Shadow Boxing

The strategist's essential, all-purpose wargaming tool

In 1957, at the height of the Cold War, Herman Kahn co-wrote a paper for RAND on strategic planning for an uncertain world. Sputnik I was two months ahead, a moment that unsteadied the entire US national security and science establishments. Kahn's essay and ideas became even more relevant.

Kahn wrote about the "Informal Game" strategists ought to play while thinking through threats. "This is a conscious attempt to try to take account of the enemy's reactions. It is sometimes played inside one man's head. One simply asks himself, wrote Kahn, "what would the enemy do if I did this," or "what does he think I will do if he does such and such?...Simply to take into account, consciously, the fact that the enemy is not passive, but actually may be trying to thwart and circumvent you, is almost without question the most common and important kind of War Gaming that is done (or sometimes not done)."

Kahn called it "Informal," but I'd say it's more like mental shadow boxing. Prize fighters need sparring partners and shadow-work as strategists need thought experiments and invisible adversaries. When your contribution to an organization is your ability to navigate competition, you must find new ways to “experience” rough seas and enemy guns.

This was the problem Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz faced a little over two centuries ago. He needed to prepare military officers for strategic decision-making crucial to the survival of his nation (in the age of Napoleon, no small challenge). But you can't just "practice" combat—too many would be bloodied, too many would die—before getting onto the battlefield that mattered. So Clausewitz devised "critical analysis," a way of using imagination to get into the mind of previous military commanders from past strategic scenarios.

Clausewitz leveraged the past, Kahn’s gaze was to the present. Both used the mind to think through conflict. Both set up full-on processes for this activity.

But what about the individual strategist seeking a little less formal method? A little quicker, rougher, easier to assemble?

That's where shadow boxing comes in. It’s not a full war game. It’s not a full critical analysis. It is an informal, individual, imaginative strategic study of the adversary and the conflict.

Shadow boxing has three principal virtues. It is free, completely free of cost. You need only your own mind to play.

Second, because it is a mental exercise, it is recoverable. Nobody need die. The purpose of strategic thinking is that our thoughts die instead of us. (To paraphrase a quotation often mis-attributed to Alfred North Whitehead.)

Depending on the exercise’s degree and depth, this is meaningful practice. You can think through your thrusts and the opponent's parries, you can anticipate adversary advances and your defenses, you can pre-experience the course of the conflict, all in your own mind.

What might it look like in real life?

Let's say you were serving on Ukraine's national security staff. Someone proposes a strike on Russian target X. Before saying a word to Pres. Zelensky, before uttering a single syllable, you would want to think out the range of responses and consequences. Maybe you consider target Y instead.

Of course none of this is limited to military applications. Shadow boxing works in all walks of life. Business, government, non-profit, sports, and even, (dare I say) in one’s own personal life.