Review: Moscow Rules: What Drives Russia To Confront The West – by Keir Giles

I am a new member of Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, in London. On a recent visit, I made use of the vast resources of a very well-stocked library at Chatham House and this book is the first of the loans that I have finished reading. It is apt as Keir Giles is indeed a senior consulting fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House. He is an expert on Russia and this was clear from the outset of this book, Moscow Rules.

I have read much material on Putin’s Russia in the last decade or so. I have also extensively studied the Cold War and beyond that into Tsarist Russia and the Revolution of 1917 and subsequent communism of the Soviet Union. I think that Keir Giles’ book stands out among many other titles in that he seeks to identify the difference between Russia, Russians, their leaders, and The West. Often, that there is a clear difference between Russia and ourselves, is glossed over. We see Russians as an extension of ourselves, with European, democratic, libertarian values. Russian commentators, who educate and inform Western readers on the subject of Russia, are indeed akin to us Europeans or North Americans and do in fact share our values. However, Giles is keen to point out that these Western-facing Russians are the minority, the tip of the iceberg and the extreme. Russians proper are not so European. As much as Peter the Great or Catherine the Great sought a  European home for Mother Russia; that dream has never been achieved. Russia is such a vast continent spanning Europe and Asia and containing such vast isolated resources and diverse populations  that, to consider it European. is just folly. Geographically, we are told of how the natural frontiers make defence an almost impossible task for Russian militaries to arrange conventionally. In Moscow they seek buffer states. ‘The only safe border is one with a Russian soldier on both sides’.

Giles identifies that strategically. Russia has changed little with regard to its foreign policy since Tsarist times, through Soviet Communism and into the post Soviet times of Yeltsin and now Putin. It always blows hot and cold in its foreign policy and relationship with The West. One of the biggest factors in Putin’s current stance is his concrete conviction about the fall of the Soviet Union as being the worst event in Russian history. The tumultuous topsy-turvy gangster capitalism that accompanied the Yeltsin era in a Russian flirtation with free market capitalism, brought the country to its knees. The people suffered a massive decline in living standards. Oligarchs got rich but the experiment with out and out capitalism just didn’t work. One of the main reasons for the fall of the USSR was a ‘betrayal’ by Ukraine in agreeing with Belarus to leave the Union after the Baltic States successfully seceded. In Russian, Ukraine means’ borderland’ and it is known as ‘Little Russia’ History with the ancient Rus capital of Kyiv in Putin and many Russian eyes does not separate Ukraine from the motherland. We have seen Ukrainian leaders of the USSR like Khrushchev and Brezhnev. It is the bread basket of Russia. One of the principal functions of the Ukraine borderland is to act as a territorial buffer to invading armies. This was the case when Napoleon came and also Hitler’s Nazi Invasion. It was clearly agreed at the end of the USSR, beforehand with Mikhail Gorbachev, that there be no further expansion of NATO into Russian imperial territory. This has proved a lie by The West. Whereas we see our export of Western democracy as a gift to Russia, the Russians see inequality, decadent and immoral sexual values, and an untrustworthy source of liars and values which simply are not native Russian. It’s like Christian missionaries, Western ventures into Russia.

The Russian mentality of paranoia is justified. They do accept autocracy and it works. Yes, there is brutality and State oppression but also the Russians trust their leaders. The Tsar was holy, God’s representative on Earth. Although the horrors of Stalin are obvious, his personality cult was also very real indeed. What we see in our media’s depiction of Vladimir Putin, the Russians see exactly the opposite. He has genuine popularity and represents true Russian values. Propaganda and suppression of dissidents has a long history within Russia and is an accepted part of their culture.

The whole Russian language has its peculiarities and translation into and out of Russian is not straightforward. Giles identifies an example in the difference between Pravda and Istina. Pravda is a ‘tactical truth’ and Istina is the ‘real truth’. We don’t have equivalents in the English language. So often, Western ‘experts’ on Russia do not possess lived in experience of Russia and the cultural knowledge that accompanies native language skills. One has to think like a Russian in Russia in Russian to understand the country.

