The Game of Nations - the Amorality of Power Politics

This is a REPRINT of an exceedingly difficult book to find. 

Please allow two weeks for the book to be delivered.

Note: This book is a reproduction of the historical text for academic, historical, or collector purposes.

1969 edition printed in 2026

6" x 9" / 318 pages

Description via Amazon review:

This book is represented as being written by one of the pioneers of modern intelligence gathering and analysis such as done at the CIA. Like most books, it is finally impossible to conclude its actual origin (or motives); however, it is referenced in Larry J. Kolb's OVERWORLD book in some detail along with a running collaboration with Copeland as his mentor, and many of the overt facts mentioned do square with world history.

Copeland, in this book, presents himself as an amoral "player" in the game of nations, meaning specifically that he did play Nasser in simulation games run by intelligence organizations and more generally as his idea of how to think of world politics (as a game). This overall point is driven home numerous times by citing the idea that world political events and differing nations' operational strategies/functions can be best understood by game theory--by analyses of win/loss possibilities as each nation may practice/play (accurately or mistakenly). Copeland crassly presents world leaders, the sane ones, as being driven by the desire to hold onto power, personally, and that the leaders' actions will drive their nations' actions via that overall desire. Copeland does not address those leaders who are guaranteered to be voted out of power such as the U.S. Presidents, although even their shorter term motivations are viewed the same as other non-democratic leaders. Too, the author does not directly reference any "shadow government" possibility inside the U.S.A. which could be seen as continuously desiring retention of power (see COG, Continuity of Government in other sources to understand this reference). The title of the book is the key insight of it.

Copeland's achievement to world history is to provide his own insight and activities in playing the game of nations in simulation activities for analyzing intelligence. He describes how each person/player would be an expert on one world leader at the historic moment and expresses how these leaders could be expected to play against or with each other. The result would be one, or usually several, scenarios of geo-political future events. In describing the game, he provides deep insight into how the world events around the several Suez crises worked.