After just four hours of rigorous discussion and robust debate, the panelists, presenters and audience adjourned to go back to their day jobs. But they did so with a fresh, out-of-the-box perspective on three (of many!) “hard problems” in U.S. national security. The organizers—Brookings and Booz Allen—called it their first National Security Challenge, but we think “Improv” is more descriptive. It represented a unique style of war gaming ideally suited for senior leaders: at half a day, long enough to exercise individual and collective intellects and strategic thinking skills, but short enough to accommodate busy schedules, and to keep participants quick on their feet in fast-moving conversation typified by two-to-three-minute individual interventions in response to pithy opening briefings on scenarios.

When that relatively short span is filled with a variety of intriguing—and potentially worrisome—scenarios, the deliberations stay fresh, and the participants remain intellectually on edge. But this stress fuels creativity: a fight-or-flight for the mind, where disengagement is not possible. When buoyed by the intense, informed nature of the participants, the results tend to be pretty good, and everyone found great value in forcing themselves to wrestle with a range of contingencies and confrontations. For American national-security policymaking, that’s what happens in the real world.

Michael O’Hanlon is a senior fellow and director of research in the foreign policy studies program at the Brookings Institution. Ron Sanders is a former Associate Director of National Intelligence, and currently Vice President of Booz Allen Hamilton, where he leads their war gaming practice; he is also the firm's first Fellow. Kirk Riggs is a former Air Force officer, a Lead Associate at Booz Allen Hamilton, and the Director of the firm's Center for Wargaming and National Security Strategy.

Image: Sailor demonstrates virtual sand table for urban warfare operations.​ Flickr/U.S. Navy