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Conversations with Bill Kristol Guest: Garry Kasparov, Author and former World Chess Champion

Taped June 7, 2016

Table of Contents

I: Trump, Sanders, Clinton 0:15 – 15:30 II: A Failure of Vision 15:30 – 43:19 III: Reflections on America 43:19 – 59:54 I: Trump, Sanders, Clinton (0:15 – 15:30) KRISTOL: Hi, I’m Bill Kristol. Welcome back to CONVERSATIONS. I’m very pleased to be joined again by Garry Kasparov, the World Chess Champion, human rights and democracy activist in Russia, his homeland, and now living in America. An astute observer of America for at least a quarter-century. And I thought often foreigners have the best understanding of what’s happening in our country from Tocqueville on. I thought we’d have a conversation not about the Soviet Union and its collapse, and not about what happen afterwards as we’ve discussed before, in the 90s and after that, but about America. It’s an unusual moment. You’ve been very outspoken in your views about the sort of seriousness of this moment. Help us analyze what is happening, why it’s happening, as we speak here on June 7th, 2016. Thanks for taking the time. So where are we? You’ve followed America closely for three decades at least. KASPAROV: Yes, three decades. KRISTOL: When were you first here? KASPAROV: 1988. I watched America even from afar. I always had a great interest in studying American democracy and development of the democratic system here. I can say it’s highly unusual this moment. It’s highly serious, but, you know, things like that happened before. It didn’t happen over our times, so just during our lifetime, but it doesn’t mean that things like that – dramatic changes – cannot happen. No one at no time is immune, I guess, to changes. I just want to say that it’s a serious challenge, but the resilience of democratic system must be tested from time to time. This is the moment that, in my view, will prove the strengths and the resilience of the American political system. People should understand change is inevitable. Sometimes, you reach a point where the old system is no longer functioning to satisfy all the key players, the different interests in society, so I guess we’ve just reached this point. KRISTOL: Let’s be specific for a second. What is so different? Why are we just – we’re having another election – KASPAROV: I don’t think it’s an election because we saw, you know, during our lifetime moments where one party or another party – two major parties – one of them was in trouble. You could see the radical

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takeover just in pushing the party to the extreme. And, you know, this party was punished by losing general elections. But this is the first time when you see both parties pushed to the extreme, basically, creating a critical mass in the center that is left with no proper representation. I think that the rise of Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders on the other side – and let’s not be mistaken; Bernie Sanders is the winner, the ideological winner of the primaries. KRISTOL: Trump has gotten more attention, and certainly, I’ve been preoccupied from saving conservatives from Trump, but let’s talk about Sanders. KASPAROV: I think both Trump and Sanders – it’s like two sides of the same coin. It’s a best indicators that the temperature has risen. The temperature of the body is sick. You can see the signs on both sides of the political spectrum. Sanders revived the word socialism as a part of the mainstream debate, and it’s much more dangerous than people think because, as you correctly stated, Trump consumed all the attention. Though, of course, Trump is just an individual. I think he’s very dangerous because he doesn’t fit the President, but you know, he also exposed the weakness, fundamental weakness of the Republican Party. The GOP proved to be incapable of coming up with a candidate at a time when the election was for them to lose. Hillary Clinton was always inevitable, and she is a bad candidate. I would say she’s probably the second-worst candidate in US history, but the GOP managed to come up with the worst. By far, the worst. The parties spend too much time, the so-called elites spent too much time trying to bring another Bush, and then when they realized it was not working, they couldn’t agree on one candidate, and it ended up with the party being in disarray, and Trump was relatively small support so, maybe, he gets 35, 36 percent. He managed to take over the party by just using all sorts of aggressive and arrogant techniques. But speaking of Trump, we should pay attention to the long-term threat comes from the Left. Because when you look at the demographics, people who are voting for Trump or supporting Trump, they are not going to decide the future of this country, both in numbers but also in quality and intellect. There’s a lot of power, intellectual power. And also the youth has been allocated on the opposite side. They have a little idea about socialism, about all of this ideological debates of the past, and Bernie’s rhetoric was very inviting. It’s nice. It painted some pictures of the bright future, and I think this trend, it might become dominant unless the conservative America comes up with a real