Fuck COIN

Propaganda’s efficacy swings on a simple hinge: there are people who matter and people who do not. What’s funny is the people who supposedly matter often don’t even exist in the first place. The propaganda of capital makes a nebulous consumer the prime subject, the individual with rights, the individual under threat. Those whom capital consumes in service to it are an unfortunate yet unavoidable byproduct. To make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs. 

There are bold, in-your-face, intense examples of propaganda. I don’t think it takes a great degree of savvy to notice it. Watch the opening speech in The Newsroom. Nothing particularly subtle about that, right? America was great once, until some fucking idiots fucked it up (the people watching are, of course, not those idiots, Aaron Sorkin reassures us). Remember when Antonin Scalia used Jack Bauer to defend torture? Of course, innocent American lives are superior or more important than some nameless man in Guantanamo. 

Propaganda wears many guises, but my least favorite is the version that wears smart-guy glasses. Listen junior, this type of media says, things are more complicated than you could possibly understand. Under the guides of presenting “the facts” and a particular accepted and unquestioned rationale, the audience can make the mysterious mental maneuver of turning off the critical parts of their brains because, well, they’re in the capable hands of a smart pilot. Or, in what I’m going to cover here, because they’re playing a game. 

Let’s talk about COIN (games). 

What is COIN?

COIN stands for COunterINsurgency. Abstractly, COIN tactics are tactics used by a state against enemies that this state views as non-state actors. Irregular warfare, I.E. wars that aren’t fought with conventional tactics, have formed the bulk of most conflicts for decades, if not longer. Thus, states trying to figure out how to fight revolutionaries, insurgents, and guerillas serve as the focus for COIN methodology and tactics. 

If you need an example of (failed) COIN operations, look to the US state’s attempts to win “hearts and minds” with counterinsurgency tactics in Afghanistan or Vietnam. Drones at weddings and Agent Orange in jungles.

I am not an expert in military history, but I am an expert in board games and I have an internet connection. Rather than talking to you about COIN operations IRL, I’m going to talk to you about COIN games. COIN is a series by game company GMT Games. With the first title, Andean Abyss (set in Colombia), designer Volko Ruhnke created the framework for an entire series (currently 14, some in development) of games about various irregular conflicts. 

Unlike traditional wargames where players take two, three, or four sides of a specific battle and attempt to win it, COIN games take a different tack.  

They often require four players to get the full effect, and model abstractly political, military, and economic conflict within a period of time, whether the conflict is armed and/or nonviolent. Generally speaking, there are factions within each game that represent a particular ideology, each with specific goals for “winning” the conflict. 

For example, in Gandhi: The Decolonization of British India, 1917–1947, four players assume the role of British Raj, the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League, and the “Revolutionaries.” This is typical in COIN games, where the factions can roughly be broken down into the following categories:

• A state and/or state actors

• Revolutionary or guerilla actors

• Business interests or organized crime (AKA capitalists)

And before you get all excited expecting a capitalist critique, there’s not much of that to be found here. Generally speaking, in most of these games, the state wants to hold onto power, the revolutionaries want to seize power, and the capitalists want to make money. Not all of these factions are present in every game. Gandhi, for instance, does not have a capitalist faction. 

These games are mysteriously divorced from politics on the surface, in that they do not ever present themselves as having something larger to say about conflict, or even something more contextual about the conflict that they’re covering. They present themselves as apolitical and amoral. When you play them, there is not a “good” guy or a “bad” guy, there are simply different guys who have different goals. 

Pretty straightforward, right? Nothing to see here. 

COIN representation

One of the metropolis-sized lies in games and in history books is that the presenter of the subject and the subject’s presentation are depoliticized or impartial accounter or account of events. Read Ballard’s Empire of the Sun and get back to me if you think that. As any doofus can tell you, books and games are things that are created by people. It almost goes without saying that these works will contain to some degree the biases, political leanings, and philosophical considerations of the people who create them. 

Volko Ruhnke works for the CIA. 

I’m not doxxing here, or saying anything he doesn’t say himself. He’s got it right there in his game designer profile on BoardGameGeek. Mark Herman, who co-designed Fire in the Lake, the COIN game about the Vietnam War, modeled a US-led defense of Saudi Arabia for the US defense department. 

