The Dalig and Vadan Exercise: Teaching Students about Strategy and the Challenges of Friction and Fog

For classes which contain a discussion of strategy, war, political violence, terrorism, insurgency, peace operations, or ethno-nationalist conflict to name a few, students must have an effective, foundational understanding of the complexities of using military force. To that end, we have developed an operational "battlefield" exercise, the Dalig-Vadan Exercise (DVE), which allows an entire class of students to get a sense of the dynamics and complexities of command and execution of competing strategies without any military background, any particular emphasis on time, place, or context, and de-emphasizing the consequences of violence. Anchored on Clausewitz's friction and fog, the DVE provides students with a first-person encounter with decision making in a dynamic, multiparty, informational-limited, and time-sensitive environment that can be related to a wide range of courses and course material in international relations and related fields.