Big Sky Cairn

I remember once I was engaged in a stand-off on the Kamchatka - Alaska border. I was pretty strongly entrenched on the North American side of the Bering Straight and my opponent was on the Asian side. Both of us had invested a significant number of troops to the border in an effort to discourage the other party from invading. Unfortunately for my friend and foe, he was trying to gain control of Asia - a daunting task - and an offensive from Africa had just steam-rolled into his back yard as deep as India. He needed to fortify Siam in order to protect his control in Australia.

And so, my Kamchatkan friend made a fatal error. He had invested too much into the defense of the Bering Strait border to simply give it up, and so in an effort to keep me at bay, he split his force in half, sending half South toward Siam and leaving the other half to freeze in Kamchatka. I’m sure you know how I reacted.

Suddenly, I had twice the force as he did. My casualties would still be great, but a victory was assured and strategic control of the region was at stake (a fortification in Kamchatka is much better than one in Alaska for protecting North America). And so I attacked, and of course, I won. A stand-off was escalated to a hot war because one side altered the strategic decision calculus by removing half of his force.

The lesson was that a partial withdrawal - a slow draw-down of force is a political action with dire tactical consequences for the fighting men and women.  It’s a sure way to lose.

Of course, Jim Hunt’s previously discussed post about his “Responsible Plan” for defeat withdrawal in Iraq leans heavily on the opinions of retired generals and military types, who are much more informed about tactics than I am, right? The interesting thing about retired generals is that they are retired. No one is inviting them to tactical or strategic briefings anymore. The Pentagon isn’t making sure they have the most current data on enemy movements and objectives. They aren’t piped into our intelligence-gathering apparatus. They cannot have a sense of the plan beyond what the people on the ground in Iraq have decided is appropriate and safe to share with the press - and therefore the enemy. And most of them seem to be espousing their military plans from the comfort of their home libraries thousands of miles away from the theater of conflict. I guess my point is that while I totally appreciate their service, when it comes to credibility on the specific situation in Iraq, I’m not sure a retired general has much more credibility than someone who plays a lot of RISK.

I play a lot of RISK.

Most of Jim Hunt’s position on Iraq is actually someone else’s position, but I think this part might be his (after all, it uses quotation marks):

This war has claimed the lives of four thousand of our best and brightest, left tens of thousands more seriously injured, and costs taxpayers billions of dollars a week. We must start bringing our troops home, hand over the security of the country to the Iraqis, and end our role policing this bloody civil war.

So, let me see if I understand the proposed tactics here. Hunt wants to end the war; but not all at once. He wants to slowly draw down the troops leaving fewer and fewer to defend themselves against a growing enemy. Sounds like a partial withdrawal - a political action with dire tactical consequences for the fighting men and women. A great way to sacrifice even more of our best and brightest.

Like my friend in Kamchatka learned, when you slowly withdraw troops from a hostile region, things go pretty badly for those left behind once the critical bulk of your force is gone. As soon as the enemy feels they are assured a victory, attrition no longer matters and you invite attack. That why you either win the battle or withdraw completely and immediately. Playing the middle ground is a politician’s prerogative and that’s why we try to keep politicians from running the military.

Finally, Hunt adds this little beauty:

We must change our irresponsible tactics and actions, ensure Iraq is stable, and then leave.”

Well shoot. Is this all we have to do?

I don’t mean to pester, but isn’t that the current plan? Make sure Iraq is stable before we leave. Jim, be honest now. Did you borrow that from a speech by George W?

Overall, do you see what I’m driving at here? Hunt’s trying to play politics with Iraq, but he’s not doing a very good job. 1) He’s borrowing someone else’s ideas, 2) He’s mistaking “goals” for a “plan”, 3) His idea of a change in strategy is actually quite dangerous and will ultimately undermine stability while costing the lives of American soldiers, 4) His requirement of stability before withdrawal is exactly the same as the status quo and he offers no specifics for why his ideas will be better.

When I was a young LT, we spent a lot of time at the Tac site playing Risk. But it became predictable after a while. Whoever could get Australia would camp out there and make a mess of armies to go rolling over everyone else. So we made our own version: Nuclear risk.
After all of the armies are initially doled out, spread out the country cards face down. Each player takes either 1 or 2 cards (depending on how many players) and that is the country that you can nuke at any time, even if it’s not your turn. Keep the card hidden, but know that when you flop it, that country is now nuked, no matter who is in there. When a country is nuked, it is all NO GO terrain, and no one can ever enter it again.
There were two strategies - offensive use and defensive. If you had the card for Kamchatka for example, and were trying to snap up North America, you could use it to keep anyone from attacking you from Asia. You could also wait to use it until some massive horde invaded and then you would wipe them out.
We had to make arrangements for when continents or countries became isolated. Then we would declare a parachute drop to the adjoining country that was safe to enter, less 10% for casualties.
These mods tended to make everyone use smaller hordes, since you never knew when they were going to be obliterated.
Had a lot of fun. If you decide to try this variant, let me know what you think

Steve, I’d never played those strategies. Awesome ideas. I haven’t played for awhile mostly because my crew stopped playing to win and started playing not to lose (turns out you can trade Middle East for the card bonus indefinitely). I’ll give those variations a try.

Thanks for stopping by.