Garry Kasparov's Blog, page 35

Has Biden Lost His Nerve With Putin? | Wall Street Journal Op-Ed | June 1, 2021

by Garry Kasparov

READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE AT THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

I was one of the Russian opposition members who met then-Vice President Joe Biden at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Moscow on March 10, 2011. Mr. Biden arrived fresh from his meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who, as we knew, was preparing to return to the president’s chair after lending it to his marionette, Dmitry Medvedev.

“I told Putin not to run again,” Mr. Biden said, “that it would look bad for Russia and for him.” The vice president’s expansive candor alarmed his American colleagues, who were visibly unhappy at the turn of the conversation. I broke the awkward silence and pointed out that to Mr. Putin, Mr. Biden and President Obama were beggars who had to go to Congress for every penny, while Mr. Putin could move countless billions at will. I said that Mr. Putin didn’t care about Russia or about how things looked.

When Mr. Biden was elected, I hoped he would learn from painful recent lessons and carve out a more muscular policy toward Moscow than his two feeble predecessors did. So far, my hopes and advice have done about as well as Mr. Biden’s advice to Mr. Putin in 2011. I condemned the idea of a summit between the leader of the free world and the dictator of a terrorist mafia state, a meeting now scheduled for June 16 in Geneva.

We know what Mr. Putin gets from such meetings. Without real elections, a dictator’s authority comes from his grip on power—military, internal security and economic. A summit with the U.S. president sends a message that no matter how bad things are in Russia, no matter how many sanctions the West applies, Mr. Putin is still boss.

This was further confirmed when the Biden administration waived sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline deal between Russia and Germany. The waiver was a tacit endorsement of Mr. Putin as a good investment despite the global outcry over his jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Russian assassinations in Germany and the U.K. and election interference and hacking almost everywhere else.

What we don’t know is what the U.S. gets out of the summit. History has demonstrated time and again that appeasing a dictator only convinces him you’re too weak to oppose him, provoking further aggression.

Mr. Putin is already escalating, with a new hacking attack on a U.S. agency revealed Friday and his patronage of Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. With the hijacking of a Ryanair flight and kidnapping of opposition journalist Roman Protasevich, Mr. Lukashenko put the free world on notice by showing that its norms and regulations are fragile and ill-prepared to cope with those who defy its rules.

In power since 1994, longer even than Mr. Putin’s 21 years, Mr. Lukashenko had the pleasure of quipping that he “wasn’t Europe’s last dictator anymore” in 2015 after Mr. Putin annexed Crimea and invaded Eastern Ukraine. Belarus’s brutal regime was mostly ignored until postelection protests erupted last August and were met with terrible violence.

Mr. Lukashenko’s act of piracy against an internal European Union flight is being called an escalation, but is it really? Mr. Putin’s forces in Ukraine shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 with a missile in 2014, killing all 298 aboard. What price has he paid?

My focus is on Messrs. Putin and Biden because Mr. Lukashenko is a puppet of Mr. Putin, as is Bashar Assad in Syria. Without Mr. Putin’s approval and support, Mr. Lukashenko would never engage in such a brazen confrontation with Europe.

And without Mr. Putin’s backing of Mr. Lukashenko last year, the rightful president of Belarus, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, would have swept to power. Instead she is in exile in Lithuania, where Roman Protasevich was headed before his flight was hijacked. As with his annexation of Crimea and support for Mr. Assad and his chemical weapons, Mr. Putin’s attacks are against the international order, on the agencies and alliances that maintain it.

Europe has proved helpless and hapless in defending itself and its values in the absence of American leadership. Mr. Putin’s plan of divide and conquer has worked well in Europe, where national interests always trump the EU’s toothless institution.

The U.S. needs nothing from Russia other than for Mr. Putin to cease his global campaigns of invasion, assassination, hacking and election interference. Since he won’t stop until he’s stopped, save time and effort and just ask him over Zoom if you must ask at all. I’m afraid that divide and conquer may also apply to the Biden administration, where appeasers like Obama alumni John Kerry prefer stagecraft over statecraft.

