Chessboard

On which square of the chessboard are we?

The bottom chessboard is the realm of cross border transactions that occur outside of government control.

The bottom chessboard is the realm of transnational relations that cross borders outside of government control.

On the top chessboard, military power is largely unipolar and likely to remain so for a while.

Our historic misfortune lies in our geographic placement upon an international chessboard, with malleable rules being determined by others.

However, a thorough analysis of this issue, taking into account the realities of the present world political chessboard is necessary.

The bottom chessboard includes transnational relations outside the control of governments everything from drugs to infectious diseases to climate change to terrorism.

Other players on the grand chessboard of Asian geopolitics also are seeking to formulate new equations, as they concurrently pursue strategies of hedging, balancing, and bandwagoning.

But on the middle chessboard, economic power is already multi polar, with the US, Europe, Japan and China as the major players, and others gaining in importance.

For today s Arab world, a better metaphor might be a chessboard, from which the removal of even a pawn inevitably alters the relationships among all the other pieces.

But, taking the long view, can anyone doubt that the invasion had the effect of shaking up the pieces, not just in Iraq, but across the Islamic chessboard?

Today, Afghan national consolidation is impeded by the collapse of the great game into a little game to dominate, again, the south and south eastern edges of the chessboard.

But now, the number of players has exploded, those living on the chessboard have become players, and the intensity of the violence and the threats that it produces affect the entire globe.

But on the middle chessboard, economic power has already been multi polar for more than a decade, with the US, Europe, Japan, and China as the major players, and others gaining in importance.

It is distributed in a pattern that resembles a three dimensional chess game. On the top chessboard, military power is largely unipolar, and the US is likely to remain the only superpower for some time.

If we place a single grain of rice on the first square of a chessboard, double this and place 2 grains on the second, double again and place 4 on the third, double again and place 8 on the fourth, and continue this way, putting on each square twice the number of grains than were on the previous one, by the time we reach the final square, we need an astronomical number of grains