I don’t think people who work for intelligence services are particularly smart. The CIA has mostly done evil, which puts it pretty in line with the vast majority of US foreign policy. I think our entire state could be thrown in the garbage along with our interventionist policies. You might not. You might think, rad, CIA guy makes board games, bet they’re interesting. 

Undoubtedly, we can agree that there’s probably some bias in favor of American foreign policy in Ruhnke’s game designs. Let’s dive a little further into one of the texts of these games to see if that pans out.

Cuba Libre

Cuba Libre models Fidel Castro’s insurgency in Cuba from 1957-1958. Players take on the role of The Batista-led Cuban government, Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement, the anti-Batista Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil, and an organized crime syndicate. 

I’m not going to dive into an overview of the Cuban Revolution—it’s an illuminating and exciting subject. Frankly, I’m not an expert beyond the high-level overview. However, it’s indisputable that to understand the story of Cuba, you have to move a metric shit-ton of propaganda out of the way. 

I find the story of the Cuban revolution inspiring, but I also don’t believe in valorizing individuals. That said, it seems to me that both Che Guevara and Fidel Castro genuinely believed and fought to create a more just, worker-centric Communist country. Statecraft is always nasty, no matter who’s doing it. However, if you’re interested in the subject, I recommend the podcast Blowback. 

Jeff Grossman, who co-designed Cuba Libre with Volko Ruhnke, has this to say in the designer notes: 

“There have been many myths created about the Cuban Revolution, often created by the main characters themselves. Unfortunately, in many instances these myths prevent historians and casual readers from understanding what happened during and after the Revolution.” (Playbook, 27)

Interesting. I’m with it so far. Politics is about creating and applying a motivating mythology. Grossman then proceeds to deliver what some might consider an even-handed and measured view of his thoughts on his own design, closing with this zinger:

“In that light, perhaps the US can be thankful that its most canny, resourceful opponent was primarily defensive in nature and the harm he caused was primarily inflicted on his own people.” (Playbook, 28)

There we go, right on cue. Sadist dictator propaganda, check. 

He also states that the primary tactical methodology of the Cubans was flawed and that this resulted in Guevara’s death later in Bolivia. A handy bit of detail that he omits is that a CIA-assisted death squad helped capture and kill Guevara. Interesting evaluation of tactics from a mouthpiece of empire.

Just as a side note, while it’s probably exaggerated, Cuba reports zero homeless people, has an infant mortality rate of 3.9/1000 (we’re currently sitting at 5.9), and has, as of 2007, more than 42,000 medical professionals abroad, and has developed its own COVID vaccine. They have done all of this while buried underneath some of the most intense and draconian sanctions ever implemented by capital-E empire. No country is perfect, but my gut tells me that there’s likely more to the story of “Castro canny but bad” than Grossman and Volko would like us to believe. 

It would be interesting to go through and see what an actual historian might make of the game and the cards describing particular events, to see what was left in strategically, and what was omitted. I suppose if the goal is only to model a single year of this conflict, great, but that seems to be leaving out a lot of interesting history, as the revolution was certainly not over by 1958—there was still plenty of revolutionary activity required to establish a Cuban state (including nationalization of land, the shenanigans of United Fruit Company, and the Bay of Pigs). 

You’re like 1,000 words in now, and you’re probably wondering, how is the game actually played? 

Learning these games is a bit like reading a textbook that fucked a flow chart and had an annoying, ideologically-charged baby. Every round of the game a card is flipped, presenting an event. Players can choose to either do actions on the board or respond to the event. Depending on their choice, their ability to respond to the next card might be hamstrung. From a gamer-dude perspective, what you’re trying to do is determine whether it’s better to spring for action, or wait and see what happens, and as far as systems go, it’s...fine? I think its genius is a bit oversold, but that’s a different discussion. 

What sorts of things can you do in the game? Well, it depends on the faction you’re playing. Government factions have actions that help them flush out enemies and crush them with overwhelming force, while guerrilla factions focus on hiding and springing attacks at strategic moments. The syndicate is just trying to make money. 

But, just like history, what is left in and what is left out is often the most interesting part.

