if it's not a game then what is it?

Look, I'm familiar with the historical debate about whether this is game theory or art. I come down on the art side.

Game theory can deliver success in battle. In some cases, even war. But not in securing a nation. Which is a different matter entirely.

Books through the centuries and millennia from Sun Tzu to Machiavelli framing it as an art have proven more enduring than those framing it as a game. There is a reason for that.

You don't even have to be good at that art. But like any art you'd better at minimum have a discerning eye if you expect to have any chance of getting anything of importance that you may want. When you don't have a discerning eye, you start going after things that hold neither importance nor permanence. You expend all that well honed knowledge of game theory in the pursuit of foolish objectives.