WEBVTT NOTE Why War Games Do Not Work 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.640 Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. 2 00:00:04.720 --> 00:00:08.400 I'd like to start by apologising for being late. 3 00:00:09.440 --> 00:00:13.640 Actually, the whole way from Atlanta to Auburn, 4 00:00:13.720 --> 00:00:17.720 I was trying to think of some kind of joke I could tell about this. 5 00:00:18.920 --> 00:00:20.560 I couldn't think of one. 6 00:00:20.640 --> 00:00:23.440 So, I apologise again. 7 00:00:23.520 --> 00:00:25.960 The flight was okay. 8 00:00:26.040 --> 00:00:29.640 It was just the van that did not show up. 9 00:00:29.640 --> 00:00:40.640 My subject for today is supposed to be why war games don't work. 10 00:00:40.640 --> 00:00:49.640 Well, I have a surprise for you. They do. They do work. 11 00:00:49.640 --> 00:00:58.640 War games do work. The question is not why don't war games work. 12 00:00:58.640 --> 00:01:11.640 The question is, why didn't those that the Pentagon played in preparation of the great and mighty war against Iraq work? 13 00:01:11.640 --> 00:01:17.640 And those are two completely different questions. 14 00:01:17.640 --> 00:01:30.680 Now, I don't have to tell you that any attempt to forecast the future is very, very problematic 15 00:01:30.680 --> 00:01:34.640 and very difficult. 16 00:01:34.640 --> 00:01:42.040 We really don't have a good way to handle the future. 17 00:01:42.040 --> 00:01:49.560 Suppose we do want to know what happens to the stock market tomorrow. 18 00:01:49.560 --> 00:01:56.200 Suppose we want to know where our country is going tomorrow. 19 00:01:56.200 --> 00:02:03.280 What possibilities do we have for looking into the future? 20 00:02:03.280 --> 00:02:09.080 Yes, we can use historical analogies. 21 00:02:09.080 --> 00:02:16.240 We can look back and say, in Roman times the situation was such-and-such, and therefore 22 00:02:16.240 --> 00:02:24.320 taking all kinds of things into account, then tomorrow things are going to work out in such-and-such 23 00:02:24.320 --> 00:02:28.360 a way again. 24 00:02:28.360 --> 00:02:31.840 Or we can use trends. 25 00:02:31.840 --> 00:02:44.340 We can say, a year ago, or two years ago, or ten years ago, or fifty years ago, we were at points such and such. 26 00:02:44.340 --> 00:02:50.840 And since then, things have been moving in such and such a direction. 27 00:02:50.840 --> 00:03:01.360 and therefore assuming that the trend persists, after tomorrow we can expect to be at such 28 00:03:01.360 --> 00:03:05.200 and such a point. 29 00:03:05.200 --> 00:03:13.160 Or we can use the so-called Delphi method, which in essence means that we are going to 30 00:03:13.160 --> 00:03:23.660 Ask various experts, sir, madame, can you please tell us what is going to happen tomorrow? 31 00:03:23.660 --> 00:03:32.560 I don't have to tell you that none of these methods is very reliable. 32 00:03:32.560 --> 00:03:40.960 Analogies are always problematic because circumstances are never the same. 33 00:03:40.960 --> 00:03:49.460 Trends have an unfortunate habit of coming to an end just when you need them most. 34 00:03:49.460 --> 00:03:56.960 And there's even a little limerick about that. 35 00:03:56.960 --> 00:04:00.960 A trend is a trend is a trend. 36 00:04:00.960 --> 00:04:10.460 The question is, will it bend or be pushed off course by an unforeseen force and come to a premature end? 37 00:04:10.460 --> 00:04:24.100 And finally, Delphi, you know, Delphi sounds good but is really very problematic because 38 00:04:24.100 --> 00:04:32.840 out of 50 experts, maybe one is going to get it right and you never know which one. 39 00:04:32.840 --> 00:04:40.760 That reminds me of a former minister of finance that we used to have in Israel and about him 40 00:04:40.760 --> 00:04:46.720 it used to be said that he was normal twice a week but you never knew, two days a week 41 00:04:46.720 --> 00:04:51.720 but you never knew which days. 42 00:04:51.720 --> 00:05:01.160 Ladies and gentlemen, forecasting the future is always very, very problematic and we all 43 00:05:01.160 --> 00:05:02.160 know that. 44 00:05:02.160 --> 00:05:12.160 And if we only found a reliable way to do that, all of us here would presumably be millionaires long ago. 45 00:05:15.160 --> 00:05:27.160 War games are one method of doing this, or of trying to do this, and a method which has its advantages. 46 00:05:27.160 --> 00:05:38.380 In fact, war games have one advantage that no other method has. 47 00:05:38.380 --> 00:05:47.080 They allow you to do something no other means does. 48 00:05:47.080 --> 00:05:56.680 They allow you to play both sides of an issue. 49 00:05:56.680 --> 00:06:08.000 War, ladies and gentlemen, by definition, is a two-sided activity. 50 00:06:08.000 --> 00:06:19.960 Any war has two sides, two parties that interact with each other, that try to achieve their 51 00:06:19.960 --> 00:06:27.160 goes well at the same time preventing the other side from achieving his goals. 