{"id":770,"date":"2026-04-01T11:57:54","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T09:57:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/germanwargamingcenter.eu\/?p=770"},"modified":"2026-04-01T12:10:03","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T10:10:03","slug":"deutschland-im-strategietest-deutschland-erprobt-strategisches-handeln","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/germanwargamingcenter.eu\/en\/deutschland-im-strategietest-deutschland-erprobt-strategisches-handeln\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany in Strategic Testing \u2013 Germany Exercises Strategic Action"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Wargames do not provide predictions, but they show how decisions under uncertainty actually emerge. The article makes clear why strategic capacity for action depends less on knowledge than on routines, narratives, and institutional logics.<\/p>

This article was first published by the German Atlantic Association \/ Opinions on Security and is part of our work at the Wargaming Nexus.<\/span><\/i><\/p>

https:\/\/ata-dag.de\/opinions-on-security\/deutschland-im-strategietest-deutschland-erprobt-strategisches-handeln\/24367\/<\/a><\/p>

In the two years since its founding, the German Wargaming Center has conducted several cross-departmental and whole-of-society wargames. They do not provide forecasts or predictions. Their value lies in offering insights into decision-making dynamics, patterns of cooperation, and institutional logics under complex and evolving conditions.<\/p>

Participants in the simulations included representatives from ministries, companies, security agencies, international organizations, and civil society institutions. Based on defined scenarios, they made decisions under time pressure and with incomplete information. In the game, decisions alter the initial conditions and generate new constraints, risks, and courses of action. This gives rise to dynamic interactions that make real strategic processes comprehensible without incurring their immediate costs or damages.<\/p>

The \u201csafe-to-fail\u201d environment is not a side effect, but a core methodological principle. Errors and misjudgments become visible without leading to irreversible consequences. Failure can have productive value because it exposes assumptions, challenges routines, and initiates processes of adaptation. The goal is not to win the game, but to improve the capacity to act in real crisis situations.<\/p>

The wargames conducted since the call to \u201cplay war\u201d have aimed to make recurring patterns of strategic action under uncertainty visible. Across different thematic areas, several overarching findings can be identified.<\/p>

Strategic action takes place under conditions of persistent uncertainty. The security policy environment in Europe has fundamentally changed. Military force, geopolitical rivalry, economic vulnerability, and hybrid influence overlap. Strategic uncertainty is no longer a temporary deviation, but a structural constant. Decisions are made under conditions in which information is incomplete, time windows are limited, and consequences can only be partially anticipated.<\/p>

Cooperation follows institutional logics and not only shared interests. Actors articulate common goals while simultaneously safeguarding their own institutional capacity for action. Decisions follow mandates, responsibilities, accountability requirements, and resource constraints. Cooperation emerges where institutional logics are compatible and remains fragile where this compatibility is lacking. Competition and coordination coexist.<\/p>

Narratives structure decision spaces. Actors tend to prefer courses of action that align with their existing understanding of the situation. Options that challenge these interpretive frameworks are chosen less frequently, even if they appear functionally sound. Narratives define what is considered plausible, legitimate, or necessary. Strategic performance therefore also depends on the ability to reflect on and adapt one\u2019s own assumptions.<\/p>

Security is a whole-of-society process of negotiation. Strategic capacity for action is not located exclusively within state institutions. Economic actors, associations, and operators of critical infrastructure take on coordinating or stabilizing roles, often not on the basis of formal mandates, but due to attributed competence and systemic relevance. The strategic space is broader and more complex than traditional jurisdictional logics suggest.<\/p>

Self-observation is part of strategic resilience. Wargames force decision-makers to prioritize under uncertainty, take risks, and openly confront trade-offs. Implicit assumptions and routines become visible. Strategic resilience arises not only from material resources, but also from the capacity for critical self-reflection.<\/p>