The West may summon the nerve to crack down hard on Mr. Lukashenko over the Ryanair hijacking. I wouldn’t feel safe flying over Russian airspace if Belarus isn’t punished severely, if even then. And until Mr. Protasevich is released, no dissident should feel safe anywhere.

The day after the hijacking, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, met with his Russian peer, Nikolay Patrushev, to lay the ground for the summit. They talked about “normalizing,” a euphemism for appeasement. Normalizing relations with a dictatorship only normalizes dictatorship. Yes, as Biden supporters are quick to say, even Ronald Reagan met with the Soviets. But he did so with concrete national- and global-security demands and from a position of strength. So far there is no such agenda for a Biden-Putin meeting.

Ten years ago in Moscow, Mr. Biden had the nerve to talk tough to Putin, but he lacked authority. Now he commands the full power of the presidency and must prove he hasn’t lost his nerve.

Mr. Kasparov is chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative and the Human Rights Foundation.

Garry Kasparov: What We Believe About Reality | Op-ed | June 2, 2021

Great headline the NYT gave my new piece on misinformation & intellectual orthodoxy. Those of us who grew up in authoritarian states are used to being told that what we see isn’t reality. https://t.co/tPgHpPZ9K0

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) June 3, 2021

This personal reflection is part of a series called  The Big Ideas , in which writers respond to a single question: What do we believe? You can read more essays by visiting The Big Ideas  series page .

People who were born behind the old Iron Curtain are often described as having paranoid tendencies. As a member of this group, I can only say we had a lot to be paranoid about.

Growing up in Baku, in what is now Azerbaijan, I watched as the all-powerful Soviet state lied right to our faces, every morning in the paper and every night on the news. As I began my climb up the chess Olympus, I realized that every sports official, fan or neighbor was a potential informant; perceived disobedience could result in the loss of your job, your freedom or your life.

As the doomed Communist economy slowed in the 1980s and our standard of living fell further behind that of the free world, domestic repression and propaganda only increased. The contrast between what the authorities said and our observable reality became absurd. “There’s no news in the Truth and no truth in the News,” went the line about the leading Soviet newspapers Pravda (“Truth”) and Izvestia (“News”).

It’s easy to connect an all-powerful state — be it the Soviet Union, the current Chinese Communist Party or Big Brother in George Orwell’s “1984” — to the dissemination of false narratives with the goal of social control. Dictatorships have the means and motive to twist reality into whatever serves their purpose, and a track record of doing so.

Some individuals living under such a regime truly believe the official story, despite what their eyes may tell them. Others pretend to believe, out of fear. Then you have those who may or may not believe, but who are nonetheless ambitious, bent on not only surviving, but thriving. Demonstrating what a good believer in false narratives you are can provide a ladder up in those environments, especially if you rush to display your purity and conformity by accusing others.

In writing “1984,” Orwell was inspired, if that’s the right word, by a novel called “We,” a futuristic portrait of a totalitarian state by the Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin. Banned in the Soviet Union, “We” had first been published in English, in 1924. In the novel, Zamyatin took precise aim at the true goals of ideological zealots and their endless pretexts for centralizing control of every aspect of society.

“The way to rid man of criminality is to rid him of freedom,” says D-503, the loyal, but increasingly conflicted, spaceship-building protagonist of “We,” pleased by his own mathematical logic. The same logic can easily be applied to speech: You cannot spread prohibited thoughts if you cannot speak. In such a world, the heretic is to be burned, jailed or lobotomized. Or at least deplatformed.

In Western countries today, there is no state monopoly on misinformation. Falsehoods spread instead from every nook of society. Thanks to the power of the internet, anyone — elected politician, businessman or private citizen — can be a propaganda minister from the comfort of home. Social media can quickly fan errant sparks into raging wildfires. Online tribes of conspiracy theorists can influence and even merge with political parties, often encouraged by hostile foreign state actors that appreciate the potential damage such groups can inflict.

It’s well established that fake news and outrageous lies spread faster than boring truths. Everyone enjoys the idea of being the holder of a secret others don’t know. And facts are outnumbered in this fight. There are a million ways to lie, exaggerate and elide, but still only one lonely truth.

