This posting is going to go back a step to a previous version of the game of New Diplomacy (and perhaps each version should have a number to denote it). The latest version is primarily concerned with technological advances brought about by increased global internet participation. I am returning to 1989 and the fall of the Iron Curtain. To those glorious promising days of a new dawn in world cooperation and the end of the threat of world thermonuclear warfare.
It was the point at which the US started to assume it's new role of World Policeman but without the chess playing skills required during the 'Cold War'. Brian White in his essay 'Diplomacy' reminds us that; 'No good card or chess player reveals his or her 'hand' in advance, and diplomatic negotiations are similar to these games in important respects'.
In the film 'Wargames' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHWjlCaIrQo a supercomputer is made to play tic-tac-toe to understand that some games are futile and so it is persuaded not to 'play' a game of thermonuclear warfare against the Soviet Union. The computer then decides to relinquish control and asks to play chess instead. So why then did diplomacy fail to disarm the world based on this logical conclusion! Or fail to see that a logic driven computer would if given artificial intelligence understand that such a game was a 'no win' situation.
The role of games, sport and diplomacy has been around for a long time. William Shakespeare mentions tennis in 'Henry V ' when the Dauphin, the French Prince sends King Henry a gift of tennis-balls, as a joke in response to Henry's claim to the French throne. King Henry replies through his diplomats "His present and your pains we thank you for: When we have matched our rackets to these balls, we will, in France, by God's grace, play a set [that] shall strike his father's crown into the hazard ... And tell the pleasant Prince this mock of his hath turn'd his balls to gun stones" For gun stones he refers to what we know as cannon balls for a gun.
Time and time again sport and games feature in diplomacy and on occasions manages to defuse the sabre rattling and the jingoism.
Once again, some very interesting reflections in this entry - and a literary reference to boot!
ReplyDeleteHowever, I couldn't really grasp what your main theme or point was, and it wasn't clear what you meant by diplomacy disarming the world of "war games" technology. Are you arguing that diplomacy has given up on the task of rationally and peacefully ordering the world through conscious human agency and cooperation?