The Game of Risk

         In our International Politics class, we played the game “Risk.” I was a member of the black team. Described as a peace-loving “middle power,” the objective of the black team was to “bring a peaceful resolution to global conflicts.” To actually win the game, we needed to have the Diplomatic Status Board show no declarations of war at the end of a round or have 16 alliances. Each team received a secret power, the black team’s secret power was “World Council Censure.” This power is intense, our diplomat could request to censure a team at the World Council. If a team was censured, they would be unable to vote on the World Council for two rounds. In addition, the censured team would have only two reinforcements per turn and would be unable to declare war. Despite possessing a great secret power, our team did not use it. The black team won slyly by creating 16+ alliances.
In relation to world politics, part of the game was quite realistic. Each team had its own unique set of goals and strategies to achieve them, like states in the real world. The teams possessed different territories and forged alliances to keep themselves “safe” which mirrored international politics. *add more
         The fact that the black team, the “peacemakers” won the game two times out of three in this classroom version of risk is amusing to me. I believe these wins are contingent on two characteristics that are present in international politics/risk: egocentrism and relationships. The egocentrism of teams made them unaware of the goals of other teams. Throughout the game, teams tried to claim as many territories as possible while simultaneously declaring alliances or war with other teams. Therefore, teams were interacting with each other to help themselves to achieve world domination. Each team was concerned with creating mutually beneficial relationships and or engaging in war to secure territories. Because of this, the teams were distracted. They were unaware of the intentions of all or some of the teams. It is apparent the black team flew under the radar during the game. Since we did not pose a threat to any teams, most teams forged alliances with us. The teams did so under the impression these alliances would benefit them. Being unaware of the goals of the black team proved to be a fatal flaw for all teams, especially for green and blue who came the closest to winning.
       A part of the game that felt unrealistic concerning world politics was the mechanics of the game. Every game needs a set of rules to function. In the game risk, some rules created interactions between states that would not happen in real life. Obviously, a state in real life would not have to wait to attack another or declare war. Also, a state would not have to abide by a specific order to carry out a form of action. The strict organization was necessary for the game to operate but in reality, disorganization and spontaneity would be prevalent.
            To make the game relate more to international politics, I would add unexpected elements. Since the world is a highly unpredictable place, I would add a wildcard to each round. There would be 30 different wildcards, varying from natural disasters to unwanted government intervention. Each team would have a stick with their color placed in a mug. Then, to be fair, the professor would draw a stick without looking every round. This would decide which team was the receiver of the wildcard. The point of pulling a wildcard would be to implement a random setback that could easily occur in the world. Another advantage of having the wild cards would be the chance to include countries across the globe.
        In the future, a way to improve the game is to tweak the way it is facilitated, so more students participate. Each team had a diplomat and a president, so naturally, the students who filled those roles participated the most. To ensure other members of the team participate, the professor could implement a few different strategies. Non-title team members could record the moves of the other teams for each round, hypothesize objectives of other teams and strategize plans to win.
Overall, I found the game of Risk exciting and relevant to our International Politics class. Playing the game was an efficient way to bridge concepts learned in class and fun. The teamwork/decision making and action of moving pieces on the board was a way to let students connect socially and visually with international politics.

