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April 6, 2022 - The Megyn Kelly Show
01:34:48
20220406_how-america-enabled-putins-atrocities-and-democrac
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Putin's KGB Roots 00:15:32
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
Today, we are excited to welcome Gary Kasparov back to the program.
We're going to get his thoughts on the awful situation in Ukraine, but how things are going overall there.
Also, new sanctions just announced moments ago against Russia in the wake of what's happened there this week.
But we're also going to touch in more depth on his remarkable, remarkable life and career from chess prodigy to freedom fighter.
And by the way, he has predicted what would happen in the Soviet Union, then Soviet Union, what would happen in Russia, what Putin's next move would be correctly for the better part of Putin's entire time in office and prior to as well.
I mean, so you really, my overall impression in preparing for this interview is we should be listening to Gary Kasparov.
When it comes to what Putin's next move is, I don't know that there's a better person to listen to.
So just a bit about Gary before we bring him on.
He was born in the former Soviet Union.
By 12 years old, he would be the top child player in all of the USSR, the world under 20 champion at just 17.
Look at him there.
If you're watching on YouTube, he's like this little boy sitting there against grown men.
And the best player in the entire world by age 22.
He would remain at the top of his game for two decades.
His matches were like something out of the movie Rocky, but in this case, the Russian almost always won.
And in this case, we're rooting for the Russian too.
By 1996, he would even compete against IBM's supercomputer, Deep Blue, and win.
I knew that I could learn much better because my opponent would need more time to learn and to come back with a really sophisticated counter-strategy.
But a year later, in a rematch, Mann lost to the machine, a defeat that would haunt Gary for years.
It was through the game of chess that Gary Kasparov's eyes were opened to the West and to the power of democracy.
It was life-changing, he says.
By 2005, he decided to call it a career, putting his chessboard away to join the fledgling pro-democracy movement in Russia.
He wanted his children to grow up in a truly free country.
And to him, that meant a Russia without Vladimir Putin in charge.
He would protest.
He would attempt to run for office in a country that makes that virtually impossible against Putin.
Sometimes landing himself in jail.
You're not allowed to protest in the streets in Russia.
Even there, he was so popular that the guards wanted his autograph.
But by 2013, it became clear he was no longer safe in his own country.
And so he left his beloved Russia and family members, including his mother, behind.
He would settle in New York City, where he told anyone and everyone as often as he possibly could about the threat Putin poses.
At times, he would be dismissed as an alarmist, but his warnings have proven right over and over again.
It's almost eerie.
In fact, he even wrote a book about all of this in 2015 after Putin's first invasion of Ukraine.
Winter is coming was the name.
And yet, six years later, here we are, witnessing the worst crisis in Europe since World War II.
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Gary Kasparov is the chairman of Renew Democracy Initiative.
Great to have you back, Gary.
Thanks for being here.
Thank you for inviting me, Megan.
Let me just start with Winter is coming because I heard you say, you know, I wrote a whole book about this.
I've been talking about this for 20 years.
I talk about it as much as I can, about what Putin is likely to do.
And it's always the more bellicose course.
It's always the land grab.
It's always the he doesn't respond to weakness.
He only respects strength.
As you said to me the last time you were on, it's not a question of why, but why not for him?
And yet, no one listened.
Now they still look at you and people like you who are saying, Trust me, he's not going to back down.
Trust me, he only responds to strength and say, Well, what's next?
What's next?
And you're kind of throwing your hands up in the air saying, I've written it all down for you.
Read the book.
The path is right there.
Yes, you're right.
And it doesn't make me feel happy that I was right all along because I thought that we could have learned from history, from World War II, pre-World War II, appeasement policies in Europe that failed so spectacularly.
But nobody wanted to listen.
I think it's part of human psychology because the language of appeasement sounds nice.
And I think the biggest mistake the free world made about Vladimir Putin and his regime, they knew he was corrupt.
They knew it was some kind of a mafia.
They knew it was not a democracy, though they paid lip service and they called it some kind of hybrid democracy, the special democracy, sovereign democracy, whatever.
I always say that the moment you see an adjective before the word democracy, it's something that's wrong.
But they never expected him to go that far because they thought, oh, he's already a mega-billionaire.
They have such a comfortable life.
They steal money in Russia and they spend money and park money in the free world.
Why to risk all?
Not paying attention to his true intentions.
And I'm not a shrink.
I couldn't read his mind.
So I'm not a part of psychologist.
But I just listened to Vladimir Putin.
And I grew up in the Soviet Union.
I met enough KGB lieutenant counsels in my life to know how they thought.
And I knew the moment I heard him being a prime minister and a part of the successor back in 1999 when he addressed his former KGB colleagues, technically former KGB colleagues at the headquarters in Lubyanka, saying, no former KGB officers, once KGB, always KGB.
That, you know, for me was the first warning because I knew what it meant.
And he immediately, as a president of Russia, restored Soviet enterprise.
That was another warning sign.
So it was an indication of his plans.
And the moment I heard him say the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, I knew he was up to something.
And that's why I've been saying all along: while Vladimir Putin was our problem in Russia in the first decade of the century, eventually he would be everybody's problem if given the chance.
And it's very unfortunate that not only his words, and again, he had plenty of them said openly, like in Munich, a security conference in Europe in 2007, 15 years ago, when he talked openly about these spheres of influence.
That's a language straight from the Malta-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, and laid down his vision of Europe with NATO being pushed back to 1997 borders and Russia would claim its rights, quote unquote, for direct or indirect control of former Soviet republics and even Eastern European former Soviet satellites.
And then you followed it with attack on against the Republic of Georgia in 2008.
You know, with everything on display, I just couldn't understand what else was needed to understand that this man had serious plans.
His intentions were not limited to becoming the richest.
He wanted to take revenge for the loss or defeat, Soviet defeat in the Cold War.
And also his philosophy, if you may use this word for his worldview, was based on the ideas that were so opposite to our values.
And one of the key elements was violence.
Vladimir Putin believes, as his favorite characters of history, Joseph Stalin or Ivan the Terrible, that violence is not just allowed, but it's desirable tool to control your subjects and also to spread your influence, both domestically and internationally.
You are unsparing in the book and very open and honest about U.S. leadership and how they've misjudged Putin, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama to Donald Trump to Joe Biden, who came after your book, but you've written enough and said enough publicly about him.
I know how you feel.
Let's just go back and start there for a bit, because I know with George W. Bush, you feel he backed himself into a corner with that, I looked into his eyes and saw his soul remark, in a way that sort of handicapped him from being stronger against Putin.
If you wouldn't mind just setting the stage for where Putin was in his leadership then, right?
Because you talk about how the democracy experiment in Russia was about eight years.
It took about eight years from the time the Soviet Union fell to the time they elected a KGB, a former KGB agent, and he started to slowly eradicate all those democratic reforms bit by bit.
Didn't take him that long.
So that's the young Putin at that time.
And talk about what happened after 9-11 and how George W. Bush really hamstrung the United States from being stronger as he eroded those freedoms that had been budding not so long ago in Russia.
Since we have time, so I can afford a little detour in history.
And I can say that I have pretty amazing record of criticizing six U.S. presidents.
It started with my criticism of Bush 41 and then followed with Bill Clinton.
So that's why, you know, if I could present myself as truly bipartisan or non-partisan critics of U.S. foreign policy based on facts.
So that's why, you know, when some people blame me after publication of my book, Winter's Coming, for being so anti-Obama, I pointed out that, you know, I had a pretty good record of going after any president who did, as I believe, something wrong, vis-a-vis Russia, a former Soviet Union, and this part of the world.
And speaking about this meeting in Slovenia in June that you mentioned, I think that was the beginning of Putin's rise as a leader of Russia who managed to charm his Western counterparts.
And he used his KGB knowledge.
I think the tricks were quite primitive, but it did work.
And we all know that one of the turning points in the conversation between Vladimir Putin and Bush 43 was the story that Putin told him, I believe invented, about him being baptized in the Soviet Union and wearing the cross given by the mother and how he always had it on his chest and had to hide it because it wouldn't be welcome in KGB.
Okay, baptized, crossed in the KGB.
Okay, give me a break.
So, but it did work.
Bush, a devoted Christian, he brought the story and it created a bond.
And we should give Putin credit.
