Posted on 04/26/2014 11:24:22 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
The game of chess is a national pastime in Russia. And you might say that Vladimir Putin is playing a high-stakes game of geopolitical chess when it comes to Ukraine.
Western leaders are plotting how to counter Putin's latest moves with economic sanctions. So to get some insight into what might come next, we talked to an economist who knows Russia — who is also extremely good at chess.
Putin Playing From A Weak Position
Kenneth Rogoff is a world-renowned economist and professor at Harvard. He was also recognized as a chess prodigy when he was a teenager and became a chess grandmaster when he was 25.
Back in his chess-playing days — and later as an economist — Rogoff made friends across Russia and Ukraine, including Gary Kasparov, the former world chess champion who also ran against Vladimir Putin for president.
"Putin is playing from a very weak position," Rogoff says of Putin's game plan. "But he's very good at it. That doesn't mean he's not going to win. A really strong chess player doesn't need a good position to win."
Putin's position is weak because Russia's economy is weak, Rogoff says: It's too dependent on oil exports, which aren't supporting a decent standard of living for most of the country. Corruption is rampant, and most industries are not competitive with the rest of the world.
Most Russians live in near poverty by U.S. or European standards.
Russia has a large military, but an actual war with the West is extremely unlikely.
"It's going to be an economic war, [as] far as we're willing to push it," Rogoff says of this contest.
Putin's Style Of Play: Good Tactics, Bad Strategy?
In chess, you also want to know your opponent's style of play. So, what kind of player is Putin?
Chess players draw a distinction between strategy and tactics, Rogoff says.
Strategy is "where you're really looking far down the road: If I take the Ukraine, what does that really do for me? Does that make me better off?" he explains.
Tactics, on the other hand, "are very short-term ways to gain pieces and positions," he says. "He's a master of the tactics. He sort of sees a few moves ahead and he's very good at it. But what is the long-term strategy? It's really hard to see."
So far Putin's move to grab Crimea has helped and hurt him. It helped by making him more popular at home in the short term, the former grandmaster says.
But longer term, taking Crimea is probably hurting, he says. Nervous investors are pulling tens of billions of dollars out of Russia. Russia now has to support Crimea, and it is a poor region. The West is imposing economic sanctions, and if they haven't been tough so far, they may get tougher.
That leads Rogoff to think that Putin has not carved out a long-term strategy.
"I just don't see it," he says. "This definitely seems like they're flailing out, looking to try to grab some pieces, grab some territory, without thinking what they're going to do with it.
"Putin's Endgame: Russian Pride
So what is the ultimate goal behind his moves? Rogoff says, "I think there's no question the endgame for him, what he's looking for, is pride."
Rogoff thinks Putin is most interested in returning some greatness to Russia. He says, "I understand he has portraits of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great in his office, and I suppose he would like to have [himself] thought of in those terms — of restoring greatness to Russia."
If Putin's weakness is the economy and his endgame is pride, Rogoff suggests the West should show Putin an opening, something bigger than a few pieces in Ukraine.
"The best thing for us is if Russia starts doing well and feel that they're benefiting from the world order," he says.
What moves should the West make to push Russia in that direction? Rogoff says world leaders are still trying to figure that out.
South Africa.
"Putin's Endgame: Russian PrideThat says Putin is a dangerous madman, to be leading Russia in this way.
Now, now . . . under the new FR standard, presented by our Russian friends, we must be calm and reasonable and respect everything NPR has to say.
No they didn’t. Apartheid was going to fall one way or the other.
You can spew any stupid babbling you want all day long.
What matters here is what the Russians believe.
What the Russians believe is not a secret. Many of the books in the professional reading course for the Marine Corps taught their belief in some detail. At least the books that were on the list in the seventies, eighties, and nineties taught them.
Your theory, or anyone in the west’s theory is entirely irrelevant to what the Russians will do.
The Russians do not care what some western academic thinks.
The Russians do not care what I think.
The Russians do not care what you think.
Not even a tiny bit.
They are going to act in accordance with their established doctrine.
Tell me this, did you personally predict that the Russians were going to send a military force into Ukraine?