52 00:06:29.480 --> 00:06:41.960 Where you only have one side, you do not have war. You may have a massacre but you do not have war. 53 00:06:41.960 --> 00:06:50.400 War, by definition, involves two sides. 54 00:06:50.400 --> 00:07:01.240 And here already you can see why war is so much like a game. 55 00:07:01.240 --> 00:07:08.280 Because most games also have two sides. 56 00:07:08.280 --> 00:07:18.280 From that point of view, it does not really matter which kind of game you are talking about. 57 00:07:18.280 --> 00:07:29.280 Whether it is football, or basketball, or chess, or many other kinds of board games, 58 00:07:29.280 --> 00:07:41.280 By definition, they must have at least two sides, and usually most games, as we all know, do have two sides. 59 00:07:44.280 --> 00:07:52.280 So, from this point of view, there is a strong affinity between war and games. 60 00:07:52.280 --> 00:08:06.440 I could even argue that war is simply a game in which anything is permitted. 61 00:08:06.440 --> 00:08:15.880 And if you look back at the etymology of the word itself, war and the way it is called 62 00:08:15.880 --> 00:08:23.200 in various languages, including my own. I'm Dutch originally. The Dutch way for a word, 63 00:08:23.200 --> 00:08:34.280 sorry, for a word is oorlog, which means the original game, or the great game. The great 64 00:08:34.280 --> 00:08:41.640 game, as some of you may know, was also the name that the British in India a hundred or 65 00:08:41.640 --> 00:09:04.440 War has this in common with games that it has two sides. 66 00:09:04.440 --> 00:09:18.480 Force, war and games involve strategy, which means that you are playing or fighting against 67 00:09:18.480 --> 00:09:30.200 an opponent who, like yourself, is to a large extent free to do or not to do what he wants 68 00:09:30.200 --> 00:09:41.200 in his attempt to achieve his goals and prevent you from achieving yours. 69 00:09:41.200 --> 00:09:52.900 So, both wars and games involve studying the opponent in order to understand his mind. 70 00:09:52.900 --> 00:10:02.780 Both wars and games involve studying his capability to see not only what he wants to do, but what 71 00:10:02.780 --> 00:10:04.580 he can do. 72 00:10:04.580 --> 00:10:15.860 Both wars and games will involve such things as planning how to use your own strengths and 73 00:10:15.860 --> 00:10:21.740 exploit the other guy's weakness, and so on and so on and so on. 74 00:10:21.740 --> 00:10:31.860 I could go on and explain the affinities between war and games, and the beautiful thing about 75 00:10:31.860 --> 00:10:41.100 it is, again, that in many ways it does not really matter which kind of games we are talking 76 00:10:41.100 --> 00:10:43.460 about. 77 00:10:43.460 --> 00:10:53.460 You can certainly talk about the strategy of, let us say, a basketball game or a football game. 78 00:10:53.460 --> 00:11:00.460 And you can equally well talk about strategy in a war. 79 00:11:00.460 --> 00:11:11.460 And in both cases it will be very much a question of trying to understand the other side, advantages and disadvantages, 80 00:11:11.460 --> 00:11:19.740 strong points and weak points, combine them with their own and lock them together in such 81 00:11:19.740 --> 00:11:27.820 a way as to make the outcome work in your favor. 82 00:11:27.820 --> 00:11:37.420 So to return to my original point, I am not saying that war games are perfect, I am saying 83 00:11:37.420 --> 00:11:48.700 that in some ways war games are the best way we have as humans to study that great unknown 84 00:11:48.700 --> 00:11:58.940 which is called the future, and that this is particularly true in the case of war, precisely 85 00:11:58.940 --> 00:12:12.060 only because of the affinity between war and games, and that affinity consists essentially 86 00:12:12.060 --> 00:12:25.500 of the fact that both wars and war and games are two-sided activities. 87 00:12:25.500 --> 00:12:35.900 And so, if you look back into history, you will find that war games have always been used 88 00:12:35.900 --> 00:12:45.160 for planning, modeling, training, forecasting war. 89 00:12:45.160 --> 00:12:56.600 But indeed, in many ways, they have been the most used method for doing all this. 90 00:12:56.600 --> 00:13:11.280 Beginning, ladies and gentlemen, at least as early as the 10th century BC, when, I'm sure 91 00:13:11.280 --> 00:13:31.640 Let the boys stand up and play in front of us. 92 00:13:31.640 --> 00:13:38.960 The play involving twelve of the servants of King David and twelve of the servants of 93 00:13:38.960 --> 00:13:46.960 The House of Saul who fought each other to the death until they were all killed. 94 00:13:46.960 --> 00:14:00.400 So using games to model war, using games to understand war, using games in order to substitute 95 00:14:00.400 --> 00:14:08.420 for war in this case, goes back a very, very long time indeed. 