He knew how to work with people.
He could read psychology.
He could read people.
That's why he was so successful in winning favors and then even friendship from some of the foreign leaders.
And eventually, bringing them to his side, even using more direct means like bribes.
And Gary, just to interject before you continued, even when I interviewed Putin, and I spent a fair amount of time with him in three separate sit-downs, one of the first things he said to me, and he knew that I was the mother of three children, was how much his mother meant to him, what a close relationship he had with her.
It was an obvious manipulation.
Absolutely, absolutely.
He always tried to play for strengths or weaknesses of the opponent.
It's well known that his first meeting with Angela Merkel, knowing that she disliked dogs, he brought his dog to the meeting.
So this is, again, he knew how to work with individuals at this KGB school, also probably lessons from the streets of Leningrad, some of the sub-criminal culture where it was very important for survival, to actually read your counterpart, to read your friend or your enemy.
And it did work with Bush.
And then the moment came, 9-11.
He was the first foreign leader, Colin Bush.
He knew that that was something that would stay in Bush's mind.
It doesn't matter what he said.
He just offered condolences and full support.
And he knew that he had Bush on his side.
And anything he did afterwards, I think that Bush had great difficulty.
Until the invasion of Georgia in 2008, difficulty of looking at Putin's record, looking at not only his record in KGB, this pre-president's presidency, but also his record as a president,
the Second Chechen War, the hostage crisis in Nordos, the theater in Moscow when the hostages and terrorists were killed, many 150 roughly were killed by this North agent.
Bessland, the school was burned, also terrorists attacked.
The school was burned to the ground with 335 people being killed, more than half of them, children, and the murders of political opponents, including Litvinenko, a former KGB spy who was poisoned by Polonium 210 in London.
So everything that could point out at Putin's true colors, Bush ignored because I think the power of the first contact and also the Putins willingness to always accommodate Bush because they had many more meetings afterwards.
And that's all, you know, helped Putin to neutralize America's opposition, even at the point where they went after Yukos and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the most successful oil company in Russia, the biggest one.
And it was about to merge with one of the largest US corporations to create the mega company that would hopefully, I thought, change the course of Russia and would bring our country into this global trade as a partner, not a spoiler.
And Putin stopped it.
President Kholokovsky privatized or reprivatized company, gave it to his own bodies.
Rolling Back Reforms 00:15:41
And US administration, okay, shrugged their shoulders.
Because they seem to have an attitude of, look, all the stuff that's happening in Russia, that's Russia's problem.
We have our own problems here on the side of the United States.
We're now fighting a war against bin Laden, the Taliban.
And, you know, we're not going to be able to focus on their human rights for the time being.
But you make the case, okay, that's one thing, 9-11.
But we were, because you're a master strategist.
That's how you achieved all these chess titles and victories all your life.
We should have been, as you write, quote, pressing our advantage as soon as the Berlin Wall came down.
And instead, as soon as it came down, we pressed the brakes.
We retreated.
And so it wasn't just, oh, after 9-11, we were busy.
The two previous presidents who you said you criticized, HW and Clinton, didn't handle things the way they should have once we had the moral authority after the Berlin Wall fell.
Yes, going back to 1991, because it's relevant, since one of the very important moments in 1991 was Bush's famous speech in Kiev, Chikin Kiev speech, a few months before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
And in this speech, allegedly penned by Condo Liz Rice, he warned Ukrainians about this pro-independence movement.
He warned them not to follow their nationalists because it could lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
And then that was a nightmare for Bush and his cabinet, for his Secretary of State, Jim Bega III.
So they were terrified by the potential collapse of the Soviet Union because they didn't know how to handle it.
It was a chaos and they wanted to avoid it.
So let me just give you, because we cut us out of that, knowing that you might reference that.
And we have a little soundbite of Bush 41 in what you call, again, the Chiken Kiev speech, 1991.
Here he is.
In Moscow, I outlined our approach.
We will support those in the center and the republics who pursue freedom, democracy, and economic liberty.
We will determine our support not on the basis of personalities, but on the basis of principles.
And we cannot tell you how to reform your society.
We will not try to pick winners and losers in political competition between republics or between republics in the center.
That is your business.
It's not the business of the United States of America.
Do not doubt our real commitment, however, to reform.
Do not think we can presume to solve your problems for you.
So what's he trying to say there, Gary?
Oh, it was a clear message.
You know, stay with Gorbachev, you know, reform, but don't, you know, don't disintegrate.
And it's amazing.
I was young.
I was 28 in 1991.
But I knew that the Soviet Union was doomed.
And I was, I have to admit, shocked by all-powerful American intelligence, because we heard stories about Pentagon and about CIA and just looking just at the wrong things and making predictions that I knew would not materialize.
On November 15th, November 15th, five weeks before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Edward Shevarnadze, who was reappointed Soviet foreign minister, visited Washington, D.C.
I was also there, just I was receiving an award there.
And I saw on TV, this is the it's a big celebration.
Bush and Baker and other members of cabinet, they received Shevarnadze and they talked about a new dawn in Soviet-American relations.
Again, five weeks before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
And why it's important, because now we are seeing the, it's like a repetition of history.
We are revisiting it.
Because I think one of the problems of this administration, of all relevant agencies like Pentagon, CIA, the state, is the same fear that if Ukraine wins the war and Putin's army is defeated, Crimeans return back to Ukraine and Putin's regime collapses, what happens in Russia?
So for me, it's like, you know, seeing the signal.
And that's why I want to remind our audience about 1991.
But it's amazing that now we are in 2022.
We could have learned something.
And as you said, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War offered America a unique opportunity to rebuild the world, to actually offer a new vision.
In 1992, America was all-powerful.
You could have reformed the United Nations.
You could have demanded that countries would not be simply paying lip service to democratic procedures, but will carry general reforms.
Democracy was a fashion.
Everybody wanted to be democratic or at least look democratic.
So, and then eight years, eight years of eight Clinton years, and then, you know, al-Qaeda was ready to strike.
The attack on America in 2001, 9-11, I think was a result of failure of imagination.
What America needed is the same vision as the Harry Truman administration had in 1946.
At that time, it was building institutions to oppose communism, the threat of communism to Europe and the rest of the world.
And these institutions did work.
They helped America to stop communism and then defeat it.
And all presidents, Democrats and Republicans alike, they pushed this agenda, relying on the institutions built by Harry Truman and his team.
We needed something similar, but Bill Clinton was not Harry Truman.
But also, Americans had a very different attitude.
It's easy to blame the leader, but I think the mood of people who were behind Harry Truman, people who won the World War II, beating Germany and Japan, and who were willing to make sacrifices, was very different from the nation that was relieved in 1991, 1992, and thought about, okay, comfortable life.
It's not surprising that Francis Fukuyama book, The End of History, was a bestseller.
I have to admit, I also thought that, you know, we would never deal again with the horrors of totalitarian past.
Yeah, but you're making a good point, though, because the mood of the country does in large part dictate policy.
That would explain, if not excuse, Barack Obama's policy towards Putin, which really seemed to be almost on bended knee.
And I don't think the American people felt that way, but I do think by the time he took office, we were war-wear.
You know, we were eight, right?
We were seven years into the war against Al-Qaeda and so on.
And he seemed to have this, you tell me, but just this utopian view of what he was capable of and how if he just made nice nice with guys like Putin, we'd have a kinder, gentler, better world.
Yes, I think Obama's foreign policy was based on his naive beliefs that the world could be a better place if America retreat, if America.
It's not just going back to the trenches, because we had these shifts in U.S. presidencies.
You had more aggressive policy of Harry Truman, then Eisenhower more or less going back to the trenches, then JFK and Johnson, then even Nixon went back to the trenches trying to stop the war in Vietnam, actually finishing this war in Vietnam.
So it was always back and forth.
But Obama's decision to change, dramatically change American foreign policy was based not only on the demand from the public.
You're right, there was a mood.
So people were tired of these wars and they didn't understand.
So what's it for America in Iraq or in Afghanistan?
But it was ideological.
And it was the growing segment of American society that demanded America's not only retreat, but apology.
And I think that led to a very dangerous phenomenon of, as I said, significant segment of American society believing that America was not a solution, but rather a problem.
And without America's playing an active role, they called world policemen, the world would be a better place.
