Let's Play a Game

          The game of Risk is very complex and involves many moving pieces, much like International Politics. Risk is realistic because of the many different competing teams battling for their own territories and specific goals. Alliances are formed and dissembled in order to protect each other and take down other countries battling for their resources. Certain countries can only accomplish certain tasks they want to due to the resources available to them. Not all countries can complete their goal because of other circumstances that arise.
           The game of Risk is unrealistic in relation to World Politics because there is no form of currency. Tasks, alliances, and conversations between countries and territories would take much longer than they do in the game. Also, many events, such as natural disasters, affect the timeliness of politics moving smoothly. Elections to change those in power do not occur in the game on a regular basis the way they do in real life.
            A way to make the game more similar to world politics would be to have each team pick up a card when it gets to be their turn. The card would entail some type of "plot twist" that affects or delays that team from making a decision or action. Regular elections should be held and there should be some way to make treaties and declarations between countries. Overall, I liked this game. I felt that once we went through a couple of rounds and everyone got a better understanding of what they were doing, the game could go more smoothly and everyone could focus on what they needed to do in order to win.

War Games

Diplomatic Risk is a game nothing less nothing more. I really did enjoy playing but I felt it was mostly because my team (black) had the goal of 16 alliances (the easiest one) and we won. When I think back to how we played versus what we learned throughout class this year I did not find my choices changing based on my education. I don't really think there is a way to play this game or any board game without a purlely realist lense. There is not much to interpret as the only thing that you have any control over is the military so constructivism is pretty unimportant. You could argue that we as group committed liberal international intervention when we all ganged up on blue. However you could argue that we were not committing an act of humanity and community help but rather we did not want the game to end and lose so we all acted in our own rational self intrest.

I would say that the game is unrealistic in a decent amount of ways some of them are kinda unavoidable. First off when you engage in global diplomacy you cannot win the game. There is no combination of diplomatic manuvering that could result in Trump being name winner. The world has no end at least in the forseeable future, the end of history theory is insane and flimsy on its own so yo cannot win. Even widley successfull states like Rome and the British Empire still collapsed as time went on. Another factor is that you only control the military of your country. For example as black we kept building up our army that we were never going to use, if a state in real life did that then there would be a huge push back from the public. I as president also acted without impunity and if I wanted to I could have attacked anybody without limited effect. Finneally I would say that when a terratory was conquered there was no opposition or resistance from the local population. The United States could invade and conquer belgium with little effort but the local population would make it impossible to incorparate and assimulate. Risk was fun but it was just a game

Diplomatic Risk

Playing Diplomatic Risk was an interesting experience. I feel like I learned a lot while playing this game. It is realistic in a few ways. One of which is that in the real world, representatives of states will never really know 100% on what other representatives goals and objectives might be. It was also realistic in the fact that not every faction in the game was not equally as powerful. In the real world, there are some very powerful states and some very weak states too. Diplomatic Risk was also realistic because when I noticed other factions in the game build up their forces next to some of my team's lightly defended territories, I thought that we were about to be attacked. This has happened many times in the world today in which one state builds up its military which then scares neighboring states into building up their military as well.

The game was also unrealistic in a few ways. one way was that a team could only attack another faction if they were at war. This is not the case in the field of international relations in which states can attack each other without formally declaring war on the state it plans on attacking. It was also unrealistic in the way in which the roles of the team member were. There are only two positions, the president and the diplomat, that were leadership roles. The other team members were the citizens of the faction. Many state leaders have a whole group of advisers advising the president on decisions.

Overall, the game showed how difficult international relations can be; however, some ways to make it a little more realistic would be to add some sort of economic aspect, or add another role to each faction like a general who can advise the president on how to attack as well as rolling the dice. another way to make the game more realistic would be to have each faction have a different government. Democracies would had to vote in order to change their leader if they wanted or stage a coup if it was a communist or fascist government. If exactly half the people oppose the coup and support it in one faction, they would be in civil war and either lose a turn and decide next turn or split into a separatist faction.

Diplomatic Risk Reflection

            I do believe that Diplomatic Risk was very realistic in many ways, especially in comparison to the original game of Risk, but obviously also had its unrealistic aspects as well.  The game was realistic because every team had different objectives, just as all countries around the world do in terms of international policies and agendas.  In the regular game of risk, all countries have the same objective of world domination, and in the real world a majority of countries do not actively seek to accomplish this goal, even during times of war.  Therefore, the twist on the original game helped make it more realistic and comparable to real world politics.  The game was unrealistic in some ways as well.  Alliances, neutrality, and wars do not occur so quickly between states, and are much harder to break in real life than in the game.  Each team was so quick to form alliances and declare war against other teams in order to gain that they needed, and war was the main way to gain territory, though negotiating existed.  In world politics today, negotiations are the main way in which actions and alliances form, not through physical war.  In this way, Diplomatic Risk was much more parallel to world politics pre-WWII. 

            If the game were to be changed in order to mirror world politics better, I think one of the main things that would have to be established are military ranks for power.  In the game as it is, everyone is on the same level playing field in terms of how powerful their armies may be, and in reality, if the United States needed to infiltrate a territory that had more military power than what they may have had, they would still be victorious because of the other factors that go into war as well, such as nuclear weapons.  Also, although this could be difficult in a game such as Risk, to make the game more realistic to how world politics are today, there would have to be an economic aspect to the game as well.  In the game, there is the ability to trade territories and such, but world trade has a very large role in world politics today and is underrepresented in the game.        

