Chess and Politics
Dominic Lawson hits the nail on the head with his assessment of Vladimir Putin in The Sunday Times.
The Russian President may have his admirers like Nigel Farage or Rudy Giuliani, but he is no statesman or visionary and the comparison with Mexico is very apt.
Because if America decided to invade its neighbour nothing could stand in its way, although the bigger question is what would be the point - yet the deep dislike much of the American media has for President Obama means that they talk Putin up as if he is playing a blinder on the international stage.
Let me put it in black and white: Putin is no grandmaster
By Dominic Lawson - The Sunday Times
There is no evidence that Vladimir Putin plays chess. There’s no reason he should, even as someone brought up in the Soviet system, which regarded the world’s oldest strategy game as an ideal diversion for the workers. It is worth noting, however, if only because in America politicians and pundits have, since the Ukrainian crisis broke, been acclaiming Putin as a “chess player” whose masterful strategic skill has been making fools of the West and in particular President Obama.
Thus, the chairman of the House intelligence committee, Congressman Mike Rogers, declared: “I think Putin is playing chess, and I think we’re playing marbles ... and so they’ve been running circles around us.” The New York Post argued that “Putin is acting like a grandmaster of chess while Obama stumbles at chequers.” Exactly the same simile was used by The Washington Times.
Admittedly, none of the above could be described as well disposed towards President Obama; they will happily seize on an image that paints the president as a directionless dunderhead (and it’s true that Obama has no particular vision).
Yet his critics also betray an admiration for Putin’s alleged strategic brilliance, exemplified by the way the former Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani gushed: “Putin decides what he wants to do and he does it in half a day, right? ... He makes a decision and he executes it quickly. Then everybody reacts. That’s what you call a leader.”
Well, yes. That is one advantage of being an unchallengeable dictator in all but name, totally in control of your country’s legislature. An American president in such a position could decide to invade Mexico in half a day. That might constitute leadership, but would hardly qualify as strategic brilliance.
Some of this admiration for Putin on the part of Americans comes back to a naive view of chess. There is a sort of syllogism that goes: you have to be very clever to play chess. The Russians are brilliant at chess. Ergo the Russians can outwit us at will.
The former world chess champion Garry Kasparov dealt with this point pithily in his book How Life Imitates Chess: “It’s natural to suggest that aptitude at chess signifies great intelligence, even genius. There is little to support this theory, unfortunately.” I can vouch for this: I played chess for Oxford University and only one of our team had any special academic abilities (not me).
As for its applicability to politics, Kasparov is equally dismissive: “In chess every piece of information you need is available at the board, so what is being tested is your ability to process that information. In politics things are different: we never have all the information. People often compare politics with chess, but in fact politics is more like a game of cards, poker perhaps.”
Quite. A number of US presidents have been very skilled at that game of bluff and money — none more so than Richard Nixon, who financed his first congressional campaign from winnings at the poker table.
When John F Kennedy confronted Nikita Khrushchev over the Cuban missile crisis, the US president faced similar charges from his domestic political opponents: that he was being hopelessly outwitted by a deep Russian strategy, second nature for a land of chess players. Yet it turned out that the Soviet leader, if anyone, was bluffing. It also emerged that, of the two, Khrushchev was by far the more impulsive character.
We don’t yet know what will happen in the face-off between Washington and Moscow over Ukraine, but this much is clear: Obama is an intensely deliberative politician, passionless even, while Putin is impulsive and governed by emotion — just what no serious chess player should be.
The emotion that governs Putin is resentment, chiefly over the collapse of the Soviet Union and what he perceives as the lack of international respect for Russia. Most if not all of the worst wars in modern history have been fuelled by a similar psychology of resentment: Kaiser Wilhelm’s in 1914 and Adolf Hitler’s 25 years later. In neither of those cases did Germany benefit from what at the outset was admired as decisiveness — even by many non-Germans.
