The Daily Beast Podcast - Garry Kasparov on What Will Take Putin Down

Episode Date: January 30, 2022

Garry Kasparov is one of the great strategists and a longtime critic of Putin, so naturally, in this bonus episode of The New Abnormal, Molly Jong-Fast asked the chess Grandmaster how he thinks the current crisis in Ukraine and Vlad’s stronghold on Russia will end. He shares a few theories that could checkmate Putin once and for all—and details how Biden’s presidency is part of the endgame. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of the new Abnormal. We thank you so much for being here. Today we have an extra special bonus episode with Gary Kasparov, who's of course a former chess grandmaster and world chess champion, who is then turned to be one of the leading voices against Vladimir Putin in Russia, and he's going to explain to us what he thinks is going on over there with the Ukraine and Russia situation. Welcome to the new abnormal, Gary Kasparov.

Thank you very much for having me. Thank you for joining us. I just want to know how you. You grew up in the former Soviet Union. When did you get radicalized? I'm not sure I like the world radicalized because it's probably more of getting normal. It's my journey from abnormal to normal. Soviet Union was a communist dictatorship.

And I grew up as a kid who was surrounded by this propaganda from very early days. Soviet Union, it's a peaceful country, great lenient communism, decadent west, you know, it's all sorts of stuff, you know, aggressive America, CIA, Mossad, MI5, whatever. Right. And it took a bit of time for me to actually see it through, but naturally my home education helped. My father died when I was very, I would say, young, I was seven. And my grandfather, my mother's father, he was dying. communist. And that's definitely had also an impact on one side. But my father's younger brother along to these Jewish intellectual circles in Baku, in the city of Baku, where I was born and raised.

I always say it's a deep south right next to Georgia, which is because a republic of the origin was next to the Republic of Georgia in the deep south of the USSR. And I had access to books because I was very curious. I was a voracious reader. And also as a chess prodigy, I, I could travel at very early age, first inside Soviet Union, and then at age 13, I represented Soviet Union at the first under 16 world chambers with France. And that trip was quite an eye opener, because I could see the difference. I came back, and I, as someone was a critical mind, I could help comparing things and reading books and listening to the propaganda and then just analyzing it. And it didn't take long for me to understand that the gap between reality

and Soviet propaganda was too big to cover. At very early days as a teenager, I already saw that the way that the Soviet Union was built and the country has been developed. It was a rote perdition. It was abnormal. So that you may call radicalization by the Soviet standards, though until I became world champion in 1985, so I played by the rules because all I wanted is to win the title and naturally being half Armenian half Jewish boy from Baku was not sort of great asset of playing the darling of Soviet system, a Russian champion, Anatoy Korp. That's the first phase of what you called radicalization. And the second one began after I won my title in 1985, became the youngest world champion in history,

And I knew already that I could afford more than ordinary Soviet citizens, because in the Soviet Union, chess was one of the most influential games. The Soviet propaganda always wanted to use chess as a demonstration of the communist superiority over Decadent West, like intellectual superiority. And that's why the world champions, they carried very special prestige in the eyes of the Soviet citizens, almost like a sacred chaos. or high priests of intellectual dominance of the Soviet Union. And I turned this status into my advantage, trying to push for opening up. Of course, I was lucky. It was Gorbachev who was in power. And the Soviet Union was gradually opening up, though I was not happy with the pace of the reforms, because I saw quite early that Gorbachev's plans were to modernize socialism, modernized communist,

modernized communist state, make it more competitive, but not to turn it into democracy. How long has it been since you've lived in the Soviet Union? Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Well, I know, but I'm in Russia. I spent the first 28 years of my life, yes. I was born in 1963, and I was very happy to see the end of, of, This monstrous state in 1991 because I was already a very active part of anti-communist opposition. It's the nascent democratic movement in Russia.

I was the first Soviet athlete who refused to play on the Soviet flag all the way back in September 1990 when I played my fifth and the last World Championship match against Al-Loddy Karpov and started here in New York City. And I demanded to have a Russian flag, a Russian tree color, not the red flag of the a communist party. And it was, it ended up with, with open conflict. And after game four, the International Chess Federation under pressure of the Soviet delegation, carpet delegation, removed both flags, which fined with me. So I was quite pleased that no more Soviet flag was standing at the table. And in 1991, I thought as many of us that that was the end of history. It's the, we all remember the great book of Francis Fukuyama back in 1992, so calling the end of this clash between liberal democracies and totalitarian ideology.

And we all thought that it's, you know, if the future would be bright. But unfortunately, you know, we forgot that the evil, evil doesn't die altogether. It could be buried for a while under the rebels of Berlin Wall. But the moment we lose our vigilance, the moment we turn complacent. it sprout out. For me, another stage of my active engagement in this fight against totalitarianism and against KGB dictatorship began in year 2000, when to my horror, I saw the KGB Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Putin took over from Boris Yeltsen.

