I think in chess circles that would be regarded as cheating..... Deep Blue, Deep Blue where are you now? No to war. Yes to chess.
No nukes. If we just play chess we could save a lot of money on our defence budgets and all those boys and girls on the front line could go home to their mothers. I'd even suggest we could dumb it down to draughts (checkers? in americalese?). Anyway all the arms manufacturers could step down and use their designers to work on renewable energy solutions.
Pity. /surreptitiously kicks nukes to one side hoping no one noticed I'd brought them. You think? Escalation. Bigger and better chess sets, more convoluted rules, addenda and amendments, New Improved Design Pieces. Keep 'em tied to the apron strings? http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2370066&postcount=16
I'd still say that it depends on the type of conflict. Take WWII, for example. Hitler wanted to kill the Jews and everyone else he considered "undesirable". Are you comfortable with someone's chess skills being the only thing to prevent this from happening?
Well that wouldn't be a problem if you keep the men from competing. Would you rather they be strapped to stretchers?
This is something that (as a weapons/ warfare geek) has always bothered me, maybe more than slightly. "Are you comfortable with someone's chess skills being the arbiter?" As opposed to them being stronger, nastier, able to sacrifice more of their civilian economy to produce more big tanks/ guns/ bombs? In the end ALL warfare is nothing more than a ratification of "might makes right" (and as someone who was always the little kid in the playground I saw flaws in that at a very early age). Surely we can do better than kill each other (and ourselves) off.
Did going to war prevent Hitler killing Jews? And did the protagonists of WWII go to war to prevent the killing of Jews? Does war prevent atrocity or perpetuate it? It's hard to see how chess or draughts could do any worse......