As the diplomat for the black team, I don’t really deal with the dynamics of the actual board game aspect of Risk. I’ve never played the game before, and to be honest I still don’t really understand how to play the dang thing. As for Risk relating to world politics, I definitely can see some overlap and some blaring differences from my position as diplomat. I think the biggest difference between the two is the fact that in UCWP Risk we separate diplomacy and actual action. In world politics, obviously, nations juggle with both diplomacy and domestic affairs simultaneously. In class, this separation is much more efficient than having to do both at once; I couldn’t imagine the chaos that would ensue if we had to do both at the same time. Conversely, the chaos that would ensue if world politics was formatted similarly would be exponentially more destructive.
Also, a big difference from my diplomatic perspective is that in diplomatic Risk there is a clear winner, and all teams are trying very hard to fulfill their objective and win. In world politics, there is no single winner. Nations can interact with each other and have overlapping objectives and both win together. The game we play in class is a lot more cutthroat. Also, since in the realm of world politics more than one state can “win”, objectives aren’t so secret, and therefore aren’t to the detriment of the state if another state finds out about them. In class, many people had stolen/borrowed other teams’ papers that had the objective and secret power which is an incredible advantage. Once the objectives were no longer secret, diplomats now used their knowledge of what it took for the other nation to win to sabotage plans and crank up any kind of agreement, since they knew the key to victory. In world politics, most nations make their objectives pretty clear in most cases, if not just to keep citizens informed of actions of their nations.
UCWP Risk, while an interesting and entertaining board game that perhaps is most relative to world politics compared to other games, is still just a game. While some concepts may be shared, the fundamentals of the game differ greatly from the realm of world politics.
I can see why you would say that there are some aspects of Risk that aren't very realistic (like the delayed order of it all), but at the same time there were some parts that were interestingly true. For instance, my team, the red team, had some leadership issues. Our original diplomat and head of state didn't interact well with the "advisers" and were eventually replaced. Not that it did much to help.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think that real-world politics really is that cutthroat. Whether or not politicians show it, I think they're always on the lookout for ways to put their country ahead/take advantage of other countries weaknesses. For example, the United States doesn't ever reduce the pressure on other countries who don't conform with its' policies in international organizations. Even China has started to flex its brawn. Their actions may not be overt, but a trained eye can notice the shifting of power as the real game of risk goes on.
In addition to your non-realistic points, if whoever the blue team was supposed to represent had tried to take down China (red), red would've nuked them into potato chips.