This is an example of an early professional counter
insurgency game written for the Pentagon to explore a rural based insurgency
through a wargame.
America was engaged in a strategic counter insurgency in
Vietnam. On one side was the government of the Republic of Vietnam (South
Vietnam) supported by America and other Western Allies. On the other side was
the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) supported by Russia, China
and other communist countries. The stakes could not have been higher. In
America, every effort was being made to wage war more effectively in the
conflict. One of the tools applied was wargaming, such as this game.
The game is a multi-player megagame with players
representing the government, the insurgents and the sample villages at the
centre of the battle for control. The game allowed the players to explore the
asymmetrical conflict from a different perspective, using the prism of
wargaming.
Agile/COIN was played in a number of key establishments in
America and clearly had some training value. One success was pulling special
forces soldiers away from their normal military skills focussed training and
asking them how would they actually influence the hearts and minds of the
people in the villages of rural South Vietnam.
This book includes after action reviews of twelve games with
the lessons learnt. What is also interesting is the examples of the American
players committing atrocities against the civilian population as an in-game
strategy.
The game was developed until it was turned into a
computer-based game as part of the appliance of science to war movement.
Ironically, whilst this may have increased the operational analysis value, it
also reduced the training value of Agile.
This book is published by the History of Wargaming Project
as part of its ongoing efforts to document professional wargaming. 