FLASHPOINT:2027 · SOURCES & METHOD · OPEN MATERIAL ONLY
Sources & Method
◢ METHODOLOGY NOTE
What this exercise is built from. FLASHPOINT:2027 is a fictional branching scenario assembled entirely from open, unclassified sources: public threat assessments, published doctrine, and peer-reviewed or think-tank scholarship. The 2027 timeframe, the Baltic gray-zone opening, the orbital escalation act, and the Taiwan Strait quarantine are each grounded in scenario families that appear repeatedly in the open literature listed below — but the specific events, personalities, communications, and probabilities in the game are authored fiction.
How the branches were weighted. Where the game rolls dice ("field rolls"), the weights are the designer's structured judgement informed by historical base rates and the cited literature — they are not measured probabilities, and they should be attacked in seminar. Chance sequences are seeded per exercise code so that runs are reproducible and comparable across a cohort.
Known limitations. The engine models one principal per side with a compressed advisor cast; it cannot represent bureaucratic politics, coalition bargaining, leaks, or resignation threats except as narrated colour. Branch trees force discrete choices where real crises offer continua and delay. Adversary seats are written from published doctrine and scholarly interpretation of it, in English translation — an unavoidable interpretive layer. None of the outcomes constitute a claim about what any real government would do.
THIS IS A SIMULATION, NOT A PREDICTION. IT IS DESIGNED TO TEACH CONCEPTS, NOT TO FORECAST EVENTS.
◢ THREAT ASSESSMENTS & SCENARIO LITERATURE
Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community (2026, unclassified) — baseline open assessment of Russian, Chinese, and space/cyber threat vectors.
Militaire Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst (MIVD), Public Annual Report 2024 (April 2025; published in Dutch and English) — European service reporting on Russian sabotage, maritime infrastructure mapping, and gray-zone activity that informs the Baltic act.
NATO-Russia Dynamics: Prospects for Reconstitution of Russian Military Power — timelines for Russian force reconstitution underpinning the exercise's 2027 setting.
Russia, NATO, and the Baltics: Scenarios for European Security and Living on the Edge: NATO's Eastern Frontier, Article 5, and Russia's Motive — Baltic contingency scenario families and the Article 5 ambiguity problem.
Amanda Hsiao & Bonnie S. Glaser, "Why China Waits", Foreign Affairs (8 May 2026) — analysis of PRC coercive options short of invasion, including quarantine variants, informing the Taiwan Strait act.
◢ PRIMARY DOCTRINE — NON-WESTERN SOURCES
Presidential Decree No. 991 (19 November 2024), "Fundamentals of the State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Area of Nuclear Deterrence" (informal English translation, US Naval War College Russia Maritime Studies Institute) — the current published conditions for Russian nuclear use, which widen the 2020 text (non-nuclear aggression backed by a nuclear state; aggression against Belarus). The superseded 2020 text, Presidential Decree No. 355, "Basic Principles of State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence" (2020, English translation); alternative translation via CNA — the version in force when the scenario was first designed. Both texts are drawn on in the Moscow seat.
State Council Information Office, "China's National Defense in the New Era" (2019 defence white paper, official English text) — Beijing's own framing of its security environment, Taiwan policy, and "active defence," drawn on directly in the Beijing seat.
◢ STRATEGIC THEORY (SEMINAR MODE CANON)
Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Harvard UP, 1960) and Arms and Influence (Yale UP, 1966) — commitment, brinkmanship, the threat that leaves something to chance.
Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton UP, 1976) — misperception, the spiral model, and the security dilemma.
Herman Kahn, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios (Praeger, 1965; Routledge reissue) — the escalation ladder and its limits.
Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History (OUP, 2013) — synthesis of the coercion and deterrence literature.
Graham Allison & Philip Zelikow, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (2nd ed., 1999) — rational-actor, organisational, and governmental-politics models.
Barry R. Posen, Inadvertent Escalation: Conventional War and Nuclear Risks (Cornell UP, 1991) — the conventional-operations-to-nuclear-risk mechanism at the heart of the orbital act.
James M. Acton, "Escalation through Entanglement: How the Vulnerability of Command-and-Control Systems Raises the Risks of an Inadvertent Nuclear War", International Security 43:1 (2018), 56–99 — why attacks on dual-use command-and-control raise inadvertent nuclear risk.
◢ FURTHER WORKS CITED IN SEMINAR MODE
John H. Herz, "Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma", World Politics 2:2 (1950); Robert Jervis, "Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma", World Politics 30:2 (1978).
James D. Fearon, "Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes", American Political Science Review 88:3 (1994).
Glenn H. Snyder, "The Balance of Power and the Balance of Terror", in Paul Seabury (ed.), The Balance of Power (Chandler, 1965) — the stability–instability paradox; "The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics", World Politics 36:4 (1984) — abandonment and entrapment.
Alexander L. George, Forceful Persuasion: Coercive Diplomacy as an Alternative to War (US Institute of Peace Press, 1991).
Dan Altman, "By Fait Accompli, Not Coercion: How States Wrest Territory from Their Adversaries", International Studies Quarterly 61:4 (2017).
I. William Zartman, Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa (Oxford UP, 1985).
Robert D. Putnam, "Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games", International Organization 42:3 (1988).
Nina Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945 (Cambridge UP, 2007).
Timothy Thomas, "Russia's Reflexive Control Theory and the Military", Journal of Slavic Military Studies 17:2 (2004).
Frank G. Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars (Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, 2007).
Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (Allen Lane, 2012) — background to the July 1914 base-rate card.
◢ WARGAMING PEDAGOGY
Reddie, Goldblum, Lakkaraju, Reinhardt, Nacht & Epifanovskaya, "Next-generation wargames", Science 362:6421 (2018) — wargames as research and teaching instruments.
Peter Perla & ED McGrady, "Why Wargaming Works", Naval War College Review 64:3 (2011) — narrative immersion as the mechanism of learning in games.
◢ HOW TO CITE THIS EXERCISE
Harvard: Burnapp, H. (2026) FLASHPOINT:2027: A Crisis-Origins Exercise [Online simulation]. Escalation Lab. Available at: https://escalationlab.org/ (Accessed: date).
Facilitation guidance, session formats, and debrief structure: Facilitator Annex. Terms of art, including the blockade/quarantine distinction: Glossary.
FLASHPOINT:2027 · ALL EVENTS FICTIONAL · THIS IS A SIMULATION, NOT A PREDICTION