As the book draws to a conclusion, Giles doesn’t leave us with false hope that Putin will be ‘offski’ any time soon. And if he is, his replacement will have similar mentality and little will change; relationships between blocs could indeed disintegrate further. There is a certain stability and continuity in Vladimir Putin’s rule, as unpalatable as it might be at present. We seek rapprochement but we must recognise Russia’s point of view. NATO is encroaching and I personally see the argument being a double-edged sword regarding Ukraine. Both sides are equally guilty. It’s one thing Eastern European satellites signing up to NATO, but vast core areas of the Soviet Union adjacent to the Motherland signing up? It is unacceptable from a Russian perspective. You have to draw lines at some point. The whole Westphalian system is based on drawing borders and we know from other war experience that borders don’t necessarily export very well. Eg. The Middle East and Arab World. There needs to be some middle ground and it is important that politicians on both sides of the divide look at the psychology of their agreements and disputes and I think that by studying ‘Moscow Rules’, which is a very interesting, mainly psychological,  exploration of the differences between Russia and us, any potential diplomat involved in international relationships, will be wiser and better armed in their ability to succeed in diffusing the ticking timebomb. I don’t think that there are many on the planet out there that wish for a full MAD Armageddon nuclear exchange between the old Cold War rivals.

It’s the first book that I’ve read from Chatham House library: I’m off to a good start and it makes me hungry for more. The library there is alone worth the membership fee alone for anyone with just a vague interest in international geopolitics. Chatham House is a renowned think tank with leading global experts. Knowledge is the key to all survival and is the essence of civilization.

https://wezgworld.com/chatham-house-how-effective-are-the-united-states-sanctions-19-06-2023/

Review: The Dragons and the Snakes – How The Rest Learned to Fight The West – by David Kilcullen

This is one of the very best books I have ever read. It is up to date material and full of cutting edge military theory and ideas and I believe is critical essential reading for any politician or military personnel, especially those who conduct their employment in the NATO led West. I am no stranger to Australian soldier-scholar David Kilcullen’s work. This is the fourth book of his that I have read. This work surpasses the previous books and it is genuinely a masterpiece. What are the dragons and snakes? The dragons are the main, most powerful nation-state enemies. Russia and China are the main dragons and additionally we have Iran and North Korea who pose significant military threat and who are ideologically opposed to the West. The snakes are state and non-state actors. Less powerful nation states such as Iraq or Afghanistan and terrorist organisations and quasi nation jihadist states and their peripherals such as ISIS. Al Qaeda is a big snake, as is the Taliban as is Hezbollah and it is these snakes that have predominated active warfare measures from the USA and her allies in the post Cold War world. On the whole Kilcullen criticises Western military action in the recent past citing little evidence of genuine success. Traditional warfare and indeed highly technological modern military fighting that reached its zenith in the first Iraqi conflict of 1991 has been made redundant by adaptive enemies who have learnt how to successfully withstand dominance by coalition forces and have adapted techniques and tactics that have in effect neutralised our methods. While the world witnesses this stalemate between snakes and our armies the dragons have been sat watching, taking notes and suitably adapting their own military philosophies to take advantage of the new global environment. The way in which these dragons have re-emerged into active roles demonstrates new confidence and their upward projection into the future looks very daunting a positive to a fading Western democratic dominant imperialism. The main message of this book is that if we do not adjust ourselves and realign our military strategy we will ultimately face defeat and the political and economic collapse of our societies. When analysing the snakes we look in detail at various different organisations. ‘Combat Darwinism’ is an interesting scientific look at the decapitation of the snake that is Al Qaeda. Our strategic focus was to target leadership of this jihadist monster and every time a key leader was successfully culled a new hydra head on the snake was born and the enemy’s success in adaptation, even though its movement may have come close to complete annihilation, meant that natural selection allowed the foe to fight again with even more strength and resurge. Often our own militaries pulled back from the precipice due to economic and political factors, allowing the necessary reformation space for the enemy. This has been a key part of analysis for the War on Terror. After 9/11 We succeeded in killing the likes of Osama Bin Laden and most of the rest of the leadership but ‘The Base’ movement just became a self-perpetuating force unto itself without traditional vanguard leadership and it morphed into other jihadist factions such as AQI (Al Qaeda in Iraq) and ISIS, producing further problems. The very fact that today, The Taliban are back in government in Afghanistan demonstrates Combat Darwinism in effect and the future of global jihad seems to be a lasting phenomenon that will continue to plague the Western World for the foreseeable future. I found the case study of Hezbollah as it fights against Israel and later in Syria to have been very illuminating. Their adaptation and growth have demonstrated how a tactically weaker military force can survive, grow more powerful and be effective in the face of complicated battle odds. Looking at the snakes we see a new Russia under the autocratic reins of Vladimir Putin who is becoming ever more military active as his increasing hostility and delusion grows especially with the latest invasion of Ukraine. Liminal warfare tactics used by Russia introduce new elements to modern warfare against the West. Operating just below the detectable surface a combination of economic warfare, information warfare and cyberwarfare does just enough damage to Russian enemies without provoking military response. From cyberwarfare attacks in Estonia through to democratic election social media disinformation warfare during Trump election in USA or Brexit in the UK, Russia is undermining the West. Often it is different sides’ different perceptions of what constitutes hostile actions or warfare that our polarised views can fail to distinguish. In the last days of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev received promises that NATO would not expand any further to the East yet Western leaders lied in these reassurances. Putin and the Russian military rightfully are concerned by any move that threatens their territorial integrity. Post communist oligarch capitalism and an easing of traditional espionage has allowed a traditionally focussed long term enemy to rebuild and rekindle its old hostilities to the West. The study of China illustrates again how economic and computer technologies can be used liminally to fight out societies. The Chinese military has slowly been rebuilding and modernising. Its Navy has emerged from nowhere and it has been encroaching on island chains in the South China Sea, building barriers that can be used as both defensive and offensive bases against any future major conflict. I was particularly pleased to see Kilcullen reveal the importance of the military theory work of PLA strategists, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. I have only recently read the ‘Unrestricted Warfare’ book that since its publication at the turn of the millennium, has been a core component of the People’s Liberation Army’s development. Although he sees some of the authors’ ideas as pure paranoia and delusion this also demonstrates how perception on different sides can be very different. China has undoubtedly focussed very heavily on economic warfare and the fact the renminbi now underwrites the whole US economy and the globalisation of Chinese capital investment in key infrastructure such as ports or via tech firms such as Huawei is forecast by Qiao and Wang. The question is asked in that with China being so overexposed economically could mean that direct traditional military conflict could be less likely. The analyses of our enemies is concise and precise and unsettling. What are Kilcullen’s answers to the posed dilemma? He admits that there are no obvious solutions and although it is clear that change has to occur and is likely to come on both sides, The West and the Dragons and Snakes, it is felt that a Byzantine approach to preservation of Empire is the best path forward. Acceptance of our fading power and influence yet also a pragmatic and sustaining approach to preserving and development our military, political and economic futures.