Diplomatic Risk Reflection

The diplomatic game of risk is beneficial to understand the way the world politic works. It gives a better understanding to see how the political actors interact with different states. This game reminds me of two things: First, the interaction of political actors with other actors to pass the bill or to put sanctions internationally. Second, the political actors interact with other political actors to align with other states to strengthen their power. For instance, President Trump made a trip to few countries in Asia to enhance the US relationships with other countries. During his trip to China, he specifically urged China to stop making a trade deal with North Korea. In the same way, the diplomat of each team went around the class to interact with other team members to make a deal. The primary goal of the diplomat is to persuade another team to have an agreement that would support towards the objective of his or her team. I was not the head of state neither the diplomat. However, being apart of the team is something extraordinary. The president or the diplomat plays a role in interacting with other team members, but their action is carried out by the decision taken in the group. I think that is the way the world politics functions. The political actors represent their states, but their action is carried out by the decision taken by members of their state's representatives. Most importantly, I understood that allying with another state is critical in the world politics. Allies rarely wage war against their partners, but they help to strengthen to support their allies. Allies is essential in every stage the of world politics because the more allies the state has, the more powerful it becomes. For instance, the team blue was close to winning the game, but since it had no allies it lost. The other teams aligned with one another and ultimately removed blue to have control over Ukraine and other parts of Europe. If the team blue is clever enough to make a deal with other teams, it might have won the game.
    The realistic part is when the diplomats make a deal with another diplomat of other teams. The diplomats would do anything to benefits his or her team. There are cases where the diplomat of one team do not agree with the deal that another diplomat is trying to get in. However, the diplomats of both teams work together to make sure that both the teams benefit from the deal. The diplomat would not agree on the deal that would not benefit their teams.
However, in few cases, the state representatives do not keep the promise about the agreement. They break the deal when they see that one only team is benefiting from the agreement. For instance, Yellow promised not to wage war against blue in the future, but when the yellow came to know that blue was about to win, yellow passed its special power to green to take down all the territories that blue controls. I think this is the way realist play the game in a real-world politics. They have a deal, but when it comes to the point that they see the deal would only benefit the other state they would not care to break the agreement.
    The only part which I disagreed was to align with pink. When the president and diplomat said yes to align with pink, I said it does not benefit us at all. We just went outside the context of our objective. The reason is the second objective of the team yellow is to get rid the team pink. But without a second thought, the president and the diplomat allied with the team pink. If this was a deal made with another state, our state ultimately went in the wrong direction. The president and the diplomat were excited about the special power used to destroy the team blue, but they forgot the objective of the team.

The Game of Risk: Mirroring World Politics

The Game of Risk: Mirroring World Politics

by Victoria Hassan

After playing a modified version of the game of Risk during class, it became clear to me that the game incorporated several aspects of real-life world politics. Playing the game of Risk and interacting with other teams helped me to better understand how world politics generally operates. However, there were some aspects of the game that seemed to insufficiently mirror the reality of world politics, most likely due to the fact that Risk is merely a game. As a result of this, there are a few aspects of this modified version of Risk that can be adjusted for future operation of the game.

One of the game’s aspects that ultimately mirrors how world politics operates, is the notion that the different political actors in world politics generally have different objectives. Though two different political actors might aim to control one particular territory, their reasoning for acquiring this territory is likely to differ. For instance, if one political actor’s reasoning for acquiring a territory is to spread religion, another political actor’s reasoning for acquiring that same territory might be to obtain that region’s resources. This is similar to the game of Risk because each team has different objectives that they need to complete in order to win. However, some of the teams need to acquire the same territories as other teams in order to complete their objective.

Another aspect of the game that directly relates to real-life world politics is the fact that political actors do not always know the objectives of other political actors. Sometimes political actors feel as though they need to keep their objectives a secret in order to preserve their chance of actually obtaining the goal at hand. However, there are instances in which political actors feel as though they need to disclose information to other political actors in order to reach success. For example, one political actor or state might want to form an alliance with another political actor or state and share their objective in order to reach it. There was an instance in the game in which a political actor from the Yellow Team shared his objective with political actors from the Blue Team in order to achieve this objective. This tactic proved to be helpful and resulted in an alliance that benefitted both teams.

Additionally, the game of Risk seems to mirror real-life world politics because it revealed that communication between political actors is very important. Without proper communication between states and their respective diplomats, information can become skewed and this can ultimately lead to conflicts between states. For instance, the United States believed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, which ultimately led to violent conflicts between the United States and Iraq. However, within the game of Risk, many of the political actors communicated with one another via their respective diplomats. This allowed for a generally clear understanding of the status of each team.

Though there were several aspects of this modified version of Risk that mirror real-life world politics, there was one major aspect of the game that did not seem to mirror actual world politics. This was due to the fact that the outcomes of the battles were based merely on luck. However, in real-life, the outcomes of battles depend on how well the military forces are trained and the particular strategies that they utilize. Though this seems quite impossible to include in a game version of world politics, such as Risk, it still inadequately mirrors the reality of battling for territory in real-life world politics. Along with this, the game of Risk did not seem to incorporate the economic feature of trade in world politics. I believe that trade is a very important part of world politics because it is not only a trade of goods, it is a trade of culture and it allows for essential communication between states. Therefore, due to a lack of trade between teams within the game of Risk, I think that the game failed to mirror this economic aspect of world politics.

