Battleangel | Personal

It’s funny that whenever you’re playing one of those strategic international relations role-playing games in a group with other people, the plot always starts two paces from global thermonuclear war. In a situation where the only solution can be found as one is funneled through the realist school of IR. Just so that you can’t wriggle your way out of it. Talk about apologetics for military industrial complexes and doctrines.

Unwittingly perhaps, such games bear an uncanny resemblance to real life in that conflicts are often presented as if they just happened. They’re gift wrapped to fit the preferred reaction and solution of the powers that be. Take a fairly simple issue as Iraq and Iran for instance. No one asked your opinion before western interests had their chance to make the mess, select, train and prop up Saddam in the case of Iraq and fermenting a popular Islamic revolution in the case of Iran. But when the damage is done it is apparently OK to do limited brainstorming, as long as you’re in the funnel of course and deciding between military approved measures.