Review: Red Notice – How I Became Putin’s No.1 Enemy – by Bill Browder

There is irony in this tale as Bill Browder was following in his grandfather’s footsteps in some ways but was also radically poles apart. Browder’s grandfather had stood for Presidential election in the USA on a Communist ticket. Bill Browder was drawn to business possibilities behind the Iron Curtain and in the post Cold War, post Soviet Union Russia, Browder’s Hermitage fund became the biggest foreign investor in Russia and also the fund, with at its peak over $1 billion in assets under its control, the best performing investment fund in the World. The start of his career was interesting. After good qualifications at Stanford University in the United States, Browder set himself up in the European financial capital of London, with a view to exploring trade in Eastern European markets, made possible by the fall of the Berlin Wall. Among early experience he worked for the notorious Robert Maxwell, shortly before his controversial yacht death just as a huge pension fraud Maxwell had been operating was being exposed and investigated. Despite this career blip, Browder went on to form his own fund, Hermitage Capital Management. He headed off to Moscow and with careful research began to take advantage of the huge available margins made in the wake of privatisation of former Soviet Industry. This was the age of emerging gangster oligarchs and widespread corruption. Browder, ever in a quest for justice and a moral code which rejects corruption began to flag the eyes of Russian potentates and in 2005 he was refused entry to Russia as Moscow airport and put back on the plane for repatriation in the U.K. Thus ends the high profit-yielding business honeymoon and the start of a quest to recover his money, keep his business afloat and expose the enemies and corruption that threatened his destruction. The whole saga spirals out of control and the Russian authorities launch a massively corrupt scheme involving police officers who tried stealing his businesses and ran a massive tax fraud amounting to about $230 million. The path led to the very top with Kremlin officials supporting every move against the Jewish American businessman. His Russian lawyer, an honest Russian gentleman by the name of Sergei Magnitsky becomes embroiled in situation and is thrown in jail and due to health complications, torture and refusal of necessary medical care, Magnitsky suffers a brutal early death in jail. Browder is deeply upset and affected by this and his role as venture capitalist businessman changes into human rights campaigner. Browder irks even the highest power in Russia and becomes the biggest public enemy of Vladimir Putin. The U.K. government were relatively unbothered in their assistance so Browder ends up campaigning with the US politicians and at the very highest level dealing with the likes of Senator John McCain, Senator John Kerry among other Washington players to take up the cause. Ultimately Browder flukes hi sway into getting President Obama to pass legislation called the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act which restricted and placed travel bans on all corrupt officials involved in the crimes and death of Browder’s lawyer and was part of a general move of sanctioning Russia and its excesses. In return Putin decided to punish sick Russian orphans by denying them access to adoptive American families. A bit sort of in tow with Vladimir’s current international reputation as a bit of an ogre…. The book is a whirlwind exploration of big business, exposes the realities of modern Russia and also in the wake of unbelievable corruption and human rights atrocities a sense of justice is achieved.