You know, amazingly, it's this now when these people are just laying down these arguments, they simply ignore the fact that Obama's retreat and apologies and reset policy with Russia and total rejection of facts on the ground led to the retreat of democracy globally.
I don't think it's a mere coincidence that when you look at the Freedom House timeline, that last 16 years, democracy is on retreat.
Democracy has been steadily losing ground.
And that's exactly the moment where Barack Obama laid down his vision of the future world and tried to make friends with all American foes.
So from Russia to Iran to just, you name it.
And it's interesting because you can't, you know, our viewers and listeners can't confuse our trying to force democracy on lands that clearly had no interest in it.
You know, places like Iraq or Afghanistan.
I mean, there's some interest, but it's, you know, these are not countries that are going to become beacons of democracy.
And a country like Russia, where they wanted democracy, there was a baby democracy.
There I go.
I have a word before of it, but there was until they elected Putin and then he started to roll back all the reforms.
That's different.
Those two things are not the same.
Yes, but I will be a little bit more generous to Iraqis and Afghanistan.
So it's the whatever we say about America's intervention in Afghanistan.
I mean, it helped hundreds of thousands of Afghanistan, especially women.
It had an effect.
And now, by the way, I'm confused when I see some far-left groups that advocated for Americans' withdrawal at any cost from Afghanistan.
Now they're complaining about the plight of Afghani women, especially girls.
Yeah, but it's this, can you just connect these two things together?
And just to clarify what I'm saying, you know, because there's a lot of the folks who don't want us to get involved right now in Ukraine in any more meaningful ways cite the Bush policies, the years of 43, saying our attempts to spread democracy were disastrous and cost a lot of American blood and treasure.
And we should learn from our past and not go down that path again.
Okay, that's one thing.
We also have to learn from the Obama years and from the Trump years, the Obama years, unbended knee with roses towards guys like Putin doesn't work.
It leads him to be more aggressive in the region and not imposing severe consequences on him is more provocative than peaceful.
But I'm just trying to start at that first lesson with respect to George W. Bush and his and Condi's and Cheney's attempts to spread democracy throughout parts of the world that seem to have very little interest in it.
Go ahead.
Yes, no, it's a very important point.
So now it's the actually, I would put Ukraine as a separate case study because, yeah, Ukraine is not Iraq.
It's not Afghanistan.
Ukrainians had their democracy.
And this is something that the audience should understand when they look at Ukraine and Russia.
Now they can understand the difference, but still, you know, they even can, you know, many, many, many know even the geography of Ukraine because you see that the map, a Ukrainian map, and all these cities that are now in the center of global attention.
But many Ukrainians do speak Russian.
So and we hear arguments that, oh, Ukraine is Russians, the same people.
They're two, they're very, very close brothers, sisters, maybe cousins.
Yes and no.
It's Ukrainian language is very close to Russian, but many Ukrainians in the East and the South, they speak Russian, you know, the same Russian as Russians do, as I do.
But Ukraine and Russia parted, not just in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the most important moment was in 1994 when Ukrainians had presidential elections and the sitting president, Leonid Kravchuk, lost the elections and walked away.
So Ukraine had probably the most important element of a democracy, a peaceful transit of power.
And that's made the hell of a difference because Russia never had it.
Yeltsin didn't want to leave power.
Election in 1996 was, yeah, it was free, but not fair.
And of course, you know, after Putin's appearance, it was no longer free or fair.
So we all knew the result of the elections.
That's why I said the difference between Russian politics and chess is that in chess we have fixed rules and unpredictable results.
In Russia, you know, rules change, but results stay the same.
It's not a game that smart man plays.
Wait, wait, let me just stand you by there for one second, Gary, because I want to squeeze in something else and then come back to this because this is important, how we got here.
I mean, I think you can't understand where to go, what the right next move is without understanding how we got here.
That's where I want to pick it up in one minute.
So, Gary, we talked about sort of pre-41.
We talked about, well, pre-43, I should say, 41, and then Bill Clinton and now 43 and his comments about Putin's soul and so on.
And now, Obama had a couple of massive things happen during his presidency with respect to this region of the world.
2008 was right before he came into office when Putin took Georgia, when he invaded Georgia.
And then 2014 is when he invaded Ukraine and got much more aggressive there.
And there were some sanctions placed on Putin, which I think the Obama defenders would say were nice and severe and appropriate.
But it was a nothing.
And you had been predicting all along, listen to me, this is going to result in a more aggressive Putin.
He's not done.
He doesn't respect responses like this.
We've done absolutely nothing.
You wait.
He's going to do more.
Yep.
When Putin attacked the Republic of Georgia, and technically it was not him.
The Maidan Moment 00:15:34
There was his shadow man, Medvedev, who was sitting there for years.
And by the way, that was also an important part of Putin's plan.
He was not ready to assure power after his first two terms.
He could sense that the moment was not right.
So he needed someone who could give it his four years break.
And for me, the last indication of his plans to stay in power forever was his decision, Putin's decision, to stay as a prime minister.
If he decided, if he wanted to retire, if he wanted to enjoy life and he was already a mega billionaire, I'm sure he could have done that without any difficulties.
Even with all the crimes he committed before, I'm sure he'll find enough understanding in the free world to close eyes for that.
And Russia would move into his new Medvedev era, liberalization.
So it's the, yeah, that's what everybody expected.
But he stayed behind Medvedev.
Technically, by Russian constitution, by the law of the land, Medvedev could have fired Putin with a stroke of his pen.
But in a mafia-like structures, in dictatorships, it's not about official position, but it's about unofficial grip on power.
Technically, Stalin was never the head of the state, but he was calling all the shots.
Same with Putin.
And to my surprise and horror, Americans and Europeans have been spending years, numerous attempts to court Medvedev and his entourage, trying to sort of build relations and to offer Medvedev some kind of political cloud to make sure that Putin would never come back.
Of course, it failed.
And the aggression against the Republic of Georgia was the first sign that Putin was ready to move.
And his speech in Munich was not just a declaration, but was a plan.
And Obama's first act was a knock for a policy of reset.
Yeah, with Hillary Clinton.
We have that much.
Absolutely.
She sat there and she gave this button that was supposed to say reset in Russian.
And I know you've pointed out that's not what it said.
We misspelled it.
What did it say in fact?
Yeah, it was overweight, actually.
Yes, that's the, yeah, it was, it was totally opposite.
They added, you know, two letters.
You know, somebody State Department blew it up.
Yeah.
So it was just, you know, it was a doomed policy.
And it started with a big mistake, you know, in definition.
Yeah.
And then you had Obama caught on tape saying to Medvedev, I just need more flexibility after the election.
That was 2012 already.
But yes, it's the after attack on the Republic of Georgia.
Americans basically ignored it.
Europeans spend months trying to make sure that the blame is split evenly between Russia and Republic of Georgia, trying to find any plausible explanation to blame former president of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili for provoking Russia.
Because they're like, you know, we don't have to get involved.
Oh, yeah, but it's the, again, Sakashvili knew that it was imminent.
Invasion was imminent.
And after the invasion, in August 2008, I wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal saying Ukraine would be next.
And when people ask me, how did I know?
I said, I looked at the map.
And it was very clear.
Putin wanted to make sure that no former Soviet Republic, independent states now, would join NATO.
And Georgia was moving in this direction westward.
He stopped it.
And of course, Ukraine was a much bigger target.
And for me, it was just a matter of time.
Putin would be looking for right moment to attack.
And also, you could hear this, you know, this growing frustration in the tone of Russian propaganda.
They have not attacked Ukraine yet, because it's important to remember that since 1991 to 2014, all Russian presidents, Yeltsin, Putin, then Medvedev, and then Putin, signed numerous treaties with Ukraine.
And Russia made no, not a single demand about Ukrainian territory, about an inch of Ukrainian territory.
And all these treaties, agreements have been ratified by several Russian parliaments.
So the uniqueness of the Crimean annexation was that it had no diplomatic prelude.
Even Adolf Hitler or Saddam Hussein, they tried to pretend that they had claims.
They were talking about Dancing Corridor as Hitler or Saddam Hussein about Kuwait as being taken away from Iraq by British colonial powers.
Putin didn't even bother.
And I knew that he would act when he thought he could do that.