I work with a guy from Eastern Ukraine and what he tells me pretty much coincides with what you heard and posted.
Meanwhile, Barak Obama is still looking for his
ass with both hands and a flashlight.
Dude, I am far from being a military expert, but some of us were laughing about how Putin was waiting to do it after his Olympics.
Blue Light Special on a warm water sea port and arable farm land!
You don’t have to be rolling in dough to know ... now’s the time to fill your shopping cart!
Putin wants to be flattered. He wants to be told that he is smarter, stronger, and more important than he really is.
He can't give up Crimea because it would be too much of an insult to him personally and to his genocidal regime's imaginary greatness.
In the end, Putin is a little man with a serious inferiority complex. His people will pay the price for his hubris and stupidity.
Putin is playing Obama like a Pedophile with a little boy in the back of a van. However, the author has a point. Historically, Russians are not very good soldiers outside their own borders (they’re savage when you invade them). They believe the Ukraine belongs to Greater Russia, but Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland are foreign countries to them. Also, if we get a pro-American, pro-business, pro-freedom President in 2016, this could open up the American oil and gas fields and providing energy to Europe, breaking Russia’s economy.
We have a large community of Russian expatriates, Romanians, and Moldovans.
I work with two ethnic Russians from Ukraine.
They believe the central problem is one of economic opportunity.
Ukraine has never had an especially strong economy, and there has been very little recovery since the Great Recession in 2008-2009.
According to them, the Russians in Crimea and east Ukraine believe their standard of living will go up much more with Russia than with Ukraine.
Putin is a fish. Obama is a potzer.
Answer my question.
Did you predict months ago when the European Union & Ukraine trade agreement was announced that Russia would invade Ukraine?
You're right that seizing Crimea without firing a shot is of great symbolic importance in that it had the effect of galvanizing Russians behind him. The Russian people smell blood and they want more. But it was also a major first stage in Russia becoming a Mediterranean power by destroying Turkish power.
In addition to seizing Crimea, maybe Odessa and eastern Ukraine (that seems likely in the near future), Putin will probably take all of Georgia (he's already taken Abkhazia and Ossetia) and sever the Baku-Tbilisi- Ceyhan pipeline, which will really screw Europe. He'll have Europe by the shorts. Then, he'll take Armenia (cutting a territorial deal with the Armenians and the Iranians at the expense of the Turks and the Azeris) and have the Turks surrounded from two sides, three if you count Syria.
The reduction of Turkey to a toothless rump state is the strategic prize. Crimea (and maybe Odessa), the Eastern Ukraine, and Georgia-Armenia are the strategic pivots.
And if there's one theme that's remained constant throughout Russian history the past 1,000 years it's the Slavs' struggle against the Mongol-Tatar (Turkic) steppe peoples who terrorized, raped and looted their lands.
Heck, this is more than strategic. This sh*t is personal for them. And Putin is doing an excellent job in whipping up Russian jingoism.
And the truth is that Obama won't do a damned thing about it. And neither will Europe once he seizes the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. They'll tow the line like the good little quislings they have always been, the contemptible wussies.
If I was Turkey I'd be afraid. Very afraid.
Do you mean to say when it was announced by Yanukovich that Ukraine would NOT be making a trade agreement with the EU?
You are aware that Ukraine and the EU did not make an agreement, right?
Actually Putin has emboldened the Turks and played into their hands by supporting ethnic separatists in the Caucasus. Turkey has made moves to establish relations with the Abkhazians because a large diaspora of Abkhazians live in Turkey. The Turks are who paid for the largest mosque in Europe to be built in Chechnya, Russia. Putin turned over Chechnya to the jihadist son of the Chechen mufti who is now establishing sharia law in Russia with Putin’s blessing.
Many ethnic Ukrainians speak Russian.
Good point — I over-simplified.
By the same token, anecdotal evidence is often unreliable; and data is not the plural of anecdote.
Canada has the world’s third largest population of ethnic Ukrainians (after Ukraine and Russia); and, they are amongst our best citizens. I wish Ukraine well.
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