Are we playing checkers while China plays go?
2 min readJun 9, 2018
There’s the (apocryphal?) Cold War era story of Kissinger saying that the Russians grew up playing chess while the American grew up playing poker. Each provided the other with a certain cultural framework with which to approach politics.
I’m not sure about this analysis beyond its initial appearance of wisdom, and perhaps it’s social value as a piece of intellectual banter. Not to say…