alternative that will attract the center. The center that is left, so no probable political framework. KRISTOL: And what do you make of the Sanders appeal? I mean, some of it just an alternative to Clinton, I suppose, but I mean, do people believe in socialism as an economic force? KASPAROV: People believe that something is wrong, and this is the moment where you have the best opportunities. So fertile ground for demagogues and populists, both on the Right and the Left, rise. And this is very dangerous because they rise at the same time, which shows the great dissatisfaction. And they win because they offer a vision. Trump doesn’t have a proper vision, he can change views. Bernie is solid in offering his vision. They’re trying to speak in plain language, they’re trying to come up with simple solutions. And people, you can hardly blame people for following these two demagogues and populists because there’s nothing else, there’s no alternative. There’s no vision for the future. Trying to hate Trump or Sanders with punches, that’s wrong. That’s wrong. It’s not going to work because you have to come up with a comprehensive vision that will help to revive America. They both talk about reviving America in their own terms, going back to the roots. To the sort of entrepreneurial spirit of the country. To explain to the American public, especially to American youths, what were the reasons of the great success of this country, why this country was so dominant, why, in 200 years, the great

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predecessors were able to build a country that is still shining, despite so many problems and wrongdoings? This is not simply about building walls or redistributing wealth. It’s about reviving the spirit of capitalism, it’s about reviving the spirit of competition and creating political institutions that will represent the interest of the majority, that will stop fighting a fight that is already over. We’ll not have debates that’s already – it’s long overdue. That’s done. We have to look at the future, and that is why I think both parties will undergo significant transformation. I think that – KRISTOL: Let’s talk about that on the Democratic side, first, because the obvious answer to you is, “Well, Sanders is about, it seems, to lose the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton. He was a protest candidate, and he lost. Why are you taking it so seriously?” KASPAROV: Because the majority of intellectual Democrats, the youths, when you look at demographics, they are behind Sanders. KRISTOL: You think he is winning even though he’s losing. KASPAROV: He already won. But also he has one powerful ally that hasn’t spoken yet. And I think many people just simply ignore the fact that this powerful ally is not going anywhere. His name is Barack Obama. KRISTOL: Talk about that. KASPAROV: I’m sure Obama has been watching this primary with greatest joy. Because it exposed Hillary. It showed how weak she was. She is a lousy candidate, he proved it eight years ago. Now, she is winning because the Democratic Party is very much the private enterprise of Clinton’s family. I think people just didn’t pay enough attention to Obama’s statement that he would stay in DC for at least two more years. I don’t think anybody can buy seriously the argument that he wants his youngest daughter to finish her school there. Correct me if I’m wrong, except Woodrow Wilson who was terminally ill, I mean, no US President stayed in DC after leaving the office. KRISTOL: The custom has been to leave and clear the decks for your successor. KASPAROV: Staying in DC, it’s a message. I don’t think Obama, who’s very young, very popular, could raise a lot of money. He could go from DC to New York, to Los Angeles, he’d be welcomed almost everywhere by the liberal crowd. But he wants to stay there. Staying in DC, he believes he could play a role. What kind of a role he could play if another Democrat, namely Hillary Clinton, is President, and I don’t think there’s love lost between Clinton and Obama. KRISTOL: So what kind of role could he play? This is an interesting speculation. KASPAROV: It is a speculation, but I think Hillary will be forced to have a progressive VP. I think it might be a young Sanders. Okay, Sanders, someone with similar views. Very much online with Obama’s vision of the future. I wouldn’t be surprised if – Hillary is turning 70, her health is not great – in 2020, this VP will run as the first progressive candidate, and I think by that time the party will be totally under the control of Obama’s vision of socialism. KRISTOL: You take Sanders in a way as the heir to Obama or the carrying forth of the Obama vision? KASPAROV: Sanders is a kind of ice-breaker for Obama. Sanders exposed the weakness of the Democratic establishment, why it’s for Hillary. Let’s have it for her, and surely, there will be many

