Every week we ask interesting people what book they think President Trump should read. In the past, we’ve talked with Bret Stephens and Chris Matthews. This week we ask Garry Kasparov.
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Adam Rubenstein: What book would you recommend that Donald Trump read in order to better understand the nature of Vladimir Putin’s regime?
Garry Kasparov: The first problem posed by recommending a book to Trump on Putin’s Russia, or anything, is if he would ever read it. From White House descriptions, it’s a chore to get Trump to pay attention to anything other than the cable news shows he loves and perhaps those he loves to hate. Of course, this may reflect the shorter attention spans of many people today, reflected in our instant culture and social media. So I would like to make the general admonition to make time to settle down with a book, where the author was concerned with real thoughts and meaning, not just a soundbite or factoid. You can skip an hour or two of headlines without the world ending—even in the Trump era.
I have often said, only partly in jest, that to truly understand Putin’s regime you should read the works of Mario Puzo, especially The Godfather. Putin’s rule is without ideology or anything beyond money, loyalty, and the power needed to guarantee those things. That is, a mafia system. Nationalism, religion, Putin’s attempt to rebuild a Frankenstein’s Monster of the USSR—it’s all about money for Putin and a small group of oligarchs. Ironically, this is a mentality that Trump likely understands quite well and, based on his comments, finds nothing wrong with it.
AR: Is there a specific book on modern Russia that you recommend?
GK: There are quite a few recent books to better understand Putin and Russia today, including my own. But they all encounter the problem that Trump actually admires dictators and the ability of someone like Putin to wield massive power without worrying about judges, Congress, or a critical press. Reading about how Putin jails and murders his critics, takes over the media, bans protests, and loots the country might sound like a tutorial to Trump! His praise of dictatorial power and violence is a consistent theme for decades, not only in his campaign and administration.
All that said, Trump should read Luke Harding’s A Very Expensive Poison, which uses the 2006 murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London with a radioactive isotope as a lens to expose the criminal and murderous nature of the Putin regime. Harding was a reporter in Moscow for years and was himself pressured by the Putin government and knows his subjects very well. Unlike many Western reporters (and politicians), he doesn’t let a deluded desire to “show both sides” obscure the difference between good and evil.
Litvinenko was granted asylum in the United Kingdom for whistleblowing on some of Putin’s horrific crimes against the Russian people he supposedly protects, especially the 1999 apartment bombings that were blamed on Chechen rebels. (David Satter’s recent book, The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep, focuses on these and is also excellent.)
That a prominent defector, to use that old word, could be assassinated, and so spectacularly, so dangerously, in the center of London, showed both that Putin had no respect for international borders or laws, and also that the Western governments that thought to make friends with him were terribly naive. Pathetically, the investigation into the nuclear murder of a U.K. citizen by Russian assassins in London was delayed and buried by several administrations so as not to complicate relations with Russia. What message does that send to Putin and other dictators?
This dynamic has only gotten worse, with Putin’s invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, military intervention in Syria for Assad, and election interference across Europe and in the United States. Yet you still hear politicians talking about wanting “dialogue” with Putin, and just a few days ago Trump said he hoped to enlist Putin’s help with North Korea—as if Putin weren’t the one providing Kim Jong-un with missile and nuclear tech in the first place!
This is the fundamental misunderstanding, one that both Barack Obama and even George W. Bush also suffered under: that there can be, or should be, common ground with a hostile dictatorship. You only end up betraying your values and interests for “peace for our time” that never last long. Since the end of the Cold War, nobody likes to talk about harsh things like deterrence and isolation, but they worked, and they are still needed when dealing with authoritarian regimes who only exploit appeasement.
That’s what I would most hope that Trump would take away from Harding’s book, that the small, personal horrors—the murders, the persecution of innocent protesters and journalists—that they are the reality of autocracy, the “strength” that Trump admires in people like Putin and Xi Jinping. It’s not strength, it’s terror. It’s fear of their own people.
AR: What is your view on the president’s dealing with political dissent? What does he understand or misunderstand about dissent?
GK: As for what Trump doesn’t understand about political dissent, I’d say it’s how vital it is to democracy. Trump has a very thin skin, a condition I admit that I share. But so? You can disagree, you can argue, that’s a free country! His response is instead to call everything he doesn’t like “fake news,” which creates a situation where there is no reality, no facts, and that is just what modern dictatorships do. It’s poisonous.
As with free speech protections, defending dissent is only important when it’s unpopular. Marches and articles favored by those in power, favored by the majority, don’t need protection. Dissent is the lifeblood of democracy and even if you don’t agree with what this or that group of dissidents, say they should always be given fair hearing. Even if they seem a little crazy!
It takes a little craziness to speak out against power, against the status quo. So listen to them, because quite often they are the canaries in the coal mine.