The democratization of misinformation holds fewer obvious dangers than the control of information under a dictatorship, but the consequences are real. Today, false narratives often thrive in communities that are fragmented and difficult to reach by conventional means. Membership in such groups is a potent substitute for loyalty to a political party, and far less predictable in terms of outcome.

I have personal experience with authoritarian rule that has no respect for human freedom or human life. My own news site, Kasparov.ru, has been blocked in Russia for years. And I have closely followed as thousands of my fellow Russians were beaten and jailed in recent months for peacefully protesting the Putin regime. Having witnessed how easily dissent can be criminalized, I am always quick to point out the absurdity of American pundits and politicians decrying censorship after someone loses a book deal or Twitter account for sharing hateful views.

My life experience, however, is also why I am so concerned about a phenomenon that more subtly threatens the free flow of ideas in Western societies: the rise of an unchallengeable majority view, able to turn regular people into silent witnesses, informants and ambitious zealots like the ones I grew up with in the Soviet Union.

Such intellectual orthodoxy doesn’t have the authority of a state behind it, but online platforms such as Facebook and Twitter can be just as effective in enforcing adherence to the new “party” line. Consider the conversation around the origins of the Covid-19 virus.

Earlier in the pandemic, some experts — including Luc Montagnier, a Nobel Prize-winning virologist — suggested that the virus might have been the result of an accidental leak in a Chinese laboratory. The theory, however, was soon enveloped by an increasingly polarized discourse. In attempting to sharpen his rhetoric against China, President Donald Trump and his supporters openly promoted the possibility of the leak, while critics of his administration reflexively rejected it as a false narrative. Silicon Valley titans swiftly removed news articles amplifying the theory; mainstream media labeled them as misinformation.

Yet, at the time little information was available to confirm or contest the validity of the argument. The theory’s dismissal was not the result of a thorough scientific investigation; it was a move based on politics and driven by the dominant voices shaping the conversation in the public square. (In recent months, with Mr. Trump out of the picture, the World Health Organization and several scientists have stated that the laboratory leak hypothesis calls for further investigation.)

Disloyalty to intellectual orthodoxy in our free world doesn’t bear the grim consequences it does under totalitarian regimes. No one will be sent to the gulag for failing to toe the line. But we cannot successfully fight misinformation without the ability to think and speak without fear. How can we discard bad ideas if we cannot discuss and refute them? It is all an attempt to rid us of crime by ridding us of freedom.

As Zamyatin wrote, “There are ideas of clay and ideas molded of gold, or of our precious glass. In order to know the material of which an idea is made, one needs only to let fall upon it a drop of strong acid.”

Our metaphorical acids are education, the free exchange of ideas and the freedom to think, speak, be wrong and learn without fear. Protecting these principles does not mean putting up with intolerance or promoting hatred, but it does require courage — courage to admit doubt, to challenge others and be challenged.

Garry Kasparov is the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative and a former world chess champion.

America has nothing to gain from meeting with Putin: Garry Kasparov | Morning Joe | May 26, 2021

President Joe Biden will meet in-person for the first time since taking office with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva on June 16, the White House announced Tuesday. Garry Kasparov of the Renew Democracy Initiative joins Morning Joe to discuss.
May 26, 2021

Firing Line with Margaret Hoover | May 14, 2021

Chess grandmaster turned democracy advocate Garry Kasparov, who chairs the Human Rights Foundation, warns about the rising tide of authoritarianism worldwide. He discusses bringing chess to life in the acclaimed series “The Queen’s Gambit.”

This program is made possible by viewers like you. Support your local PBS station: www.pbs.org/donate

Akon’s Romance with Dictatorship | Opinion | Newsweek | May 11, 2021

by GARRY KASPAROV AND CELINE ASSAF-BOUSTANI

READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE AT THE NEWSWEEK

Another chapter was recently written in the ongoing romance between celebrities and dictators. This time the dictator seeking to launder his reputation and distract from his crimes was Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni. And the celebrity was American rap artist Akon. What made this instance particularly worthy of note is how the Grammy-nominated artist’s disgrace went one step beyond selling his soul. He blatantly acknowledged how popular culture plays a role in enabling dictatorship and went so far as endorsing Museveni while articulating his disapproval of democracy.

