RealLand: A Wargaming Approach to Computational International Relation

The objective of this study is to advance a wargaming approach to computational international relations (IR). Wargaming has a long tradition of artfully balancing between realism and human playability. Those same techniques can be incorporated into computational IR models. A wargaming approach affords both greater resolution in the operational environment and emulation of human decision-making, which provides a significant alternative to past computational IR models of international conflict. As a demonstration of this approach, I developed two simulations: Basic and Enhanced RealLand.;Basic RealLand is a replication of the work of past researchers (Cusack and Stoll, 1990; Duffy, 1992) providing a comparative foundation for innovation within Enhanced RealLand. Enhanced RealLand combines computational social science (CSS) techniques with defense and commercial wargaming mechanisms to enable a wargaming approach to computational IR. It is a strategic-operational simulation where players sense the world, identify issues, develop strategies, and implement actions such as trade, alliance building, and war. The shift away from game-theoretic approaches for modeling computer agents as nation-states to the conflict-theory model as players proved promising, and the results generate a world worthy of the prominent IR realist theorists. An important contribution is the creation of a pseudo history, similar to that of a narrative resulting from a social simulation.;This study advanced a wargaming approach to computational IR by demonstrating that additional representative modeling, in a human playable form, can be used for advanced IR research. By placing the focus on simulating human decision-making through a descriptive process, Enhanced RealLand provides an approach and extensible framework for computational IR models to have analytic utility whether for theorists, policy-makers, or educators.