Playing Poker With the Bear

Today's article by 'Spengler' on the Asia Times website ("Americans play Monopoly, Russians chess," at: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH19Ag04.html) makes a compelling case that opening a military base in some new country is often regarded by American strategists (especially Neo-Cons) as an end in itself. He writes:

...Russia is playing chess, while the Americans are playing Monopoly. What Americans understand by "war games" is exactly what occurs on the board of the Parker Brothers' pastime. The board game Monopoly is won by placing as many
hotels as possible on squares of the playing board. Substitute military bases, and you have the sum of American strategic thinking.

The Russians, meanwhile, are the consummate chess-players: they ponder every move carefully, trying to anticipate how friend and foe alike will react. Only when they are sure that the odds are in their favor do they make their move.

I once had a very similar thought myself: Americans play poker, while our rivals and enemies play chess.

While chess is a game of long-term strategy, poker is all about short-term bluffing. Expanding NATO all the way to Russia's border, without having enough troops to deal with the blow-back, would be a good example of a recent U.S. bluff.

Poker players also get a new hand every round (a "new deal," in case you ever wondered where that phrase came from). Their bad luck--even their mistakes--from the last hand never carry forward to the next, unlike chess, where one desperate move frequently leads to another. The failure of our ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, have strengthened Iran. But this, in turn, seems only to have made the Neo-Cons all the more determined to attack Iran. Our blunders in the Middle East may yet force us into an even bigger catastrophe over there.

In the final assessment, I think our foreign policy would be a lot better off if our rulers started thinking more along the lines of chess, and less like desperate poker-players in a Vegas casino. Foreign policy, like chess, is one long, continuous game; it is not a serious of disconnected little 'deals' with no long-term implications.

But alas, chess requires a capacity for long-term strategic thinking that seems to be in short supply in the U.S. these days. In today's Washington, the Kennans and Kissingers have given way to the Cheneys and Wolfowitzes--a development I regard as most unfortunate.