“How rich is the man who can put a billionaire in jail in one day? … Putin can put them all (61 Russian billionaires) in jail if they threaten his business interests. He is a businessman. He isn’t about ideas. He could be liberal, he could be nationalist – he doesn’t care. He supports Iran and Syria because he needs tension because tension helps oil prices.” – Garry Kasparov, quoted in London Times interview of March 24, 2007.
Garry Kasparov retired from chess several years ago, but he hasn’t retired from the game of chess. Rather, he has expanded his chessboard and is now engaged in the game of his life. Rest assured: You and I are on the chessboard.
If Kasparov’s view of President Putin is correct, as a challenger to Putin in the upcoming 2008 Russian election, it is a game that could well cost Kasparov his life. His most recent move has simply cost him five days in jail and a small fine. But it is a Russian jail, with KGB jailers.
So what is the game Kasparov is playing? It is perhaps the brevity of human life that makes each of us a prisoner of our tiny slice of the great gift of life, which is always played out against the backdrop of human history. Of necessity we see – and accordingly understand – everything that happens to us or around us only after it has been translated through the tiny prism of our unique education and experience. We construct a model of our life within our mind.
A culture, such as the West, has broadly similar views. Shared education, traditions and ways of looking at the world (such as religion) give us some common vision as a society. But the modern god of diversity, worshiped by so many of today’s leftists and academics, intentionally fractures this small, shared worldview. Increasingly, each of us tries to make sense of the world on our own.
Kasparov’s game with Putin adds another dimension to this. In the old, pre-politically correct days of psychology, it was widely held that people 20 points apart on the IQ scale could not comprehend the mental processes of one another. If we peg most of us at 100 (the definition of a normal IQ), that means we are incapable of understanding the game that Garry Kasparov has sat down at the table to play. His IQ is widely believed to be somewhere between 130 and 190.
Coupled with that, Kasparov has the training of a grandmaster in chess; training that originated in his childhood. Here is a brief description of the grandmaster’s world:
“Although Kasparov finally lost the title, to Vladimir Kramnik, in 2000, he remained the most highly rated player for another five years. ‘To be a world champion in chess, the amount of what you have to know, what you have to fit in your brain and master, is so big that it is incomprehensible to a normal person,’ Waitzkin said. ‘You have to know more than a nuclear physicist or a brain surgeon knows. You have to know more stuff than virtually anyone on earth. Then you have to have the facility of mind to process it and then forget it so that you are free to improvise and be imaginative.'” (“The Tsar’s Opponent,” by David Remnick, The New Yorker, Oct. 1, 2007)
So why play? I don’t inhabit Kasparov’s world; I’m afraid I don’t know. But I’m willing to bet that if we look carefully, you and I will find ourselves somewhere among the more lowly pieces on that chessboard. Kasparov’s opening quote adds another dimension to the Mideast unrest the world has experienced, and the result hasn’t been bad for Russia. Their debts are paid, their economy is growing, and they have nearly as many billionaires as America. Not bad – for a nation that was dead broke and on international life support because of its nuclear weapons in 1989.
As “The Tsar’s Opponent” points out, “Russia is second only to Saudi Arabia in petroleum production and leads the world in the production of natural gas. Without Russian gas, much of Europe freezes in its bed. Oil prices have nearly tripled since 2000.” You don’t suppose that accounts for any of Europe’s chilly attitude toward the U.S. in Iraq, do you?
Some of that tripling is certainly due to increased demand, as the world’s poorer nations develop and become oil consumers. But built into the now nearly $100 per barrel oil price is Putin’s support for Iran’s nuclear ambitions: Not only does the sale of nuclear materials and expertise put money in Russia’s pocket, it makes the developed world very nervous. And nervous consumers tend to stock up.
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