Command and Staff students excited to wargame upcoming civil war
FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. — Wargaming is a staple of professional military education courses across the Defense Department, and students at the Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC) are pretty excited about their wargame scenario for Academic Year 2025.
“I thought maybe we’d play out a scenario for defending Taiwan or perhaps countering Russian aggression in Scandinavia,” said Maj. Molly Swift. “So I was surprised when we were told we’d be planning something called Operation EYELINER. Then, the instructor opened the road to war brief with a close-up of J.D. Vance. And as I gazed into those eyes, I thought, ‘Yeah, I can see how those baby blues could get the country in trouble.’ That’s when I knew this wargame was going to be special.”
Dr. Burgerlich Krieg, head of the Murderology, Murderonomy, and Statistics Department that oversees CGSC’s game exercises, noted that wargames are intended to prepare students for future conflicts.
“All of our officers take an oath to defend America against enemies foreign and domestic. So we figured that given the polarization of the upcoming election, we should game out a few homeland courses of action just in case the sweet meteor of death doesn’t put us out of our misery before November 5th.”
Using a modified version of the classic Axis and Allies wargame, each CGSC conference group was assigned a unique branch plan of national dissolution to explore.
“Operation EYELINER assumes that Vance takes over the presidency after Trump chokes to death on a Big Mac at his inauguration ball,” Swift said as she casually rolled a pair of dice in her hand. “Naturally, Vance’s immediate national security priority would be forcibly nationalizing the means of production at major cosmetics centers in California and Florida. So we’ve planned out combined armored thrusts and airborne assaults leveraging the closest Army bases to each maquillage center of gravity.”
Clegg elaborated on some of the other branch plans: “The American taxpayer can rest assured that the iron majors here at CGSC are gaming out every possible scenario. For example, Operation WORD SALAD follows an executive order by President-elect Harris to deploy special operators in direct action missions to eliminate any journalist who asks her a question harder than ‘What’s your favorite color?’ With a Trump victory, Operation CHAINSAW has the Corps of Engineers provide logistical support to irregular forces led by RFK Jr. that hunt down immigrants. Sure, using severed Haitian heads is kind of a dark way to track victory points, but it’s these types of realistic wargame scenarios that really make the military decision-making process come alive.”