The Jenga Year | The Press

After two years of idling, the planet took its revenge in 2022. If they had turned in on themselves during the COVID-19 pandemic, the great powers – the United States, China and Russia in the lead – are relaunched in the great game of quest for global influence this year. But what exactly are they playing?

Risk

We first thought he was bluffing, then that he was playing chess, but we have to admit that by invading Ukraine on February 24, Vladimir Putin embarked on a sinister version of Risk, this famous game of strategic conquest, which nevertheless depends on a roll of the dice. “When it comes to dominating the world, everything depends on who will take the greatest risk”, can we read in the descriptive note of the game which the Russian president seems to have consulted before sending his army to the neighboring country. , hoping to bring down the Kyiv government in three days.

He underestimated the cards Ukraine has in hand and the alliances it has. NATO, which had proved a rather absent-minded player since Donald Trump’s presidency, was cautious but nonetheless stepped up to support Ukraine’s defence. The population of the country – far from lining up behind the invader, who has no regard for the rules of the game – has rallied behind its president Volodymyr Zelensky and is going for broke.

Ukraine even won an important round in another game, Battleship, by sinking the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the Moskvain April.

That said, at the end of the year, it is above all the immense losses that are attracting attention. First the loss of human life, which in all likelihood amounts to more than 100,000 on each side of the conflict launched by Russia. And the loss of crucial Ukrainian infrastructure, relentlessly bombarded by the Russians in the hope of weakening Ukrainian resistance.

At the time of the balance sheets, in his snowy Kremlin, the Russian president must digest with difficulty the fact that by embarking on this attempt at conquest, he has not only bet the human, economic and military resources of his country, but also its political future.

It remains to be hoped that the Russian misadventures will cool the ardor of Xi Jinping’s China, which, since last summer, seems ready to launch a game of Risk against Taiwan.

Jurassic World

Another game, taken from a film, was also popular this year on the international scene. In Jurassic World, one player controls the dinosaurs while the other players team up to defeat the prehistoric animals and their master.

We were treated to an American version of this board game last summer. Majority in the Supreme Court, conservative justices overturned the judgment Roe v. wade which guaranteed the right to abortion throughout the country. Not only did they roll back some of the rights of American women to the Ice Age, but they imposed their backward ideas on the nearly 70% of Americans who supported the status quo.

Thanks to this unpopular decision, the Democratic team was able to hold its own in the midterm elections, even if the leader of the woolly mammoths, Donald Trump, promised them a crushing defeat.

The Iranian variant of Jurassic World is much more disturbing, however. Since mid-September, the young women have succeeded in rallying a large part of civil society – men, ethnic minorities, traders, factory workers – to their cause in what has become the largest popular uprising against the Islamic Republic. since his advent.

Unfortunately, Ayatollah Khamenei and the other dinosaurs of the regime control the tools of state repression and do not hesitate to unleash their velociraptors against the demonstrators. Bringing up to date their practices of the 1980s, they increasingly use the death penalty as a deterrent. The world watches, helpless, this fight with unequal weapons, but whose outcome is not yet written. We begin to hope that a meteorite seals the fate of the tyrannosaurs of Tehran.

musical chairs

In 2022, we were also treated to a few variations of the game of musical chairs. In Brazil, far-right populist Jair Bolsonaro lost to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is returning to the political scene after a few years behind bars.

In the Philippines, it was “Bongbong” Marcos, the son of the former dictator driven out of the streets, who took power with the tacit agreement of his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte. Moreover, it is Duterte’s daughter, Sara, who now occupies the chair of the vice-presidency in this funny game in which democracy is the big loser.

But in this game, no one beats the British Conservatives this year, who have seen Boris Johnson, Elizabeth Truss and Rishi Sunak succeed each other as Prime Minister in less than 12 months.

These repeated transitions at the head of the government did nothing to reassure the British population, who said goodbye to Elizabeth II, the country’s greatest symbol of stability for 70 years.

We will have to see if the Netflix revelations of Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, will have an impact on the new king, Charles III, who will be crowned on May 6. One thing is certain: it is not only in Quebec that the oath to the king is called into question. Three Caribbean countries want to hold a referendum before 2025 to decide the fate of the constitutional monarchy. New Zealand and Australia also mentioned the idea of ​​a popular consultation, but on a longer term.

Canada, in all this? Justin Trudeau, on the eve of the Queen’s funeral, said he did not want to open this file let alone “debate” the issue. The Parti Québécois took care of it for him.

Jenga

If we take the nose off the news to assess how much the world has changed in 2022, it is the game of Jenga that stands out as the best metaphor. At the start of the game, there is a tower of wooden rectangles that seems quite sturdy. This could be seen as the international system, made up of United Nations bodies, international law bodies and all the multilateral agreements that govern relations between States, to regulate international trade, regulate war and the flow of refugees or to counter climate changes.

Of course, this tower was not intact on 1^er January 2022. Players have been pulling pieces for years, reneging on commitments or ignoring them. But the year 2022 will have witnessed an acceleration of the process and, consequently, the weakening of the tower. The United Nations is struggling to raise the necessary funds to fight the terrible food crisis which affects 800 million human beings; the Security Council is more paralyzed than ever by Russian and Chinese vetoes; the G20 struggles to denounce Russian aggression in Ukraine in unison.

But it’s not all bad news. As in the game of Jenga, the pieces removed are used to build new floors in the tower. In the last year, we have seen growing solidarity between democracies, a revitalization of the energy transition under the impetus of the war in Ukraine and the creation of a new fund to offer compensation to the countries most affected by the global warming. All is not lost.

It remains to be seen if the foundations of the international system built after the Second World War remain strong enough to support the novelty or if it will be necessary to review the architecture of the tower.

Ah, 2023, here you are already seized of a beautiful mandate!