Controlling country like Afghanistan is not zerosum game. It is a blackhole that burns money, resources and men! There was never great plan to conquer India (as British believed).
> leaders of the international order want to prevent nuclear proliferation
"Leaders" are happy if they find their way from podium.
Current situation is more similar to Cuban missile crisis, not some great chess game. Sadly we do not have anyone like Kennedy!
But everything is non-equal. Best of the best have everything aligned in the same direction (family, wealth, genetics...). Even the "sacrifice" does not hurt, because that is just the way they do it.
Believe in "Great sacrifice" does not work in long term, and just builds resentment over time. People who promote it are usually drug addicts and broken in their personal lives!
> that two defectors have started a new great game
There was never the "Great Game". Look into Russian archives, they never played something like that. There was no great plan to capture India. It was all self inflicted paranoia and projection of UK colonial elites!
UK state does not provide high level of services, to justify super high tax. You have to wait years for some surgeries from NHS. Infrastructure such as transport system. Education. Safety....
I am in EU country that has similar system, but it has some problems:
- keeping verifiable trail for digital documents is difficult. You have to go to notary, and print verified copy at cost of 1$ per page. Old paper system just sends you hard verified copy for free.
- there is a fiction of delivery for digital mail.
- digital documents get deleted from mail box after 6 months. There is paid version that preserves them. There is no way to archive them outside of government servers, because signature trail expires.
- good luck with using digital documents at the court, there are laws, but those are unenforceable. Your fancy digital doc may just get thrown out as a fake.
- government owns all servers, and may just decide to delete some digital documents.
In short new "digital" system is buggy, cumbersome, abd very expensive if you want safety and reliability. Cost of paper is negligible.