By Tuesday, 16 September 2025, 4:22 Pm Opinion: Keith Rankin

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Today’s geopolitics is already coming very close to a war
(mainly of words, so far) between Asia and Europe (both
entities broadly and loosely defined). For geopolitical
purposes we may call this a war of hubris and cant between
East and West. Conveniently for the West, the words East and
Evil start with the same letter, so it’s easy for westerners
to conflate East and Evil to the initial E.

latter do we give greater Europe, aka The West? G for Good?
Or B for Bad?

Consider the six principal political
leaders of the West: Rutter, von der Leyen, Starmer, Merz,
Trump, Netanyahu. What they have in common, to a lesser to
greater degree, is their complicity re the genocidal Israel
project. Can we call them Good? Clearly no. Can we call them
Bad? Yes, we can.

It means that, from the point of
view of an academic (ie disinterested to a point, not
uninterested) Eurocentric observer, we are entering a
geopolitical struggle between Bad and Evil. (Only people who
advocate for the Israel project in its present form could
claim that it’s Good versus Evil.) We note that the most
obvious interpretation of ‘Bad’ is that Bad is the lesser

(We should also note that, from a Sinocentric or
Russocentric or Iranocentric or Indocentric point of view,
the expansionist West probably looks more like Evil than
Bad. It may be that more people in the world perceive West
to be the greater Evil and East to be the lesser Evil. The
median viewer probably lives in India.)

Referee’s Eye

Let’s think of this geopolitical
arm-wrestle as a game of rugby. The referee is obliged to
favour neither Bad nor Evil. And it’s a game with an
indefinite amount of ‘extra time’; only the teams themselves
can call fulltime, though they may consult the referee. So
long as the teams cannot agree to an outcome, the game
simply continues ad infinitum. We may assume that
each team has a very large ‘reserve bench’.

that, and ignoring the case of Japan for simplicity,
geopolitics from 1938 to 1990 was either ‘Good versus Evil1
versus Evil2’ or ‘Bad versus Evil1 versus Evil2’; it was
multipolar then bipolar. For simplicity, for that historical
war we may call Good/Bad the West, putting aside the issue
of western motives and morality. In May 1945, Evil1 conceded
to West and Evil2. In 1990, Evil2 conceded to West. There
was no real argument about who were the winners and losers.
There may be an argument about the use of the ‘Evil’ labels;
but those labels accurately reflect the western view of both
Nazi Germany and Communist Soviet Union.)

Most likely
the referee secretly prefers the lesser Evil (Bad) to
prevail over the greater Evil. But our referee is a
professional, and must adjudicate according to the ‘plays’
that take place. A professional referee is neutral. Probably
both Evil and Bad will try to cheat. The referee must deal
with both sides’ cheating even-handedly. (Point of ethics.
Would it be better for the game if such a referee is like a
‘bent cop’, in this case favouring Bad over

What is the game’s best outcome if Evil is
winning? Does Bad keep playing forever hoping for a
Hollywood-style comeback? Or – if the only realistic
alternative is total defeat – does Bad concede,
offering a dishonourable draw in the hope that Evil will

The Nuclear Option

What happens if,
when we enter indefinite ‘extra time’, we abandon the rules
and agree to start playing Nuclear Rugby; noting that
this form of rugby involves both sides resorting to tactics
of mass destruction. In the absence of rules, the referee
relocates to Rapa Nui, hoping to be safe there. Further, the
referee is now an observer, pronouncing on military
advantage and nothing else; hardly anybody listens anymore.
As before, the game only ends by mutual agreement; or by
there being no players left alive.

Here we note that
there are ‘third parties’. There are neutral nations which
have joined neither team. And each nation has unwilling
participants; people who do not like rugby. These people
neither wish to support the same team as their government
nor the other team; for practical purposes they are neutrals
or pacifists, not traitors. They struggle to be heard above
the noise of the binary contest. Then there are the
non-human life forms on Earth; they are neutral third
parties. Nuclear weapons, more than any other type of
weapon, disproportionately affect third parties.

does a game of nuclear rugby end? Is there an
‘offramp’ before The End? Presumably Evil will give up if
it’s clearly losing; as eventually occurred in 1938 to 1990.
But will Bad ever give up if Evil is winning?

is winning and Bad refuses to ‘sue for peace’, then the only
hope for the birds and the bees is a quick extinction of all
participating humans. Humanity’s only hope would be the
survival of some neutrals; and the retention of a planet
which can still support life. There will be no victor to
collect the cup of Ashes.

Don’t play geopolitical rugby.

Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic
historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and
Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New

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