Last month, Akon visited Museveni (the country’s dictator since 1986) ostensibly to explore business and investment opportunities. President Museveni was quick to indulge in ceremony and appointed Akon, whose real name is Aliaune Thiam, as a special envoy for tourism and culture. Beyond diplomatic pomp, the dictator personally granted Akon one square mile of land to “build a futuristic city” powered by Akon’s own cryptocurrency Akoin. Some Ugandans asked why it was that local investors struggle to get similar opportunities from the same government. The answer is that Akon’s visit wasn’t about business or investment. It was a propaganda piece by the Ugandan government to purchase and exploit the prestige of the multi-platinum-selling music star.

Akon played his part to perfection. At the end of his visit, he declared that “not every place in the world is made for democracy.” Akon’s appalling comment is base and outrageous given that Akon himself enjoys the trappings of wealth in a democracy and is engaging in predatory behavior in a dictatorship.

Akon made his heartless declaration as Ugandans are still reeling from the most violent spate of regime repression in decades. In recent months, Museveni’s regime forces have killed dozens of demonstrators, abducted hundreds of opposition supporters and brutalized, beaten, jailed and tortured untold numbers of Ugandans. The violent repression forced Bobi Wine, the leader of Uganda’s People Power Movement—a nonviolent political movement seeking democratic change—to suspend his campaign for fear of his personal safety.

Akon’s comment was published as Wine spent Election Day and the following weeks under house arrest, unable to contact the outside world because of a government internet shutdown while a subservient electoral commission handed Museveni a sixth presidential term. Today, about 3,000 opposition activists, demonstrators and Wine supporters are still missing, reported to have been arrested or abducted by state security agents.

In Uganda, democracy has never had a chance to grow not because it isn’t “made for democracy,” as Akon says, but instead due to a succession of repressive and brutal leaders, most notoriously Idi Amin, who earned the nickname “Butcher of Uganda” for killing between 300,000 and 500,000 Ugandans during his bloody reign. And the butchery back then was enabled by a coterie of useful idiots much like Akon who sold their approval for Amin. Following Amin’s fall, a succession of military coups, rigged elections and a civil war strife enabled Museveni to shoot his way into power.

Over his more than 35 years of rule, Museveni has clung to power through constitutional amendments, rigged elections marred by fraud, intimidation, censorship and violent repression.

Akon’s hypocrisy is glaring for another reason. Beyond thriving in a democracy, Akon has frequently exercised his freedom of expression in the U.S. to speak up about injustices. In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, he released a music video, “Ain’t No Peace,” condemning police brutality, and signed an open letter, along with 91 prominent African artists, media personalities, academics and leaders, expressing solidarity with African Americans and the Black community globally. Ugandan victims of police brutality, apparently, matter far less to Akon than George Floyd.

Celebrities like Akon play an outsized role in the public imagination. Their presence and media influence have the power to bring wider attention to important issues. But with the power of celebrity comes the responsibility to support just causes, or at the very least, avoid supporting evil and exploitative causes. Akon’s comments are a gift to dictators such as Museveni, who relish the opportunity to pose alongside glamorous celebrities and lend their murderous regimes the appearance of stability, normalcy and calm.

Unfortunately, Akon isn’t the first celebrity to perform propaganda for dictators in order to line his pockets, and nor was Uganda his first time. In 2018, he joined rappers Ludacris, Young Jeezy and Sean Kingston in performing for the 49th birthday of the spendthrift son (and vice president) of Equatorial Guinea’s dictator Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has been in power since Akon was 6 years old. Akon is also part of a broader ecosystem of celebrities and companies that choose money over morals.

Jennifer Lopez has accepted millions of dollars to play private concerts for some of central Asia’s most corrupt and brutal figures, including Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow. In 2019, dozens of celebrities, including Janet Jackson, Liam Payne, 50 Cent, Future, Chris Brown and Tyga performed at a music festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which was funded and authorized by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), one of the world’s worst human rights violators.