Review: Russians Among Us – Sleeper Cells & The Hunt for Putin’s Agents – by Gordon Correra

I’ve read Gordon Correra’s previous work in espionage literature and for this reason I was drawn to seek out this new offering. In the current climate of the Russian invasion of Ukraine under ex KGB spy, Vladimir Putin, I felt that this relatively recent work would highlight some of the ongoing dangers of Russian spies that have infiltrated our societies in the West. I did enjoy watching the TV series ‘The Americans’ that presented a fictional version of what Correra exposes as a fait accompli, the reality of embedded Russian illegals, sleeper cells inside the USA. The story skips between the lives of several of these trained Russian agents who take on fake identities of dead people in the West with a view to setting up ‘normal’ lives in the country of the Cold War enemy state. These illegals get normal jobs, buy houses, live in suburbia and slowly but surely are always looking for ways of undermining their host nation, seeking out potential contacts in their business and social lives who might be able to prove advantageous to Russia. They could be within powerful political circles or in technology or finance. These identified potential real people could be approached to become KGB / FSB / GRU agents or could be blackmailed. Obviously the game of espionage is cat and mouse and played equally voraciously by both sides. The CIA and FBI counter-intelligence in the case of many of the more recent illegals manoeuvred the whole expensive operation. A very valuable CIA source, Alexander Poteyev was head of the illegals program in the FSB and for over a decade was revealing all the critical information of the whole affair. Thus, the FBI maintained close surveillance on the spies for over a decade, watching their every move from their marital lives, their children growing up to any movements towards vital US targets in their operational activity. Putin has a twisted logic about the West and is an avid supporter of covert intelligence operations against his Cold War adversaries. His absolute detestation of treason and spy turncoats led him to attacking two ex-KGB comrades on U.K. soil. Alexander Litvinenko was murdered in London by radioactive poisoning (Polonium) and later, Sergei Skripal, who had been granted an official pardon by Putin, and had been part of a Vienna exchange by for the arrested Russian illegals, was attacked in Salisbury by a Novichok biological nerve agent but survived the assassination attempt. He had been an active MI6 agent and was released from Russian prison. It was interesting seeing how technology change and the post Soviet Union era redefined the illegals program and how Russian agents were just masquerading in the West using their real identities. The internet and social media brought a new dimension to espionage with active political meddling in the US election leading to the Donald Trump Presidential election of 2016. The book details shocking secrets of the clandestine world of international espionage and is an entertaining tale. One can only wonder how little we actually know and just how many illegals actually are still active and who successfully evaded the capture net.

