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The 2026 India-Pakistan Simulation

The Center for Security Policy Studies hosted 30 undergraduate students for a day-long matrix game simulation centered on a hypothetical hostage crisis in Gwadar Port, a Chinese-sponsored commercial and military hub in southern Pakistan. The simulated crisis was perpetrated by the Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA), an ethnic separatist group operating out of the region. Participants were divided into two simultaneous sessions, each composed of five country teams: Pakistan, India, China, the United States, and Saudi Arabia. Over the course of the event, students tested international relations concepts in an adversarial yet “safe-to-fail” environment.

Goals

The simulation’s primary participants were political science majors in the final year of their degree programs. The primary objective was to allow these students to experience the intense constraints faced by decision-makers in crisis situations firsthand. Students applied classroom concepts—such as escalation and great power competition—while managing tangible sources of friction, including severe time pressure and imperfect information.

Because the exercise served as an undergraduate teaching tool, a secondary goal was to balance realism with approachability. The simulation was carefully scaled to accurately model real-world geopolitical dynamics without requiring participants to possess an expansive familiarity with the intricate details of each state’s military capabilities, bureaucratic institutions, or internal politics.

Design

The matrix game format was selected for several distinct advantages. First, it provides a structured opportunity for students to practice the argumentative and persuasive skills required for actual diplomatic negotiation and coalition building. Second, matrix games inherently simulate the time pressures, uncertainty, and limited scope of action experienced during actual crises. As a system-level simulation, the format also provided a necessary layer of abstraction, making the scenario accessible.

The scenario itself was designed as a nested crisis, requiring students to address the immediate tactical problem of a hostage situation while simultaneously navigating the broader framework of regional strategic competition. Participants quickly discovered how overlapping geopolitical priorities constrain actions that might seem perfectly logical in a vacuum, while simultaneously creating unexpected opportunities to leverage diplomatic linkages.

The simulation was bookended by a briefing and an after-action review. The initial briefing provided the mechanical rules of the road and primed students with a brief review of major international relations theories. The after-action review provided a critical opportunity for students to deconstruct their experiences, share lessons learned, and consider the real-world implications of the insights they gained.

Outcomes

The matrix game framework introduces an element of random chance that accurately simulates the deep uncertainty decision-makers face in a crisis. Student teams were not only uncertain about the actions of rival country teams, but they also faced uncertainty regarding the efficacy of their own actions. They learned how well-intentioned moves can create unforeseen and problematic outcomes, experiencing the anxiety and frustration of encountering high-stakes situations with no definitively “correct” answers.

Supported by facilitators, students utilized the crisis as a laboratory to experiment with theoretical models. During the after-action review, one country team discussed how they utilized the framework of “ends, ways, and means” to break down chaotic developments and analyze strategic tradeoffs. Other teams noted how their adherence to different analytical paradigms—namely realism versus liberalism—heavily influenced their own strategies and their assumptions about their adversaries.

A major dynamic that emerged organically during the simulation was the friction between political feasibility and tactical reality. In one session, students debated which country team should execute a highly complex rescue operation. Seeking a diplomatic victory, they attempted to coordinate a joint operation between the United States, Pakistan, and China. Politically, this was an elegant, face-saving compromise and a potential springboard for regional de-escalation. However, the added complexity of coordinating ad-hoc interoperability between rival militaries lacking a shared operational framework set the stage for tactical failure, despite lofty political intentions.

In all, the 2026 India-Pakistan simulation succeeded in its goals of allowing students to test academic theories under pressure, introducing them to the structural friction facing real-world decision-makers, and fostering increased interest in civil service and strategic analysis.

Summary

The 2026 Crisis: Taiwan simulation was designed to model a theoretical Chinese assault on Taiwan, beginning with a ‘quarantine’ and escalating to a direct attack on the island. The players were broken into teams representing the diplomatic, military, and executive branches of Taiwan, Japan, and the United States. Another team, representing China, served as a red cell to simulate adversary decision-making. The simulation was both a teaching tool for graduate students and an opportunity to test escalatory dynamics in the region under the conditions of the “fog of war.”