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arguments – next year, the 100th anniversary of the amendment of the Constitution that gave women the right to vote, so I mean, you can have a lot of nice stories of why Hillary should be the President. She will do a lot of good things for the Democrats, she will guarantee the control of the Supreme Court for the next 25 years. But I think Obama is planning to have a significant role, if not a decisive role, in his mind, to shape American politics. He hasn’t finished his job. He moved the country in this direction, but he hasn’t finished his job, and I think now he feels that, with the Republican Party in disarray, with no real opposition, and with a chance to retake the Senate, maybe the House, and to take control of Supreme Court, he can fulfill his agenda. KRISTOL: Characterize that agenda. How does it look to you? Having watched him closely for seven and a half years? KASPAROV: His agenda – His foreign policy is very apologetic. He believes America is a prime source of trouble. Some may say evil in the world. He doesn’t want America just to continue its leadership role. Here in the United States, his domestic agenda will be to create an all-powerful state. Obamacare is just the first step, and I think we’ll see much more. Not only single-payer, but I think we’ll see much more power allocated in the hands of the state, and we’ll see, you know, just the total accumulation of the functions that used to belong to the American people and other institutions in the hands of the federal government. KRISTOL: You don’t buy the argument that Obama has been a weak and failed President? KASPAROV: Obama is one of the most successful Presidents in history. We can and should disagree with his agenda, but he has succeeded in pushing it through. Over this eight-year period, only two years, he enjoyed support of majority in the Senate and the House. He did it by facing opposition from the Hill, and Republicans failed to stop him pushing his agenda. When he couldn’t do it with lame-duck House and Senate in 2010, he just did executive orders. He proved to be very capable in selling his agenda. He’s a great communicator. And I think people make a mistake by disagreeing with what he represented. With the success of the implementation of his agenda, which I think was phenomenal. Now, when the Republican Party will be such a terrible shape, and I believe now it’s facing its extinction. The party that pronounces Donald Trump the next President of the United States, I think, is no longer a viable institution. II: A Failure of Vision (15:30 – 43:19) KRISTOL: I mean, you’ve been coming here since the end of the Cold War, I’m sure you’ve given some thought, how did we end up with this powerful agenda that President Obama was able to get elected on and sell to the American people? I don’t think we would have predicted this is where we would be a quarter-century after the Cold War. KASPAROV: In my latest book, Winter Is Coming, I try to explain the failures of US foreign policy, which was no longer consistent after the Cold War, and it’s worked more like a pendulum swinging from one side to the other. So Bill Clinton did little, W. did too much, Obama has been doing nothing. But I think it also had an effect domestically. KRISTOL: I’m struck thinking back to the 90s, we all thought that liberalism was now mature, sophisticated, market-friendly, fairly tough even, in some ways, on foreign policy. That was the Clinton/Blair kind of Third Way on the Left, and then conservatives, with George W, Bush in 2000 and compassionate conservatism, it looked like everyone was moving to the center. A sort of happy, not-too-ideological politics. It really does look amazingly different today. It’s a great example of how one can be

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totally misled by taking a snapshot look at a particular situation. That turned out to be very weak on both sides, don’t you think? KASPAROV: Absolutely. We are facing now – and you pointed out to Europe, it’s not just an American problem – the disappearance of the center of the mainstream political parties, it’s a common case. From Eastern Europe to the United States. Of course, it could have much more profound consequence in the United States because it’s still the leader of the free world and anything that happens here will influence the world whether people here think about it or not. I just want just to have a brief look at the European continent and just to analyze this process of the solution of what we believe was a center, or you may call, the staple of the political system. Let’s look at Greece now, the country is being run by hard-left and nationalist cotillion. You say Greece is not typical, that’s a special country. Let’s look at Austria, a very solid country. Now, the presidential elections, both parties representing the center, the Conservatives and Social Democrats, they were wiped out in the presidential elections. So the second ballot was a fight between an ultra-nationalist and hard-left candidate representing the Green Party. The Green Party won by a razor-thin margin. And look at England now and the United Kingdom, the Labor Party has been taken over by Jeremy Corbyn, the man who was a back-bencher for decades. Nobody thought he would ever move from his backbench to the front, now he’s in charge. And again, without pointing out other countries, like we can see the rise of ultra-nationalists in Germany. We see very powerful nationalist party forming now in France. We can see nationalists are leading in the polls in Holland, and we could see the leftwing, hard-left groups also sort of gaining in the