And obviously, Obama's policy encouraged him because prior to the Crimea, we had few important moments that convinced Putin that Obama would not act.
One is, let's, you know, again, remind our audience, it's a green revolution in Iran in 2009.
I know that many Iranians waited for Americans at least to offer moral support.
Nothing.
They let Iranian mullahs to destroy it.
And I think the first month of the revolution, the Iranian government, the Iranian dictatorship, was very cautious, ultra-cautious, because they didn't know what would be American reaction.
Don't forget, American troops were standing next door in Iraq.
So recognizing America would not intervene, they crushed it.
Then, of course, Arab Spring.
And I think it's quite a disastrous America's response because, again, it required policy.
It was something has been changing.
And America was, as we know, leading from behind.
And I'm not talking about the tragedy of Benghazi.
Again, the turning point from Putin's perspective was Syria.
That's where Americans could make all the difference.
And I have no doubt Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons from Putin's permission, having Putin's permission.
I think for Putin, it was a test.
And America failed the test.
Obama was ready to strike and then backed off.
What about the ousting back, you know, in terms of our policy?
I mean, we are said to have helped oust the pro-Russian Ukrainian leader Yanukovych, right, in what Russia and Putin describe as a coup.
And his defenders, Putin's defenders, say, if I have my chronology right, that's one of the reasons he took Crimea.
It's just he'd had it.
He was sick of being pushed around and he was trying to restore the scales of justice.
Okay, I'm just giving you the other side.
Look, Ukrainians had their first Maidan, the first protest back in 2004.
Because as I mentioned already, they elected a challenger to become a president in 1994.
So they ousted by ballot, not by bullets, by ballot, the first president of Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk.
And they were very sensitive to any attempts to stay in power against their will.
And they knew that election in 2004 was stolen.
And that's why we saw a protest of Maidan.
It was fairly peaceful because Yanukovych didn't have the same kind of backing from Russia.
And he agreed just to have a third ballot.
And it was fair elections and he lost.
By the way, to tell you that Ukraine was a democracy, the same Yanukovych came back five years later because Ukrainians were not happy with Yushchenko and with his coalition.
So the country changed presidents as the gloves in a good or bad weather.
And that's, again, that's a democracy.
It was a free country.
Yes, corrupt?
Yeah, you can't deny it.
Not very successful economically, yes, but it was a free country.
And that was a fundamental difference between Ukrainians living in the east of Ukraine, who had the same background as Russians living on the other side of the border, spoke the same language, read probably the same newspapers in the Soviet Union, watched the same movies, but they used to live in a free country and they were very sensitive to any attempts to force them accepting a president, a ruler they didn't like.
And also, and it's 2004.
Now, you talked about 2014.
That was very violent because Yanukovych already had full backing of Putin and he wanted to push Ukraine back from what nation wanted, joining Europe.
And he decided to denounce the agreement with the European Union and Ukrainians protested.
And then he used force.
He shot some people.
And then we had a second Maidan.
It was not as peaceful as the first one, no dances.
There was a fight.
Dozens of people, actually, probably about 200 were killed.
But Ukrainians won the battle in Kiev because the nation didn't want Yanukovych to turn Ukraine into Russian satellite.
I didn't see Americans there.
And again, the moment when you hear Putin's argument, oh, America was behind it, I could see Russian troops in Syria.
I could see Russian bombers destroying rebel strongholds and carpet bombing Galapago.
I could see now Russian militants across Africa.
It's all prior to latest invasion of Ukraine.
I didn't see Americans intervening directly in Ukrainian revolution.
Whether it was a support, maybe, but again, it's probably insignificant because as someone who was involved in pro-democracy movement in Russia, I can tell you we never had any direct or even indirect support from Americans.
Yes, simply yes.
Yes.
Being invited to Spaso House, the residence of American ambassador, yes.
Many Russian NGOs received some grants from American-led organizations, though, again, my organization never did it.
But again, when you look at the even amount of these grants, it's just a drop in an ocean compared to the amounts of funds that Putin regime could rally to create some fake organizations that fought back.
And of course, amount of money Putin has been using effectively supporting dictators around the world and buying favors from Western politicians like Gorkho Schroder.
So going back to 2013, that for me was a very important moment.
Assad had to be ousted because Obama said, President of the United States said, using chemical weapons, that's a red line.
That's the red line.
And he stopped.
He stopped short.
And I knew that's an open invitation to Putin.
I remember, I think I was on a Donald Show, The Last Word, and we had an argument.
I said, that's something that would resonate, actually would have an effect beyond Middle East.
And I was dismissed.
Okay, Crimea was inevitable.
And also a year late, a year earlier, you all remember debates, Obama Romney.
And Mitt Romney said something that, you know, now it's, it's, nobody argues.
Russia was our American number one geopolitical fall.
Obama's reaction, ha, it stays as you are a dinosaur.
You just, you know, you belong to a political stone age.
It's it's it's cold war.
We live in a different era.
Maybe you missed, you know, that's this time.
It's a calendar.
It's 21st century.
Okay.
I'm, I still think Obama has to apologize for being so wrong.
And again, that's the message that Putin got.
He has been remarkably silent in the course of decade.
I mean, he sent out a couple of tweets.
That's it.
He's read remarkably silent because these are his policies and Angela Merkel's policies and Emmanuel Macron, right, to some extent that are coming back to haunt us.
Yeah, but let's, you know, Macron, you know, let's, I'm very critical of Macron, but the problem with Macron is that he is a French president.
And with all criticism from Macron, we should remember that his opponents are much worse.
Yeah.
When you look at the French presidential elections, that in a few days' time.
So it's Macron is a leading candidate and next second ballot will be him against Marine Le Pen.
But the next three candidates that combining vote of this, Marine Le Pen, far left, Melanchona, and far, far right, Zimur, they combined 45, 46%.
They're all pro-Putin.
So nearly half of the French population supporting openly pro-Putin candidates.
So that's why let's give Macron a little bit of credit because he's not good.
He's not resolute, but at least he prevents France of joining Putin's camp.
It's about French voters.
Yeah, okay.
So, I mean, to me, this is very educational because I do think there's still a belief, especially in sort of more liberal America.
And maybe even now, the factions are not that clear politically anymore, liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican when it comes to this conflict, but that if we just mind our own business, we don't do anything to antagonize Putin, you know, this is their issue.
Let's stay out of it and let them fight it out, that that somehow is going to protect America, that we can stay out of it.
We can be more isolationist now.
You know, the Obama vision was friends.
That's not happening.
And then I think the Trump vision was more like talk tough, but actually, you know, act tough, but don't talk tough.
And maybe that'll get us someplace.
Not exactly.
And now here we are.
And I think what we're learning is nothing's worked against him except for muscle.
Muscle, he understands, like any bully in the school ground.
Yes, absolutely.
Absolutely.
And I think we have now three consecutive presidencies, Obama, Trump, and now Biden, that had very different perspectives about America's role in the world, even from Clinton and Bush 43.
Because with all the criticism what we can lay down for Clinton policies or Bush 43 policies, they will view themselves as the leaders of the free world.
Obama, Trump, and until now, we'll see what happens with Biden administration.
But originally, Biden's administration was built to also look for domestic affairs.
That's a trend.
And it's happened first time.
We had three consecutive presidencies that wanted America to be removed from the world stage for different reasons.
They were very isolationists.
And, of course, it changed the balance in the world and and emboldened Putins and other thax and terrorists and dictators to grab what America left um left uh uh, unprotected.
World War III Risks 00:14:19
Yeah, we're seeing the effects of that that foreign policy play out in front of our very eyes.
All right, stand by uh, quick break.
And then back with Gary Kasparov, whose fascinating life story has given him so much wisdom, and we're lucky to have it here.
And, by the way, you can watch the show, you guys, if you want to see it visually, on our youtube channel youtube.com, slash Megan Kelly.
So please check that out and download the podcast as well.
Okay so, Gary the?
Uh.
Just a little bit on the latest in Ukraine, where the the war has definitely gone a lot better for Ukraine than people could have hoped when it first started.
We, I think the conventional wisdom was, this will be over quickly uh, in Putin's favor, and it hasn't.
That's not to say that we don't hear about these atrocities coming out of Ukraine.
I mean yes, it's daily, but this week's news was particularly bad.
