Peter Espeut | Putin is a poor chess player

Since 2018 I have had the honour to be accredited as part of the official delegation of the Holy See to the International Seabed Authority (ISA). Early in the 27th session last Monday at the Jamaica Conference Centre, in their opening remarks several countries condemned the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia. In his opening remarks, the ambassador of the Russian Federation attempted a justification of his country’s military action, and while he was speaking, diplomats from more than half of the nations represented got to their feet and walked out of the conference room.

The chair had to suspend the session until the delegates returned.

You cannot do well in the war game called chess unless you can see several moves ahead. “If I move my knight here, my opponent has several options in defence, or attack: he can move his castle here, or his queen there …”. The best chess players are able to analyse the alternatives, and to predict their opponent’s gambits several moves down the line.

Russia is famous for excellent and highly strategic chess grand masters; three immediately come to mind: Boris Spassky, Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov; there are many, many others. We high school chess players studied the games of these grand masters, move by move; you don’t make a move until you have a good idea of how your opponent might respond.

I doubt that Vladimir Putin is a chess player. If he is, he would have done an assessment of the troop strength of the Ukrainians – their training and their weaponry – as well as their national character, before invading. A good strategist would have assessed world opinion, and forecast the response of the western alliance including NATO, before sending in the bombers and the troops.

LOSING GROUND

Could it be that Putin’s military intelligence predicted that Russian forces would overrun the Ukraine in a few days? It has been one month already since the invasion, and reports are that Russian casualties are mounting, and the invasion has stalled; if anything, Russian troops are losing ground.

Could it be that Russia’s diplomatic intelligence services did not predict that the global community would immediately impose crippling economic sanctions on the Russian state and the Russian private sector (disparagingly referred to as the Oligarchs) which largely supports President Putin? What could have blind-sided them?

I wonder if former US President Donald Trump should not share some of the blame for this invasion? The checks and balances in the great US of A were unable to fully negate Russian inroads into its affairs at the policy level, and its trickle down to the operational level. I have no doubt that President Putin felt empowered by Trump’s hugs and kisses.

He obviously thought he would get away with it, as he did with the invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014. Ukraine and many other countries condemned the annexation and considered it to be a violation of international law and international agreements safeguarding the territorial integrity of Ukraine, of which Crimea was a part. The G8 group of countries suspended Russia from the group, and introduced a first round of sanctions against the country. Nothing came of those protests, and western countries slowly normalised relations with Russia, continuing and deepening trade links.

There is no doubt that economic globalisation has deepened the dependence of the western world on Russian oil and gas. Could it be that Russia felt that the west has no alternative but to buy its energy, and therefore that it is impervious to the most serious sanctions? And that any sanctions imposed would be what we Jamaicans call “a nine-day wonder”? They may be right in the short term, but this may spur the long-awaited break with fossil fuels as our main source of energy. Every crisis has its up-side.

NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES

Countries like Jamaica will inevitably suffer negative consequences from this Russia-Ukraine war. And not just our access to fossil fuels. European colonialism has tied us into European foodways, in particular to the use of wheat flour. Africa and the Caribbean have incorporated crops they do not (or cannot) grow into their national cuisine, which makes us dependent on its producers.

Africa – which traditionally subsists on corn and manioc (cassava), has seen a dramatic increase in wheat consumption – twice as fast as population increase.

Wheat products – boil dumplin’, fry dumplin’, hard-dough bread, Easter bun, plantain tarts, patties, cocobread, toto, bulla – are all flagship items in Jamaican culture from slavery days, when masters imported flour, salt fish, rice, corn and breadfruit to feed their slaves. Recent introductions like hamburgers, hot dogs, pasta, pizza and breaded chicken add to our growing wheat-dependence.

Overturning our history of slavery and colonialism in Jamaica must involve weaning us away from our wheat-based diet, while encouraging us to eat what we grow, and grow what we eat.

This is quite a serious matter, as Ukraine and Russia account for a third of global wheat exports. The prices of these commodities have already gone up, and you don’t have to be a champion chess player to predict that they will rise even further in the weeks and months to come. We must be concerned not only with national security, but also with our food security.

Come you anti-colonial and reparations advocates: join the fight against wheat flour! And promote more cassava, green bananas, yam and dasheen in our diet!

Again, the coming scarcity of wheat might encourage us to diversify our tastes into more local foods, to the benefit of our agricultural sector – another possible up-side to this crisis.

In the meantime, what might be Putin’s end game? He is too proud to knock over his king, withdraw his troops and resign the chess game. He may feel he has other powerful weapons in his arsenal he has not yet deployed in what has – so far – been a conventional war.

Let us hope the international community will find some cojones before chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons are brought to bear.

Walkouts are not enough!

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and development scientist. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com