Purveyors of popular culture hold the power to spark change. And, at least while they are in America, most celebrities take this responsibility seriously. Corporations, athletes and celebrities alike routinely condemn police brutality in the United States and use their voices to promote equality and social justice. But why is it that as soon as they are out of the country, so many of them are quick to embrace the world’s most evil men?

Akon seems to hold a profoundly prejudiced view of Ugandans, who he seems to think are not capable of living in human liberty, as he does. Akon’s remarks are an affront to Ugandans’ courageous struggle to live free of tyranny.

Holding Akon accountable for his comments is not an example of “cancel culture.” His remark was not off the cuff. Akon’s explicit praise and endorsement of Museveni is worthy of international condemnation. Ugandans have the same right to freedom and democracy as Americans, Norwegians, Chileans and South Africans. Akon’s clear disregard for democracy in Uganda and support of a murderous regime is an unbearable affront to human dignity.

Garry Kasparov is a former world chess champion and chair of the Human Rights Foundation.

Celine Assaf-Boustani is chief program officer at the Human Rights Foundation.

The views expressed in this article are the writers’ own.

“Garry Kasparov’s next gambit” | Yahoo Finance Interview | May 4, 2021

“I cannot recall a single event in the last few months without being asked about 'The Queen’s Gambit,'” author, speaker, and 13th World Chess Champion @Kasparov63 says. “The show reached out to people all over the world. … It definitely helps chess to regain ground.” pic.twitter.com/EwOPbhQl2k

— Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) May 3, 2021

Garry Kasparov: ‘Why become a martyr? I can do much more outside Russia’ | The Guardian | April 30, 2021

The chess grandmaster on speaking out against Vladimir Putin and why he cannot choose the best player ever.

Sean Ingle
@seaningle
Fri 30 Apr 2021

READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE AT THE GUARDIAN

“I haven’t stopped my fight against the regime,” says Garry Kasparov, his words bristling with defiance and quiet rage. “I’m not lowering my voice. Putin is not just a Russian imperialist. He has a much bigger agenda. He is an existential threat to the free world.”

It would have been easy for the greatest chess player in history to stay quiet after fleeing Russia in 2013 amid a crackdown on prominent opposition figures. Kasparov, after all, is a successful businessman, an expert on artificial intelligence and cyber security, and has just launched a new website, Kasparovchess.com. But that has never been his style. Not now. Not ever.

“In the west there is a lot of self‑deception, multiplied by business interests and apathy, about Putin’s true intentions,” he warns. “No one wants confrontation. But people need to recognise that Russia is a fascist dictatorship, which has no restrictions when it comes to destroying political opponents – in and outside – of Russia.”

Kasparov has experienced the cost of opposing Putin. He was jailed in 2007 for five days and then bruised, quite literally, when beaten by police during a peaceful protest in 2012. Those days in Russian politics, he says, made him miss his time at chess, where at least there were clear rules.

Will he ever go back? “Boris Nemtsov came back,” he replies. “Alexei Navalny came back. What’s the point of becoming a martyr? I can do much more by staying here.” Things have got so bad in Russia, Kasparov says, that he is unsure whether he would prefer to live under Putin or Soviet communism in the 1970s and early 80s.

“That’s a tough question. Twenty years ago, I’d say definitely things were better. Even 10 years ago I would not hesitate. Today I don’t know. It depends on the angle of the observation. But the fact is I have to live outside Russia. And the regime is more aggressive and more dangerous than the Soviet politburo. Yet at the same time there’s also a chance, because young people know how different life is outside of Russia.”

The west’s response to Putin, Kasparov says, must start with recognising the threat – and then standing up to the regime by imposing far greater sanctions on the oligarchs that support him. “Putin’s interest, if we use a chess analogy, is to make sure that the game is not played by any rules, unless he chooses them. He wants to ruin the world that was built after the second world war, one that was based on compromise, consensus, and respect for treaties. The international community has to face up to that.”

