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Comment by UweSchmidt | Hacker News Reader

Contemporary expressions of the influence of prevalent strategy games on geopolitics might be:

- Chess, a popular game in Russia and a game of gambits and bloody material exchange for a pawn: the Ukraine war

- Go, a popular game in China and a game of long term development and area control: China building artificial islands, investing heavily in Africa, and avoiding direct confrontation in Taiwan

A certain characteristic of chess is the need to study and memorize openings and lines, which has no parallel in real life. Overall, if there was a strong correlation between chess and other areas of life, chess grandmasters would be prominently successful in top military and business leadership positions.

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This is just confirmation bias. You're looking for patterns so you're finding them. If you look for the opposite patterns you'll find them too.

Russia besides the mandatory invasion every decade has been infiltrating the west and avoiding the direct confrontation for decades, they spent a lot of money on encouraging brexit, trump and financing a lot of far-right and far-left parties in EU in hope of breaking it.

Russia also invested heavily into gas infrastructure hooking up Germany to have direct influence on its politics.

China isn't above invading some countries either when it thinks it can get away with it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Peo...

China is also currently running concentration camps for hundreds of thousands of people. Somehow we don't talk about that.

Both countries are agressive militaristic dictatorships using whatever tools they think will serve them best at the moment. China is simply more patient because it isn't in obvious decline (yet).

Another contrast is that China is importer of basic resources and exporter of goods - so it needs international peace to profit. Russia is exporter of basic resources - so it needs international chaos for best prices. When you listen to Russian economists they often talk about international "pressures" that are beneficial to their economy because oil prices go up.

I concede that this is a pattern that I enjoy contemplating and could be confirmation bias. A "Go" philosophy, if it were indeed a thing, is in itself certainly not morally superior, as it ultimately tries to surround and eliminate enemy pieces in an attempt to control most of the board. Chess on the other hand also includes plenty of moves that are intended to control the board or provide small longterm advantages that are hopefully not fully clear to the opponent.

I do think that the Eastern way of avoiding direct confrontation is a major cultural difference to the West, and is reflected in both Go and geopolitics.

Going back to the article, any Strategist should probably study a wide range of games to maybe gain a small improvement in strategic thinking.

I think strategists should study a wide range of actual wars and conflicts, and fall back to games (as opposed to actual "war games") as like a third tier approach.

And I think you're perception of "go" philosophy <-> geopolitics as practiced is absolutely confirmation bias. For one thing, Chinese Chess is absolutely a thing, and at least within China, is at least as popular, if not more popular than Go.

How do you define "Eastern", because the Mongols, Huns, Chinese, Japanese definetly didn't shy away from direct confrontation. Historically speaking.

And USA was isolationist not that long ago. Chess was already invented ;)

West and East are relative anyway. Also, go far enough east, and what used to be west is all of a sudden east of you.

> - Chess, a popular game in Russia and a game of gambits and bloody material exchange for a pawn: the Ukraine war

And yet, here we are. American strategists planned, and the governments executed a chess-like game against Russia decades ago, and the public in the west knows everything started last year and attributes all the bloody hell only to Russian expansionist politics ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Chessboard

USA didn't wanted USSR to break up. It was trying its hardest to prevent it in 80s/90s because it was afraid of nuclear proliferation and wars. USSR has broken up against all the political games - simply because people were fed up with it.

Proping up Russia right now is probably going to end up similarly - the country is just too big for its organization and economy to survive as a normal country. It can only survive as a militaristic dictatorship. And who wants that?

The West is probably generally influenced by chess. Thinking in terms of of the "Grand Go Board" would probably be less bloody, but still be confrontational on a fundamental level (concepts like my pieces vs your pieces, control, surrounding, eliminating, a winner and a loser).

The Mackinder heartland theory is self evidently incorrect. Russia has controlled the heartland for hundreds of years. But has never been the global hegemon.

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