Eyeing Russia, Pentagon Wants Global War Games

General: Goal Is to Eventually Just Have One Big War Game

Continuing to envision the new Cold War with Russia both as a ticket for ongoing increases in military spending and a convenient way to coax regional allies into complicated alliances, the Pentagon is increasingly interested in building its war games across broad global conflicts, and in particular a war with Russia.

US war games used to be very regional, with one or no more than a handful of nations involved in very limited missions. In recent years, they’ve grown progressively in scope, and that’s no accident. Brig. Gen. John Healy, who coordinates exercises in Europe, says the US wants to prepare for more complex wars with broader goals.

Brig. Gen. Healy said the goal was even broader, saying in the long run the US is working toward a single, globally integrated war game, so that all the exercises are on the same page, and part of the same global war game.

It’s going to be difficult to boil all the war games down into a single one, since different regions have different bogeymen. It would be difficult, for instance, to bring the annual US war games in South Korea, traditionally practice for attacking North Korea, into being somehow about Russia.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.