The rigging of the Millennium Challenge 2002 simulation echos events in the planning for the Vietnam War. Chapter 21 of David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest describes the elaborate simulations run to prepare for our involvement in Vietnam, each involving weeks of preparation and conducted by senior military and civilian officials. The first set did …
This post about the 2002 Millennium Challenge war games has sparked such a valuable discussion that it is being moved to the DNI blog (update: it is here). Stay tuned, as this will be worthwhile reading. For a good introduction to the subject of war games — more formally, “military simulations” — see the Wikipedia …
War games rigged? General says Millennium Challenge 02 ‘was almost entirely scripted’, By Sean D. Naylor in the Army Times (16 August 2002). Vignettes like this illustrate the structural ills of our defense apparatus better than any theoretical analysis can. The most elaborate war game the U.S. military has ever held was rigged so that it appeared …
Recommended reading: an autopsy of the 2002 Millennium Challenge war games Read More »
Part V of this series provoked many emails requesting more symptoms showing the decline of the State (DOTS) in America. I wish all the questions I received were so easy to answer. This essay will give some general background and a specific example. The ur-text for DOTS is Martin van Creveld’s The Rise and Decline …
