Hypothetical conflicts and wargaming have gone together like cookies and cream for as long as there has been a hobby. Often, these games range the gamut of more fanciful or science fiction subjects, but many times, they’re grounded in some very real fears. We’re going to examine those fears and those games and see how they might have been a window into what everyone thought a potential conflict might look like.
The 1980s – Fulda Gaps and 99 LuftBalloons
The 1980s was a turbulent time underneath the surface of MTV, Michael Jackson, and Miami Vice. It was a world on the knife edge. Movies like Threads and The Day After scared Western audiences silly about -the possibility of a Third World War and the potential outcome – Nuclear Armageddon. On the flip side, the movie Red Dawn had audiences thinking a conventional war with the Soviet Union was possible and winnable. War or situations close to war with the Soviets permeated the popular entertainment of the day, including reams of books written about the potential of a Third World War.
Wargaming, was of course, no different. SPI, Victory Games, GDW, and Avalon Hill all churned out titles asking, “What if the unthinkable happens?” To a certain generation of wargamers, the Fulda and Hof Gaps became as familiar as Stalingrad and Waterloo. The arguments over whether a Soviet offensive doctrine would work as claimed were as lively in the wargaming world they were in the professional defense circles of the time.
In the author’s opinion, any war in Central Europe would have eventually gone nuclear. One side would have begun to lose – and lose badly – and when it did, it would have used nuclear weapons to stabilize the situation. Worse, with what we now know about Soviet doctrine, they believed in first use of nuclear weapons in any potential conflict. It is debatable in the wake of a Third World War that there would have been a history left to remember it.
But that didn’t stop the raft of wargames from attempting to address the topic. Everything from Victory Game’s NATO to GDW’s magnum opus, The Third World War series, all addressed the question on the Central Front. Could NATO stop the Warsaw Pact without the use of nuclear weapons? We know now that it was possible from about 1986 on, but even up until 1989, every modern wargame had half or more of its scenarios dedicated to “What to do if the Russians come.”
More tactically minded gamers had a plethora of games to choose from on the topic as well, such as Avalon Hill’s MBT, West End’s Fire Team, Avalon Hill’s Firepower, and the GDW Assault series. Then there was West End’s Air and Armor, which to me, was probably the best operational game to come out of the period. The author can tell you, he played them all, and all of them were played with an eye toward a planned career choice, being one of those folks in the Fulda Gap (Funny how plans and actuality almost never match, right?).
The naval dimension was also covered, with such games as Victory Games’ Fleet Series and the air dimension like GDW’s Air Superiority and Air Strike, and Avalon Hill’s Flight Leader. No stone was seemingly unturned. And in 1989, the bottom fell out. Suddenly, the production of all these games stopped as quickly as the Berlin Wall fell. But admittedly, there’s a certain nostalgia one carries for their youth. Many of these games, while handling a nightmarish topic, are fun. And like all nostalgic things, there are comebacks. Compass Games is reissuing at last count NATO, The Third World War, and Air and Armor. What’s more, they’re coming out with new games on the topic, such as Blue Water Navy and The Battle for Germany, with more accurate orders of battle and better maps. It seems the “War that Never Was” will always be with wargamers of a certain age.
Contemporary Fears – China and the Pacific Rim
Today, the fears are similar while also different. In the 1980s, we faced a peer opponent in the days pre-internet where nukes were king. Today, we’re in an age of social media being the world’s best intelligence collection tool and China being a far cry from the cash-starved Soviet Union. China is an emerging naval power with some long-standing grudges with some of the members of the Pacific Rim. And there’s a chance those grudges could lead to a broader war. Would it be the World War III imagined in the 1980s? No. This time, the Fulda Gap is at sea and on the faraway island of Taiwan. There aren’t any forward-deployed U.S. forces this time, at least not any closer than Japan or Guam. China seems to have an advantage, but does it really? That’s a question games like Next War: Taiwan, Next War: Vietnam, and Breaking the Chains attempt to answer, much like their 1980s counterparts.
Also, like their 1980s counterparts, they try to make a nightmarish situation imaginable and allow gamers to grapple with the issues general staffs and war colleges the world over are dealing with right now, just like their counterparts did in the 1980s. Hopefully, we will look back from a more peaceful time when these games get reissued to another generation of nostalgic gamers.
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(This article is credited to Jason Weiser. Jason is a long-time wargamer with published works in the Journal of the Society of Twentieth Century Wargamers; Miniature Wargames Magazine; and Wargames, Strategy, and Soldier.)