Before you question my intentions behind a provocative question like that, let me give you some context. I love board games where the outcome of the game is purely dependent on skill set rather than luck, i.e., rolling a dice, etc. That’s how I discovered this wonderful little board game called Risk! The game involves a world map and armies; a lot of the game’s objectives involve taking over several continents by defeating your opponents’ armies. Right off the bat, it does enable the megalomaniac in you.
An observation I made about the game was, despite the game’s objective being all about taking over the world, it seemed fair from the get-go because all players had equal infantry, to begin with. Once that was
settled, everything else rested in the hands of a player’s skill set, strategy, and sheer tactical brilliance.
Before you question my sanity for attempting to extrapolate and appropriate a board game’s gameplay with the real world, the game exists because the world’s nations have been at war, not once, not twice, but several thousand times in the past — attempting to colonise each other. So, game imitated life before life began imitating game.
Hypothetically speaking, in the off chance that every nation in the world treatise on being transparent agreed on having the same number of infantry, will war be justified?
I am not justifying war by any means; in fact, I’m a strong advocate of non-violence in any scenario, let alone on a global scale. But, given how often we hear about drone strikes and nuclear weapons being tested, it isn’t far-fetched by any stretch of the imagination.
If every nation in the world had the same number of soldiers in the army, when it comes down to war, strategy and tactical knowledge are all that will matter. However, in the game, the infantry of every player has the same powers — strength, abilities, etc. For the sake of the argument, let’s assume that it’s the same in this real world scenario too. In this world, George Orwell never wrote Animal Farm, or did he ever say, “All animals are equal but some are more equal than others”?
If every country has exactly 1000 soldiers in the infantry, and every country’s mission is world domination, becoming the biggest superpower, establish trade routes, then the most tactical and
smartest nation of the lot will succeed in their mission.
Sounds reasonable? Yes, but without taking into account the inevitable death of hundreds of soldiers that comes in the way of supposed greater good. At no point in human history has violence been a justifiable action or reaction.
Take war that involves bloodshed out of the equation and waging wars that practice diplomacy and negotiations, you have got yourself a game of Risk! that involves colonization without the death of anybody.
But colonisation is oppression, even if it is sans bloodshed. So, in an ideal world, wars of any kind will be non-existent and the necessity of a game like Risk! or its subsequent deconstruction of it by a columnist will be obsolete.
(When he isn’t writing, the creative producer with The Rascalas watches a lot of ‘cat videos’ on YouTube)