Um, out of Butcha, the town of Butcha, where there are shocking reports this week of bodies littering the streets, of the bodies having civilians this is with hands tied behind their backs, having been shot in the head, in the back of the head.
Now Western leaders calling for war crimes investigations?
Uh, of course Russia the, the Ministry OF Defense, says this is all fake, this is fake video, and so on.
That's what they said in Syria too, when we saw similar atrocities.
But American reporters from CNN and other outlets are now personally reporting.
They observed mass graves in the town.
Uh, the mayor saying up to 300 victims may be buried there.
President Zelensky is calling it genocide.
President Zelensky, again with an emotional appeal uh to the West to pay attention to what we're seeing.
This was him speaking to the UN on tuesday.
Has the voice of a female translator on it listen?
They killed entire families, adults and children, and they tried to burn the bodies.
So where is the security that the Security Council needs to guarantee?
It's not there.
Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to close the?
U. Do you think that the time of international law is gone?
If your answer is no, then you need to act immediately.
So here's what they've done.
Gary, this is An?
This broke just as we came on on the air.
U.s just announcing new sanctions uh, CNN reporting.
The?
U.s announced new sanctions wednesday on Russian financial institutions and individuals, including Putin's two adult daughters, as it aims to increase economic pressure on Russia and Putin himself following what happened in Butcha.
The?
U.s also announced sanctions on the wife and daughter of Putin's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov um.
With respect to Putin's daughters, apparently we believe that he's been hiding his assets with them.
That's why they are being targeted.
I don't know, does that?
Does that grab you as anything impressive?
Better than nothing, but for me it tells that there was no, and still there is no, strategy in in confronting Putin.
Putin regime strategy means you know the goal.
So, going back to Harry S Truman or Fdr?
Uh or Ronald Reagan, you knew there was a strategy.
They lay down the strategy and they tried to to To accomplish it by using various tools at their Disposal.
Right now, America is still struggling to identify the goal of the war in Ukraine.
For me, it should be very clear.
We have to do absolutely everything to make Ukraine win and to recover its territory.
That means that we have to provide Ukraine with any weapons they need to win the war.
We're not doing that.
And America is still a stumbling block in this data coalition.
And we have to declare that all of all sanctions that are being now imposed on Russia will not be lifted before Ukrainian territorial integrity has been fully restored, Crimea included.
That's a message that will, I think, make a lot of people in Putin's anto-rush thinking hard about the future.
As of now, we see measures, tactics.
So, sanctions, first package, second package, third package.
It also tells us that all stories from the White House and the state that accompanied Biden's summits with Putin.
And I say summits because one summit was in person in Geneva last June, but then there were two very lengthy calls on video calls that I would also qualify as summits.
And we were told that these calls and these meetings, the conversations, they were used by Biden and his team to warn Putin against invading Ukraine.
It seemed to me that Putin didn't listen or he just had an impression that it was just all talk, hot air, and he attacked.
And while Americans told the world and Ukrainians that they prepared some hellish sanctions, it seems to me that now it's six weeks of war.
So they're still bringing one package after another.
And as for military supply to Ukraine, we are way, way behind of the schedule that had to be met to make Ukrainians ready to repel Russian attacks and now to advance.
And it's not just, you know, it's Biden administration.
It's easy to blame politicians.
But we know that the Biden administration followed the advice from Pentagon and CIA.
American intelligence believed that the Kiev would fall in four days, 96 hours.
General Milley.
And it still hasn't.
Yeah, it hasn't, yeah.
But General Milley, in the beginning of February, testified before the House committee.
It was a closed meeting, but now remarks have been publicized.
He told American lawmakers that the Ukrainian army would be destroyed in three days.
Amazing.
And now General Milley is telling us that the war would go for years.
By the way, this is the same Pentagon that failed in Afghanistan.
There was also, it's unbelievable failure to evaluate the situation on the ground after so many years of being there.
So I wonder, you know, so for how long people that were so wrong recently and proved to be incapable of analyzing the information from the ground from these most sensitive parts of the global conflicts, they are now, they will continue giving advice to the administration.
And also, you know, it's not only just about General Milley, it's about so many experts that were wrong all these years.
And now they are criticizing not only myself, but others who are advocating for more aggressive policy in Ukraine, support for Ukraine, saying that, you know, we're trying to push free world into the open conflict with Russia.
Again, ignoring the fact that their policies is just emboldened Putin to become more and more aggressive.
In your 2015 book, you were saying he's going to go back.
He's going to invade Ukraine again.
He's going, trust me, he's not done.
And then you said, my detractors say the answer to my argument is, well, we don't want World War III, which is exactly what we're hearing now, right?
Like this.
And I talked to the guys on the other side of you on this particular issue, not you personally, but your positions.
And that is exactly what they're worried about.
And I understand that concern.
We don't want World War III.
No one wants that.
But you've been saying for a long time, people use that and it's a straw, man, are getting more involved in Ukraine.
And you're not talking about a full ground war with American infantry on the ground in Ukraine, but something more militarily than we're doing.
You're saying that that will not lead to World War III.
In fact, it will help stave it off.
Look, sanctions that are now being in place, same sanctions.
Maybe half of them eight years ago would have changed the game.
Sanctions should be preventive.
That's the nature of sanctions.
So you respond to some kind of aggression and you do your response includes sanctions that will put a price tag on any further aggression.
Unfortunately, when you look at Putin's aggression, the history of Putin's aggression, all the sanctions, they were reactive and they were very weak.
Obama's bragging about American sanctions in 2014, 2015, I think he said, oh, Russian economy is in tatters now.
Okay, give me a break.
So Putin was laughing loud.
So probably you can hear him laughing in the United States.
And my point was fairly simple.
Either you have sanctions that could make the cost of aggression too high for Putin, or you help Ukraine to rearm, to give them weapons, to defend themselves, or you do both.
But you will make clear to Putin that you are in the game.
And that could have saved us from the disaster now.
Now, that was exactly the argument you mentioned.
Oh, you want us to be involved directly?
It will drag us into World War III.
The problem is the wars, if you go back to World War II, for instance, the wars with dictators began not because of this strengths of the free world, but the opposite.
The war is a result of the miscalculation of a dictator who believes that he could move far without meeting adequate response.
And that's why now we reach a point where we have to pay much higher price.
And that's why those in Germany or in Europe who are saying, oh, we don't want to freeze.
We can't afford a total embargo on Russian oil and gas export.
Yes, but maybe you should recognize that it's your policy.
Two decades, Jerk Schroeder, then Angel Merkel, that made Germany dependent on Russian gas.
And now maybe you have to suffer a little bit.
Maybe you have to pay for your mistakes, for your willingness to do business with Putin, for your politicians insisting that having Nord Stream 1, Nord Stream 2 would give Germany leverage over Putin, not the other way around.
And now Ukrainians are paying in blood in their lives for your.
It's not just Ukrainians, because forgive me, but I think a lot of people are like, well, I don't want to pay more for my energy bill.
And it's not my fault that my president struck a bad deal in Germany.
And I have heart for the Ukrainians, but I got to worry about my own family, Ukrainians.
But it's not just the Ukrainians.
This is the point you've been trying to make all along.
It's not going to stop there.
That's what you've been warning.
It's not going to stop.
Yes, exactly.
This is, it's because it's right now we have a chance to stop Putin because Ukrainians are willing to make the sacrifices.
They have an army that can stop and destroy Putin's war machine.
Because if Putin, God forbid, wins in Ukraine, he'll move on.
And then we come to the point where this is NATO, Article 5.
And what's next?
Are we going to defend Poland or Lithuania with American soldiers?
Now, just, you know, make no mistake.
If America follows its obligations by NATO, Article 5, it will have to bring not only the planes and missiles, but boots on the ground.
I don't think that it's going to happen.
Article 5 is a piece of paper.
I don't believe there's any political will.
It's all about, oh, maybe we can give Ukraine enough weapons to survive.
And I think that's wrong.
It's morally wrong.
It's politically wrong.
And for those who say, oh, no fly zone or any aggressive U.S. policy of giving Ukraine advanced weapons like missiles that didn't hit Russian ships in the Black Sea.
By the way, that's one of the biggest military advantages of Russia because the most powerful missiles being fired from these warships in the Black Sea.
Oh, it will bring us into the war.
