Blurring the Lines

Evil
As mentioned before we can see evil as being inefficient. It is portrayed as such in a number of different games, media, and movies (etc). War is highly subjective in this manner. One side will see the other as evil and vice versa. It is a reason why a good number of games are not made about CURRENT conflicts, but of conflicts past.

So where can we figure out a way to balance this in gaming?

Blur the line
If one can it is easier to come up with two powers which have no bearing in the real world. The Gumberdoors fight the Alsfiefdtofs. Who cares about their backgrounds they are just fighting. To further fix the idea of inefficiency of evil both sides could be given a background of what we consider evil. The Nazis fighting an imperialist military force of some sort. Of course not with the same weapons but with the same idea. That is of course if one has to build their fictious nations off of real ones (we usually do because we need a basic idea of what is going on in a social political area.)

Through this the end result comes back to be what is subjectivly understood about the soldiers who you are using to fight with. Instead of forcing the player to take an stand they gain an understanding of the soldiers through the battle. That is not to say one should not make historical games. We have seen through games however that historical games tend to be one sided; victor orientated and thus less fun then when both sides are balanced.