The Peace Support Operations Model' was developed by UK defence analysts due to the inadequacies of traditional combat models. I first aware of the model in presentation by the lead UK analyst at a meeting of the Cornwallis Group. Subsequently a game' was organized for the next Cornwallis meeting at the Allenby resort near Carlisle the US Army War College was the host.
You can read the paper on the mode (PSOM) here:
PDF link
In a nutshell the game had Blue (external intervening military/diplomatic faction), Green (Host Nation government), White (Humanitarian aid), Red (spoilers i.e., small radical factions) and media (run by the game control). Turns were a month long i.e., movement rates weren't important, instead players assigned resources / actions to provinces / areas. Score was kept by the usual measures of progress' that have been used in real operations e.g., areas under control of the government, casualties, rebuilding of infrastructure, etc.
In the game at the Allenby, we had experienced military, policy, humanitarian, state department people, etc. playing the same roles being near to Washington, many were from there. I was an observer of the host nation government faction. The media reports were run by a very experienced UK analyst George Rose (and an avid golfer).
The scenario was a post-civil war where the major warring factions had come to an accord and had formed a coalition government. External military/diplomatic and humanitarian efforts were there to support the establishment of a stable government. There was one minor spoiler faction (Marxist, if I recall) played by two retired state department guys.
As a one day event we could only get so many turns done but at the end of the day, the external / host nation / humanitarian factions looked to be winning according the measures of progress. However, I thought that was misleading and so did George. Why was that?
The primary reason was that the measures of progress were tactical (e.g., bridges built) but were not well connected to the strategic factors to win (i.e., the legitimacy of the government). What had happened was that the spoiler group cleverly picked targets to embarrass the government who wanted to respond but lacked the capability. The external faction refused for all the reasons we've seen in these operations (e.g., fear of escalation, casualties, etc.). As a result the government was becoming increasingly distrustful of their external partners and took matters into their own hands which resulted in fair bit of civilian casualties so the government was beginning to lose international support / legitimacy in the eyes of the populations in the countries providing external support. If we had continued the game a few more turns it's likely that there would have been loss of support for the external intervention and perhaps loss of support for the government within the country.
How could a small, spoiler faction achieve this? The two state department chaps were quite clever they knew how the intervention forces would respond i.e., they knew the doctrine, policies, rules of engagement, etc. of the intervention forces and how the international media would react given the media doesn't have a deep understanding of these things but they do know a good story when the see one. George and I expected that the coalition government would soon collapse despite the all the wonderful progress infrastructure rebuilt, security forces trained, etc.
A couple of things I noted from that were (1) the need for both internal and external legitimacy of the government, (2) how media can derail true progress as supporting governments knee-jerk react to bad press and (3) that experienced state department people are undervalued they knew the potential fractures in the various groups and drove a wedge between them at the right spot.
Fascinating experience.
While the UK analysts used defence information for their model, I would think that there's enough open source information that anyone could develop their own game particularly since one would not be trying to replicate a real world situation but create a fun, interesting and balanced game. Would it be a miniatures game? no, more of a board game with meeples. But it could be the basis for a campaign game which would set conditions for skirmish games and the results of the skirmish games influencing the campaign's progress. That wouldn't be any different than bath-tubbed Barbarossa games I've seen for WWII miniatures games.
FYI – I would expect gamers to do better than the players in the game I observed.
