In war, it is often said, there are no winners. But, in fact, wars are often not even about winning and losing at all. They are about reaching an equilibrium. Author and former intelligence officer, Andy Owen, argues that what has changed in the world today – in part due to the chaos of Trump's second term, but also due to events well preceding him – is that the world has been thrown out of this equilibrium. And if geopolitics is indeed a kind of game, the referee – the US – and the rules of the game – international law – have come unstuck. The result is a dangerous free for all, where might equals right. Owen argues, in order to survive in such a world, smaller nations need to build coalitions to have any chance of repelling the power of larger nations – and they need to be smart in playing the game. 

Playing games is a universal part of human experience. The British Museum has a board from the third millennium BC, from the Mesopotamian strategy board game The Royal Game of Ur. There are many parts of our experience that we can easily recognise but become slippery when we are asked to define them. Games are one of these. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein believed the elements of games, such as play, rules, and competition, all fail to adequately define what games are. He concluded that people apply “game” to a range of disparate human activities that only share “family resemblances”. Some of those disparate human activities are far from play. Most however can be analysed through Game theory. When applied to our currently fragmenting geopolitical system, and the most fractious relationships within it, game theory can provide insight into what moves key players may make next, and what state the board may be left in.

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Game theory analyzes strategic decision-making. It assumes that participants are rational actors and will act to maximize their own outcomes. It is a framework for analyzing situations where multiple decision-makers interact, and the outcome for each depends on the choices of all others. It can be applied to the simple board games like the Royal Game of Ur and the most complex of human activities. I used a form of game theory as a soldier, without realising. Patrolling through Basra in 2006 we were engaged in a more deadly Mesopotamian game. Local improvised explosive device (IED) teams would disguise their lethal projectiles in piles of rubbish or dig them into the side of the road on routes they thought troops would take. Despite my team gathering intelligence on the IED teams, including sometimes the locations of the IEDs themselves, and the training we received on how to spot signs of their presence, it mostly felt like we were playing a game of chance rather than a game of skill. Every decision about which turn to take was a play in the game that could decide who was the winner and who was the loser.