The politics of play: wargaming with the U.S. Military

Abstract

"Politics of Play: Wargaming with the U.S. Military is the first book in International Relations to examine the use of wargames in the world's most powerful fighting forces. Since 2014, a wargaming renaissance has been underway in which a small but committed wargames community of practice has been empowered to proliferate their craft across the military's strategic planning, professional education, and training regimes. Drawing in detail upon one hundred hours of interviews conducted at U.S. military wargames and schoolhouses, it examines the military's use of games for recruitment, training, education, and research. It argues that by promoting a non-reflexive immersive state and cultivating a drive towards victory conditions, wargaming has both reality-producing and subject-producing properties. In addition, grounded in the thought of Jacques Derrida, it offers a new theorisation of play--'deconstructive play'--as a practical means by which the politics and power relations at work in wargames might be identified and challenged. The book shows that, far from one and the same, games sit in tension with play insofar games are systems or structures that arrest and direct play, often imposed from outside, while play involves the making and breaking of such rules by players themselves. Combining original empirical analysis with a new theory of play, Politics of Play offers a critical analysis of the use of wargaming to produce soldiers in the digital age"--