Just War Theory and the Cold War

In one of my history classes, we examined and analyzed the history of U.S. foreign relations. one topic that came up was the just war theory during the Cold War. The United States used the just war theory to go to war in Korea and Vietnam. U.S. leaders justified military intervention by claiming that they were protecting these countries from the threat of communism. Both these conflicts were very costly and little was gained in both these conflicts most notably in the Vietnam War in which the U.S. lost the South to communism. they justified the huge losses in Korea by claiming that they managed to complete their main objective which was to defend the south from the communist north. They had a more difficult time the justify their war in Vietnam. By the later part of the war U.S. losses were very high and U.S. citizens were becoming tired of the war and hearing of troops being killed and wounded in a country that was geographically far away and irrelevant to them. Bombing raids were killing many civilians and alienating southern allies. The troops themselves were unable to trust their own allies due to the lack of distinction between friend and foe. military leaders were lax on their rules and allowed soldiers to treat the villagers horribly including allowing the massacre of a whole village of civilians. The U.S. was also losing their diplomatic reputation due to the fact that its allies were questioning whether defending a country from communism was really worth the cost. Eventually, the U.S. had to concede defeat. This was due to a lack of enthusiasm of  U.S. citizens about the war, the high cost in both lives and economically, the citizens of Vietnam no longer wanting a U.S. presence, and the loss of prestige and reputation from the war. All of these factors forced to the U.S. to concede defeat and withdraw from Vietnam and watch the south fall to communism.

Terrorism Today

Living in the United States, we are under constant the constant threat of terrorism and being attacked at any place, in any moment. As Americans, especially in the post-9/11 world we live in, unfortunately almost everyone has some connection to a terrorist attack.

The religion class I am taking this semester is called “Sacred Spaces: from Mt. Sinai to Ground Zero” and we go on multiple field trips to analyze religious and secular sacred spaces. We took a field trip to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York City. The timing of our trip was rather unfortunate because it occurred a few days after a man influenced by ISIS, the most prevalent terror group since al Qaeda, stole a van and drove it into a crowd of people right near the 9/11 Memorial. Our field trip almost got cancelled due to the danger of the location surrounding it. This was the largest terrorist attack in NYC since 9/11. My teacher decided to go through with the field trip because she felt that it was important we didn’t let them control our lives and we can’t shelter ourselves. She also thought it was important since we were going to a place where the biggest terrorist attack on US soil took place and we needed to pay memory to the victims. In class prior to the field trip we studied about the roots of terrorism in Islam and everything that took place leading up to the attack on the World Trade Center. Personally, my family didn’t know anyone who was killed in the 9/11 attack but the terrorists who flew the planes, took flight lessons in my town. I lived in a small town in Florida until I was 10 years old and the terrorists took lessons at a flight school 10 minutes from my house and lived very close to me. My mom had seen them at the library a few times and recognized their pictures when they were on the news. I saw their registration forms for the flight school in the 9/11 museum and instantly got chills. The terrorists took the lessons until they learned how to fly but dropped out before they learned how to land and no one was suspicious of it. We have defeated al Qaeda with the killing of Osama bin Laden but since the root causes of hatred against western civilization in the Middle East has not been defeated, new terrorist organizations, like ISIS, will continue to take over. We may not be able to prevent against these attacks but we can control our we react. For example, the way the Boston Police department reacted was very organized and efficient to get the victims to safety, unlike the handling of 9/11 simply due to the mass scale of it. 

Inequality Then and Now

            As the world becomes more and more interconnected, common themes can be seen in how human nature plays a part in the attitudes and actions of peoples toward other peoples.  In our discussion about Columbus and how he reacted to and treated the Native people whom he encountered on his journey to the Americas, it is evident that his actions are not dissimilar to those of people today.  People are critical today of Columbus’ actions against the Natives because he did not understand them or go about treating them the right way.  In the same way, globalization has converged cultures more than ever and has caused the oppression of certain peoples and cultures by those perceiving themselves as more dominant.  Commonly with human nature centuries ago and today, people have the tendency to look down upon or treat negatively other people or cultures they do not understand.

            As Todorov describes in his writing about Columbus’ encounter, he says that being physically naked, the Indians are perceived by Columbus to be deprived of all customs, rites, and religion; but that this carries a certain logic in that for a man like Columbus, human beings wear clothes following their expulsion from Paradise, which itself is at the source of their cultural identity.[1]  Columbus makes the incorrect assumption that his own culture translates to all other people, even the unknown.  This has a negative impact because he then creates expectations for the Natives in which they cannot follow or know because they are completely different from Columbus and his European culture.  Columbus therefore looks down upon them and treats them as not on the same level as himself- as not human beings like him. 

Today we look upon Columbus’ actions and are befuddled by them because we recognize the tone-deaf approach to how he treats the Natives.  However, this imperialistic approach Columbus had to understanding the Natives is not much different from how “superior” cultures attempt to relate to “inferior” cultures today.  The United States is repeatedly accused of this and American imperialism is widely recognized around the world.  This idea does not only happen large scale like with the United States, but also on a much smaller scale as well.  Human nature plays out in the idea that people will treat those they do not understand and those that do not have the same values as themselves inferiorly.  Globalization has not helped this concept either- if anything it has caused an increase in the intolerance seen today between cultures, though one of the biggest side-effects of globalization has been convergence of cultures.  This paradox can seemingly be solved with the understanding that human nature has not changed from the time Columbus first landed in the Americas to modern day when civil war still breaks out between peoples of the same country over the idea that they are the superior sect. 

The recognition today of the issue that cultures and people still fail to recognize equality among all is far above that of when Columbus encountered the same issue many centuries ago.  Therefore, although it is still a glaring issue in the world, more and more attempts are being made to combat the intolerance among cultures.  Unfortunately, total equality is a hard to reach future goal that cannot be attained until the recognition is among all people – an almost impossible task in of itself.            

                 

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[1] Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. Translated by Richard Howard. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999, p. 35