And while the whole world was mesmerized by the young, strong, dynamic new Russian president who made many good statements, I heard. something else. I heard Putin's own words. The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe in the 20th century. Or another quote from him, once KGB, always KGB. There were no former KGB officers. And for me, those were harbingers of perilous times ahead of us. And I was not surprised that one of the first actions of Putin as a president of Russia was to restore the Soviet anthem. Again, another clear demonstrations of where his heart, was and what he would do if he would be given this chance. And unfortunately, the free world turned a

blind eye on Putin's actions and even on his own words, like his speech in Munich at security conference in Europe 15 years ago, 15 years ago in February 2007, when he talked about return to the spheres of influence and Russia's right to have direct or indirect control of neighboring states. When you watch now, what do you see happening? I'm not surprised because I've been saying all along about Putin's plans and also he quite helped, you know, just by confirming it, both by his words and his actions. After his speech in Munich, he attacked the Republic of Georgia. And in 2008, I wrote an article saying that since the free world showed no resistance to Putin's attempts to redesign the borders,

and exercise control of the former Soviet republics, we could expect, you know, him going further, and Ukraine will be next. People asked me, how did you know? I said, oh, I just looked at the map. And I have no doubts that Putin would try to find a good moment to seize part of Ukrainian territory, starting with Crimea, and also will do his best to demolish Ukraine and sovereignty, because democratic, prosperous Ukraine is the greater threat to Putin's dictatorship in Russia. But I also said many times that why Vladimir Putin was our problem in Russia, and it also was a problem for neighboring states, many of them former Soviet republics, he would be eventually threat to everybody because dictators, they never ask why.

They always ask why not. And if Putin could go away with his aggression against the republicans, of Georgia or other neighboring countries, or he could get away with his support to bloody dictators like Bashar al-Assad, his support of North Korean dictatorship or Venezuelan dictatorship. Eventually, he would see the West too weak to oppose his direct actions inside the free world. So for me, Putin's attack on American democracy starting in 2015, an open assault by propping up Donald Transcandidacy was a natural continuation of his policies of building troll factories and fake news industry back in Russia in 2004, 2005, and exercising these powers first in Russian-speaking

universe, neighboring countries, and then moving to Europe. And now he feels that he could do whatever. Though the last few weeks, I think they, hopefully they brought him to reality, because first time, American administration, it's the, actually the first American administration, there were four of them already that had this chance, but the first one that demonstrated that there were limits for Putin's expansionism. And that's why I think Putin now is contemplating his next move, recognizing that those are not just words, not lip service, not empty warnings, but could be serious consequences if he could continue his aggressive expansionist policies. Putin is absolutely a dictator and he's power hungry and he wants to, I mean, everything we've seen shows that he wants to sort of reunite the Soviet Union, whatever that looks like.

But my question to you is there also are, with Ukraine, there's an oil and gas component for him. And Putin has been very interested in money. He has an opportunity here because of the way with the pipelines and the price of gas right now where, you know, he's turned off the spigot and he could. turn it back on and make a lot of money and not go to war with Ukraine. Do you think there's a chance he does that, or do you think he just is so single-minded? Oh, it's a great question, because it reveals the true nature of Putin's regime. It's not the classical dictatorship of the 20th century. It's not just imperialism or ideology. It's more like a mafia state. You can say that every country has its own mafia, but in Russia, math has its own state. So Putin's power is

based on money and control of money. And we have to recognize that he controls directly or indirectly more money than any other individual in human history. If you look at the Russian annual budget, if you look at all the funds allocated by Russian government, if you look at all the fortunes of oligarchs, most of them just directly connected to Putin, we may end up with an amount exceeding one trillion dollars. And Putin proved that he was not shy of using this money to buy, call it favors from Western politicians, from Western businesses. So when you look around, you'll find out that so many former politicians, hopefully only former, mostly Europeans, of course, are directly working for Putin, like former Chancellor of Germany, Schroeder, former Prime Minister of France,

Féon, former Prime Minister of Finland, Lippon. It's a long, long, long list. And Russian oligarchs have been most generous by donating money to the charities. And guess, you know, how many of these billions and billions of dollars spend on charities in England or in European Union are found its way to the organizations that are related to policy makers? So Putin built the most sophisticated network ever built to lobby his interest, and he gets supported, as you point it out correctly, from oil and gas. Russia has nothing else. It's all about natural resources of Russia that being sold and profits being allocated in the hands of Putin's cronies.

I said that it's the Putin found the magic formula of combining car monks and Adam Smiths. So it's his nationalizing expenses and privatizing profits. And all the profits end up in the pockets of those related to him. But this money is not kept in Russia, is not kept in China, is not kept in Iran or Venezuela. It's in the free world. It's all way, you know, just from Riga in Latvia to San Francisco or from Copenhagen to Naples. Probably you can mention Australia as well. It's very important for Putin to make sure that this financial network is intact.