Kasparov is also squaring up for battle on a second front as he attempts to capitalise on the extraordinary chess boom of the past year by launching Kasparovchess.com. It promises chess lessons from the world’s best players, designed for every ability, a strong community, and the opportunity to face Kasparov.

The website is backed by the French multinational Vivendi, but Kasparov knows the competition will be intense. The world’s biggest chess site, Chess.com, has more than 30 million members, while the Play Magnus Group, owned by the world champion Magnus Carlsen, attracted £40m of investment when it launched on the Norwegian stock exchange last year.

“Magnus has the world title and resources, and that gives him a tremendous edge. However when it comes to content, I think we will be superior. We will be offering even more, at a much lower price. And although I’m no longer a formidable force in chess, I know how to promote and sell the game, and to get people excited.”

While they might be rivals in business, it is obvious Kasparov has immense respect for Carlsen, who has been the world No 1 since 2011, and world champion since 2013. The pair worked together, briefly, when the Norwegian was a teenager and Kasparov still follows his games closely.

“Magnus is still very passionate about the game. And he has this motivation, like Bobby Fischer, to win and to fight – and also an ability to use every resource like Anatoly Karpov. It’s a deadly combination.”

Kasparov won’t be drawn on who is the best ever. “It always has an element of subjectivity,” he says. “It’s like arguing who was the best football player: Pelé, Maradona, or Messi? But Magnus has already clearly had a phenomenal career. More than that, he has helped make chess mainstream.”

But there is a word of warning for the reigning world champion too. “Magnus is still the best player, and I doubt very much he will be at any risk of losing the world championship match [against Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi] later this year. But two years from now, who knows? Alireza Firouzja is just 17 but rising, and Carlsen is 30 now. In the last year, especially in rapid and blitz, he’s making blunders.”

Garry Kasparov is launching his own chess website, Kasparovchess.com.

As he speaks there is a flash of the old Kasparov: someone who would glare at his opponents like a pitbull while making impossible calculations many moves deep – part Mike Tyson, part Stephen Hawking. That, he insists, wasn’t a deliberate strategy to intimidate his rivals.

“Everything I did at the chessboard was natural,” he says. “At the helm of my career, I lived every game. It was not just playing. It was a matter of life and death. I was so motivated and devoted. Losing was a big pain to me – almost a physical pain – and as long as we were at the chessboard I looked at my opponent as more than that. They were an enemy force to be destroyed.”

In chess circles he was known as “The Boss”, and was still on top when he retired in 2005. His fitness and legendary preparation helped, he admits, as did his thirst for victory. “There are many great athletes and sportsmen in history that developed the same attitude,” he says. “What I probably managed better than others is that I never lost my steam. I was still motivated to play a great game or to take a challenge at the end of my career, as I was in 1980.”

Even now chess remains an important part of his life, and he talks with pride about his recent work as a consultant on the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit. Not only did he choose the games, but he worked hard on ensuring it was as authentic as possible, from the way the players touched the pieces through to ensuring the world champion, Vasily Borgov, was followed by KGB agents.

Kasparov believes the series not only fuelled a boom in online chess but helped rehabilitate the game among the wider population. “For a long time chess was seen not only as a nexus of intellect and creativity, but also a potential threat to your mental stability,” he says. “The stories are there, from Paul Morphy to Fischer, so you can’t deny it created some kind of psychological barrier.

“I believe the Queen’s Gambit has almost cleansed chess from these fears, especially among parents. Because, contrary to what people thought about the game, it didn’t bring her down, it actually lifted her up. It helped her struggle against her own ghosts, and her own psychological problems.”

Kasparov’s passion for the royal game still burns so bright, more than 50 years after he first picked up a chess piece, and it seems only right to ask whether he has ever fallen out of love with it? “Never,” he replies. “And while my business engagements keep growing, you will still see me a lot on my new site. Chess is oxygen to me.”

