The whole thing reminds me a lot of when I used to play a lot of world-domination military strategy games on NES and on the computer. Games where you went around conquering territories and building and administrating empires. Most of them were set in feudal Asia. I was a huge fan of the sorts of classic espionage tactics I described above, where I would send a band of ninjas or spies into neighboring territories to foment peasant revolutions against enemy rulers. Or I’d go in and bribe their generals, or failing that, assassinate them. I recognize now in our leaders a lot of the same types of ruthless thinking being used as is engendered in those games. And thinking from that vantage point, of trying to maintain my strategic power, if they threaten my stability, then I will strike. First from within, by turning their own people against them, and cutting them up into more easily manageable blocks, or hostile zones. Then once they have been sufficiently weakend, I will roll my armies through their territories and colonize them. Just like we’re doing in the Middle East. Of course, when my own peasants revolted in my territories, I would crush them with an iron fist, tax the living shit out of them and institute really harsh drafts and product export quotas on them. I didn’t give a shit how low their morale level got, as long as they were providing me a never-ending stream of fuel for my war machine.

In a way, playing those computer games has given me an almost sick sympathy, or at least an understanding, of the sort of games they are playing, and how they are playing them. In all those games too, there’s this point you reach where, once you acquire a certain number of strategic territories and armies, you’re pretty much assured of winning the game. I don’t the Empire of America is quite there yet though, thankfully. It could still go any direction at this point, but they’re off to a strong start. South America and Western Europe are no neutralized at this point. Africa is too de-stabilized to put up any opposition at the moment. They have to finish getting a secure foothold in the Middle East though, so that they can launch a pincher attack on Asia. Whenever I play Risk, Asia is always the last region I try to conquer.