Diplomatic Risk and real life international relations differ most significantly in the fact that Risk is played on a cardboard map of the world with armies consisting of tiny plastic soldiers and cannons whereas in the real world war looks more like this....
Note the marked absence of Jet Li and Jason Statham in Risk, a staple of any real-world war
But all joking aside, Risk and real life are similar in many ways. Both involve a powerful/powerhungry ruler or ruling class striving to gain more power in the mercantilist sense, by taking it from others. Diplomatic Risk brings the element of diplomacy (surprise surprise) tot he Risk board which basically entails making treaties and alliances with other nations/armies and only allowing a nation to attack a notion that it is at war with.
Diplomatic Risk does a pretty good job in demonstrating realist IR theory, but when it comes to the other theories, it misses the subtleties of relationships between states both in wartime and in peacetime. The other ways in which Diplomatic Risk can never give a truly accurate representation of real-world war is morality and self preservation. There is no morality in Risk. If you send 10 units into a massacre it has no lasting moral side effects of your conscience that those little plastic markers were removed from the board, however if you send 10,000 men to their death...well suffice it to say I wouldn't want to meet the man who is unaffected by that. As far as self preservation goes, when you're gambling with real armies and real lives, there is always an element of danger, no matter how far you are from the action. Defeat in Risk means a rematch. Defeat on the field of battle could mean the end of your way of life or just your life in general.
FIRE EVERYTHING!
Of course to accurately simulate all these things would take a "game" of astronomical complexity, something that probably could not be called a "game" at all, but would be more appropriately labeled as a society.
I agree with your statement that Risk portrays realism pretty accurately but fails to account for all morals and ethics involved in the real world. It is most definitely true that we did not consider human lives when attacking- we declared war, rolled the dice, and hoped for the best. Everything happened much more easily and quickly than it would in reality. We made decisions without any consideration for humanity or the public’s opinions…it didn’t matter if it was right or wrong, harsh or fair, we just acted how we wanted in order to achieve our assigned aims. That’s the problem with simulations like these…no matter how accurately you try to represent the situation, it will always no matter what leave out countless relevant factors that affect how things happen in reality.
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