96 00:14:08.420 --> 00:14:17.460 And one might even argue, perhaps because we don't know, that the origins of war and games 97 00:14:17.460 --> 00:14:22.420 is exactly the same. 98 00:14:22.420 --> 00:14:34.220 I could give you any number of cases in which war games did succeed, probably the best known 99 00:14:34.220 --> 00:14:50.020 are the hundreds and maybe thousands of war games that were played by the U.S. Navy at 100 00:14:50.020 --> 00:15:00.780 the Naval War College between 1920 and 1941 in preparation for what was known at that time 101 00:15:00.780 --> 00:15:12.060 Plan Orange, A Possible War Against Japan Some of you may even have seen pictures of 102 00:15:12.060 --> 00:15:13.700 how it was done. 103 00:15:13.700 --> 00:15:21.420 They had this huge hall and in the hall it was surrounded by galleries, so senior officers 104 00:15:21.420 --> 00:15:23.460 could look on. 105 00:15:23.460 --> 00:15:30.260 The whole had a checkered floor and on the checkered floor there were little models of 106 00:15:30.260 --> 00:15:41.140 ships and for two decades a whole generation of naval officers, some of whom were this 107 00:15:41.140 --> 00:15:51.780 time to rise to very senior rank indeed, played and replayed and replayed and replayed every 108 00:15:51.780 --> 00:16:00.940 Every single possibility that might one day arise in the war in the Pacific. 109 00:16:00.940 --> 00:16:11.460 And when the war finally came, there had been nothing that had not been replayed by somebody 110 00:16:11.460 --> 00:16:16.260 at some time during the preceding twenty years. 111 00:16:16.260 --> 00:16:22.420 You might say, nobody really forstalled Pearl Harbor, that is true. 112 00:16:22.420 --> 00:16:32.380 But everybody had fought, quote-unquote, the Japanese countless times, and considered, which 113 00:16:32.380 --> 00:16:36.340 is what people should do in war games. 114 00:16:36.340 --> 00:16:41.060 Suppose the Japs do this, what do I do then? 115 00:16:41.060 --> 00:16:44.020 Suppose they do that, what do I do then? 116 00:16:44.020 --> 00:16:50.860 All of this with the help of little ship models that were pushed over the checkered floor 117 00:16:50.860 --> 00:16:57.900 with, as I say, galleries all around the hall so that senior officers would stand there 118 00:16:57.900 --> 00:17:04.900 and look on what was going on. 119 00:17:04.900 --> 00:17:12.940 I'd like to say something about the various kinds of work. 120 00:17:12.940 --> 00:17:22.420 So maybe you gain a little bit of a better understanding of what this is all about. 121 00:17:22.420 --> 00:17:29.140 I just explained how the Navy used to do it, the US Navy. 122 00:17:29.140 --> 00:17:40.460 And many of you to this day, I'm sure, are aware of a whole class, a whole range of war 123 00:17:40.460 --> 00:17:50.380 are games that are commercially sold and which operate exactly on this principle. 124 00:17:50.380 --> 00:17:53.780 They come in cardboard boxes. 125 00:17:53.780 --> 00:17:57.540 They are made by companies such as Avalon. 126 00:17:57.540 --> 00:18:04.980 They contain a map which is divided not into squares but into hexes. 127 00:18:04.980 --> 00:18:14.460 They have all kinds of counters that will represent ships or aircraft or tanks or units, 128 00:18:14.460 --> 00:18:20.700 and those can be moved according to very complicated rules to the right and to the left at such 129 00:18:20.700 --> 00:18:27.440 and such a pace in the presence of such and such enemy units which will do to them such 130 00:18:27.440 --> 00:18:33.780 and such as they come close or as they don't come close and so on and so on and so on. 131 00:18:33.780 --> 00:18:42.780 These games are enormously complicated to play. They can take weeks, even months, until you finally finish with them. 132 00:18:42.780 --> 00:18:54.780 You have them at every level, from a model of the whole of World War II to the individual battle, and there are quite a number of people who play them. 133 00:18:56.780 --> 00:19:01.780 But this is only one of a great many types. 134 00:19:03.780 --> 00:19:16.780 Some of the earliest war games known were played by a Greek soldier and statesman called Philopoeman in the 3rd century BC. 135 00:19:16.780 --> 00:19:25.780 And if you read your Polybius, you'll find that Philopoeman used to go riding with his staff, and then he would ask them, 136 00:19:55.780 --> 00:20:07.520 Almost the only kind of training for an activity so full of surprises as war always is. 137 00:20:07.520 --> 00:20:13.260 As all of you know, the Middle Ages had their tournaments. 138 00:20:13.260 --> 00:20:18.300 What were tournaments if not war games? 139 00:20:18.300 --> 00:20:30.580 if not attempts to recreate war on a specified field at a specified time at a specified place. 140 00:20:30.580 --> 00:20:35.860 And originally they were extremely dangerous. 141 00:20:35.860 --> 00:20:47.580 Worst known tournaments started around 1800 and they got so dangerous that it became necessary 142 00:20:47.580 --> 00:20:55.460 to really create some rules so that not too many people would be killed. 