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W6 June 17–23, 2016|

Kasparov continued from W1

One scene in the film was etched in Kasparov’s memory, when master Yoda guides Luke Sky-walker and tells him: “Anger, fear, aggression: the dark side of the Force.” This advice seemed to Kasparov to be futile and annoying. He thinks young Sky-walker should have taken a dif-ferent road: take uncompromis-ing, aggressive initiative against Darth Vader, the enemy, in order to save his friends.

This, in a nutshell, is Kasp-arov’s philosophy in chess and life. “I believe, both in chess and in life, in what I call ‘the advantage of the attacker.’ To be aggressive and taking the bat-tle to your opponent. This is a good thing not only because it usually works, but also because you then learn something when it doesn’t,” he told me.

“Losing passively teaches you very little about the situation or about yourself. You learn only by doing, by trying, by taking risks. How do you know if you can climb a mountain or start a new company or do anything unless you take the risk? What will you learn by not trying? Nothing.”

In chess, to be able to dictate the pace to his opponents, Kasp-arov subjected himself to a rigor-ous training regime. He used to investigate deeply many open-ings of the game, and to always set new challenges for him-self, so as not to stop making progress.

That training has given Kasp-arov the conceptual tools for thinking about politics.

Epoch Times: If you were play-ing chess against Putin, how would you describe his game-playing philosophy?Garry Kasparov: “Putin isn’t a chess player at all. He’s a poker player. Chess is a completely transparent game—both play-ers know all the information all the time. That’s not how Putin operates. He’s a KGB guy to his core, and keeps as much hidden as possible; just like in poker, most of the cards are secret and you can bluff even if you have a bad hand.

“Reading your opponent is no less important than calculating the odds of your success. The leaders of the free world have much better ‘cards’ than he–militarily and economically–but Putin bluffs with bad cards and gets them to fold.”

Kasparov claims that Putin is an “opportunistic tactician”—

someone who jumps from place to place and causes trouble in order to advance his interests. Thus, for example he tried to interfere in Syria to cause a wave of migrants that would weaken the European Union—the main threat to his rule and influence, claimed Kasparov.

“The problem today is that the countries of the free world wait passively and react hastily to Putin’s moves, playing tac-tically as well, but slowly and weakly,” he said.

Discussing the free world’s passive tactics, Kasparov makes an analogy to the laws of phys-ics. “Just like energy cannot be destroyed, power can also not be [destroyed]: Once the U.S. for example leaves [a certain region], others will enter and act there; like Putin, Assad, and Iran, who yearn to take the power in the Middle East that the U.S. has willingly given away.”

Epoch Times: Why do you think a passive strategy that “doesn’t take sides” is wrong?Mr. Kasparov: “Some enemies are worth having. Staying neu-tral in a fight between good and evil means evil will win. We are seeing that very clearly today. The Global Freedom Index has declined for nine consecutive years, and a big part of that is because the former champion of global freedom and democracy, the United States, has declared itself to be a neutral party, a pas-sive observer.

“Thus, aggressor states have quickly stepped into the power vacuum. Neutrality may keep your soldiers safer in the short run, but it will make the world far less safe in the long run. All the battles the free world is try-ing to avoid now, from Ukraine to Syria, will result in harder, more deadly battles later.”

“In chess, we say that the side with the initiative is obliged to attack or the advantage will pass to the opponent. That is, you have to press your advan-tage or lose it. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the free world has had a huge ini-tiative in every way—militar-ily, economically, cul-turally. But they decided to

(Top) Garry Kasparov at the Oslo Freedom Forum on May 25, 2015.

(Right) Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov at his office in Midtown Manhattan on June 13.

ANDREY SMIRNOV/AFP/GETTYIMAGES

GARRY KASPAROV

The problem today is that the countries of the free world wait passively and react hastily to Putin’s moves, playing tactically as well, but slowly and weakly.Garry Kasparov

celebrate, instead of using that initiative to press the world’s remaining dictatorships to change. Now we are paying the price for that complacency.”