But as everybody talked about sanctions, Putin laughed at them for a simple reason. He was not really affected by the sanctions, not neither him nor his oligarch. You can simply look at a number of Russian oligarchs in the Forbes list. This number grew after Putin's invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea in 2014. No matter what Angela Merkel, the former Chancellor of Germany, said about Putin, what Putin looked at is an amount of German gas that have been sold. And this amount doubled since 2014. So it's the first time when Putin could be facing a threat of Europe cutting this gas supply,

Though it's painful for Europe, everybody understands it. But Europe buys one third of gas. It's worse for Europe than it is for Putin. This is about leverage. So Europe buys one-third of its gas supply from Putin. Putin sells 80% of its gas production to Europe. So where's the leverage? But the problem is that corrupt European politicians,

they never wanted to take a strong standing as Putin. But now, thanks to the change of the position of this current administration, Hopefully Europe and most of Europe. Still, you know, Germany is lagging behind France position is questionable. But most of Europe now is lining up to take the final stand against Putin. The Nord Stream undermines all of this, right? Yes, North Stream. That's why I was very critical of the administration decision not to sanction.

I believe the sanctions against the Nord Stream. But I also understand the rationale. They tried desperately tried to bring. Germany, I'm aboard. But North Stream is still, you know, it's built, but it's still not open because it has to be sanctioned by European Union. And I think now that's what is part of this game. I think Putin understands that there is a real threat that if he attacks Ukraine, if his troops cross demarcational line again. And I said demarcational line because he already invaded Ukraine in 2014. Then he would be running a real risk of North Stream 2 being shut down.

It's almost like when Germany decided to sort of turn its back on nuclear power, they set themselves up for this. 2011, yes. After the Fukushima disaster, they made this decision, which I think was stupid because as of now, this is the only alternative. If we want us to have the real, called green policy, so there's no alternative to oil and gas, but nuclear. But this decision made them dependent on Putin. That's what Putin loved. Right. And that was when he really had the power.

Yes, but look, you may call it water under the bridge because Germany had years and years to build alternative supplies. Yes, let's say that the nuclear was out of question. But there were many other opportunities to build alternative pipelines. So the big, you know, gas deposits in Mediterranean Sea, so that's next to Israel, between Israel and Cyprus. But you have to work with this. Then there's these massive gas deposits and opportunity. build the gas pipelines from the south. It's Kazakhstan to Afghanistan. All of these projects required, and I'm not even talking about American shale gas, but all this project required policy.

It's strategy. And what's happening in Europe, that's what Germany played dominating role under leadership of Angela Merkel, she was in power for 60 years, that they renecked or all these alternative pipelines on all these opportunities to reduce the dependence of Europe on Russian gas. So that's why they put Putin in a very powerful position. But now, look, with America back in the game,

America's leadership being partially restored. So Putin recognizes that even with all his lobbyists and agents in Europe, mostly in Germany, Austria and France, he may not be able to prevent real sanctions to hurt him and NATO building strong defense lines against any possible aggression. Knowing what you know about your experience of growing up there and Putin and all of this, if you were Ukraine, what would you do?

Well, look, I think Ukraine has been doing what it could. So it's preparing for war because the only way to stop Putin aggression is to be prepared for war. Putin will make a decision to cross or not to cross this demarcation line and to attack Ukraine further, to invade Ukraine further, based on his calculation of potential losses. What's the cost? And the cost could be prohibitive. As of now, I think that Ukraine enjoyed first time in many years massive support from the free world led by America. Of course, we still have exceptions, shameful position of Germany that refused to send a lethal weapon, surprising to me a Canadian decision considering the 1.5 or so million Ukrainians leaving their decision of Canadian province is true though not to sell a lease a weapon to Ukraine

but you have Great Britain you have of course America you have American allies like Poland and Baltic states so Ukraine is being prepared it tells me that the cost if you combine the potential military costs with thousands of body bags sent back to Russia because then the war will be bloody

and also potential economic cost because America may force now a German hand and to stop Nord Stream 2. I think the war is less likely these days and also I'm listening to Russian propaganda and the last 48 hours after they received the American response which was fairly tough,

they are changing gears. So it's still very belligerent rhetoric. It's not like we're going to war tomorrow. It's basically, oh, our enemy is expecting us to fight, but maybe we should be smarter. So it tells me that there is the growing hesitations in Kremlin. And if I have to give you my forecast now, I think the war today is much less likely than two weeks ago because first time Putin met with a strong response from the Western Coalition or late by the United States. Fantastic. Thank you so much. This was great. I'm so glad

we got you to talk about this. Molly, always pleasure. Thank you very much. this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens?

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