143 00:20:55.460 --> 00:21:04.780 So they decided that they would only be played with blunt weapons and they decided later 144 00:21:04.780 --> 00:21:11.000 on that there would be a partition, all of you must have seen this in the movies, separating 145 00:21:11.000 --> 00:21:17.960 the two opponents, so that each one was moving, riding his horse on a separate side of the 146 00:21:17.960 --> 00:21:18.960 partition. 147 00:21:18.960 --> 00:21:24.120 But even so, accidents continued to happen. 148 00:21:24.120 --> 00:21:31.480 And in 1561, a king of France, Henry II, was killed in a tournament. 149 00:21:31.480 --> 00:21:40.560 And of course, later, the poor guy who did it was executed. 150 00:21:40.560 --> 00:21:51.200 You can't kill a king even accidentally and expect to live. 151 00:21:51.200 --> 00:21:56.360 There is chess. 152 00:21:56.360 --> 00:22:01.640 Many of you, I'm sure, know how to play chess. 153 00:22:01.640 --> 00:22:07.240 Chess originated in India in the 6th century AD. 154 00:22:07.240 --> 00:22:16.920 I won't go into all the details, but all of us understand that it is an attempt to model 155 00:22:16.920 --> 00:22:20.760 war. 156 00:22:20.760 --> 00:22:30.040 It is an attempt to model war which leaves out many things. 157 00:22:30.040 --> 00:22:38.320 First of all, it completely leaves out the little question of supply. 158 00:22:38.320 --> 00:22:43.960 So in that sense, it is a purely tactical game. 159 00:22:43.960 --> 00:22:50.360 It includes only the fight itself, and of course, even the fight is only included in 160 00:22:50.360 --> 00:22:58.680 a highly simplified way, and it ignores everything that happens until the forces clash on the 161 00:22:58.680 --> 00:23:06.960 It ignores secrecy. 162 00:23:06.960 --> 00:23:17.040 One of the great differences between chess and real war is that in real war very often 163 00:23:17.040 --> 00:23:22.160 you don't know what the enemy is doing. 164 00:23:22.160 --> 00:23:33.120 In chess you do, experts call this a game of perfect information. 165 00:23:33.120 --> 00:23:39.840 This particular point of view chess is very different from war. 166 00:23:39.840 --> 00:23:49.160 Both sides are instantly and fully appraised of everything that the opponent does or does 167 00:23:49.160 --> 00:24:03.680 Chess, like most games, although not all, also leaves out friction, meaning that if I, as 168 00:24:03.680 --> 00:24:11.640 a chess player, want my queen, or my castle, or my whatever, to advance from A to B, then 169 00:24:11.640 --> 00:24:18.080 this castle will in fact get the order to move from A to B, and it will get her. 170 00:24:18.080 --> 00:24:26.220 It will not be held up by rain, it will not be held up by, let us say, mud. 171 00:24:26.220 --> 00:24:34.520 The van will be there on time, right, to use my own example from today. 172 00:24:34.520 --> 00:24:42.800 All the little things, right, that, to use a somewhat crude term, all the screw-ups that 173 00:24:42.800 --> 00:24:49.360 are present in war, are not present in chess. 174 00:24:49.360 --> 00:24:52.400 It is a game without friction. 175 00:24:52.400 --> 00:25:00.400 You can introduce friction into war games, but it is not easy to do. 176 00:25:00.400 --> 00:25:05.640 Usually they do it by rolling a dice, okay? 177 00:25:05.640 --> 00:25:11.560 You decide to do something, and then you roll a dice. 178 00:25:11.560 --> 00:25:20.320 and let us say it is in order with six surfaces, so you say that or the rules say that in four 179 00:25:20.320 --> 00:25:26.240 out of six stages the thing that you have decided to do is going to happen, but in one 180 00:25:26.240 --> 00:25:32.280 it is not going to happen and in one something completely different is going to happen. 181 00:25:32.280 --> 00:25:40.680 So this actually is a good way to introduce friction into war, but as you can imagine 182 00:25:40.680 --> 00:25:52.680 It makes playing the game very complicated, which is why that takes so long, and which is why, personally, I must admit, I find them extremely boring. 183 00:25:52.680 --> 00:26:13.680 The attempt to incorporate all these factors into games will make them enormously complex. 184 00:26:13.680 --> 00:26:23.320 Some of those rule books will consist of dozens and dozens of pages with hundreds and hundreds 185 00:26:23.320 --> 00:26:31.880 of rules, and I personally must say I've never really understood how the patience to go through 186 00:26:31.880 --> 00:26:39.440 them all and never really understood how other people have the patience to go through them 187 00:26:39.440 --> 00:26:52.040 This is where computers come in. 188 00:26:52.040 --> 00:27:01.600 Computers have the advantage that you can feed any number of rules into it. 189 00:27:01.600 --> 00:27:09.200 And once you fed the rule into the computer program, it stays there and the computer will 190 00:27:09.200 --> 00:27:16.200 will not forget the rule, and it will not get the rule wrong, at least supposedly wrong, 191 00:27:16.200 --> 00:27:25.340 and it will do what it is told, and it will do what it is told very fast, so playing the 192 00:27:25.340 --> 00:27:35.040 game will not take weeks or months, plus, it will do that time after time after time 193 00:27:35.040 --> 00:27:41.480 So, you can change the variables. 