RIsk, literally

So yesterday I found out exactly why Risk is actually called "Risk." We as the blue team gambled everything and took a huge risk and gave up our only population center for a chance to win it and we were betrayed. So it is in world politics as well, although perhaps not so drastic. Diplomatic Risk definitely resembles real world politics because it really limits many of the actions you can take because of your relationship with other nations. In the real world, you could potentially declare war on someone, but many times a nation simply doesn't have the capability to do this so they can't, just as in the game. We had to take into consideration all the consequences and fallout of our decisions upon the world order and if it would impact our goals.

However there were some things that I felt would be magnified on the world stage. I was surprised that our numerous alliances didn't get us into trouble because inevitably we would be allied with someone and their enemy as well. There have been many instances in history where the two nations allied with someone like us decided they were being played, teamed up and destroyed the nation with all the alliances. While this didn't (or did not yet I should say) happen to us in the game, it did arouse suspicion. It appears that in the game world and the real world that peace is suspicious. Everyone thinks there are ulterior motives.

I also think there would be increased cooperation in the real world as opposed to this purely realist game because even nations with benign goals are still trying to win. In the real world what defines winning is always changing and is sometimes very undefined as opposed to having pretty firm objectives as in the game. I think I caught on to something when i jokingly said to PTJ that while we are all preoccupied with war that the plague is going to wipe all of us out and I think this is totally possible in real life. Whether its AIDS or climate change as PTJ suggested or resource depletion and various environmental affects that we know will eventually happen but not when, we are headed into a dangerous time where we ignore some of the greater events happening around us. Not to be doom and gloom because I believe we can cooperate and fix this, but if we don't it will mean extinction, and as scientists will tell you we are due for another mass extinction.