Goals

The simulation served two distinct objectives. The primary goal was to allow Schar School graduate students to test the theories they had learned in the classroom within an active and dynamic environment, exposing them to the stresses faced by policymakers in crisis scenarios. Considering the audience of graduate students with a diverse mix of backgrounds and areas of specialization, we set out to establish as much realism as possible without excessive granularity.

Additionally, the exercise allowed us to observe a plausible adversary operational concept against an active counterforce. By subjecting a well-understood potential operation to Clausewitzian friction, we sought to identify “unknown unknowns”—factors that, by their nature, are generally overlooked in traditional academic analysis.

Design

For the 2026 Crisis: Taiwan simulation, we chose a situational awareness exercise format. This structure deliberately disperses information and creates strains in inter-team communication to replicate the “fog of war” experienced in a real crisis. Teams were kept physically separated in different rooms spread over two floors, creating a tangible strain on communication. To recreate the differing operating procedures of institutions and the difficulty experienced in interagency cooperation, each group had specific rules and formats for carrying out actions. These rules, which were clear to each team internally, were opaque to the other teams, further straining communication.

To maintain situational awareness on the facilitator side, we improved upon a custom backend system we had previously established in an earlier crisis simulation. This infrastructure, designed by Dr. Lee Roberts and Dr. Jerad Harper, is a less granular form of more traditional theater-wide wargames. Functionally, this system operated behind the institutional simulation. As a result, rather than acting as a traditional wargame focused primarily on testing strategic principles, the situational awareness exercise framework allowed us to test strategy as it interacts with political deliberation and the strains of interagency cooperation.

Outcomes

The simulation highlighted strains in the “hub and spokes” system of alliances in East Asia, where the United States maintains bilateral guarantees with each nation rather than a multilateral regional framework. This system, coupled with strategic ambiguity pertaining to Taiwan, grants freedom of action to decision-makers at the cost of greatly increasing uncertainty for all parties.

Both the United States and Japan have a vested interest in preventing a Chinese military takeover of Taiwan. Together, they form a powerful deterrent force and possess a practiced capacity for military cooperation. However, in a high-stakes crisis, mutual uncertainty about how the other will act creates a “stag hunt” scenario. Both sides face high costs if they move without the other, making communication essential to reach an optimal outcome. The situational awareness exercise format highlights this sometimes-overlooked dynamic, forcing students to balance the benefits of freedom of action against the costs of uncertainty between allies.

The unique factors faced by the military teams generated interesting insights. The military teams of Japan and the United States possessed a direct line of communication, allowing them to cooperate effectively. However, the executive branches possessed final authority and often made decisions based on a wider range of factors than just military necessity. The military teams frequently felt their attempts to achieve tactical success were hamstrung by the executives, effectively modeling real-life tensions between a military’s tactical needs and a political branch’s broader mandate.

The China team was able to test the underlying assumptions of widely considered strategies under adversarial conditions. They attempted to leverage the uncertainty among the Taiwan, U.S., and Japan teams, actively seeking to create friction regarding their commitments to armed defense. Yet, they also struggled with uncertainty over how the United States and Japan teams would respond to escalatory behavior. Overconfidence that Japan and the United States would back down in the face of provocation led to increasingly escalatory behavior from China, which eventually triggered significant retaliation and an escalation cycle that China would have preferred to avoid.

In all, the 2026 Crisis: Taiwan simulation demonstrated to both students and researchers the effects of uncertainty on escalation. Uncertainty regarding ally resolve promoted overly cautious moves from the Japan and U.S. teams, which signaled weakness. In turn, attempts to exploit that perceived weakness by the China team led to escalation far beyond what they had initially desired.