War games are an important planning tool. Various military and political experts sit around tables or in separate rooms and role-play decision-making in different countries. The decisions in the previous round are then played out in multiple rounds. The goal is not for the teams to win or lose but rather to force analysts to confront groupthink or plan for scenarios they had not previously considered.

Every so often, war games sponsored by Washington think tanks or even the U.S. government make headlines. Would Iran target the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain to retaliate after an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear sites, even if the Pentagon had not been involved? A recent Middle East Forum war game, for example, suggested the possibility that the Iranian regime could invite China to park its navy at the Kharg Oil Terminal to prevent any U.S. retaliation against Iran’s main outlet to export oil. Other war games considered the possibility that China could strike at U.S. installations in Guam or naval aviation fuel depots in Singapore to neutralize them ahead of an invasion of Taiwan, or asked how much weaponry the North Atlantic Trade Organization could provide Ukraine before Russia might resort to nuclear weapons.