By David K. Shipler
American
football is a convenient metaphor, and it’s sure to be overused on this Super
Bowl weekend. But what if we turn it around and recognize that our foreign
policy is actually the metaphor—a metaphor for football, and that our trick tactics
and testosterone-driven plays internationally are often modeled on what works in
the National Football League?
The decision this week to ramp up US military
deployment in Europe, like putting more muscle on the line, is designed to cow
Vladimir Putin’s “aggression,” to use the word that is kicked around casually
by the Pentagon. It seems logical if you think you’re in a game to win by
defeating the opponent rather than finding victory on common ground. The real
world of foreign affairs is rarely a zero-sum game, however, and there’s never
a final whistle.
The American-Russian face-off is full of
football-style moves that look tough but have had the perverse effect of
strengthening the hand of the other side. Expanding NATO, which commits the
United States to go to war to defend any of its members, has alarmed Moscow as
the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have joined the
alliance, along with Eastern European countries once in the Soviet sphere of
influence. Russia’s reaction has been the opposite of what’s good for the West.