I don't think so.
There is a risk of Putin, you know, using WMDs.
Yes, there is a risk.
The question is, what do we do to minimize the risk?
And my answer is exactly the opposite.
If we show weakness, he could get involved.
But it's not only him, it's his generals and admirals that will believe that they can push the button, follow Putin's order, use tactical nuclear or chemical weapons without being punished instantly for that.
And the opposite would be for America, for NATO, making it very clear that any use of WMD will be met decisively by NATO.
And I bet you, again, I cannot bet my bottom dollar, and I don't want us to come to this point, but my instincts tell me that no Russian admiral, no Russian general will follow Putin's order if he knows that he will be punished not in five years in Hague at international criminal court, but in five minutes because a NATO missile will come back.
Same with Russian pilots.
If there's no fly zone, I don't think Russian pilots are chemically.
They're not being trained to die for Putin.
They're very good in bombing hospitals and other civil objects on the ground.
But meeting NATO pilots in air, I doubt very much.
So it's about hedging our risks.
And my answer is that the strong response now, which could be costly, could be risky, but that's a result of our feckless policies over 15 years since Putin's declaration of his plans back in 2007.
Turning the Tide 00:10:41
So it's time to recognize.
We miss this moment now, the price goes up.
And if, God forbid, Putin crushes Ukrainian defense and goes around and attacks NATO country, Lithuania or Poland, then we have two choices: boots on the ground, and that will pay with the blood of American soldiers, or total capitulation.
The end of NATO and total triumph for Putin.
And that's again, that will resonate not only in Europe.
That will resonate in the Middle East with Iran.
And of course, China will immediately look at Taiwan ready to strike.
Okay, I want to ask you about whether you think any of the sanctions that we've put in place will lead to a different result.
Because I know early in this conflict, you were saying if we don't respond forcefully, we are going to see China take Taiwan.
We are going to see Russia take more territory.
Of course, a lot's happened since then.
And there have been some pretty remarkable economic sanctions by all of the West.
So I'm wondering whether you think even those will act as a deterrent right now to Putin in doing anything else, regardless of how Ukraine comes out, because that's a lot of pain that they may not let up on.
But before you comment on that, I just want to tell our audience, as you're speaking, I'm thinking about this.
On March 16th, Jillian Tet in the Financial Times, she writes for the Financial Times, she's British, she posted an article, quote, why I should have listened to Gary Kasparov about Putin.
And she says, you came to dinner at her house in New York a few years ago, and it was, quote, a memorably intense evening.
She said, as we dug in to dessert, Kasparov told the assembled group of American policymakers and financiers how Putin was becoming increasingly authoritarian.
This is years ago, isolated from the West, and as a result, likely to lash out at neighbors such as Ukraine in a dangerous way.
She writes that the rest of the table, quote, rowdily dismissed his catastrophizing.
And Kasparov became heated.
She said, she writes, given Kasparov's acuity in predicting current events, I called him up.
I apologized for the way that we didn't listen.
And I asked what he thinks might happen next.
He believes Putin has already lost this battle in the sense that his key objective of swiftly annexing Ukraine has failed.
And said, I don't think a Ukrainian leader can accept anything less than the return of the land in Crimea.
This war will end with a Ukrainian flag on Sevastopol.
But my point is, you've been dismissed by too many with your warnings about what Putin will do next.
And here you are warning.
If he wins, if he's allowed to declare victory, if he's allowed to keep the territories he annexed or more, I mean, God forbid, all of Ukraine, you're saying now he'll go further.
There will be more countries he'll attack like Poland.
And that's why we need to listen to you right now.
So has your prediction on that front changed at all given the economic sanctions that the West has imposed on him?
Hopefully.
So we see that the Western response to Putin's aggression is getting stronger and stronger.
Again, it's still leading from behind because we could see more atrocities.
And by the way, Bucha is a first of many.
It's a relatively small town.
Wait until Mariupol will be liberated.
And I don't know what we'll find out there.
So Ukrainians are paying massive price in human lives.
We're talking about thousands already.
It will be in tens of thousands of lives.
And they're still willing to fight.
And Putin failed to take over Kiev.
He failed to destroy Ukrainian sovereignty.
Volodymyr Zelensky emerged as the greatest hero of our time.
But Putin still has enough military to win battles in the east and the south and to cut Ukraine from the sea.
And as you said correctly, declare victory.
That's enough for him.
Because regimes like Putin's cannot survive military defeat.
That's why it's very important for America and NATO to declare our goal of making Ukraine win this war and offering Ukraine any assistance they need.
And sanctions will not be lifted until Ukrainian territory has been cleared from Russian occupation forces, Crimea and Sevastopol included.
So that's, you know, that's the strategy that I believe can lead to the collapse of Putin's regime in Russia.
And that's all we need because as long as Putin stays in power, there will be no peace.
I don't want to predict his next move, Lithuania, Poland, maybe Estonia, but he will not offer us any lasting peace because he needs conflict.
You just have to listen to Russian propaganda.
It goes back to Nazi time, to Stalin's time, and it's probably even worse because at least in the 30s or 40s, nobody can verify these lies.
Now they're lying and they know that we can check it.
Just push the button on our device.
So we can look at the screen and we know that it's all lies.
They don't care.
So I think as long as this regime continues its push against free will, against our civilization.
So we have to recognize it's an existential threat.
Because as I said, the world is getting smaller and smaller.
The battle in Ukraine, which is a front line of freedom today, will resonate in the Middle East, in the Far East, China, Taiwan, everywhere in the world.
So we have been seeing the steady advance of forces of darkness, totalitarianism and terrorism over the last 16 years.
Ukraine can help us to turn the tide, but we have to help Ukraine.
And that's why we should not do it step by step.
We have to come up with most powerful thrust.
The West can do that.
And I think China, by the way, is sitting now on the fence because they saw that while the West is not doing enough for Ukraine to win, but it's enough to punish Putin and his economy.
I don't think China is ready for the same challenge.
But again, the outcome of the battle for Ukraine, will define the outcome of the global battle that will continue for many years between forces of freedom and tyranny.
There are reports that we're more interested in ending it than winning it.
You know, that we just want Ukraine to end it, not to win it.
And that the U.S. is pushing for a result that would look like maybe Putin gets to keep the territories he's already annexed.
You know, he keeps Crimea.
He keeps these territories and then retreats.
And then he gets to declare victory.
We've got to give him the opportunity to save face or he won't stop is the thinking.
And Ukraine can say, okay, we've got the territory we have left.
They didn't take Kyiv.
Zelensky is still in power.
And probably they won't be allowed to join the European Union or NATO.
Two things that they were not guaranteed.
We should point out to the audience, there's a lot you have to do in order to join the EU or join NATO.
And there are all these sorts of requirements that Ukraine may not necessarily meet and hasn't met so far.
So it was never a lock.
Anyway, that's what it seems we may be pushing.
Like, just give up those terrorists.
Let him have those territories and everyone will just call it a day.
Yes, it's, I don't know, it's for a fact, but it looks like there's powerful factions in this administration that would like to end the war because they see it as a destruction.
We talked about U.S. foreign policy changing from Obama to Trump to Biden.
And now Biden is just, it's at a nexus.
He is forced to take much larger role that he wanted.
The Americans' debacle or just retreat stampede from Afghanistan was a result of this ideological pressure.
This administration was built to address exclusively domestic affairs.
It was built on a belief that America should do as little as possible outside of the United States, in the rest of the world, and concentrate on the ills of the American society and push an agenda that's, to my taste, is too far left.
Now, this agenda is dead.
It's for many reasons.
So you talked about high price of gallon of gas and of course inflation and related economic issues.
That's, you know, that's, because it's the war in Ukraine definitely has an effect.
But this administration is still resisting calls to boost American domestic production.
I mean, I understand that we have, you know, pressure from the Green New Deal activists.
But right now we're talking about present.
We're talking about economic hardship in this country and also about the global crisis.
And we know that Putin's regime, among many other dictators, is being funded by these high oil prices.
So that's the extracting more oil from American soil will help directly and indirectly in America, but also will deny Putin some of the benefits of his oil expert, which unfortunately is still not banned.
And of course, it's very difficult to talk about other important issues as police brutality when you look at Bucha and Mariupol.