polls in Spain. Just you know, it’s the end of the traditional politics we knew, and it just tells us that these parties are no longer reflecting the aspirations of those who voted for them. For many voters, they seem alike, and since they don’t offer the vision, and this brings us back to 1991, you win the war, you sort of end the chapter, and you have to start writing a new chapter. You need vision, you need strategy. It’s a long-term vision that we want to achieve. What is the plan? This is what makes democracy unique and so powerful that we’re not reactive but we’re proactive. And we failed this sense of urgency. We’re no longer coming up with long-term plans, and we’re stagnating. And at a time of stagnation, the voters have no more trust in the established political institutions, and if we make projections of European politics to America, I think the change in the political landscape here is inevitable. The future winners are those who are ready to recognize the inevitability of change today and will come up with an agenda and will create a gravitas for the millions and millions of people who see no alternative, but don’t want to join in one extreme of another. These people will have to be guided, and it’s time to start creating the alternative. KRISTOL: It is startling. I remember back even in 2003, people forget all the Democratic leaders were in agreement basically with Bush’s foreign policy. Some of the rhetoric I thought maybe went a little far, they voted for the war in Iraq, obviously – John Kerry the next nominee, Hillary Clinton who ran in 2008, Howard Dean was a little leading indicator, it turned out, for Obama, who turned out, as you say, is a leading indicator of where the whole quote progressive movement is going. And on the Right, too, Bush was President, he was comfortable, it was another Bush, it was a very old-fashioned Republican Party. I think 2008 had a big effect, too, in shattering people’s belief and confidence in the political and economic elites. Some of the difficulties in Iraq and elsewhere damaged people’s confidence in the foreign policy elites, and you put it all together, and you do have a situation in which – as you say, we’ve seen before in America, but I don’t know. I’m trying to think. It’s pretty big though, it’s pretty unusual this degree of collapse of confidence in the elites and on both sides without any obvious leaders to rally behind. KASPAROV: If we go all the way back in US history, I could think of nothing less – or more depends on how you look at this – from mid-50s of the 19th century. Whereas both Whigs and Democrats facing an

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inevitable split. Democrats splitting for North and South and Whigs splitting for new GOP and Know-Nothing. I think it’s fairly similar now. Of course, the agenda is different, but we are seeing both parties being torn apart by very powerful extreme wings in the party. Now, the ball is on the Republican side because now, because Democrats – you can hardly expect some Democrats, and I believe many of them are horrified by Bernie Sanders’ agenda and by the prospect that we’ve discussed now. They’re not seeing this trend, but they are on the winning side. It’s much more difficult to revolt when your party is winning, and it’s very clear they will be triumphant in this election cycle. So the Republican Party now has to do something since I don’t see how this institution is capable of winning general elections. And if you don’t win general elections, why are you there? I’m curious – and I will say very much annoyed by this very timid reaction of Republican leadership, who are just trying to find the middle ground. Look, A) Just tell me whether you believe in some ideas or not and B), if you say we have to be pragmatic, but you have to understand this party cannot be revived after Donald Trump’s disastrous performance, which I believe is inevitable, which will also affect the GOP performance both in the House and Senate, and will give Democrats unique opportunities to push their progressive agenda and push the country further to the Left. You just have to come up with a plan for 2018 and 2020, and this plan cannot be connected to a party structure that still has 30-35 percent of those who brought Trump. You cannot build coalitions. Winning coalitions should be built with a vision of the future, and the current Republican coalition is doomed to lose general elections forever. So that’s why I still hope the Republican Party will find leaders that will rise above the current fray, and also will create a gravitas for many Democrats to join. Because it’s very clear what agenda is needed for the country and what can attract millions of millions of people that are simply just lost between these two poles, two extremes. KRISTOL: I’ve been struck in trying to persuade the Republican elites in what you just eloquently said. They just don’t grasp, I think, what the world will look like after five months of apologizing for, and justifying, and excusing Donald Trump. I mean, they’ve had a little taste of it. We’re speaking on Tuesday, June 7th. They’ve had a little taste of it in the last week with Trump’s comment about the quote Mexican judge. KASPAROV: And he’s not an official nominee yet. KRISTOL: Right. He’s not a nominee yet, and they’re already seeing what damage its doing. And what it’s going to be like for five months, both politically in terms of Democrats running ads saying, “Well, you say this is a terrible thing for someone to say and then you support him. What’s the story?” But also just more psychologically in terms of just looking like so weak. KASPAROV: Again, this is the – Trump, how to create a little climate where people don’t vote for but they vote against. Trump, I can say, probably the best recruiter for the Democratic Party. Actually, for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Because the alternative is – if the alternative is between the progressive agenda and Trump? So maybe we can recover from this economic collapse and we don’t like socialists, but Trump could be World War III, the man is crazy. He doesn’t fit to be near the nuclear button. It’s all about the alternatives. Elections is just about making the choice. Sometimes, it’s for less evil, but I think this great country could do much better than just choosing between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. KRISTOL: I’m certainly with you on that. But I think the Austrian election, which I didn’t pay close attention to, which you summarized well, is a good example here. At the end of the day, the Green candidate really barely beat the far-right candidate. And most, I think, respectable people said, “Okay, the Green is the lesser of two evils.” But it shows how far we’ve come that the Austrians –

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KASPAROV: Absolutely. He’s not just Green, he’s hard-left. There’s different Greens, but this is hard-left Green. KRISTOL: Fair enough. But had to accept a hard-left candidate, you could imagine that happening with a lot of people in America, I think a lot of young people will decide that’s the choice they face. KASPAROV: You can hardly blame them because Donald Trump will keep doing his job by telling them that this hard-left might be the only choice for them to live with. KRISTOL: So if Paul Ryan or Ben Sasse, or one of the many Republicans that are uncomfortable with Trump or some of them refusing to support Trump – Marco Rubio – all the people who are allegedly thinking about running next time. If you were in the room with them, and you’ve been in the room with some of them, but if they were here now, what would you think about telling them? Not so much the short-term tactics of handling Trump and whether to run or not as an independent, what is the message they need to be saying that is different from and in contrast with Trump? KASPAROV: I mean, Trump changes his message every day. It’s difficult to be different. No, again, there are two sets of arguments. One is on the side of ideology, of the agenda. You have to be serious. You have to look like a serious candidate who could attract millions and millions of people, not only from the Republican Party, but also from the center, and from the Democrats and the coalitions, that will secure the victory in 2020 will be very different from any traditional coalition we saw before. I think the politics now will be shifted to some kind of this sort of centrist combination. And someone who can grasp the aspirations of these people will be a potential winner. Second, if these potential candidates, people you mentioned or others, if they think they can run on the GOP ticket after GOP nominates Donald Trump, they are dead-wrong. The party which nominates Donald Trump will never win general elections. That’s – they have to understand it because Trump will mobilize people to the other side, and it’s an indelible stain. How can he talk about ideas? How can you talk to people about a vision of the future if you just supported the candidate who was so unintellectual, so empty? It’s full of hot air. It’s not about ideas; it’s all about just selling sound bites. You have to go beyond sound bites, you have to look at the future, and now it’s time to lay the foundation for that, and again many people on the Democratic side that might follow, but you don’t expect them to take the lead because they’re part of the winning coalition. KRISTOL: It’s very much the case. I found that over the last few weeks trying to find people. There are a lot of Democrats that are sympathetic to such an effort, but relatively few are willing to step out. Because they can live with Hillary Clinton, and she’s going to win the nomination and probably win the election so why should they put themselves at risk? But I am struck, the Republican elected officials do not have the sense of urgency that you just described. They think that it’s like with Goldwater in 1964 – we nominally support him, we don’t do much, we keep our heads down, we put out some good policy ideas, and then he loses, and we reemerge the day after the election to say, “That’s done and that’s over, now let’s move ahead.” And they don’t believe yet that the Republican Party is, in a way, finished. KASPAROV: Goldwater was a legitimate candidate with ideology. And let’s not forget who represented Goldwater in the final speech. KRISTOL: Reagan. He just lost. He was just too conservative. KASPAROV: Too conservative. But it was a set of ideas that actually won 16 years later.