194 00:27:41.480 --> 00:27:46.280 You can feed in one kind of unit, another kind of unit. 195 00:27:46.280 --> 00:27:48.940 You can try this, you can try that. 196 00:27:48.940 --> 00:27:51.900 You can change the rules. 197 00:27:51.900 --> 00:28:00.040 You can do all that and play the game fast, time after time after time after time, and 198 00:28:00.040 --> 00:28:08.040 Then see what works and what does not work. 199 00:28:08.040 --> 00:28:18.240 Ladies and gentlemen, I was supposed to tell you why war games don't work and I have spent 200 00:28:18.240 --> 00:28:26.480 the last 20 minutes or so explaining to you why they do work. 201 00:28:26.480 --> 00:28:37.200 I don't want to take this too far. I don't want to argue that war games are perfect. 202 00:28:37.200 --> 00:28:50.720 No human attempt to look into the future is or can be. We are just little blind creatures 203 00:28:50.720 --> 00:29:02.480 with a very very limited ability to look into the future, but as the tools, and God knows 204 00:29:02.480 --> 00:29:10.920 that they're not very good, but as the tools for looking into the future, for trying to 205 00:29:10.920 --> 00:29:20.600 so to speak, to rehearse the future, for trying to explore if not what the future will be 206 00:29:20.600 --> 00:29:31.840 to bring what it may bring, and do so in a way that is not one-sided, but two-sided, 207 00:29:31.840 --> 00:29:43.760 I would argue, in spite of my thoughts, that there simply is no substitute for war games. 208 00:29:43.760 --> 00:29:52.720 War Games are the two, maybe, certainly the best two, maybe even almost the only two for 209 00:29:52.720 --> 00:29:57.680 doing all of this. 210 00:29:57.680 --> 00:30:06.960 So the real question, ladies and gentlemen, is not why war games don't work. 211 00:30:06.960 --> 00:30:16.960 The real question is, why those that were used in order to prepare for Iraq did not work? 212 00:30:18.960 --> 00:30:22.960 Those are very different questions. 213 00:30:22.960 --> 00:30:37.840 The first and by far the most important reason is because apparently there was no thought 214 00:30:37.840 --> 00:30:52.920 at all what would happen once Iraq had been occupied and Saddam Hussein toppled. 215 00:30:52.920 --> 00:31:01.520 You see, ladies and gentlemen, modeling Iraq was not so, or the Iraqi war was really not 216 00:31:01.520 --> 00:31:05.080 so very difficult. 217 00:31:05.080 --> 00:31:09.520 You had to have a map fed into the computer. 218 00:31:09.520 --> 00:31:14.640 You had to have the various forces fed into the computer. 219 00:31:14.640 --> 00:31:19.600 You had to have the capabilities, the things that I could do, the things that I could not 220 00:31:19.600 --> 00:31:21.360 do, fed into computers. 221 00:31:21.360 --> 00:31:26.920 All of this involves lots and lots of foldable work, but it still can be done. 222 00:31:26.920 --> 00:31:31.120 We know more or less what such and such a weapon is capable of. 223 00:31:31.120 --> 00:31:36.120 We know more or less what such a unit and such a unit needs per day. 224 00:31:36.120 --> 00:31:42.960 We know more or less so many things that go into their moves and their fights and their 225 00:31:42.960 --> 00:31:46.600 shooting at each other. 226 00:31:46.600 --> 00:31:56.640 And you can feed these things into a computer and then time after time you come out with 227 00:31:56.640 --> 00:32:06.640 the result, which actually happened, that this war would be won and easily won too. 228 00:32:06.640 --> 00:32:15.680 So if it had all been about the first three weeks of the war, then you could have argued 229 00:32:15.680 --> 00:32:20.880 The war games worked, and they worked very well indeed. 230 00:32:24.580 --> 00:32:31.980 The problem, of course, was that contrary to President Bush announcing on board of the 231 00:32:31.980 --> 00:32:38.780 Lincoln and in the midst of that little party that he arranged for himself, 232 00:32:38.780 --> 00:32:46.780 Major combat operations were over. 233 00:32:46.780 --> 00:32:50.780 Well, this was where he got it wrong. 234 00:32:50.780 --> 00:32:53.780 And this is where Ramsfeld got it wrong. 235 00:32:53.780 --> 00:32:57.780 And this is where Wolfovich got it wrong. 236 00:32:57.780 --> 00:33:06.780 And I read, like most of you did today, I suppose, that Wolfovich is now going to the World Bank. 237 00:33:06.780 --> 00:33:10.860 Do you know who went to the World Bank before him? 238 00:33:10.860 --> 00:33:14.900 McNamara, that kid. 239 00:33:14.900 --> 00:33:23.620 So I was wondering whether the same story is repeating itself. 