And in order to prove his point, Putin resorts to a very local example of how something doesn't work, ignoring that fact that, contrary to his demented opinion, the North American Continent, Europe, Japan, Korea...do exactly what he says doesn't happen -- massive free trade to the mutual benefit of all.

What Putin does not want to admit is that where these successes are taking place, you have strong Capitalist Democracies in place.

Just another failed Putin-anti-american-anti-democracy vomit...

He's not arguing against free trade there, he's saying that the India-Pakistan conflict stupidly prevents free trade. On that, he's right on. Partition of the subcontinent was one of the worst things to happen in the 20th century.

"Pakistan is never going to march through Siberia in real life the way Italy can march through Scandinavia in Diplomacy."

As I said earlier, the most relevant countries strive for hegemony. Liechenstein isn't striving for hegemony in Europe either. But you have a knack for barging in and ignoring what has already been discussed.

Also note the states in real life are much higher. I'm not saying most leaders are or were moralists, but even the Machiavellian realist in a real life international system has to confront the fact that his irrational actions (attacks for revenge for example) won't just cost him a game, it will cost millions of lives. That reins in the irrational propensity for actors to lash out like they do in real life.

To support your point though I never really thought that the balance of power was ever really the goal of most actors throughout history. I think the one state actor that tried to balance Europe was Britain for selfish reasons and they were very effective in doing so for the most part.

I err toward promoting a status quo and a balance of power in in game which is not good for the goals of diplomacy

Sure great powers strive for hegemony. But does that translate into the game of Diplomacy and does that mean Diplomacy disproves the balance of power? I still say no. The goals are just too different.

You might be completely right about the balance of power being a silly idea, but Diplomacy isn't the vehicle that shows that. It's a game that, while it says a lot about how humans interact with each other, does not and cannot reproduce the dynamics of the international system.

At the same I think alot of time people playing diplomacy do seek a balance and you can use that to your advantage. Britain attacked my France in the back before turkey blew up with several new scs. To get England to back off all I needed to do was to move west with my fleets and suggest that if he failed to retreat I would let turkey grow unchecked. He backed off inediately.

Computer 'games' are used to simulate theories about social science all the time. So is game theory which operates along the same lines but in a more formalistic, mathematical way. Theories are necessarily a simplification. To say that the real world is more complex is true, but that's a critique which can be leveled at any theory of anything. But if we simply throw up our hands after being told the world is very complex then we cannot understand anything. We must simplify in order to understand.

What I'm saying is that if BoP cannot work in a simulated environment where conditions are optimal for strategic balancing, then it follows that it is not likely to operate in the real world where conditions are far less optimal, and for roughly the same reasons.

The crux of the issue is whether the goals are fundamentally different in the real world from the Diplomacy goal of hegemony. You already say that great powers strive for hegemony, so I don't see how you can also say the goals are very different.

Is hegemony synonymous with unipolarity? Cause that's what a Diplomacy player seeks. There's also the matter of scale. Iran seeks hegemony in the Middle East, but it does not seek global hegemony. Under one view, Hitler only sought hegemony in and around Europe, leaving the British Empire intact to maintain its hegemony in Africa and Asia.

It's not a crazy argument you're proposing, I just really don't buy it. Diplomacy is just too different fro mreal life to be able to disprove balance of power.

Yes, I mean unipolarity or at least the maximization of power & influence in the world within the realm of a state's capabilities. You're right Iran seeks regional hegemony, although I'm not sure Iran qualifies as a great power - which is the behavior BoP aims to explain, not small powers. The Mideast seems to be going through a warring states period where they're trying to figure out the successor to the Ottoman Empire, to become the new Caliphate, a new great power. A situation which does not lend itself to balancing vs US influence.

South America is the only area of the world that seems to be at least minimally operating according to how BoP would anticipate considering the distribution of power in the world, but even in this case it's not significant.

As for Germany only seeking regional hegemony. Yes. It didn't have the sea power to challenge the British (or France) anywhere outside of Europe, and they learned from the mistakes of Wilhelm that getting into a naval arms race with the British would be a colossal error.

But the example of Germany is illustrative of non-balancing even in the case of regional hegemony. The countries of eastern Europe lined up with Germany as soon as it became apparent that Germany was the strong power in Europe, dumping their previous affiliation with France via the Little Entente. So did the Soviet Union. Italy, who resented the German annexation of Austria, cutting off opportunities for expansion, nonetheless sided with the Reich when France was on the brink of defeat.

Games and models *attempt to represent* reality, they don't *demonstrate* reality. Reality demonstrates itself and the models adjust if necessary. You almost literally confused the map with the territory.

Models can make predictions, but testing the predictions is not always ethical.

"Yes, I mean unipolarity or at least the maximization of power & influence in the world within the realm of a state's capabilities."