 

Why Would Biden Want a Summit With Putin, Whom He Calls a ‘Killer’? | Op-Ed at the Wall Street Journal | April 18, 2021

by Garry Kasparov

READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE AT THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The Biden administration brought a dramatic change in America’s tone toward Russia and Vladimir Putin. In March President Biden bluntly and accurately called Mr. Putin “a killer,” indicating he saw no need to be diplomatic about the leader of a regime that has repeatedly attacked U.S. interests—and, as last week’s sanctions announcements made clear, the U.S. itself.

But tone doesn’t count for much unless it’s backed by consistent action, which had been lacking. Mr. Putin is no master strategist, but he reads people well and senses weakness with animal cunning. Mr. Biden has to walk the walk after talking so much talk, or Mr. Putin will assume that the new U.S. administration is as feckless as the previous two.

On April 13, Messrs. Biden and Putin spoke on the phone for the second time. The White House readout includes Russian hacking and election interference and is strong on Ukraine, where Mr. Putin is again amassing forces.

Then comes the final sentence, like the twist in a horror movie. “President Biden . . . proposed a summit meeting in a third country in the coming months.” A summit? With a killer? In one stroke, Mr. Biden gave Mr. Putin exactly what he craves, equal status with the president of the United States. Even if it never comes to pass, the invitation sends the message that Mr. Putin is irreplaceable, still worthy of the support of the oligarchs and elites whose fortunes he guarantees. President Trump was rightly lambasted for granting Mr. Putin the 2018 Helsinki summit, which did nothing for U.S. interests and a great deal for Mr. Putin’s. This would be no better. Calling it diplomacy ignores that diplomacy is supposed to have a point.

The ending of the readout was also notable for failing to mention Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, whose health was deteriorating even before he began a hunger strike to protest his treatment in prison.

Such blunders seem inexplicable, especially considering the strong sanctions the U.S. announced two days later. In a series of statements followed by a rare Biden press conference, the U.S. assigned clear blame on Russian intelligence services for the SolarWinds cyberattack, attempts to interfere with the 2020 election, and the continued occupation of Crimea.

Along with targeting individuals and companies involved in those actions, the U.S. moved to block American institutions from participating in the Russian sovereign-debt market. This is a significant step beyond the usual tit-for-tat games that Mr. Putin is happy to play with the U.S. and Europe. He cares nothing for Russia or its people—but he cares a great deal about power and money.

With that in mind, if the U.S. is serious about deterring Mr. Putin, there should also be targeted sanctions, including asset seizure, on his oligarch cronies, their families and their companies. If you support Mr. Putin’s mafia dictatorship and profit from it, you should also pay the price when he oversteps.

On Wednesday, the U.S. canceled the deployment of two ships to the Black Sea, where they were headed to keep an eye on Mr. Putin’s military buildup in and around Ukraine. Again Mr. Putin the aggressor is rewarded with concessions, guaranteeing not peace but further aggression. It’s the same pattern that has already cost more than 14,000 lives in Ukraine, as well as the 298 innocents aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, the passenger jet Mr. Putin’s forces shot down in 2014. On Friday, Mr. Putin answered Mr. Biden’s call for de-escalation by criminalizing Mr. Navalny’s political organization and blocking entrance to the Sea of Azov, further cutting off Ukraine.

The mixed messages from the White House are even more troubling because their source is unknown. The Tuesday phone call took place while Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin were abroad, which leads me to wonder whose idea it was to undermine the sanctions with a summit offer. On Friday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the invitation “wasn’t precooked or preset.” Was this a synapse firing off some Cold War nostalgia, or are there other voices in Mr. Biden’s ear?

John Kerry, one of the agents of President Obama’s catastrophic Russia appeasement policies as secretary of state, is roaming about the globe with his new climate-envoy title. He recently met in India with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. If Mr. Kerry has influence with Mr. Biden—and if he still has his rare gift for getting nothing for something—he may be promoting worthless “green deals” with Russia and China in exchange for things they care about, like summits, pipelines and taking human rights off the table. A struggle between geopolitical realists and appeasers could become another split in the Biden White House, along with the expected policy tug-of-war between moderates and progressives. Mr. Biden says he wants a “predictable” relationship with Mr. Putin, but that’s exactly what he has. Mr. Putin attacks; the West retaliates weakly, then offers concessions for dialogue until Mr. Putin attacks again.

