Quote Originally Posted by Entropy View Post
I'm not so sure "friends" are a choice in international relations.
Besides the fact that when one stops believing they have choices they start becoming a "victim," as I stated recently "friend" and "foe" are very limiting constructs, best to see all as "competitors."

But again, irrelevant to the appropriateness of the analogy. In fact, I would go so far as suggesting that this analogy is a very good metric to see if someone has a grasp of the fundamental nature of these types of operations.

If you give them the analogy and they go "Ahh" or "of course", then you can get on with discussions of the problem.

If they instead simply can't see the connection, then, in my professional opinion, they really aren't prepared to discuss the problem at all, as they think it is something very different than what it actually is.