Played a really fun game of Labyrinth tonight—a new wargame that simulates the Global War on Terror at the strategic level. Peter played the Jihadists, and I had the US. For the first two years after 9/11, things were bleak. Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines were hatching plots and hurting American prestige. Afghanistan was ruled by the Taliban, and they were recruiting cells of jihadists in Central Asia, Russia, and Pakistan. They even took a shot at getting hold of Soviet nuclear weapons (but the plot failed, thankfully).
I countered by using persistent diplomacy to get Pakistan to ally with me, whereupon I sent some troops to help them disrupt the growing number of jihadists there. Then, in 2002, I launched the invasion of Afghanistan and forced a regime change there. Meanwhile, Al-Qaeda was recruiting cells in Italy, Great Britain, Iraq, and elsewhere, and the world community was increasingly at odds with the US over how to deal with the terror threat. More and more countries were advocating a soft posture, while the US and Israel (and Russia) were hard on terror.
Finally, I decided to make a major change in strategy. I conducted a reassessment and changed the US posture to soft, bringing my administration’s anti-terror policy in line with the rest of the world. The response was overwhelmingly positive, boosting my influence in the Muslim world.
In 2003, I pushed hard to press my advantage and managed to complete the operation in Afghanistan, establishing good governance there. Next, I coaxed Pakistan into democracy, and then the Gulf States after that! Democracy was busting out all over, and the jihadists were reeling. For my final one-two punch, I hammered away at jihadist funding. Al-Azhar, the Islamist University in Cairo, came out with a fatwa denigrating Al-Qaeda, which quickly dried up funding for the jihadists. By the end of the war, they had no means to recruit. They had staged a comeback in Central Asia and were moving toward declaring a major jihad there to re-establish Islamic rule after being chased out of Afghanistan. But I countered with some back-door diplomacy and coaxed Central Asia into a position of neutrality, dooming the Islamists’ ambitions there.
Very fun game. I think my best move was reassessing strategy and shifting to a soft posture, which in turn led to diplomatic gains in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Must play this one again and again. Excellent game design!
