Bull in a Chess Club

Before launching the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Vladimir Putin reached out to the West to offer a deal. We recently got some insight into the terms of the deal thanks to an interview by NATO General Secretary Jen Stoltenberg with reporters. As I’ve said before, the deal was blackmail and extortion, not diplomacy. Russia isn’t playing “3D chess,” as some commentators have said; it isn’t even playing checkers. It’s refusing to play at all, threatening the actual players with violence unless they give it what it wants.

Russia’s version of diplomacy is like a bully in a chess club. He doesn’t know how to play but issues threats and behaves badly until one of two things happens: he gets his way, or the less confrontational players confront him in a united front. The bully’s objective isn’t to learn how to play the game, to develop himself intellectually, or to participate in a group activity — it is to show everyone how tough he is and make a scene. It all comes to an end when the Chess Club members band together.

Russia isn’t interested in participating in the world except to exploit others. It doesn’t want to develop itself economically, politically, culturally, or in any other way — it just wants everyone to know how tough it is and that if you don’t let Russia win, Russia will tip the board over and beat you up. That only works as long as the smaller players don’t band together, which is why Putin demands that nobody else be allowed to join the club. It doesn’t matter if they all want to play by the rules; Russia says that they aren’t allowed to because then nobody will be afraid of Russia anymore.

Russia doesn’t want to learn how to play the game at all. It isn’t interested in mutually beneficial trade deals — only blackmail and extortion. It had an uneasy arrangement with Germany, selling billions in gas yearly, but then ruined it all when it changed the deal for blackmail and extortion. Germany decided to go without, although it took some hard knocks to finally learn the lesson. Germany sat through multiple rounds where Russia would get close to losing and then threaten to overturn the board unless Germany would agree to a tie, despite Russia already having lost. At some point, the costs became too high, and Germany decided to stop playing.

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