Then Diplomacy doesn't fit. Each player has the ability to conquer the map and the goal to do so. Each state, even each great power, does not seek unipolarity.

Take an obvious great power, China. For all the panic in some circles, it is not trying to eclipse the United States. It, at its nationalist maximum, seeks only to be dominant in East Asia. It wants to control the East and South China Seas, not the East and South China Seas AND the Mediterranean AND the Persian Gulf AND the Caribbean. It does not want a Chinese replacement for the World Bank and IMF. On and on.

If Diplomacy were a good analogue to reality which could disprove the balance of power it would have to account for different definitions of success like that. It doesn't, so it's not a good vehicle for disproving balance of power. It's just too different from how things really work. All Diplomacy players have the same goals and the same criteria for victory, the same cannot be said for all states or all great powers.

Stability is an interesting concept, but fuzzy. How long does it need to be stable to prove a theory? Does a balance of power require a war to prove the balance, and is that part of the theory or is the balance supposed to prevent wars, and the stability broken at the out-break of armed conflict?

The balance of power and mutual assured destruction prevented an outbreak of war in the cold war days, and that simpler situation only required two competing powers... How stable was it? Is a decade of peace enougy? 2 decades?

But doesn't the end of the cold war undermine the notion that the balance of power was what was maintaining stability, or that any balancing was actually occurring? If anything it shows that states bandwagon with the stronger power, rather than balance against it. Russia is weak? Let's all march in line to join NATO and get goodies from the United States, now the unipolar power.

That's a separate issue entirely from whether the game Diplomacy disproves balance of power theory. Now you're talking about how post Cold War geopolitical developments disprove it. Not the same thing at all.

Funny thing, you see. Expansion by annexation is remarkably rare nowadays. Also, with democracy being as popular as it is, establishing lasting puppet regimes either involves doing something people at home don't like (dictator) or repeated military action. The world Diplomacy represents is set in a time when annexation was still barely alive and family members of the king could still become kings and dukes of conquered areas.

I know it's not the same thing, I was replying to Orathaic.

@ Phil_a_s

There's an interesting book by Peter Liberman about how industrial democratic societies are actually more apt to cooperate with conquerors, since they have more to lose from resistance.

Ah, sounds nice.

So... no reply to what I said?

I think the comparison between Diplomacy and actual geopolitical situations breaks down for only one reason. Diplomacy as a game ends whereas actual nations and geopolitics continue on. As an example. England reaches 18 SC and wins the game so it ends. The survivors, Germany, Russia and Turkey have 17SC between them. They are balanced numerically to England but for whatever reasons they haven't cooperated well enough to stop England and the game says at 18SC one player wins. Let's suppose that like the world the game doesn't just end at this point. Let's say a number of years of peace ensue during which time two of the players (read governments) change. They (say Germany and Russia) now conspire to put their predecessors' differences aside and jointly attack England, who has been busy with other things since he's feeling secure and that he's the dominant country anyway. England now drops to 17SC and responds vigorously to the attack. The fourth survivor, Turkey decides to join the action against England and in a few game years England is reduced to 14SC. At which point Turkey envious of Russia's success versus his own and wooed by England's promise of support into Greece, switches sides and attacks Russia. And on an on we go.

Just like a schoolyard seesaw balance can be attained in many different ways. Picture a heavy child seated low and a lighter child perched high. Pure balance is difficult to achieve in any endeavor be it sports, business, politics, etc., because there's always an ebb and flow which passes back and forth through a balance point. This is one of the things I love about Diplomacy. It does have applicability to the world we inhabit and the interactions we engage in with other people. I think Diplomacy is a good way to demonstrate the balance of power, how it works, how it doesn't work and the difficulty in maintaining it in both the game and in life.

"It wants to control the East and South China Seas, not the East and South China Seas AND the Mediterranean AND the Persian Gulf AND the Caribbean. It does not want a Chinese replacement for the World Bank and IMF."

Their goals are constrained by their capabilities. 30 years ago China wasn't seriously talking about controlling the South China Sea, despite the fact that their foreign policy rhetoric was considerably more bellicose and strident than it is today. Now they are insisting upon it and backing it up with threats of force. That's because they have the naval capabilities to insist upon it.

China still sees itself as a backward country. It has ambitions of great power status, but it doesn't think it's quite there yet. Although that may change soon.

"It's just too different from how things really work. All Diplomacy players have the same goals and the same criteria for victory, the same cannot be said for all states or all great powers."

The fact that the states in Diplomacy are more equitable in power dynamics and this more equitable in goals actually buttresses my point. The conditions in Diplomacy are optimal for strategic balancing because of the equal distribution of power to start off with, but it doesn't occur very often. The conditions are far less optimal in the real world, where the closest rival to the global hegemon is a relatively backward country with a pretty low standard of living that doesn't even have a blue water navy.