Review: Memoirs – by Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev was one of the most influential and critical figures of the twentieth century. When I was growing up in the 1980s he was part os a set of international world leaders that seemingly had much more influence over people than the political leaders of today. Gorbachev was the last leader of he Soviet Union until its collapse in 1991. He presided over the final years of the Cold War and witnessed its thaw. He was a key advocate of détente and disarmament and sought rapprochement with the West. He brought, along with Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and François Mitterand a reduction of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) through disarmament of nuclear weapons stockpiles and a lessening of military friction between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. These are his political memoirs and they offer a true insight into a very powerful global leader who played a significant role in world affairs at the end of the century, presiding over such key events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and ultimately the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev had humble roots as a tractor and combine harvester driver in the Stavropol region of rural Russia. He joined the Communist Party early and was fortunate enough to go to university in Moscow from where his active role in politics flourished. He would be elected Chairman of the Communist Party in 1985 replacing a series of elderly, embedded Soviet leaders. He offered the leadership and nomenclatura a new dynamism and vitality. Living standards were low in the USSR and Gorbachev sought o revolutionise Soviet communist politics and regenerate benefits for all. His key policies for which he is most remembered are Perestroika and Glasnost. Perestroika was a realignment and a modernisation of economic policies, introducing more economic freedoms, less State control and an opening of international trade, ultimately with the USSR becoming part of the global economic system. With Conservatives who clung to Stalinesque control of the State his Perestroika was an anathema. It proved popular and gave Gorbachev international prestige though and improved foreign relations. Glasnost was an opening up of politics and accountability to the people. It again proved unpopular with the forces on the right of the Party. He headed the Politburo where the key leadership of the Soviet Union ruled the nation. From the start though, he had enemies within and ultimately these conspiratorial plots against him grew and grew until the final death throes of the entire Union. His ultimate nemesis proved to be Boris Yeltsin the future democratic President of an independent Russia. Yeltsin’s self-serving, backstabbing Machiavellian manoeuvring ultimately destroyed much of Gorbachev’s legacy. With the context of today’s Russian war in Ukraine I did gleam some interesting information about a political fact that I was unaware of. Crimea has a native Crimean Tatar population and during Gorbachev’s presidency there was friction between Crimea and its control by Ukrainian officials. The native population preferred to identify itself as part of Russia and therefore these facts lend credibility to Vladimir Putin’s annexation based on historic feelings about the region. As the story progresses you get an overall feeling of the train derailing as political tensions intensify. The independence of the Baltic States from Soviet Rule is the beginning of the end and encourages the nationalist sentiments of Yeltsin’s Russia and other key Soviet republics as Belorussia and Ukraine. Gorbachev shares a loving relationship with his wife Raisa and his family and their very lives are threatened by an attempted coup where he is locked in his dacha with all communications cut off and the target of a criminal attempt to subvert the rule of the USSR. After the coup, things never fully recovered and ultimately in 1991 he was forced to resign as President and this brought to en end the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev’s main legacy was to the World. In the West he was viewed with much affection and was seen as someone who they could do business with yet he is often remembered inside the Soviet Union as a failure. I think that long term in historical memory his true status will be felt with the benefit of hindsight. There is much glamour in the international jet-setting of world summits, especially with Reagan and it was interesting reading about his encounter’s with the United Kingdom Prime Minister Thatcher.
I think that in reading this book I have gained a much greater insight into the true mechanisations of Communist rule inside the Soviet Union and although Gorbachev sadly died only a short while ago, I felt that in completing the study of his memoirs it has significant relevance in understanding the Russia of today and what led to the global situation which we currently witness in Putin’s Russia.

Review: Putin’s People – How the KGB took back Russia and then took on The West – by Catherine Belton

The author of this, the best study of Vladimir Putin that I have read to date, is Catherine Belton, a Financial Times journalist that was based in Moscow. It is a comprehensive study of the rise of Putin and how he has cemented a Tsar-like power as head of the New Russia. We go from a relatively humble career as a KGB agent in East Germany through to a man who has consolidated vast amounts of wealth and power in an insurmountable concrete position of power as head of State. The anarchic conditions of Yeltsin’s post Soviet Union capitalist experimentation left opportunities for many and was very disruptive both globally and within Russia. Putin enters politics as deputy mayor of St Petersburg where he begins a steady ascent to supreme power. So much of his rise is based on total corruption and dodgy dealings with organised crime such as the Tambov group. Putin’s main allies who have accompanied his meteoric success have been the Siloviki or former KGB and FSB agents. Systematically towards the ed of the Cold War as perestroika and glasnost opened doors, money and large sums of it were being funnelled out to the West by KGB agents planning the post Soviet reality of Russia. Putin challenged the new wave of super wealthy oligarchs who were the revolutionary Russian cowboys who seized State assets during the anarchic capitalism. Boris Berezovsky and Mikhail Khodorkhovsky were the most high profile victims of the new Putin state facts that oligarchs had to comply and were subservient to the Kremlin. Roman Abramovich was more lucky and has a cosier more complaint relationship with the régime. Londongrad and siphoning of cash to Panama Papers offshore banks enriched Putin and a web of total corruption of all, the judiciary, the opposition politicians, rogue regions of the former USSR, all have been forced to submit to Putin aggression and domination. Some of the links are so discrete and conniving and the journalistic excellence of the author brings to light a lot of the hidden deceit. Espionage has had a lot of psychological resonance within the Kremlin with democratic foreign politics being subjected to Russian meddling and interference. It is interesting to note the evidence of Putin’s role in Brexit and the Trump presidency. There has been massive financial input into the British Conservative Party and frankly the Russian impact on Donald Trump is totally blatant and obvious. He was farming out Trump Towers franchises across the world entirely to dodgy Russian businessmen and gangsters while pocketing a healthy 18% return cushion on all investments without touching his own unscrupulous dollar bank accounts. The reality of this non-fiction real life account is so far-fetched and shocking that it could never possibly have been invented by a modern day Dostoyevsky as for sure, the true story of Vladimir Putin is stranger than fiction. This book has obvious relevance with this odd man’s decision to invade Ukraine and its international and domestic dangerous consequences. A great book.