Epoch Times: As part of your battle against dictatorships, you’ve reached North Korea’s border and released a balloon with pamphlets that were meant to wake the North Koreans up to the reality of their situa-tion. But it is a known fact that North Korea is only an exten-sion of the Chinese Communist Party. Don’t you think that stra-tegically, to resolve the North Korean problem from the root, one first has to deal with the Chinese Communist Party?Mr. Kasparov: “My battle with North Korea is one battle in a larger war. It is always impor-tant to do whatever one can anyplace. Strategically, a frontal assault on your enemy’s strong-est point only rarely succeeds. One must look for points of vul-nerability and to press where one can. The fall of the cruel North Korean regime would be a pain-ful loss to the communist rul-ers of China. I also see Hong Kong, a place with a tra-dition of democracy, as another potential point of vulnera-bility of the Chinese regime.”

Choosing TargetsIn 2013, Kasparov was having lunch with David Keyes, then executive director of the NGO Advancing Human Rights, who was appointed this March as the prime minister of Israel’s spokesman to foreign media.

Keyes made it his mission to annoy the world’s dictato-

rial regimes. He has already had the privilege to star in angry Facebook posts by the Iranian foreign minister, after embar-rassing him at a lunch-eon by asking him there

about a political prisoner in Iran.“Every crack counts. Each

time I annoy a dictatorial regime a little bit, it is another crack, and then another,” Keyes said in an interview with the Epoch Times in November 2014. “I think the West is hesitant due to insecurity about the values of the free world, insecurity in our enormous might, and our lack of discernment between good and evil—democracy and dic-tatorship.”

An interesting idea came out of the meeting between Kasparov and Keyes. Kasparov reminded Keyes that in 1984 the name of the street in Washington, D.C., where the Soviet Embassy was located was changed to Sakharov Plaza, after human rights activist Andrei Sakharov. Following this move, the Soviet Union permitted Sakharov and his wife to return to Moscow after many years of exile.

Keyes was enthusi-astic, and together with Kasparov they published an article in The Wall Street Journal. “Every time the Soviets entered or left their embassy, t h e y we re reminded of the human cost

of their tyranny,” they wrote. “This simple but inspired con-gressional measure helped put human rights at the center of the U.S.-Soviet relationship.”

At that meeting we “chose targets,” Keyes said during an interview with the Epoch Times. “We wanted to begin with the least democratic countries, like China, Russia, Syria, and Iran.” This led to a proposal to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs to name the street where the Chinese Embassy is located after a Chinese dissident.

I ask Kasparov if he and Keyes have chosen additional targets. “The idea is to do it with every nondemocratic country that persecutes those who oppose it: Russia, China, Arab countries, and North African dictator-ships,” Kasparov said. “Though this is only a symbolic act, sym-bolism is usually a very impor-tant thing in ideological wars.”

Epoch Times: Andrei Sakharov said that moral foreign policy also turns out to be the most effective. He claimed that pre-serving values and principles is an effective long-term pol-icy, while selective and hypo-critical application of morality and principles leads to confu-sion and poor results. What do you think about his position?Mr. Kasparov: “This insight is as true today as it was in the Cold War. Sacrificing a moral

position for political

Garry Kasparov is born Garik Kimovich Weinstein in Baku, Azerbaijan (formerly Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic).

At age 7, he begins the serious study of chess. He attends the Young Pioneer Palace in Baku and three years later trains under coach Vladimir Makogonov.

Kasparov helps in the creation of the Democratic Party of Russia.

Kasparov is matched against Nigel Short for the World Chess Championship, and both split from FIDE (World Chess Federation) with complaints of corruption and lack of professionalism. FIDE stripped Kasparov of his title. He and Short set up the Professional Chess Association and play their match in London.

Kasparov becomes the youngest world chess champion at 22. That year, he plays and wins against Anatoly Karpov at the 13th World Chess Championship from Sept. 3 to Nov. 9, on black, using the Sicilian Defence (a specific sequence of opening moves).

April 13, 1963

1970 May 1990 September–October, 1993

1985

Russian riot policemen detain Garry Kasparov outside a court building in Moscow on Aug. 17, 2012.

Chess Grandmaster Garry KasparovFights the World’s Dictators

VIDAR RUUD/AFP/GETTY IMAGES