In the future, I think it would be beneficial if the game of Risk dealt with aspects of trade in international relations. For example, each team could have a particular major export and they each could also have an objective to acquire particular resources from other teams. Trading could happen through discussions between the diplomats of each team, requiring them to bid for resources. If one team wanted a particular territory that was being occupied by another team, they could offer to trade their resource in order to acquire the territory. I believe that trade is a major aspect of world politics due to its influence on economic, communicational, and cultural matters. Thus, I think that it would be beneficial to incorporate trade in the game.

Overall, there were several important features of the game that mirrored world politics in a very beneficial way. Whereas, there were a couple minor aspects of the game that were either missing or did not seem to sufficiently mirror world politics. However, adjustments can be made to the game to better mirror world politics.

Diplomatic Risk Reflection

In this game of diplomatic risk I was placed onto the Black team, who’s goal was essentially world peace by the end of the game.  In order for my team to win we had to remove all declarations of war from the diplomatic status board, or maintain 16 alliance declarations through an entire round.  To aid us we were given the secret power of “World Council censure”.  This power allowed our diplomat to ask the Word Council to censure one team so they could not vote on any actions for both the current and next round.  The team being censured was under other restrictions as well, such as being unable to declare war or place more than two military reinforcements on territory during the affected rounds.  My team won the game and did so without the use of our secret power, however this can be attributed to both our diplomacy towards other teams along with the impending success of the Blue team.

I thought this world diplomacy game had many realistic parts, but the one that impacted me the most was the frustration in pursuing our own goals as a team.  Much of our time during the game was spent deliberating between teams, bargaining to make alliances between certain teams, and attempting to end wars between others.  I found it very challenging to spend most of the game building an alliance between two teams that were not my own and watching them reap the subsequent benefits.  This work then angered my team’s other allies, so I had to delegate the rest of my time to smoothing things over and placating this different team.  Much of this, however, is how real world diplomacy works.  Sometimes a diplomat will work to forge alliances not because it is directly beneficial to their representative country, but because it will lead to regional or international prosperity.  As someone eager to learn more about this career path, I felt this was a very valuable experience to gain in a classroom setting, as this is something usually covered on the surface in a lecture but never simulated until the student is actually working in international relations.

However, there were some unrealistic parts of this game that did not explicitly align with current global politics.  For example, it was not realistic in world diplomacy to have a strict order of when alliances can be declared or when attacks can be carried out.  This is necessary for the game to function, but in international relations alliances can be created at any time and war can break out immediately after the balance of power shifts.  This is not limited to occurring solely in a World Council meeting as it was in our game. 

While I feel that this game achieved its objective and taught our class about international diplomacy in a way that could never be lectured or shown through a powerpoint, I would suggest some small changes to aid the progression of the game itself.  Our class as a whole was heavily focused on the areas of Europe and Ukraine, which I felt limited our options for moving and placing reinforcement troops across the world.  My team only placed reinforcements in Northern Europe and Great Britain in order to keep our territory away from the Red/Blue conflict, which limited our global influence throughout the entirety of the game.  It would be very hard to keep the game structure going without so much conflict in one region, but this is certainly something I would work on changing so that every team was embroiled in global conflicts as opposed to focusing strictly on one regional clash.  It may be possible to have multiple areas of conflict between teams, such as a Red/Blue war in both Ukraine and Australia, or a Green/Yellow struggle in both North and South America which would intensify the game while keeping the competitive atmosphere.

Diplomatic Risk Reflection by Zachary Henry

            In this hybrid diplomatic risk, I was the president of Green and our objective was to warmonger our way to ten provinces that either contained a resource or lay adjacent to one. Our secret power was that we had the ability to attack any other faction at any time during our turn phase, regardless of any diplomatic status including alliances. Most of our efforts regarded the conquering of provinces controlled by our enemy yellow in and around South Africa, which had a resource, or protecting our resource in the Middle East. Eventually later in the game we had managed to get Argentina, another map resource out of our ally blue, before we committed a coordinated plan to prevent them from winning the game. Eventually, this led to the victory of the Black faction, and hence the game ended.