Review: Fragile Empire – How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin – by Ben Judah

This is a very well researched study of Russia under Vladimir Putin. Always concerned with the political angle of this modern day Tsar, Judah studies the rise of Putin from a relatively unflattering career in the FSB through to him becoming an immovable rock in the Kremlin. Putin’s early years are interesting and I enjoyed the reminiscences of his early teachers. His whole calculated rise through the Russian political structure always displays a calculating and cool yet opportunistic politician. His consolidation of power has been very extreme and in spite of United Russia being a new form of one party state apparatus, endemic with corruption, there is no doubt that Putin is a force that is here to stay. What is perhaps surprising is that in spite of genuine mass popularity, the Russian people are now discontent with their leader and although they face steep obstacles, credible democratic opposition is emerging, headed by the interesting internet hero, Navalny. Russia’s move from democracy towards a quasi-Soviet style economy, the empire dominated by Moscow, paints an interesting picture of this huge superpower nation. I found the author’s trips around the hinterland to reveal some fascinating insights into Modern Russia and the problems that it and its people face. This is a very good book, if perhaps a little too biased against Putin, it is a worthy opinion of the situation of this new Russian empire.

Review: Winter Is Coming – Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped – by Garry Kasparov

Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion, is clearly an intelligent man. Having retired from the game he has entered the world of politics and is a key human rights activist. The book explores his frustrations with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. It is a study of Putin and the way in which he has eroded the democratic institutions bought about by Perestroika and the fall of communism in the Soviet Union. Kasparov tried to align a coalition of democratic oppositionists within Russia yet the force of the state and its poor human rights record left Kasparov no alternative but to fight as an exile from New York City. It is clear from the book that his chess success has made him different to the average Russian. His priveleged life as a global Soviet citizen has perhaps led him further to embrace Yeltsin’s opening up of Russia. I think he hearkens for a Western style democracy within Russia but perhaps Russia itself is not suited to such political freedoms and requires a degree of autocracy for it to effectively function on the international stage. Although I can identify many of the problems posed by Putin, I feel that he has successfully restored a great deal of lost power to Russia and will perhaps be remembered in posterity as a key figure in Russian history. Although he may be a dictator, he is no Stalin and his absolute rule has still brought about many benefits to the Russian State. Can the annexation of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine be equated to Hitler’s pre WW2 actions in Czechoslovakia and Poland? Kasparov sets out a case of why the appeasing Western democratic leaders have failed the Russian people in standing up to Putin and he spells out the dangers of the régime, crying out for help. I enjoyed the tactical surprises and clear prose of hearing one of the world’s great mind’s thinking process at work as I traversed the book although I feel that perhaps it is a little unfair on its target and fails to recognise some of the intricacies of superpower politics. It will be interesting to see where Kasparov takes his future life as indeed will it be interesting to see where exactly Putin steers Russia.

Review: The New Cold War – by Edward Lucas

The New Cold War by Edward Lucas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is a study of Russia in the post-communist era. It documents the rise of Vladimir Putin and identifies the ‘new cold war’ that envelopes Russia’s relations with the outside world. I found the book to be detailed with information and I was surprised by many of the features of the new Russia. I hadn’t realised that under Putin the Russian economy had been growing really well nor had I an appreciation of his soaring approval rating with his people. The Russian dominance of the energy market, in particular, gas, is quite daunting. I really enjoyed the chapter that focussed on the actual way this energy market is structured. The new Cold War won’t necessarily be fought in terms of military might and arms races. The Russian military strength is very dilapidated and they spend 25 times less on their military budget than the US. The new war will be fought in the markets with hard-hitting Kremlin-supported oligarch cash and the high profits from the energy market. I was surprised at the overall effect how that, since 1989, Russia has reverted back to its old Iron Curtain Soviet ways, despite me imagining that it was all freedom and capitalism there now. ‘Sovereign Democracy’ has quite different values to the political system we understand. The author has done his best in this book to explain what makes Russia tick and how we can possibly overcome a dark new era of global hostilities.

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