It’s pleasant to talk about diplomacy, but diplomacy has never changed the behavior of a dictator. The U.S., combined with its allies in the free world, has the ability to threaten an overwhelming response to Mr. Putin’s invasions, hacking, election meddling and assassinations. What it has always lacked is the will to do so.

Mr. Kasparov is the chairman of the Human Rights Foundation and the Renew Democracy Initiative.

Earth Day Webcast: Augmented Intelligence for Profits + the Planet

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Garry Kasparov launches a community-first chess platform | Tech Crunch | April 15, 2021

READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE AT TECHCRUNCH 

Natasha Mascarenhas  @nmasc_ / 10:00 AM EDT•April 15, 2021

Four years ago, MasterClass, a platform that sells celebrity-taught classes, invited chess legend Garry Kasparov to teach a class. He said yes, but soon realized that creating a message that could satisfy a majority of players was a “struggle throughout the process.”

While the class did pretty well, Kasparov found it “a little bit annoying” that he had to downplay concepts and stick to a specific structure. So, now, Kasparov is launching a platform he says has been several years in the making: Kasparovchess.

Kasparovchess will be a platform in which legendary chess players will have free reign to share tips and tricks with players from various levels. Financed by private investors, and media conglomerate Vivendi, the company declined to disclose its total capital raised to date.

The platform, produced by Vivendi, includes documentaries, podcasts, articles and interviews between experts and known players in the chess community. Moe than 1,000 videos have been recorded to date, Kasparov said. Beyond content, Kasparovchess will have an exclusive Discord server attached to it and playing zones.

In many ways, it’s a vertical-specific version of the chess MasterClass he did years ago, with a big focus on community and variety. MasterClass, which is reportedly raising funding that would value it at $2.5 billion, has been a leader in the “edutainment” space, which monetizes off of documentary-style entertainment. One of the unicorn’s biggest characteristics, as Kasparov alluded to earlier, is that it has to appeal to a wide audience so subscribers can hop from one class to another. Within the same month, a user could go from a Kasparovchess class to general pontifications from RuPaul on self expression. The more classes that MasterClass can get you to take, the longer you’ll keep your subscription.

MasterClass might consider its broad view as a differentiator, but it’s clear that Kasparov views it as an opportunity.

Kasparovchess has a monthly or yearly subscription of $13.99 or $119.99, respectively. The majority of lessons from experts and retrospective analysis on games you’ve played sit behind the paywall. The premium product also grants users access to a database of 50,000 manually created puzzles that allows players to train certain skills. The product will be available to the public by the end of month.

A popular competitor already exists: Chess.com. It’s a chess server, forum and networking site that launched in 2005, with premium subscription that ranges between $5 a month or $29 a year. Kasparovchess is significantly more expensive.

Kasparov says his biggest differentiator will be a focus on community. The long-term goal of Kasparovchess is to connect global chess communities with each other, unearth prodigies that might not have access otherwise and give others access to his experiences. He thinks that remote education during the pandemic has shown the need to have more interactive solutions, beyond buzzy promises.

“It’s time to actually switch from what we’re teaching to how students can apply it,” he said. “And that helps us indirectly because chess has been recognized for centuries as a nexus for intelligence and creativity.”

Kasparov became the youngest world chess champion in 1985. He retired from public chess in 2005, and has since launched a foundation to help children have access to chess worldwide. Most recently, he helped advise for “Queen’s Gambit,” a show about a chess prodigy that became Netflix’s most-watched scripted limited series to date on the platform. The show was so ubiquitously popular that sales for chess boards soon skyrocketed.

“I was so happy because it was the first time where we could see chess as a positive factor,” he said. “We had so many years with chess being seen as potential destruction and something that could push kids to the dark area of psychological instability.”

The freshness of this message mixed with an uptick in remote education has given Kasparov confidence that his years-long project is finally ready to launch.

“It’s not just about teaching the game, or playing the game, or debating the game,” he said. Instead, he hopes people who come to the platform focus on the culture of chess, its survival and its seemingly timeless power.