Watching the international news reports this weekend, I was reminded of a short period in the 1970’s, student activism to the fore, and an occupation of a strategic educational block in a college on the south coast.
The circumstances are not relevant for this blog, but the means of passing the time is. A group of us spent three or four days more or less continuously playing ‘Risk’. The game of world domination.
Unfortunately, some countries decided it was more fun to play with real continents, and real lives. Actually, they have been doing that for centuries, but the analogy still applies.
A variety of European countries were the first to swap their cross-border battles for a global carve-up, and a damned fine job they did of it too. Just about everywhere that an asset could be sequestered or stripped, a race could be subjugated and exploited, that is where they went, and established the economic divide that still pervades today.
And, more importantly, provides arenas that they can carry on the quarrels of yesteryear with the lives of others. On the odd occasion when the scrap came close to home they saw how destructive it was and exported it again. And where they have caused destruction, division, and an establishment of exploitation and alienation, they leave behind an after-math of extremism and further misery.
Balances shift over time, and size now holds more sway. But the result is still the same. Rather than scrap it out with each other directly – thankfully, the results today would be exponentially catastrophic – or sit down and negotiate without preconditions, but with respect; they continue to vent their animosity in other countries, at other population’s cost.
So, for the moment we see the sabre rattlers circling Syria, Yemen, Iraq. And any gang will pull in acolytes when circumstances suit. So the ‘big bollocks’ are joined by smaller ball swingers, each innocent, each accusatory, none without blood on their hands.
These countries, and those in Africa, and South America, and South East Asia, have suffered for years with their own internal strife. People can be like that. Some resolved over time, some kept under control for the sake of the greater good, some forever simmering.
The one thing they all have, and had, in common that they do not need to be used as a bludgeon for other people’s aggravation. The resolution of internal strife, now enhanced by pseudo-religious extremism, is hard enough, without outside powers playing ‘Risk’ with dysfunctional countries.
But hey, why do the hard stuff, the back off and be reasonable stuff, the fair and humanitarian stuff. After all, retaining power and influence is so much more important than the odd hundred, thousand, million lives.
And history has proved that. Hasn’t it?
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