Within minutes, the clean structure that worked so well on paper buckled under the weight of a thinking opponent operating under a different set of assumptions.
In seminar, a student delivered a masterful written analysis of a regional conflict. The logic was tight. The prose was polished. It was the kind of work that earns an easy “A.” When he attempted to apply that same academic logic in a subsequent wargame, however, the limits of his written work became clear. The living, breathing adversary—another student—did not behave like a paragraph on a page. Instead, the adversary adapted, exploited vulnerabilities, and introduced friction that the student had not anticipated while writing. Within minutes, the clean structure that worked so well on paper buckled under the weight of a thinking opponent operating under a different set of assumptions.
After the turn ended, the student admitted quietly, “I thought I understood this problem when I wrote it. I didn’t.” There was no embarrassment, only clarity. The paper had rewarded explanation. The wargame demanded execution: decisions with consequences against an adversary that pushed back.
That moment captured an essential truth of strategic leader development. Writing sharpens ideas, but wargaming tests their viability. In the profession of arms, demonstrated warfighting competence, not elegant prose, earns credibility with decision makers. Professional military education requires opportunities to refine ideas through application, and wargaming provides that refinement in ways no seminar paper can. That student was me, and I have observed the same dynamic repeatedly over the past three years as a faculty member.
This experience does not diminish the importance of writing. It reinforces it. Writing remains foundational but understanding not only its value but also its limits is essential to developing effective strategic leaders.
The Value and Limits of Writing
Writing has rightly earned its place as a cornerstone of professional military education. It disciplines the mind, clarifies complex ideas, and forces leaders to organize their thoughts and apply logic, assess risk, and communicate intent. For senior leaders, writing remains indispensable. It enables engagement with policy, supports civil-military dialogue, and provides a means to articulate strategy in a form that others can critique and refine. In this sense, strategic writing reveals not only what a leader thinks, but how that leader thinks.
Because writing performs these functions so effectively, it occupies a central place across professional military education. Joint PME guidance emphasizes writing as a primary means of developing disciplined reasoning, critical thinking, and the ability to communicate military advice to civilian decision makers. Writing provides the structure through which strategy is explained, debated, and refined. Without it, leaders struggle to meaningfully participate in institutional conversations that shape the use of military power.
Precisely because writing is so valuable, its limitations matter. Writing allows leaders to operate in a controlled environment where assumptions remain intact unless the author chooses to challenge them. The narrative unfolds according to expectation rather than adaptation, coherence rather than friction. Risk can be explained, but it cannot be owned. Errors are revealed through critique rather than consequence. Writing also rewards individual cognition. Strategic leadership, however, is exercised collectively—through interaction, negotiation, and decision-making among teams operating under pressure. Writing captures how leaders think in isolation, but it does not reveal how they function when ideas are contested in real time. For these reasons, writing alone cannot produce strategic leaders. Strategic leadership is not a literary exercise; it is a decision exercise.
Wargaming imposes immediacy.
What Wargaming Provides
As Carl von Clausewitz observed, “war is the province of uncertainty.” If writing clarifies ideas, wargaming places leaders in environments where those ideas must be acted upon under pressure and uncertainty. Decisions are made with incomplete information, constrained time, and uncertain outcomes. Leaders must set priorities, accept risks, and commit resources without the benefit of hindsight.
Wargaming imposes immediacy. A flawed assumption can unravel an operational approach in minutes, while delayed decisions can surrender the initiative. Consequences compound across domains, forcing leaders to live with the effects of their choices as situations evolve. Learning occurs through consequence rather than commentary, as decisions are adjudicated in real time and their effects become immediately visible.
A defining feature of wargaming is the presence of a thinking adversary. Rather than behaving as expected, adversaries adapt, exploit vulnerabilities, and pursue objectives that conflict with one’s own. Plans are disrupted. Intelligence is ambiguous. Opportunities emerge unpredictably. Strategy is tested not against assumptions, but against an opponent who actively resists it.
This dynamic explains why wargaming is routinely employed by senior decision makers beyond the classroom. A 2023 U.S. Government Accountability Office report notes that wargaming helps leaders contend with problem sets shaped by “complex, subjective, and sometimes illogical and irrational decisions of humans.” Repeated exposure to these conditions develops informed decisiveness—not recklessness, but judgment grounded in experience.
Finally, wargaming reflects the collective nature of strategic leadership. Strategy is developed, contested, and executed by teams operating under pressure. Participants must brief, debate, negotiate, and align in real time, revealing how leaders’ function within groups when ideas are challenged and conditions are changing.
