Kriegspiel: Asymmetrical warfare as a game (#174; Topic I)

Two weeks ago, when three "unlawful enemy combatants" at the Guatanamo Bay committed suicide, the general in charge of the detention facility offered the view that it was an "asymmetrical warfare" against USA. Seeing that phrase, I meant to do a blog, but forgot. This evening, when watching PBS's Inside Washington, panelist Mark Shields again used the phrase to refer to Israel's bombardment of Lebanon in retaliation of militant guerilla group Hezbollah's kidnapping of two of its soldiers. So, before I forget again, let me do this blog. During the Boer War, a London journalist Michael Henry Temple (1862-1928) invented a game: Kriegspiel (Krieg = war in German; spiel = game), to simulate the fog of war in real life -- when the enemy's intention and formation are both unrevealed. In Kriegspiel, though using pieces and rules in western chess, a player sees only his/her own playing pieces; the opponent's pieces and moves are shielded -- a reciprocal asymmetrical war game. Each player has a playing board on which to make his/her actual moves, but the position of the opponent's pieces is assumed -- until better or definitive information becomes available. By means of intelligence-gathering moves -- with valuable information provided by the referee, who has an official board showing actual moves by both players -- a player infers the opponent's position and proceeds to checkmate the King as in conventional western chess. Difficult? Yes. Impossible? No. Fascinating? Definitely. Kriegspiel was a favorite of German army generals during WWI, and of British cryptoanalysts at Blechley Park during WWII. I was exposed to the game from a fellow professor at the U of Washington, who learned it when on the staff of the Rand Corporation. Realizing that there is only one introductory book on the game, written in German, I proceeded to do one, in English, Kriegspiel: Chess Under Uncertainty (1994, 144 pages). Well received, including interviews with ABC and the print media, I wrote another one, Chess Detective: Kriegspiel Strategies, Endgames, and Problems (1995, 191 pages), to complement a Kriegspiel endgame book, by Gerald Anderson, published in the 1940s when he was a member of the British consular staff in Washington DC.