240 00:33:23.620 --> 00:33:26.380 Let me tell you a little story about Wolfovich. 241 00:33:26.380 --> 00:33:33.640 I met Wolfovich some years ago at the World Economic Forum, and this was not long after 242 00:33:33.640 --> 00:33:41.800 The Russians had tried to occupy Chechnya and had failed miserably back, I think, in 1996. 243 00:33:42.760 --> 00:33:49.000 And so, Volfovich and I were on the same panel and talking about why they had failed. 244 00:33:49.640 --> 00:33:56.680 And Volfovich, in all seriousness, was trying to explain that it was because 245 00:33:56.680 --> 00:34:02.600 the Russians had not used the best weapons at their disposal. 246 00:34:03.640 --> 00:34:25.640 The implication of course being that if they had been Americans, and if they had used every one of those marvelous weapons that America has, and which it models in war games, then of course they would have won easily. 247 00:34:25.640 --> 00:34:34.880 Well, they did win easily, but that was not the end of the story. 248 00:34:34.880 --> 00:34:37.720 That was only the beginning. 249 00:34:37.720 --> 00:34:53.160 And as we now know, over 90% of all the Americans killed in Iraq were killed after the end of 250 00:34:53.160 --> 00:34:59.880 major combat operations, and this still goes on. 251 00:34:59.880 --> 00:35:10.440 They were killed in a period and in a kind of operation, in a kind of war, that was never 252 00:35:10.440 --> 00:35:13.920 modelled at all. 253 00:35:13.920 --> 00:35:19.060 So whatever else, you can't really blame war games, can you? 254 00:35:19.060 --> 00:35:28.320 You can't blame war games because this kind of thing was never modelled at all. 255 00:35:28.320 --> 00:35:30.600 It was simply ignored. 256 00:35:30.600 --> 00:35:40.140 There was no thought devoted to the question what shall we do after we win, quote-unquote, 257 00:35:40.140 --> 00:35:41.140 this war. 258 00:35:41.140 --> 00:35:48.540 And indeed, about a year ago, I think, I met a former head of Philips, the Netherlands, 259 00:35:48.540 --> 00:35:55.060 who told me he was retired, and he told me, well, you know, not long after major war combat 260 00:35:55.060 --> 00:35:59.980 operations came to an end, suddenly I get a call from Wolfrich, and Wolfrich is saying, 261 00:35:59.980 --> 00:36:03.740 oh, God, you know, we haven't made so much thought about all of this, we don't know what 262 00:36:03.740 --> 00:36:09.660 to do, can you please help us to set up a proper Arabic speaking television station, 263 00:36:09.660 --> 00:36:18.660 Because we don't know what to do. Of course they didn't know what to do. They never gave it. It was never considered a problem. 264 00:36:21.660 --> 00:36:32.660 Why didn't they gave it? They didn't gave it because A, as I just said, because it was not considered a problem. 265 00:36:32.660 --> 00:36:47.260 But be it because it would have been extra ordinarily complicated and difficult to do. 266 00:36:47.260 --> 00:36:57.980 You see, forming a model of a war with all the thousands upon thousands of factors that 267 00:36:57.980 --> 00:37:07.580 go into it is difficult enough, so difficult that in those haxes, games are based on haxes, 268 00:37:07.580 --> 00:37:17.220 the rules are almost impossible to play, and so difficult that the computerized war gaming 269 00:37:17.220 --> 00:37:25.680 center at Rhode Island, the Naval War College, last time I asked about it, it cost a quarter 270 00:37:25.680 --> 00:37:44.080 But far more difficult is factoring in a whole country, because now that the Iraqi army no 271 00:37:44.080 --> 00:37:53.920 longer exists, the United States is at war with a whole country, including not just military 272 00:37:53.920 --> 00:38:03.120 Union that have so and so many tanks and each tank can fire so and so many times a minute 273 00:38:03.120 --> 00:38:09.880 to such and such a range and have such and such a high probability and it can move to 274 00:38:09.880 --> 00:38:16.220 such and such a distance over such and such terrain and it needs such and such so and 275 00:38:16.220 --> 00:38:19.920 so much supplies to do so and so on and so on and so on. 276 00:38:19.920 --> 00:38:25.120 All of this is difficult to model, but you can still do it. 277 00:38:25.120 --> 00:38:30.880 But now you are talking about completely different things. 278 00:38:30.880 --> 00:38:35.460 You are talking about political relationships. 279 00:38:35.460 --> 00:38:39.660 You are talking about cultural relationships. 280 00:38:39.660 --> 00:38:43.440 You are talking about social relationships. 281 00:38:43.440 --> 00:38:48.720 You are talking about people's beliefs, people's thoughts. 282 00:38:48.720 --> 00:38:58.280 How do you factor those into a machine that basically only knows how to say yes, no, yes, 283 00:38:58.280 --> 00:39:08.560 no, yes, no, so fast, no, that not a million mathematicians cannot even come opposite? 284 00:39:08.560 --> 00:39:23.800 How do you feed beliefs, attitudes, thoughts into a machine? 