Wargaming as a Professional Competency and Preparation for the Future
If the attributes exercised in wargaming are central to strategic leadership, then wargaming cannot remain merely an instructional technique. It must be treated as a professional competency. In this context, professional competency refers to the demonstrated ability to exercise judgment, make risk-informed decisions, and adapt under conditions of uncertainty. Strategic leaders are defined not only by their ability to analyze problems or articulate ideas, but by their capacity to make sound decisions under the conditions highlighted above. Wargaming is the primary environment within professional military education where those capacities can be exercised.
The historical record reinforces this view. In the decades before World War II, the U.S. Naval War College employed wargaming extensively to explore potential conflict in the Pacific. Admiral Chester Nimitz later reflected that the Pacific War held few surprises because so much had already been examined through wargaming. The value of this preparation was not predictive accuracy, but the development of strategic judgment before real decisions carried real consequences.
As Peter Perla later argued, this is the enduring contribution of wargaming. Its purpose is not to predict outcomes, but to develop insight by forcing decision-makers to confront uncertainty, adapt to interaction, and recognize patterns through experience. Wargaming trains leaders to think in conditions where solutions are not fully knowable in advance; precisely the conditions that define strategic leadership.
Most importantly, wargaming provides a venue for demonstrated competence. It allows faculty and peers to observe how leaders think, decide, adapt, and lead when their ideas are challenged. Strategic leaders earn trust not through potential, but through performance. Wargaming makes that performance visible.
The Institutional Imperative
If wargaming is essential to individual strategic competence, then the institutions responsible for developing strategic leaders must reflect that reality. When wargaming is treated as episodic or ancillary, the implicit message is that explaining strategy carries more institutional weight than demonstrating judgment in warfighting. Over time, this shapes faculty incentives and student effort, privileging written articulation over applied decision-making. For an institution charged with preparing leaders for war, that balance matters.
At the Army War College, few courses make wargaming a central focus. The Joint Warfighting Program (JWP) is one of them. As a capstone exercise, JWP students participate in a thirty-day wargame in which the class is divided into red and blue teams. Both sides develop operational campaign plans and then test them against each other while working through the same complex and ambiguous issues commanders will face in conflict.
This wargame is conducted at the high operational or low strategic level using the Operational Wargaming System. In the wargame, students develop and direct an operational campaign while confronting logistical dilemmas, allied force integration challenges, and limited weapon availability following the initial salvos. Taken together, these conditions force leaders to exercise judgment, adapt under uncertainty, and make warfighting decisions with cascading consequences. This experience is universally acclaimed by the students as the most impactful of their time at the War College.
While the time and emphasis required for this experience are afforded to the Joint Warfighting Program, they are not readily available to the rest of the student body. Extending a comparable wargaming experience might be done by sacrificing an elective and repurposing that time toward wargaming. It would also require faculty proficiency in wargaming, as well as a full-time wargaming staff to support the effort. Admittedly a heavy lift, but worth consideration given the impact wargaming can have on leader development.
Conclusion
This argument is not an indictment of scholarly writing. Writing will always matter in professional military education. It disciplines the mind, clarifies ideas, and enables effective communication within complex institutional and civil-military environments. Strategic leaders must be able to explain ideas clearly, defend them logically, and articulate military advice in ways that inform decision makers.
On its own, however, writing cannot prepare leaders for the realities of war. Strategic leadership is not validated by clarity of expression, but by the quality of judgment exercised when decisions must be made under uncertainty, against adaptive adversaries, and with real consequences at stake. Those conditions cannot be fully replicated on the page. They must be experienced.
Wargaming provides the most authentic opportunity within professional military education to expose ideas to those conditions. It compels leaders to act on their reasoning, confront friction, and adapt as situations evolve. In doing so, wargaming reveals whether strategies that appear sound in writing can endure competition, uncertainty, and consequence. This is not a rejection of academic rigor, but its extension.
Strategic education is most effective when writing and wargaming are understood as complementary elements of a single developmental process. Writing shapes ideas, clarifies intent, and structures reasoning. Wargaming tests those ideas through execution, interaction, and time. Writing should inform wargaming, and wargaming should test writing. Together, they develop leaders capable of both sound thinking and effective action.
If the army expects its senior leaders to make consequential decisions in war, then its premier institution for strategic education must ensure those leaders are prepared to do more than explain strategy. Writing may open the door, but demonstrated judgment in warfighting – revealed most clearly through wargaming – is what sustains credibility when decisions matter most.
Wes Daugherty is an active-duty U.S. Navy captain and helicopter pilot approaching 30 years of unbroken service. He currently serves as Director of Wargaming and Maritime Operations in the Department of Military Strategy, Planning, and Operations at the U.S. Army War College.
The views expressed in this presentation are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army War College, U.S. Army, U.S. Navy or Department of War.
Photo Credit: Created by Gemini
