The Game 

As climate change continues to affect the Arctic throughout the 21st century, the region will become increasingly accessible to nation-states for trans-continental commerce, extraction of natural resources, and scientific research. State actors will accordingly expand their security presence in northern latitudes to protect these interests and engage in geostrategic cooperation and competition. Such Arctic-specific concerns are not currently emphasized in Professional Military Education (PME), which disproportionately focuses on ongoing or anticipated conflicts in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. This capstone project will increase awareness of these strategic concepts as they pertain to the unique operating environment of the Arctic, drawing heavily on the Diplomatic, Informational, Military, and Economic (DIME) model of the instruments of national power. Specifically, this project will use tenets of adult learning and serious gaming to produce a board game for inclusion in mid-to-senior level Professional Military Education (PME) for U.S. military personnel and their contemporaries in allied and partner nations. This capstone will also provide a framework to translate this game into a cost-effective and accessible web browser-hosted game for the Naval Postgraduate School’s Global Education Community Collaboration Online (Global-ECCO) game library. 

NOTE: This is a board game version only.