But what of the power play over Ukraine in 2014? To pursue the dubious chess analogy, is Putin really the master strategist? Is the game going his way? First of all, he had desperately wanted his man, Viktor Yanukovych, to remain in power. That piece was swept from the board, chiefly because Putin had instructed Yanukovych to use lethal force against demonstrators in Kiev. It was this decision that did for the regime.
Then Putin — again impulsively, and stung by the demolition of his Kiev gambit — seized Crimea. Strategically this was meaningless. Moscow already had, by international agreement, control of Crimea for military purposes as the base for Russia’s Black Sea fleet. So now Putin is fomenting Russian separatism in east Ukraine. But the consequence of this is to make the vast majority of Ukrainians look still more longingly at their Polish neighbour to the west, which has forged a dramatically more prosperous relationship with the rest of Europe.
Meanwhile, the adverse consequences for Russia mount up on the financial board. As Anders Aslund, who served as an adviser to the governments of Russia and Ukraine, points out: “Russia is far too weak to be so aggressive ... Capital outflows amounted to $64bn [£38bn] in the first quarter, slightly more than 3% of GDP, and they are now expected to rise to some $150bn for the year as a whole ... The rouble has fallen and inflation has risen, forcing the central bank of Russia to raise interest rates by 150 basis points ... That will hurt Russia’s standard of living, which has been vital for Putin’s popularity.” All this has happened even without the western powers organising any serious economic sanctions.
In Russia’s sole significant export industry, hydrocarbons, European distributors have abruptly cut off negotiations over the 1,500-mile South Stream pipeline. This was to have been a new Russian gas-exporting channel to Germany, France and Italy. So Russia is left only with the existing pipelines that cross Ukraine — exactly the arrangement its state monopoly Gazprom had sought to supersede. Putin’s adventurism has only strengthened the hand of American shale gas producers, who have been pressing Washington to allow them to export part of their glut to Europe.
Thus in the real “great game” of energy, which has always been characterised by genuinely long-term strategy, Putin has gratuitously compromised his nation’s position on the board of play. It may be that in the short term his domestic popularity has been increased by his apparent triumph in Crimea, but even the state-run Russian Public Opinion Research Centre found in February that 73% were against intervention in “the conflict between government and opposition in Ukraine”.
Chess, however, is a game for the steady and incremental accumulation of small advantages. Apart from revealing their own febrile temperaments, it is a testament to the ignorance about chess on the part of American politicians and pundits that they think Putin is playing like a grandmaster.
Thus, the chairman of the House intelligence committee, Congressman Mike Rogers, declared: “I think Putin is playing chess, and I think we’re playing marbles ... and so they’ve been running circles around us.” The New York Post argued that “Putin is acting like a grandmaster of chess while Obama stumbles at chequers.” Exactly the same simile was used by The Washington Times.
Admittedly, none of the above could be described as well disposed towards President Obama; they will happily seize on an image that paints the president as a directionless dunderhead (and it’s true that Obama has no particular vision).
Yet his critics also betray an admiration for Putin’s alleged strategic brilliance, exemplified by the way the former Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani gushed: “Putin decides what he wants to do and he does it in half a day, right? ... He makes a decision and he executes it quickly. Then everybody reacts. That’s what you call a leader.”
Well, yes. That is one advantage of being an unchallengeable dictator in all but name, totally in control of your country’s legislature. An American president in such a position could decide to invade Mexico in half a day. That might constitute leadership, but would hardly qualify as strategic brilliance.
Some of this admiration for Putin on the part of Americans comes back to a naive view of chess. There is a sort of syllogism that goes: you have to be very clever to play chess. The Russians are brilliant at chess. Ergo the Russians can outwit us at will.
The former world chess champion Garry Kasparov dealt with this point pithily in his book How Life Imitates Chess: “It’s natural to suggest that aptitude at chess signifies great intelligence, even genius. There is little to support this theory, unfortunately.” I can vouch for this: I played chess for Oxford University and only one of our team had any special academic abilities (not me).