285 00:39:23.800 --> 00:39:26.400 And the answer is you don't. 286 00:39:26.400 --> 00:39:37.560 And since you don't, you only play those parts of the world where hardware and its performance 287 00:39:37.560 --> 00:39:53.880 And so, not only was the war that came after the end of major combat operations never gained. 288 00:39:53.880 --> 00:40:01.400 The reason why it was not gained, or maybe the reason why it couldn't be gained, was 289 00:40:01.400 --> 00:40:11.800 Because there is no way to factor these other questions into a workbook. 290 00:40:11.800 --> 00:40:17.720 Maybe I should tell you another little story about this. 291 00:40:17.720 --> 00:40:21.600 The other day I got a new book to review. 292 00:40:21.600 --> 00:40:27.280 It was written to somebody who teaches at one of your work colleges, but I won't name 293 00:40:27.280 --> 00:40:29.920 the guy. 294 00:40:29.920 --> 00:40:38.760 And he tried, as so many others have done before him, to construct a model of past wars 295 00:40:38.760 --> 00:40:43.840 to see whether it would work in the future. 296 00:40:43.840 --> 00:40:53.800 And it was a very nice model, except that it had absolutely nothing to say about morale. 297 00:40:53.800 --> 00:40:59.680 Except that it had absolutely nothing to say about the will to fight. 298 00:40:59.680 --> 00:41:07.080 Just that it had nothing to say in this case about logistic, nothing to say about cultural 299 00:41:07.080 --> 00:41:09.400 attitudes and so on and so on. 300 00:41:09.400 --> 00:41:15.840 In fact, it had nothing to say about anything important. 301 00:41:15.840 --> 00:41:24.880 And unfortunately, I had to say so in my review. 302 00:41:24.880 --> 00:41:31.280 In the case of Iraq II, war games were applied. 303 00:41:31.280 --> 00:41:36.920 Some could say they were applied very successfully, but to the wrong war. 304 00:41:36.920 --> 00:41:45.600 They were only applied to the first stage, which was supposed to end, and which did end, 305 00:41:45.600 --> 00:41:52.160 with the complete defeat of Saddam Hussein's forces. 306 00:41:52.160 --> 00:42:03.860 So that, as the Russians say, yokh, nothing, a black hole, most because they did not really 307 00:42:03.860 --> 00:42:14.160 expect any hard problems at this stage, and because the factors that go into fighting 308 00:42:14.160 --> 00:42:21.400 a war of this kind would have been probably impossible to model and therefore feed into 309 00:42:21.400 --> 00:42:41.120 And so, instead of playing what would happen, they played what they could model. 310 00:42:41.120 --> 00:42:50.160 And having played what they could model, they then decided that what they could model was 311 00:42:50.160 --> 00:43:00.480 the important thing, and that everything else did not require any particular thought. 312 00:43:00.480 --> 00:43:11.600 We all know the result. We all know the result. I myself would argue, and like most of you, 313 00:43:11.600 --> 00:43:17.600 I've noticed American casualties have been going down over the last few weeks, and of 314 00:43:17.600 --> 00:43:44.600 This is not because things are going well in Iraq, this is because things are going so badly in Iraq that what the US forces do or don't do, whether they are there or not, has become almost irrelevant. 315 00:43:44.600 --> 00:43:54.760 Apparently, there was an argument between Bin Laden, somewhere in his cave in Pakistan, 316 00:43:54.760 --> 00:44:02.640 and Zarqawi, moving from one place to another in Iraq, and always somehow eluding his would-be 317 00:44:02.640 --> 00:44:10.280 chapter, as to the best strategy to use. 318 00:44:10.280 --> 00:44:18.640 Bin Laden, being an ideologue, said, well, you have to go after those wicked Americans. 319 00:44:18.640 --> 00:44:25.820 After all, the goal, the purpose of the whole exercise is, as I wrote, I, Bin Laden, wrote 320 00:44:25.820 --> 00:44:38.840 ten years ago to get rid of the infidels who are contaminating sacred Muslim land. 321 00:44:38.840 --> 00:44:45.880 Shade Zarqawi, who is less of an ideologue and more of a pragmatist and who is also the 322 00:44:45.880 --> 00:44:52.200 man on the spot and therefore the man who holds the cards. 323 00:44:52.200 --> 00:45:02.220 Sorry Mr. Bin Laden, Osama, my dear, you know, I don't agree with that strategy at all. 324 00:45:02.220 --> 00:45:12.220 Without the Iraqi forces, the American forces in Iraq are deaf and blind. 325 00:45:12.220 --> 00:45:19.160 They, to use an impolite expression, don't know the face of the S. 326 00:45:19.160 --> 00:45:29.540 And how can they, given that the number of Arabic speakers, people who are familiar with 327 00:45:29.540 --> 00:45:38.060 The culture, its tradition, its language, its habit, is so very slow, and where any 328 00:45:38.060 --> 00:45:47.260 translator is automatically a suspect, either because he wants to betray them or because 329 00:45:47.260 --> 00:45:52.300 he has pressure being put on him and he has no choice. 