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The Independent

Out of America: Grandmaster with a moral message for the White House
To tackle the ‘new tsar’ in the Kremlin, the US must first get its own
house in order, Garry Kasparov warns

By Rupert Cornwell
Published: 21 October 2007

For an old Moscow hand, it felt just like old times, back when Soviet
dissidents would summon a few Western correspondents to a clandestine
meeting. They would denounce the evils of the unaccountable and
unassailable regime in the Kremlin, and suggest how America and its
allies might nonetheless bring pressure to bear.

Today another and equally unshakeable regime runs Russia, and new
dissidents have emerged. But their basic message has not changed: if
this or any other White House wants to change the Kremlin’s ways, it
must first of all avoid double standards in its dealings with the
world.

This, of course, is 2007, not 1977. The setting was not the kitchen of
one of those cramped Moscow apartments that I remember so well from my
days as a reporter there, but a smart theatre auditorium in a wealthy
suburb of Washington DC. And the speaker was not some tousled academic
or minor poet, but Garry Kasparov – a household name wherever chess is
played, believed by many to have been the greatest player in the
game’s history.

Now Kasparov is taking on an even more daunting task than holding the
world championship between 1985 and 2000. Three weeks ago he was
chosen as candidate for the "Other Russia" opposition party in the
presidential election next March, to take on whoever is handpicked by
Russia’s present tsar, Vladimir Putin, to succeed him.

It is, of course, a hopeless fight. Kasparov may not even be allowed
to stand. If he does, polls suggest Other Russia will get only 3 or 4
per cent of the vote. But the man is nothing if not a fighter. He
likens the moment to his epic challenge in 1984 to the reigning
champion, Anatoly Karpov.

Kasparov, the brash outsider, was taking on the champion of the
Communist system, the favourite of the Kremlin establishment. The
winner was to be the first to six victories, and at one point Kasparov
trailed 5-0. But he gradually wore his opponent down. After he
narrowed the gap to 5-3, the authorities called the match off, saying
both men were exhausted. Karpov indeed was, and the following year
Kasparov captured the crown.

But chess games can’t be fixed in advance. Politics can. With
quasi-total control of the press and TV, Putin has made himself as
unassailable as the Communist rulers of yore. Times have changed, of
course – superficially, at least. Kasparov can travel in and out of
Russia to promote his new book, How Life Imitates Chess, one of those
how-to-succeed-in-life manifestos that Americans love. But the reality
is darker. Opposing the Kremlin and its interests is a dangerous
business.

If they are clever, the Putin crowd will let Kasparov’s campaign go
ahead, as proof that the election, however pre-ordained its result, is
"democratic". After all, when there are two security policemen and
hired hecklers for every participant at an Other Russia rally, not
much can go wrong. But very nasty things can happen – as they did to
the campaigning journalist Anna Politkovskaya, shot dead in Moscow,
and Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned in London.

I asked Kasparov if he thought he was in personal danger. "Yes, I am
afraid. I take care," he replies. "But what can I do? I have no
choice." He avoids flying on Aeroflot and eating at restaurants he
doesn’t know. His wife and child spend much of their time in New
Jersey. In Russia he pays a small fortune for private security. "I
like to think there are limits on what they might do. But if they
decide to go after me, all precautions will be useless."

So what can the rest of us do? As those dissidents of the past used to
argue, Kasparov says that America’s most powerful weapon is moral. It
must lead by example. It must practise what it preaches, and avoid
double standards. So "when Putin acts badly, you must criticise him.
When he behaves like … Mugabe, he should be treated the same way."

Alas, this White House has turned double standards into an art form.
This last week alone offered a fine example, with the intense pressure
by the Bush administration on Congress to drop the resolution
condemning the 1915 genocide of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, on
the grounds that it would upset Turkey, a key ally in the war against
Iraq.

Nothing has created greater double standards than the "war on terror".
In the absence of WMD, the revised justification for the invasion of
Iraq is that it was meant to bring freedom and democracy to the heart
of the Middle East – remember the stirring stuff in Bush’s 2005
inaugural address, about abolishing tyranny from the earth. Except, of
course, if you happen to sit on a great deal of oil, like Saudi
Arabia, or are a key regional ally, like Pakistan. And what price
liberty and the rule of law in the era of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay
and "extraordinary rendition"?

The greatest casualty of the "war on terror" is America’s good name.
Of all the wounds inflicted by the Iraq conflict, this one will be
hardest to heal. And, as Kasparov realises, for Putin it is a godsend.
Last week, speaking to today’s US correspondents in Moscow, the
Russian President likened himself to Franklin D Roosevelt, as social
reformer and national saviour. A stretch? Of course. But that’s what
you get when you operate double standards.