As for its applicability to politics, Kasparov is equally dismissive: “In chess every piece of information you need is available at the board, so what is being tested is your ability to process that information. In politics things are different: we never have all the information. People often compare politics with chess, but in fact politics is more like a game of cards, poker perhaps.”
Quite. A number of US presidents have been very skilled at that game of bluff and money — none more so than Richard Nixon, who financed his first congressional campaign from winnings at the poker table.
When John F Kennedy confronted Nikita Khrushchev over the Cuban missile crisis, the US president faced similar charges from his domestic political opponents: that he was being hopelessly outwitted by a deep Russian strategy, second nature for a land of chess players. Yet it turned out that the Soviet leader, if anyone, was bluffing. It also emerged that, of the two, Khrushchev was by far the more impulsive character.
We don’t yet know what will happen in the face-off between Washington and Moscow over Ukraine, but this much is clear: Obama is an intensely deliberative politician, passionless even, while Putin is impulsive and governed by emotion — just what no serious chess player should be.
The emotion that governs Putin is resentment, chiefly over the collapse of the Soviet Union and what he perceives as the lack of international respect for Russia. Most if not all of the worst wars in modern history have been fuelled by a similar psychology of resentment: Kaiser Wilhelm’s in 1914 and Adolf Hitler’s 25 years later. In neither of those cases did Germany benefit from what at the outset was admired as decisiveness — even by many non-Germans.
But what of the power play over Ukraine in 2014? To pursue the dubious chess analogy, is Putin really the master strategist? Is the game going his way? First of all, he had desperately wanted his man, Viktor Yanukovych, to remain in power. That piece was swept from the board, chiefly because Putin had instructed Yanukovych to use lethal force against demonstrators in Kiev. It was this decision that did for the regime.
Then Putin — again impulsively, and stung by the demolition of his Kiev gambit — seized Crimea. Strategically this was meaningless. Moscow already had, by international agreement, control of Crimea for military purposes as the base for Russia’s Black Sea fleet. So now Putin is fomenting Russian separatism in east Ukraine. But the consequence of this is to make the vast majority of Ukrainians look still more longingly at their Polish neighbour to the west, which has forged a dramatically more prosperous relationship with the rest of Europe.
Meanwhile, the adverse consequences for Russia mount up on the financial board. As Anders Aslund, who served as an adviser to the governments of Russia and Ukraine, points out: “Russia is far too weak to be so aggressive ... Capital outflows amounted to $64bn [£38bn] in the first quarter, slightly more than 3% of GDP, and they are now expected to rise to some $150bn for the year as a whole ... The rouble has fallen and inflation has risen, forcing the central bank of Russia to raise interest rates by 150 basis points ... That will hurt Russia’s standard of living, which has been vital for Putin’s popularity.” All this has happened even without the western powers organising any serious economic sanctions.
In Russia’s sole significant export industry, hydrocarbons, European distributors have abruptly cut off negotiations over the 1,500-mile South Stream pipeline. This was to have been a new Russian gas-exporting channel to Germany, France and Italy. So Russia is left only with the existing pipelines that cross Ukraine — exactly the arrangement its state monopoly Gazprom had sought to supersede. Putin’s adventurism has only strengthened the hand of American shale gas producers, who have been pressing Washington to allow them to export part of their glut to Europe.
Thus in the real “great game” of energy, which has always been characterised by genuinely long-term strategy, Putin has gratuitously compromised his nation’s position on the board of play. It may be that in the short term his domestic popularity has been increased by his apparent triumph in Crimea, but even the state-run Russian Public Opinion Research Centre found in February that 73% were against intervention in “the conflict between government and opposition in Ukraine”.
Chess, however, is a game for the steady and incremental accumulation of small advantages. Apart from revealing their own febrile temperaments, it is a testament to the ignorance about chess on the part of American politicians and pundits that they think Putin is playing like a grandmaster.
