War Games: The Secret World of the Creators, Players, and Policy Makers Rehearsing World War III Today

War-gaming has been going on for some time: Allen describes a 1941 game in Tokyo that ended with a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and an astonishingly prophetic Vietnam War game in the Pentagon in 1964. Using the leverage of the Freedom of Information Act (plus ""an archival fluke''), he obtained information that provides a moderately close look at the eerie world of computerized war games as played throughout the U.S. defense establishment. Allen, coauthor of Rickover, himself took part in ``the Persian Gulf game'' at the Naval War College and provides not only a description of the scenario but analyzes the emotional dynamics of the participants. Readers will be alarmed at the assessment here of the strategic community's reliance on analysts who believe that international conflict can be viewed essentially as a game without rules. Yet, as Allen cautions, ``the nuclear reality is the place where war by the rules ends. Beyond that threshold no game can go, for beyond that threshold there are no rules.'' (June 8)