These findings are based on concrete simulations conducted in different institutional contexts. In the wargame Ernstfall, carried out jointly by WELT and the German Wargaming Center, an escalation in the Baltic region was simulated. The Red Team acted consistently goal-oriented, with high speed and clear prioritization. Instead of waiting for political coordination processes, it deliberately exploited time windows, ambiguities, and procedural delays. In this way, it succeeded in creating military and political facts before coherent countermeasures could be initiated on the opposing side. The outcome attracted public attention and was also commented on politically. Analytically, however, another finding was central: the Blue Team was staffed with experienced professionals, yet institutional routines and coordination logics significantly shaped the speed of response. The delay resulted less from a lack of information than from the structure of collective decision-making processes.<\/p>

In the simulation exercise \u201cConvergence,\u201d conducted by the Berlin Chamber of Industry and Commerce together with the German Wargaming Center, the capacity for action in a security policy gray zone was examined. The scenario remained below formal escalation thresholds but nonetheless created real strain on infrastructure, logistics, and societal stability. In the early phases of the game, the participating actors primarily invested in coordination, situational awareness, and institutional connectivity. Operational measures only moved to the forefront once specific bottlenecks were identified as system-critical and collectively recognized as such. It became evident that the capacity for action does not arise solely from hierarchies, but from shared assumptions about what is considered effective, legitimate, and necessary. Notably, the Berlin Chamber of Industry and Commerce itself increasingly assumed a coordinating role over the course of the game\u2014not due to formal mandates, but as a result of expectation dynamics among other actors.<\/p>

In the simulation \u201cEntanglement Ostschild 2026,\u201d conducted on behalf of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the focus was on the future of European defense cooperation. The starting point was a structural dilemma of cooperation between national industrial policy interests and the aspiration for collective European capacity for action. At the outset, multilateral initiatives and efforts to advance joint projects despite political tensions dominated. However, as uncertainty increased, the logic of action shifted. National measures and bilateral arrangements gained prominence. Under growing time pressure, actors prioritized short-term capacity for action over long-term system coherence. A recurring pattern became visible: the greater the pressure, the stronger the tendency to revert to familiar national instruments. Strategic coherence thus proved to be less a question of formal alliances and more a matter of stable expectations and mutual trust.<\/p>

Germany does not play war in order to wage it. Germany uses wargames to understand strategic behavior under changing conditions. The simulations show that strategic capacity for action fails less due to a lack of knowledge than due to institutional routines, expectation structures, and decision-making logics. Speed becomes a factor of power. Cooperation remains fragile. Narratives constrain or expand spaces for action. Security emerges from the interplay of state and non-state actors.<\/p>

Wargames do not provide ready-made courses of action. They create a space in which assumptions can be tested, routines made visible, and decision-making processes under uncertainty can be explored. In an environment where uncertainty has become a constant condition, precisely this capacity for structured self-examination becomes a strategic resource. Strategic capacity for action does not begin with perfect information, but with an understanding of one\u2019s own decision-making logic.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Philip Jan Sch\u00e4fer \u00b7 Joseph Verbovszky<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wargames liefern keine Prognosen, aber sie zeigen, wie Entscheidungen unter Unsicherheit tats\u00e4chlich entstehen. Der Beitrag macht sichtbar, warum strategische Handlungsf\u00e4higkeit weniger an Wissen als an Routinen, Narrativen und institutionellen Logiken scheitert. Dieser Beitrag erschien zuerst bei der Deutschen Atlantischen Gesellschaft \/ Opinions on Security und ist Teil unserer Arbeit am Wargaming Nexus. https:\/\/ata-dag.de\/opinions-on-security\/deutschland-im-strategietest-deutschland-erprobt-strategisches-handeln\/24367\/ Das German […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-allgemein"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/germanwargamingcenter.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/germanwargamingcenter.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/germanwargamingcenter.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/germanwargamingcenter.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/germanwargamingcenter.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/germanwargamingcenter.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":785,"href":"https:\/\/germanwargamingcenter.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions\/785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/germanwargamingcenter.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/germanwargamingcenter.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/germanwargamingcenter.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/germanwargamingcenter.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}