So that's why I'm under the impression that Biden is, you know, always have to make choices.
And he's pressured by forces in his administration to find any solution that could end the war and let them go back to domestic agenda.
I think they already missed this moment, frankly speaking.
I think that after Butcher, it's impossible to force Ukrainians to accept any deal that will look like Putin's victory.
So even those who would like to give Putin off-ramp, I think they are no longer calling the shots.
And it seems to me that Biden's remarks about Putin's being war criminal and Putin's not staying in power, for God's sake, this man should not stay in power, and then backtracked by administration and some members of the administration, and then him repeating it.
I think it's some kind of, you know, it's an indication that there's a fight inside, inside the White House and other agencies about the policy toward Russia.
And somehow I sense that Joe Biden, who was a creature of the Cold War, I think he was elected in the Senate half a century ago.
I think his heart is in the right place and he's trying to push it in the right direction, but he's being slowed down by others.
From Chess to Strategy 00:06:51
Yeah, he's not in charge.
Right, because he keeps, he makes these statements.
Then the White House press team rolls them back or the Secretary of State rolls them back.
And then Biden, when he gets back to the microphone, says, I meant every word.
It's like, wait a minute, who is in charge?
Who's actually calling the shots here?
All right, listen, stand by because I really, next, we've got to get into your background.
It's so amazing.
It's so fascinating.
And I've watched so much stuff about your upbringing and your chess accomplishments.
I've got to ask you about man versus machine and all of it.
We're going to do that right after this quick break.
Gary Kasparov stays with us.
Just a bit about Gary.
We told you some at the top of the show.
Now 58 years old, born in Baku, Azerbaijan in the Soviet Union in 1963.
Now you live in New York City.
But when you were a child, you became the under-18 chess champion of the USSR at just age 12, 12.
And the world under 20 champion at age 17, then to the surprise of no one, at the age of 22, the youngest world chess champion in history, world, at age 22, world chess champion in 1985.
You defended that title five times.
So what, like, what did your parents know that starting you in chess at a very young age was important and could develop you?
I mean, I realize it was very much prized in the former Soviet Union as a sign of intellectual power and greatness.
And it was one of the reasons that the USSR really loved to have all the chess champions.
But is that what made your parents push you into it?
Or did you show a natural aptitude right from the beginning or both?
No, it was accidental.
So you're right, stating that chess in the USSR was a very important ideological tool.
It was supported by the state to demonstrate the intellectual superiority of the communist regime over Decadent West.
So, of course, I benefited from this state support.
But it started at one of the winter evenings at home.
I was five and a half, getting close to six years old, and watched my parents try to solve a chess puzzle from a local newspaper because all our newspapers had small chess sections.
And I was immediately fascinated by these chess, by the pieces.
I didn't know chess or what, just wooden pieces.
And I watched them moving these pieces and then I learned how to make the moves.
And to their surprise, so I made even just an offer.
So I was quite aggressive in pushing the idea.
And so, and my father immediately recognized that I had a different mindset because all members of my Jewish side, my father's family, so they were all musicians, except my father.
He graduated the violin class, but he ended up as being an engineer.
That's how he met my mother, who's also an engineer.
And his last decision in his life, because tragically he died when I was seven, so I'm from cancer, just at age 39.
So the decision that he made telling my mother that we had to send him to a chess club, not a music school.
And that's how I entered the chess network in the Soviet Union at age seven.
And I climbed very, very rapidly on this chess ladder.
So by age 10, I was already one of the strongest juniors in my city, Baku, which was the fourth largest city in the Soviet Union, just all the way down south.
And as you mentioned, at age 12, I was the junior champion under 18.
So that was the best indication of a great future laying ahead of me.
So you became a celebrity within the Soviet Union.
I mean, people must have known you on the street.
You became a worldwide celebrity.
But what was that like for you?
Did you know that you were a celebrity, that you were famous, that you had power that few had?
Look, chess was very popular in the Soviet Union.
And being world champion, and I became world champion, as you mentioned, in 1985 at age 22, gave me a unique stature.
Also, it was a time of a big change in the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev took over and he talked about openness and about changes in Soviet domestic policy, though they were much less than people thought in the free world, but still it was like a fresh wind.
So after years of stagnation under Brezhnev and his followers, two short-lived heads of the Communist Party and Ropo and Chernenko.
So Gorbachev was very, very different.
And I had a sense that my new status, this prominence, had to be used to help my country to get better.
Not that I had many ideas about democracy and how we can achieve it in Russia, but I already had a pretty good idea about the rest of the world because my first trip abroad was in 1976 when I was just 13 to France to play world championship under 16.
And then in 1977, I had another trip to France to play just the same event a year later.
And I came back knowing that there was something wrong in the Soviet Union because I could immediately see the difference.
And I felt that we had to make changes to turn our country into something more pleasant because I had to play by the rules.
I wanted to become world champion.
But in the back of my mind, I thought that the moment would come when I could use my acquired glory to help others to rally for the support of democracy.
And that's what I did.
Little did that Gary Kesparov know that within 30 years, you would be allegedly on an assassination list from the Russian president who is said to want to target you because you've been so outspoken in pushing for democracy.
Beyond Simple Games 00:09:37
That's critical of him.
I mean, it's crazy to think of.
It's not something anybody over here would ever worry about with respect to a U.S. president, but it just underscores the difference between how our two countries have chosen to live or are living.
One of the things I've heard you talk about in playing the chess, which I thought was very interesting, because I don't know anything about chess, but you're fascinating, is how much exertion goes on during, especially, you know, well, for you, every match is big, but during the big matches in particular, the number of calories that are burnt, the number of stress that you're under, that there have been studies of this.
Because, you know, I see two guys sitting playing chess.
I don't think of exertion.
I think of mental taxation, but I don't think of exertion.
Can you talk about that?
Yeah, it seems very innocuous when, as you said, two guys sitting there just in front of each other playing chess.
Or it could be two girls or just a boy and a girl playing chess.
But there's a huge pressure because the mental pressure just somehow affects your body.
And if it's a long match, when I say a long match, you play many games.
So 12 games, 14 games against the same opponent.
When I played Anatoly Carpo, we played 24 games.
So that took weeks.
So with all the with the rest days, every second day was a rest day.
So we played for two or three months.
And our first match, actually, it was unlimited number of games.
We played for nearly five and a half months.
So it's, and it's not just a game.
It's the several hours you spend at the board.
It's about preparation.
It's about living under this pressure because you go just you go back to bed and you're still thinking about the moves you made in the previous game or the moves you will make in the next game.
You eat, you still, you know, your mind is still very much, you know, just it's very tense.
And it's, it's, you know, the way I played, you know, I just couldn't escape from the images of chess pieces.
And I was always working.
For me, the whole tournament, the whole match, 10 games, 12 games.
So this is two weeks, a month.
It was always like one event.
So that's why it was a physical exertion.
And I burned calories, I lost weight, but I did a lot of physical exercise.
So the reason I stayed on top for nearly 20 years, it's because I, even in my late 30s, so I was better prepared for this physical challenge than my younger opponents.
Do men ever play against women?
Yeah, we just now play.
So this is most of the games, you know, just it's won by men.
But Judith Polger, the strongest athlete ever.
That is, because it's not something that it's not like an obvious thing where, you know, if a man plays a woman in competitive elite tennis, he's going to crush her.
And we all understand why.
But, you know, there's no inherent intellectual benefit to being a man over being a woman.
So why do you think that is?
It's, yeah, it's look, I'm not, you know, just, you know, here just to analyze the details of this outcome.
But the fact is that, you know, it's this, there was only one female player that made it to top 10, Judith Polger, so Hungarian Grandmaster.
And she stayed there for quite a while.
So she was probably at the best moment, number eight in the world, seven rate in the world.
And no other female player made it.
It's probably just a Chinese champion who you find.
She made it to probably top 80.
But other female players, they are just between top 100 to 200.
Though I have to say that when we look at the trend, the gap has been closing because at the days of Bobby Fisher, Bobby Fisher believed that he could beat any female player by giving the handicap of a whole piece.
Now, no serious player would be considering giving any handicap.
Though, again, it's the male players, they just dominate the game.
And it's probably, again, it's about traditions.
It's about the roots of the game.
So as any game, it has been played by men.