OK, so the goals of states are constrained by their abilities. I can accept that. However, the goals of Diplomacy players are the same regardless. It will always be the goal of a Diplomacy player to win outright. That's not the case with states. Everyone is not chasing after unipolarity. Since the game doesn't reflect real world dynamics it can't prove or disprove the balance of power. Also, there's Aeneas17's insightful point that, while Diplomacy ends, the real world doesn't. When a Diplomacy player achieves the unipolarity analogue the game's over and everyone goes home. A state does not have the luxury of its dominance being final. Since states are repeat players in a post-unipolar world their incentives are going to be quite different than Diplomacy players who end their relationship after the last center is captured.

You're really just shoehorning your not unreasonable argument into a scenario it does not work in.

It is not true that a Diplomacy player always wants to win. Usually he wants local dominance, if he gets it, he wants to win, and there he either wins or draws. If he doesn't achieve local dominance he will try to draw, try to survive.

What is the theory? I think 'balance of powers' is supposed to prevent war; because nobody can win if other countries will ally against them. Whereas diplomact is a challange to win BECAUSE other countries will/can ally against you to prevent a solo. So in some sense it is an example of a balance of power situation, but it is a game where the players are expected to go to war, even if they can't win outright, they try because that's why you joined a game to try. Very different situation from real-life countries which existed before 1901.

The government didn't just appear out of nothing and decide, hey lets go to war, instead they had histories which dictated their alliances... Dip is nothing like this. (i mentioned the cold war BECAUSE it actually prevented hot war from starting, if you ignore Korea, Vietnam, Angola, Central/South America...)

I dont think we can make deductions about balance of power here. It is simply because all player plays the game with a clear intention to change the balance of power, if not to win the game then not to lose the game.

Therefore all players here are passionate to change the balance of power.

The problem with using the diplomacy as a simulation of real life decision making is that you cannot measure how many of the games would be over in the first round by a drawn. it is also that no body plays the game agreeing beforehand that everyone will get one SC and we will draw.

Therefore whatever example you test, you are gonna get the result that "no body prefers balance of power". Because no body is gonna sit and play the game to draw the game. Therefore, diplomacy game cannot be used as an experiment to prove your hypothesis as your experiment is biased.

Many thanks, P33 for this. I've long been wanting to put this question to the community.

I'm now playing my 7th Dip-game. My fascination with this game lies a lot precisely in this question. How is it possible to hold championships in this game? I have not yet understood it. When I do, I'll not need to play it any more.
It can be played as "gunboat" but wouldn't interest me very much, just as Chess doesn't really fascinate me.

I can repeat what Putin said (and all you P33-haters... read slowly and carefully for once and... postpone emotionality once in a while, eh?):
"You have 7 players of more or less equal strength, each with the ability to immediately communicate with all other players, easily facilitating balancing against any potential hegemon. The objective of the game is irrelevant. The point is that compared to the real world, where Balance of Power was postulated, the conditions of Diplomacy are optimal for balancing against hegemons."

In every game I've played someone has acted irrationally in relation to the goal defined by the game. Not simply made "unintelligent moves", I don't claim myself to have the ability to make the smartest moves, but I mean in the sense they didn't even try to stop someone from winning, apparently they had some other agenda than actually getting the best outcome in the game. Sometimes I reaped the gain from this behaviour sometimes I was at the receiving end.

If world leaders were as poor diplomacy players as the lot I've met, we would have had nuclear wars all around.
There should be no need for exceptionally clever moves... All it would take is for everyone to be determined not to let anyone else win and so balance would be maintained.
So, it puzzles me how Diplomacy World Championships can be held. Are there not 7 human beings in the World Dip Community that can refrain from getting emotional and start hating some other player and do an irrational move, so that they could always draw how may times ever they play?

I'll see in this thread if someone has a clever answer to this.

http://www.diplomacy-archive.com/resources/strategy/articles/odd.htm has already been given, but just for those who decide not to look at the whole discussion posted.

Yeah, thanks again!
Edi Birsan's article. I found it and Lew Pulsipher's answer... My intuition would then side with Pulsipher's main argument, but
Brrrr... One day I'll have to give a good study to this... I need to get more experience of the game perhaps...

Diplomacy works because different players are different. The most common goal shared by almost all players of the game is to have fun. Other goals include to get 18 supply centres (this one is not as common as you might think), to score points, to annoy people you don't like, to chat, to generally piss people off, to become popular, to get the admiration of one's peers etc etc etc. There is no certain balance of power in Diplomacy because the people who play it are not balanced (haha) in terms of goals, skill, motivation, or pretty much anything.