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KRISTOL: And a decent person. No one thought that he and McGovern were not reasonable, patriotic Americans – KASPAROV: It was a debate between two visions for America. Right now, Trump is not about a vision. Actually, Hillary is also not about a vision. She wants it so badly. The Party basically hands it over to her, and now the Republican Party that could come up with a decent candidate – I believe almost any candidate from the 17 that we could see at the stage of the beginning of this process, almost any of them could be a favorite in this fight. Republican Party failed to come up with this alternative. You pay. The Party will pay, I think, by its ultimate price. Trump is – it’s a very flamboyant way of committing suicide. KRISTOL: That’s good. I’ve come to this. I once thought – I was always anti-Trump, of course, and for an independent candidate, but I once thought, well, at the end of the day, the independent Republican runs, he or she holds the Republican flag aloft so the Republicans don’t look like they’re just a Trump party, and then you go back to the Republican Party of Marco Rubio and Scott Walker and Ben Sasse and everyone in January of 2017. I actually doubt that that’s possible now. I think the degree to which – KASPAROV: It’s the general elections; it’s about building coalitions. Forget about people who supported Trump. You don’t want this coalition. Because these people – it’s a sizable part of the American population, you know, 70 percent of Republican Party, maybe 10 percent of American population. But if you have this 10 percent, you lose 20 percent that you can get from the center so there’s much bigger fish to fry in the center. And that’s what you look at. It’s a unique moment where you have to come up with a new vision. I’m not here just to formulate all these ideas, but as a professional player, I can tell you this is the right time. You have to show your leaderships qualities. It’s about someone to take a risk. Again, risk doesn’t mean you’re going to win if you take a risk, you can lose, but people they pay attention to someone who is taking a risk and at such moments they realize this person, he has ideas, he believes in them, and we can trust him that he could go against the sort of conventional wisdom, he could go against this powerful trend, and he could go against this party because he believed in ideas and he put ideas sort of beyond a very short-term foolish party interest. KRISTOL: I think that is such an important point that people – it’s so hard to get people to see that. Of course, people are risk-adverse, politicians are risk-adverse. Successful politicians are especially risk-adverse. If they’ve already reached a certain level, it’s harder for them to take the gamble. They’re sort of – KASPAROV: It’s all understandable. KRISTOL: I agree, but it’s terrible. KASPAROV: This is the moment. There are some historic moments where you have to make decisions that are tough. KRISTOL: People should think about this, who are the most consequential American presidents of the last half-century? Presumably, Reagan and Obama, I think, we would say. Reagan, as you indicated, gave this famous speech, his real entry into American politics is this speech on behalf of a candidate who gets clobbered. And you know, the normal analysis would have been – and I think it was incidentally the day after the election of ’64 – anyone who spoke up for Goldwater had no future – but he said what he believed and he did it in a decent way, he didn’t pander to horrible – he didn’t pander to bad instincts or other elements of the Party. He then runs in 1966 and defeats the establishment candidate in the primary for Governor of California, defeats the incumbent Governor of California. Runs again in ’76 against an incumbent Republican president, something you’re not supposed

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to do, just missed it. I mean, people forget how much of a risk-taker. So easy at each stage to take the more conventional view. And Obama. Obama in ’03, I mean, he didn’t make a huge deal of his opposition of the war, he wasn’t famous, he was a State Senator. Still, you’ve got to say when everyone else said, “It’s political suicide not to support the war.” Hillary supported it, and John Kerry supported it. Obama said, “No, this is a mistake.” Whether he’s right or wrong. I don’t agree with him, but that’s what got him elected in 2008. So the risk-taking worked. KASPAROV: And Obama is very consistent. He’s extremely – he’s adamant when it comes to the core of his agenda. He didn’t make any compromise. It’s basically my way or highway. Even with significant above the majority in the House and eventually in the Senate, they failed to stop his agenda. People had more trust in him. People who followed Obama they had trust, they were confident that Obama was defending their interest. Again, no matter what we think about this agenda. He had followers that believed in him. The Republican primaries demonstrated that Republican voters had no confidence, they didn’t trust their leaders. That’s why every time there was a showdown in DC, Obama won. KRISTOL: I suppose the agenda going forward would be a combination of assuming our