Chess grandmaster -cum- political dissident Garry Kasparov is generally recognized as every bit the authority on Russia today that political dissident Andrey Sakharov was on the old Soviet Union. Therefore, when Kasparov speaks about Vladimir Putin’s maneuvers, everyone in Washington listens.
No doubt this was the case last week when Kasparov made a rare appearance on MSNBC. Except what he said must have struck politicians and pundits alike as humbling and humiliating in equal measure.
Because Kasparov scoffed at their months of bloviating over whether or not Putin intends to invade Ukraine. Specifically, he said it only took four US presidents and three Putin invasions of neighboring countries over 15 years for a US president to finally figure out what Putin has been telegraphing since 2007. Which, Kasparov deadpanned, is his maniacal intent to reclaim for Russia the influence it lost after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1998.
Unsurprisingly, this prompted reporters to press US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Kasparov’s public scolding. Here is what he said:
I think that’s right. I think that’s one of President Putin’s objectives, and it is to re-exert a sphere of influence over countries that previously were part of the Soviet Union. And as we’ve said, that’s unacceptable.
(CNN, January 10, 2022)
Except, if Kasparov can be considered a latterday Jesus Christ preaching the gospel on this devilish objective, then I must be the latterday John the Baptist. Because I’ve not only been publicly warning about it long before Kasparov, I even coined a term “Putinization” to define it.
In fact, to attest to this, I need only share the following, with its own excerpts, from “‘Hello1937’ – Putin Turning Russia Back to Stalin Days,” June 13, 2012:
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Here are excerpts from just a few of the commentaries I wrote over the years warning about Putin’s intent to purge political dissent at home and wield political influence abroad in a manner that would make Stalin green with envy:
Putin is trying to reclaim Russia’s (superpower) sphere of influence in the world; inter alia, by warning Russia’s former satellite states against joining NATO (even though all of them — led by Poland — seem determined to defy him); trying to affect the make-up of East European governments (as he did, to no avail, in Georgia and Ukraine); and forming bilateral relationships with rogue states to counter America’s influence (like selling advanced military equipment to North Korea, Syria, Libya, Cuba and Venezuela).
(“Putin, a Soul Mate Scorned,” The iPINIONS Journal, March 3, 2005)
I coined the term ‘putinization’ to describe Putin’s neo-Stalinist tactics, which were (and are) clearly aimed at neutralizing all political dissent, quashing all civil liberties, and making him a latter-day Czar.
(“Hail Putin,” The iPINIONS Journal, December 3, 2007) …
So it behooves the United States to understand that threatening Russia with WTO and UN sanctions over Syria will have no impact whatsoever. Because Putin is clearly hell-bent not only on undermining and even challenging the superpower the United States wields around the world, but also on recreating the Soviet Union that Stalin turned into a superpower at the beginning of Cold War I:
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has described the [1991] collapse of the Soviet Union as ‘the greatest geopolitical catastrophe’ of the 20th century.
(The BBC, April 25, 2005)
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That shared, here’s to NATO helping Ukraine prepare to confront Russia by doing exactly what I urged last year (on November 13) in this comment at The Guardian:
Instead of fretting about Russia’s intentions, NATO should be making a show of funneling military arms into Ukraine. That will check(mate) Putin. Because every Russian soldier on the frontlines will begin trembling at the thought of crossing, knowing it would amount to little more than a suicide mission.
In which case, of course, the only winners will be the arms merchants behind the military industrial complex Eisenhower famously warned about. But hey, the whole Cold War was premised on this kind of MAD standoff.
So Kudos to the United States and Britain for making a public show of daring Putin even more by countering his (intimidating) war games in neighboring Belarus and Kazakhstan this week by announcing the shipment of even more deadly weapons to Ukraine. Because the more bloody the war is likely to be the less likely Putin is to launch it. Checkmate!
In fact, I remain convinced that, despite all his military build up around Ukraine, Putin does not have the balls to invade. I delineated the case for retreat in “Now on Ukraine… Why Is Everybody Always Plagiarizing Me?” December 8, 2021, and “To Deflect from Retreat at Ukrainian Border, Putin Bullies Human Rights Group Inside Russia,” December 29, 2021.
In the meantime, reports are that the bold imposing Russian bear, threatening to gobble up Ukraine, has been reduced to a sneaky slithering mole, threatening to sabotage it. But this shows that Putin, the purported chess grandmaster, probably can’t even play checkers. Because he couldn’t even sneak his little green men into Ukraine to execute false-flag mischief without getting busted.
I mean, am I the only one who sees Russia’s menacing Vladimir Putin as nothing more than North Korea’s menacing Kim Jong-un … only with oil and many more nukes to leverage his mischief making…?
Anyway, Putin will have to fish or cut bait soon enough. But perhaps this so-called master military strategist is just hell-bent on having Russia do in Ukraine over the next 20 years what America did in Afghanistan over the past 20.
This of course would be repeating the mistake Russia (as the Soviet Union) made by invading Afghanistan in 1979. But you know what philosopher George Santayana famously said about those who fail to learn from history…
NOTE: When Putin used the Beijing 2008 Olympics as cover to invade neighboring Georgia, that was seen as Russia being unintentionally rude, geopolitically, towards China. If he now uses the Beijing 2022 Olympics as cover to invade neighboring Ukraine, that would have to be seen either as Russia being willfully contemptuous towards China or as China being tacitly complicit in Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
But, if he invades this time, I hope the US leads all nations in ordering their athletes home and bringing those games to a screeching halt. This, to focus the world’s attention and efforts on helping Ukraine defend itself against Russia.
Related commentaries:
Hello1937… Now on Ukraine… deflect from retreat… Putin invades Georgia…