            What I found most realistic in this game was the fact that it emphasizes the difficulty of achieving anything in world politics, especially if all states are in anarchy. Each state wants something slightly different, and one should always be weary of what their true intentions are. I think the rules of the game were very fair and created a balanced and realistic representation of the present world state. Even to the fact of a blue superpower. Each faction’s victory condition is especially made to be hard for their faction. Although red and blue seem to have similar victory conditions, they must each approach it extremely differently. Obviously, for blue the conquest of Ukraine would be very easy given their manpower and resources that dominate the map. But the diplomatic twist makes something seemingly easy for them suddenly very realistically difficult. Red is weaker than blue, so their standard conquest condition seemed like a very fair victory condition. Something else I found very realistic is the variety of political states, movements, and concepts that were represented by each state. For example, the yellow faction being a religious faction bodes well to the diverse types of government in the world, and works effectively to create somewhat of a completely different goal than other colors.

            What I found unrealistic about the game was the complete spread of territories across the map. I think it’s unrealistic that all of these world powers would have sporadic territory and resources spread throughout the world. With that being said, I understand that it is necessary for the game to function properly, and I actually enjoy it better because it forcibly engages all factions to interact with each other, even if they may be ultra-pacifist like black. I enjoyed the fact that many of the victory conditions revolved around central Europe moreover a central point of importance, but I think that spreading out these important victory conditions would more realistically spread conflict throughout the map.

            Some recommendations for change of the game would only be some minor changes, because I think the game did well to fulfill its purpose the way that it was set up. One minor change may be spreading the conflict across the map more, because then it would create more incentive for factions to want to try to get an airlift sanction form the world council, something effective and interesting that did not really need to be used. It would create more strategy in placement of soldiers and more importance in the world council functions. Also, I would highlight the fact that almost anything can be done between factions. There are essentially almost no restrictions diplomatically of what we could do out of the world council/diplomacy phase, yet know one really seemed to fully understand or pursue these options. I feel like many people did not really know that those options were even available. For example, as pink crusaded against yellow after the schism, I was contemplating making yellow one of our vassals after figuring out that pink’s victory would be in their destruction. We would offer our military and diplomatic protection for a turnly tribute of soldiers, or maybe a free extra council vote to use at our digression. I’m also sure that people could possibly have defected to different factions or acted as spies. Maybe giving some examples of these side diplomatic talks would make people work outside of the rigid diplomacy that most people followed in the game. Then again you could argue that this may have been due to the norms that get accepted by each faction and the fear of being ostracized from the international communtiy when not following these norms.

Regional Identity, Global Economics, and the Modern State by Zachary Henry

Globalization is a concept that is taking over modern international relations. It has brought about a global sense of movement and interconnectedness, especially in economics and communication. It has brought about themes of a “global citizen” and a picturesque version of earth as one whole political or societal space. But at its core, it strengthens the idea of regional rule and can explain why many areas around the world are clamoring for independence. Globalization is a major player in transcending national identities, endorsing regional independence through political identity and economics, therefore, it pushes states to transcend their nationalist identities.

Catalonia is an area in Northeast Spain that has recently had much rioting and protests to cede from Spain. They held a referendum to cede at the beginning of October this year, which was reportedly an overwhelming ceding vote. This event represents a more violent version of what has also been happening in other corners of Europe—Flanders in Belgium, and Scotland in the United Kingdom. These regional areas are being affected greatly by globalization. Due to globalization, the national identity that the mother states were legitimized on are starting to crumble. Globalization brings about an ease of movement of people, culture, and communications. Because of this ease of movement, people tend to cling onto their regional, local values as a response to a seemingly global socioeconomic identity that is forming. Pluralism creates a rift of nationalism into global identity and its regional response, both of which are now essential for a state to embrace. The state’s role to protect a nationalist idea and people is no longer valid, because the power of a regional identity and global outlook has eclipsed the nationalism they protect. They essentially are no longer the central hub of security in their citizens lives, as the social contract of government calls for.