TERROR

There’s a specific set of actions available to insurgent factions in these games, including Cuba Libre. The action in question is affectionately referred to as “terror.” Following the COIN logic of “you have to win hearts and minds to establish a state,” all of the factions try to manage support and opposition tokens on different territories on the map. Depending on which faction you’re playing, you might want different degrees of support and opposition in order to win. 

Insurgent factions have the ability to place “terror tokens” on the map, which undoes support for the government factions (again, painting in broad strokes here). 

Once again, broadly speaking, the COIN series of games seems to be trying to demonstrate a particular set of theses: 

1. Irregular conflict is centered around delegitimizing faith in an established state, and:

2. Irregular forces use terror and sabotage to accomplish this aim.   

Which begs the question: do those tactics work, and if not, why include them in the model? How do you even know? 

What are we playing at?

The idea of an unbiased observer is an insidious one, and it is particularly endemic in our culture when we’re talking about the “facts” or the “history” of an event. Returning to Cuba, take Grossman’s quote above about the inhumanity of the Castro regime. 

I can’t find good numbers on the death toll on the Cuban population during his time in office for political opponents and the like. Some report ridiculous statistics like 30,000+ people, while others report purges of opponents or CIA-supporters at around 3,000. In the United States, around 44,789 people die a year from lack of adequate healthcare. Of course, these deaths occurred in different contexts for different reasons: all are tragedies, and there is no good guy or a bad guy when it comes to politics and state affairs. Our brothers at the propaganda machine are quick to point out the atrocities of other cultures, while ignoring the ignorant sadism of our own. 

What is interesting, however, is how little discussion I see surrounding the way these games are politicized to paint caricatures of what they are supposed to represent with historical fidelity. 

To take an idea from John Dolan, in armed conflicts there are what you can refer to as counterforce tactics and countervalue tactics. Counterforce tactics target enemy forces. Countervalue attacks target civilians and areas that represent the opponent’s way of life. Countervalue tactics are often to send a message, rather than actually attempt to win a conflict. 

An easy example of a countervalue tactic is dropping atomic weapons on Japan, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and poisoning an entire country for no tactical or strategic purpose beyond scaring the ever-loving shit out of some people. I agree with Dolan in that whenever countervalue tactics are being used, that side is losing, whether it's in the long or the short term. 

In fact, in Vietnam (of which there is a COIN game called Fire in the Lake), I might argue that the government and state factions only waged a countervalue campaign, in that US forces terrorized and brutally murdered civilians, relocated villages, and deployed chemical weapons. My Lai? Designer Mark Herman certainly cannot be relied upon for answers. 

So, I suppose the question becomes this: if the goal is to learn history, to understand and better know its context, naturally we need to better understand the conflicts pictured and why they took place. If these games, these COIN games, seek to teach history, or to provide compelling counterfactuals (what ifs) about history, what do we do if they distort or misrepresent this history?

What are they then?

If you said my favorite word “propaganda,” then we’ve arrived. Propaganda seeks to muddy the waters, to confuse, to mislead. How could you possibly understand a conflict like Afghanistan, Vietnam, or the Cuban revolution? They’re so complicated, so complicated in fact, that we can’t even present a view beyond a year of the conflict, no? We couldn’t possibly talk about United Fruit Company. And certainly, we couldn’t bring in some of Ruhnke’s thoughts about the War on Terror. 

Oh wait? What’s that? He made a whole game about it!? 

Here’s a great quote from that one’s (Labyrinth) playbook: 

“The game’s response to these questions--and its central premise--is that the ‘War on Teror’ is really about governance of the Muslim world: that competant, accountable government will offer Islamic populations the future that they desire and thereby drain extremism of its energy. That jihadism roots in the abysmal quality of governance in many Muslim countries. And that global jihadists seek to take advantage of that poor governance to spur Muslim populations to opt for their vision of Islamist rule. Labyrinth’s victory conditions, the way it tracks the status of countries in the conflict, and its core mechanics--jihadist operations in particular--seek to portray that premise.” (Labyrinth Playbook)

Volko works for the CIA, and he is a popular (and apparently cuddly front-page figure).

The question is: does he work for you?