Author: Garry Kasparov
Year: 2015
Publisher: Public Affairs
Language: English
In 2010, in
the aftermath of the global credit crunch triggered by the American sub-prime
crisis and the sudden failure of the investment bank Lehman Brothers Inc, the Greek
economy had come under particular pressure. Standing at the brink of national
bankruptcy that would risk hurling the entire world into a second calamity, the
EU launched an aid programme leading to a conservative disbursement of merely
52 billion euros. At that time, I was following the events in Greece in my
professional capacity and my verdict was “Not nearly enough. This will hurt
more than help.”
In 2014,
the makeshift barricades of tyres and sandbags on the Independence Square in
central Kyiv were still aflame when the Russian government annexed Crimea and covertly
moved troops into Donetsk and Luhansk. Ukraine responded with whatever military
force they were able to muster whereas the Free World chose to impose modest
and largely inconsequential sanctions on selected individuals and companies. Again,
as a professional observer of the unfolding conflict where people were losing
their lives and their freedom, my verdict was “What would happen, if Barack
Obama, at the invitation of Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, would deploy
50,000 troops to Donbas? I bet not a single shot would be fired, and no one
would have to die.”
In the case
of Greece, the aid package was interpreted by the market as the ultimate limit
of the EU’s willingness to stand by Greece, and speculation against Greek national
debt exploded. In the end, the EU had to bail Greece out with a total of 330
billion worth of support programmes.
In the case
of Ukraine, faced with such lukewarm and hesitant resistance, Vladimir Putin
was emboldened to eight years later launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine
leading to the death of close to a million Russian soldiers to this date, and
heaven knows how many Ukrainian troops and civilians.
My point is
that skimpiness today, may multiply the costs by tomorrow.
In that
light, Garry Kasparov’s “Winter Is Coming”, first published in 2015, i.e. just
about the time I was bemoaning the vacuum of decisiveness in the face of
danger, reads as a vindication.
Kasparov,
the chess grandmaster-turned-oppositionist, has spent the better part of two
decades shouting into the wind. The book is an unflinching indictment of
Western complacency, tracing a direct line from the Second Chechen War (see
review of “A Small Corner of Hell” from September 2023) and the suppression of
independent media to Crimea, Donbas, and beyond. His language is unsparing, his
targets broad: Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, George W. Bush—each is rebuked for
misreading or enabling the Kremlin. Kasparov is particularly dismissive of the
recurring Western delusion that Putin is a pragmatic leader who merely seeks
respect and security.
What
distinguishes Kasparov’s analysis is less the originality of the insight than
the moral urgency with which it is delivered. While many commentators held out
hope that Putin’s authoritarianism might be tempered by economic integration or
generational change, Kasparov saw a different pattern, one disturbingly
familiar to those who study autocracies: consolidation, repression, expansion.
His instincts have proved more accurate than many of the softly hedged
assessments emanating from think tanks and chancelleries.
This
provokes a haunting suspicion. If Kasparov understood … if even I understood …
How could Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, and Herman van Rompuy not understand?
The only conceivable answer is that they did. They simply failed to act.
One thing
that Garry Kasparov, in all his unquestionable lucidity, did not foresee is the
ongoing demolition of liberal freedoms and democratic institutions in the Free
World. He did not predict that the US would turn on its allies and join the
ranks of autocratic and oppressive regimes and he did not predict that Europe,
instead of exporting its liberal values to Hungary, Serbia, Belarus, and
Poland, would instead import their penchant for racism, populism, and
nationalism.
Kasparov
writes not as an academic or a diplomat, but as a participant in Russia’s
political unraveling. His reflections on the missed opportunities of the
Yeltsin years, the rise of the siloviki, and the Kremlin’s mastery of
manufactured consent offer more than polemic. There is real analysis here,
shaped by direct confrontation with the machinery of the Russian state. That
lived experience, alongside his fluency in the West’s ideological blind spots, gives
the book a unique and, in hindsight, tortured and furious voice.
What once
seemed like Cassandra-like fury now reads, unsettlingly, as reportage from the
near future. With Ukraine engulfed in war, and Western democracies scrambling
to reset their posture toward Moscow, Kasparov’s book has acquired the gravity
of foresight fulfilled. Few will finish “Winter Is Coming” without conceding
that the grandmaster saw several moves ahead. The time is come to pay the full
price of what could have been managed at a bargain ten years ago. It is far
from certain, that the West will prove solvent.