330 00:45:52.300 --> 00:46:01.380 And in a situation where American troops only stay in the country for a year, and so by 331 00:46:01.380 --> 00:46:06.420 the time they are really going to learn something, they are already on their way out. 332 00:46:06.420 --> 00:46:13.860 I say, thank heaven, I don't have to serve in that place again. 333 00:46:13.860 --> 00:46:24.780 So in a way, American troops are simply irrelevant, and since they are irrelevant, they are, there's 334 00:46:24.780 --> 00:46:30.940 no point in going after them, no more so, because after all, they have the heavy weapons 335 00:46:30.940 --> 00:46:36.380 and they present more difficult targets. 336 00:46:36.380 --> 00:46:43.620 What we have to do is to go after the Iraqi, after the new Iraqi army. 337 00:46:43.620 --> 00:46:57.080 Indeed, since sooner or later the Americans are going to leave, in a sense the war has 338 00:46:57.080 --> 00:47:02.940 already been won and what we are doing now is not so much fight the Americans as prepare 339 00:47:02.940 --> 00:47:04.940 for the day after. 340 00:47:04.940 --> 00:47:20.940 And as I said, since it is Zalkawi and not Bin Laden, who is the man on the spot, Bin Laden did not have much choice but to listen to him. 341 00:47:20.940 --> 00:47:29.940 Modelling all this would probably have been impossible. 342 00:47:29.940 --> 00:47:39.940 There is no game in the world that can factor in such questions. 343 00:47:39.940 --> 00:47:49.940 But, and here I've come to the end of our presentation, don't let that mislead you, 344 00:47:49.940 --> 00:47:56.940 as may be the people who formulated the questions for me to answer to some extent did. 345 00:47:56.940 --> 00:48:15.940 War games are one very powerful tool for looking into the future, in some ways the best tool we have, and particularly for looking into the future of war. 346 00:48:15.940 --> 00:48:42.940 Because, as I tried to explain, no other human activity provides this substitute for the one-on-one, two-sided interaction between two belligerents, each of which is trying to achieve his aims while preventing the other from doing the same, 347 00:48:42.940 --> 00:48:52.940 Each of which is strategizing, each of which is trying to mislead the other, to outwit the other. 348 00:48:52.940 --> 00:48:56.940 There just is no substitute. 349 00:48:56.940 --> 00:49:04.940 The question is, how do we use these tools effectively? 350 00:49:04.940 --> 00:49:12.940 And what are the limits beyond which those tools cannot grow? 351 00:49:12.940 --> 00:49:27.940 And I'm very much afraid that it is in getting the answers to those questions wrong that Mr. Rothbard and Mr. Wolfovich screwed up. 352 00:49:27.940 --> 00:49:29.940 Thank you for your attention. 353 00:49:34.940 --> 00:49:54.940 It's a funny feeling, you know, coming all the way from Israel just for 40 minutes of talk, so please, I'll do my best to answer any questions. 354 00:49:54.940 --> 00:50:16.940 What's your opinion about the letters of Mark as an effective means of finding Ben Laos if there's nothing else that needs to work? 355 00:50:16.940 --> 00:50:19.940 I've seen letters of Mark as opposed to... 356 00:50:24.940 --> 00:50:31.940 about being dead or alive, you know, will be given 25 million dollars. So it does not seem to work very well either, does it? 357 00:50:31.940 --> 00:50:37.940 When I was going out to private people going out and doing it. 358 00:50:37.940 --> 00:50:43.940 No, I would not be surprised if people, private people are doing it already. 359 00:50:43.940 --> 00:50:49.940 Because 25 million is a lot of dollars, is a lot of money. Okay? 360 00:50:49.940 --> 00:50:50.940 Question here? 361 00:50:50.940 --> 00:50:57.940 In the context of your country, how effective have war games been for Israelis? 362 00:50:57.940 --> 00:51:04.940 We have suffered from exactly the same problems as you do. 363 00:51:04.940 --> 00:51:11.940 We are probably today the second most sophisticated military on earth in some ways. 364 00:51:11.940 --> 00:51:17.940 We too use war games. We too have the Weizmann Institute. We too have computers. 365 00:51:17.940 --> 00:51:34.320 You can model, let us say, the effectiveness or, in my view, ineffectiveness of anti-balistic 366 00:51:34.320 --> 00:51:35.940 missiles. 367 00:51:35.940 --> 00:51:44.800 You cannot model the factors such as the Palestinian willingness to commit suicide. 368 00:51:44.800 --> 00:51:46.520 How do you model that? 369 00:51:46.520 --> 00:51:53.400 And as a result, unfortunately, we have lost our struggle against the Second Intifada, 370 00:51:53.400 --> 00:51:58.480 and we are even now preparing to go out of the disaster. 371 00:51:58.480 --> 00:52:04.960 So I would argue we are suffering from exactly the same problems that you do, for exactly 372 00:52:04.960 --> 00:52:06.440 the same reasons. 373 00:52:06.440 --> 00:52:11.200 We are using the same tools to a large extent, and the results are also the same.