The ease of movement also applies to economics. Economics is a truly a concept with global foundations that is catalyzed by globalization. The importance of economics and trade in the global era to the state cannot be understated. Therefore, they must at least attempt to participate on the global stage in trade or finance. Globalization has facilitated a world economic boom. Trade has increase exponentially, and GDPs have been steadily rising. States must consider some form of differentiation to allow for global participation with the current dominating regional trends. The cling to regional customs is further reinforced by the economic policies of globalism. When global business ventures bring their culture into foreign markets, they disrupt the usual socioeconomic atmosphere. An example of this would be having a McDonalds in the middle of an Italian city that seems to reverberate culture and history even just in the architecture. This process proceeds to further reinforce the need to hold onto local customs and values.

States need to escape the rigid bounds of nationalism that contain them. They need to adapt to a new globalized identity that will allow them to survive. They must transcend the conventional definitions of nationalism and globalism to legitimize the shifting identities of their citizens, or risk the failure of their state. The state is not disappearing entirely, it just must adapt to the new political atmosphere, just as it has previously in history, like with the dissolution of world empires to nationalism.

outside reading sources:

http://www.jhubc.it/bcjournal/articles/desquens.cfm

Why NGOs and Government Organizations Must Work Together: Transnational Activism - Liz Haven

    In regards to fighting poverty, the ultimate goal of government organizations and NGOs is to help the poor. There are systematic problems within government organizations and NGOs that do not allow their efforts to relieve poverty. The fatal flaws of these organizations are a lack of agreeability and communication. The lack of these traits has created a complicated disconnect between organizations. Therefore, efforts made by organizations clash instead of combine. Consequently, it is essential these organizations work together to help poor states and their people legitimately.
    Evidence of issues between government organizations and NGOs have been present throughout decades with many countries. One example, found in the article “NGOs: Fighting Poverty, Hurting the Poor” highlights the downfall of a project that took place in 1999 in Qinghai, China. The World Bank was in charge of the project, and the goal was to move 58,000 farmers to a different part of the province with a dam. In relocating, farmers would receive 20 cents more a day and therefore poverty would be reduced. Since around 30 similar projects were successfully implemented in the past, this project was expected to be successful as well.
Sadly, because of misinformation, various activists and NGOs fought against the project. In short, activists and NGOs thought the Chinese farmers were being moved to a traditionally Tibetan area (Qinghai). The fact is, the proposed move of the 58,000 farmers would not relocate them into a “Tibetan” area. It would just move them to another area within their current province. The considerable confusion and disconnect arose because some Tibetan people were living in the province, but they only accounted for ⅕ of the people.
    All the protesting from activists and NGOs is directly linked to miscommunication. Once all this incorrect information started circling within the media, activists monopolized on their gained support from the U.S. Congress and Hollywood actors to shut the plan down. How the World Bank responded to activists and NGOs highlights a fundamental flaw in communication. The World Bank did not make an effort to explain the facts of the project to critics accurately. Instead, the World Bank left the project. Since the project still went on, the environmental and social protection of the World Bank was unable to protect the 58,000 people. So, the people they wished to help suffer more.
If the World Bank utilized smarter methods of communication, it could have achieved a conjunction of effort towards shared goal. One intelligent method of communication to implement is transparency. Before it comes to the point where critics spread all their flawed ideas about the project, the organization sponsoring the project should post a clear, detailed outline of everything their plan includes. They could address policies in detail and how exactly this project will help people. More importantly, they could address questions of concern before anyone jumps to conclusions.
Also, it is important NGO’s, and activists make compromises to better communication. NGO’s and activists are known for supporting the underprivileged in a non-self serving way. To do so, these organizations often bash policies of government organizations. Their highly critical attitude towards governmental organizations is what gains them the trust of the general public, celebrities and the oppressed. It is excellent NGOs and activists want to banish corrupt regimes, but this notion can cloud their judgment. For example, in the Qinghai project, the miscommunication between activists and the World Bank led to the spread of false information about the project. After being publicly attacked by various NGOs, the World Bank left the project. As a result, the project lost around 300 million dollars. Because of this, the people in poverty went more months without clean water and electricity.
Overall, it is an absolute necessity that government organizations and nongovernment organizations communicate with each other to achieve consistent and concise communication. Once established, the organizations can move forward to work on their shared goal.

Source: NGOs: Fighting Poverty, Hurting the Poor -Sebastian Mallaby