And if we continue with the same path, so seeing the gap is getting closer and closer.
So we can see that at one point, it will become more competitive than now.
Is there ever any chit chat with your opponent?
Like, could a romance blossom?
I just wonder.
It seems like all those weeks together.
Yeah, it's look, the game, you know, it's the serious game, if we're talking about serious games.
So it's the, it's, you don't, you do not communicate with your opponent.
So that's, that's, that's a bad taste.
And if you play some exhibition matches, yeah, that's another story.
But I mean, you talk, you talk to your opponents, if you wish, after the game, and this is often we analyze together, but the game itself, it's, it's a serious challenge.
Look, this is no MRS degree.
Megan, I stopped playing professional chess 17 years ago, though I still do, you know, just appearances.
I play exhibition matches.
But I think that this is with so many changes in the game of chess, this, you know, this rule of just not communicating to your opponent, you know, it's still stays.
Well, I know that I've heard you say you can't compare today's chess players to the Gary Kasparovs or the Bobby Fishers of the world because we know so much more about chess today than we used to.
And some of what we know came from you, you know, came from people watching you.
And what do you mean by that?
Explain that.
Oh, it's about a knowledge that is just being accumulated.
It's just, you know, think of a student, you know, it's a college student who's studying physics or math.
So, I mean, he or she knows much more than Newton or Einstein.
But it's not a result of them being a genius, but it's the fact that there's so much data have been accumulated and they just, you know, they know how to apply it.
Same with chess.
Bobby Fisher played chess 50 plus years ago and he came up with new ideas that were revolutionary.
This idea is now just a part of the common knowledge of a 12-year-old international master.
And they also have computers now.
This is one of the biggest shifts in the game of chess was use of the computers because now you have machines that can help you to prepare for the game.
Of course, it's illegal to use machines during the game, though that's one of the challenges for modern chess, how to make sure that there's no communication between a player and a remote computer or just a phone.
Because if you have now chess app on your phone, it's stronger than the blue.
But machines force top players, actually all professional players, to reconsider the way they're preparing for the game.
So that's why you have now young players and I've been working a lot with them.
So Kasparov Chess Foundation has been founded in this country in America 20 years ago.
We'll celebrate our 20th anniversary next November.
And for the last 70 years, we've been working with talented American kids.
So I can proudly say we had 17 Grand Masters, actually.
It's in the United States that came out of our program.
And I could see this quite a dramatic change in their attitude, the way they look at the position, they analyze it.
I'm not saying it's good or bad, better or worse.
It's just different.
Because I used to rely on my intuition.
I try to always go deep down to understand the rationale of certain moves and certain patterns.
They very much depend on the machine.
It's like following the computer makes them somehow more mechanized.
And it's not only about chess.
I think it's widespread.
A lot of people, they can't take the eyes away from computer.
And that's what I believe makes the difference between an average decision maker and great decision maker.
Because the great decision maker knows this is the moment where I have to stop looking at the screen and make a decision, stop collecting data and decide how to apply my human intuition.
So to add human qualities into the overall process.
That's fascinating.
Well, because one of the things that makes you so brilliant and interesting to listen to, and probably the reason that you've gotten so many predictions right, is you're not just a chess grandmaster, you're a strategy grandmaster.
That's really what an amazing chess player is.
A master of strategy and being able to see several moves ahead and anticipate the other person's moves.
That's what you're an expert in.
And so it seems to me that that's a skill you have been able to apply outside of the chess world to great advantage in your life.
Black and White Morality 00:04:31
Yeah, okay.
If you consider being dismissed for 15 plus years as an advantage, yes.
Yes, you're right.
Yeah, look, I...
Well, it's not your fault.
People haven't listened.
You know, look, I try to see the big picture.
I mean, I also know the limitations of my knowledge.
So that's just limits of my ignorance.
So I'm not very good at micromanagement.
And I just, you know, I stay away from things that I'm not comfortable with to exercise my authority.
And my, I know where my credibility ends.
But I'm very good at looking at the big picture and especially geopolitical picture.
And I've been now everything I said now, so I've been saying today, so it's a result of this analysis.
Not necessarily i'm right all the time, but I can feel the trends and I can, I can see the patterns and and I, you know i'm I know that some of the predictions they, they sound too aggressive.
You know it's like, you know, this very belly cause, because the language of of, of um, deterrence, is, is a rough one.
It's just, it's not soft, it's not comfortable, it's not appeasement, it's not let's live in peace and do business, but you know it's.
It's about us recognizing that there's certain moments in history where it's it's black and white.
I heard it so many times, mr Kaspar, if you are a chess player, you don't understand that the life is not about black and white.
This is it's, it's it's gray, it's a 50 shades of gray.
You have to, you know, can you have to accept this fact, your direct approach.
You know good and bad, you know uh, good and evil, it's that's.
That doesn't apply.
I agree that in many instances, you know, you have to be uh, very cautious in in in, in offering radical solutions.
But we are out right now at a point where it's all black and white.
So it's, it's as simple as good and evil, and and and and.
Ukrainian war simply demonstrated us that you know we we, we have, we reached a point, sort of like a climax the the, the moment in history where we have to make some big decisions but, unlike chess, still black and white, but no draw.
You cannot end this game with a tie right, because when you have the, our values the the, our belief in in, in freedom, you know in in, in in the rights of individuals to to okay life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, and on the other side, you have something totally opposite, believe in violence uh, and the rights of of those in power to to, to subjugate others, and you attack others at at, at the moment, they think they can get away with that.
So there's no tie.
We can only moral relativism can be dangerous.
No absolutely, this is no moral relativism.
This is again, this is, this is.
This is not the game where you have, you know, black and white pieces, because it's it's uh not about you know uh same, you know uh pieces uh, of different color.
It's, it's about set of values that can all cannot coexist okay so, uh.
Last question, was it hard to hang it up?
Because I know you did it for so many years.
You were the world champion, for I mean, your name is synonymous with chess and you brought it into the mainstream with that.
The match against the Ibm computer and all that one, the first one of which he won, noted for the record, and only the second one that went the wrong way.
Um, the whole movies have been made about that, by the way, but forget that, forget that.
Uh, was it hard to hang it up, because I know you did it for a good purpose, but was it hard?
Uh look, by the way, speaking about the second match with Ibm yes I I, I was really angry and upset by losing in a 997 and I thought it would be a curse that would haunt me for the rest of my life.
Now, I believe it was a.
It was a blessing because I was the first human human being who had his job uh, you know, threatened by a machine.
So that's this intelligent worker, and and I could live, you know uh uh um, with this knowledge and I could, you know, learn a and became eventually, I become a proponent of film machine collaboration.
So that's again, that's about your failures and your ability to learn from the failures.
So that's why I think now it was more like a blessing that I was part of this experiment and now I could share my unique expertise with others.
Now, speaking about 2005 decision to leave chess, no, it was not that difficult because What I learned from my early days, from my late mother, was that it's not just about winning.
A Call to Subscribe 00:02:00
Yeah, of course it was winning, but it's not just winning.
It's about making a difference.
It's about making contribution to the game.
It's about expanding your horizons.
And I knew by age 40 that I almost exhausted my ability to make a difference.
Winning still, I could have done probably for a few more years, but what's the point?
So I saw an opportunity to apply my fame and my expertise, my analytical skills, my energy for a better cause.
And that was my desperate attempts to save Russian democracy, feeble democracy, but save it from an impending disaster, because I already saw the rise of darkness and I had no doubt that Vladimir Putin would become an existential threat, not only for Russian democracy, but for the rest of the world if given the chance.
Well, I'm quite certain that there are many, many Russians who are so grateful to you for using your platform in the way you have.
And we're grateful to you for being with us again today.
Gary Kasparov, what a pleasure.
Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you very much for inviting me, Megan.
Wow.
Fascinating, right?
Tomorrow, we're going to dig deep into the Hunter Biden story and the updates in it that the mainstream media has been burying.
You know, the laptop and all the evidence on it.
Well, there's a lot more to the story that you won't see reported on CNN, but we're going to get into it when Senator Ron Johnson, who's been sort of running herd on this, joins us to bring us the latest directly.
Don't forget to download the Megan Kelly Show on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, and Stitcher, wherever you get your podcast for free.
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Thank you so much for your support, and we'll see you tomorrow.
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