having at his disposal limited information about his own forces, those of the opponent, and the environment in which the game takes place. As Napoleon is supposed to have said, under such conditions the conduct of strategy requires intellectual resources not inferior to those which a Newton or an Euler might command.5 Furthermore, nothing prevents two or more of the above-listed elements from being joined in a single game. To the contrary: often the way this is done is just what distinguishes one kind of game from another.

  How are games and war related?

  In the words, of Jonathan Swift, war is “that mad game the world loves to play.”6 As expressions such as “the great game” confirm, the two are linked in so many ways that separating them is sometimes impossible. Specifically, in war skill/force, chance, and the two-sided activity known as strategy mix. Conversely, war is separated from games by two principal factors. First, whereas war only makes sense to the extent that it is the continuation of politics, the very existence of games depends on that not being the case. Games, in other words, even those that incorporate political factors, possess a certain kind of autonomy that war does not have and cannot have. Second, games differ from war in that they are subject to certain highly artificial limits
: such as those that govern the location in which they may be held, the way in which they may be played, the equipment that may be used, and, above all, the time they may last and/or the conditions under which they must come to an end. Think of the peculiar size and shape of a basketball court with its hoops; or of the twice forty-five minutes a game of soccer lasts; or of the rules that define just what counts as victory in tennis, bridge, or chess.

  Fundamentally, the restrictions in question can take two forms. The first consists of pretense, i.e. some way of signaling that the encounter is “unreal.” Not by accident does the Latin word for game, ludus, have everything to do with “illusion.” The second is a set of formal, often written, rules. Generally the more developed and specific the rules are, the less the need for pretense, and the other way around. The rules’ function, in other words, is precisely to eliminate the need for pretense; within the framework that they create, anything goes. For example, a medieval knight who had his servants strew the tourneying field with caltrops could expect to be disqualified by the umpires. However, he did not have to worry that he would be punished for hitting too hard.

  A wargame might be defined as a game of strategy which, while clearly separated from “real” warfare by one or more of the above means, nevertheless simulates some key aspects of the latter: including, quite often, the death and/or injury and capture that results from warfare’s quintessential element, i.e. fighting. The more aspects a game simulates, and the more accurate the simulation, the closer to real-life warfare it is. This proposition can be turned around. Just as warfare has often served as inspiration for wargames, so wargames can be, and often have been, played not just by amateurs (from the Latin amatores, lovers) for their own sake but by the military for training, planning, and preparation too. To the extent that they allow and force players to strategize, indeed, they are not merely the best form of training but the only available one.