responsibilities abroad, defending liberty and defending the country, and a kind of innovation and self-government at home. KASPAROV: It’s a risk-taking agenda because again that’s what made America great. It’s about innovations. It’s about rebuilding the country. There are so many great things that can happen in this country if you just reveal this potential. Capitalism hasn’t betrayed America. America has betrayed capitalism. Just going back to its roots. Also assuming the leadership role. That’s what the world expects. America can do many great things in the world, and if America walks away, it creates vacuum, and it will just make things much worse. Of course, there are certain battles that are already over. I think, on the Republican side, you should understand there are many battles on social issues, they’re gone. So they’re over. Don’t fight the fights that are gone. You can think whatever you want about them, but it’s over. You should look at the future. The future is about, I believe, fiscal conservatives, it’s about risk-taking, it’s about building America’s greatest by – not bringing jobs back. It sounds ridiculous to me. America doesn’t bring jobs back, America creates new jobs. So it’s about creating new jobs. New industries. Creating something doesn’t exist today from AI to space exploration. Leading the world. And of course, just being strong. Being strong in many things, you can do things. Education. The basic infrastructure in the country. There is so much that can be done, but it’s not should be done by the state and through the state channels. The state should, you know, lead the way. The government must let people use their energy, creativity, sort of entrepreneurship to build new America in the 21st century. KRISTOL: Restoring self-government. That’s the Constitution and the will of law are crucial for that, obviously. KASPAROV: That is what Obama has successfully, not destroyed, but damaged. KRISTOL: That’s a depressing thought. What about young people? You spend a lot of time on campuses speaking to people. I guess the conventional view is they’re all voting for Sanders, and it will be very hard to get them onto this agenda. Is that correct?

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KASPAROV: It doesn’t happen overnight. Over decades in American universities, there was just, you know, a propaganda of ideas that were quite opposite to the spirit of American democracy and the free market. Now, I’m surprised to see these young people just flocking to support Sanders because he offers something that they think can work. There are problems with student loans. When you just for a moment just wearing the shoes of this 25, 26-year-old boys and girls just graduating, they just have to look for jobs and they have to build their lives, their families. They have to pay back their loans, and there aren’t that many jobs. Again, we reached a point where the traditional algorithm was you go to school, and then from school you go to college, and then just graduate and then you get a job. This method is no longer working because when you look at what kids are learning in this process at the time when they were looking for jobs all they learned becomes redundant. Again, new challenges. It’s no longer traditional process of educating kids, it’s not one-way street. It’s not a teacher standing in the center of the classroom as the sole source of authority and knowledge. It’s a two-way street. It’s iPad generation so we have to find new ways of educating them. It’s not about what we teach them, it’s about how we teach them. We need to empower them with tools. Again, there’s so much potential in each individual, and this country always had unique conditions to reveal this potential. We have to make sure we connect again the educational process and the future jobs, the future entrepreneurial ideas. We have to make sure these kids, they will understand the world that we live in and they will not be hijacked by the ideas of the past. Even if they are wrapped in nice paper with all the 21st-century bells and whistles. It’s still all rotten ideas that never worked before and never created wealth, but always destroyed it. KRISTOL: I suppose this is sort of the definition of decadence is almost the collapse of risk-taking. A kind of combination of complacency and fatalism that you can’t do much and we should just make the best of our limited and shrinking circumstances. How worried are you about that – on the one hand, that cuts against the American grain and, presumably, Americans don’t want to live in that world, but I suppose they can talk themselves into thinking that’s all we have. How worried are you about this current condition of society, the culture? Is it just bad luck that we ended up with Sanders and Trump and people aren’t stepping up and it would be easy to revive public spirit and risk-taking? KASPAROV: It’s not easy to revive because, again, Trump and Sanders, they’re reflecting much deeper problems. We should look at these deeper problems, we should understand them. We should understand why we’ve reached the point Trump and Sanders are representing ideologically, if you may call that ideology, two major American parties. In my view, it requires us to not just to analyze what’s happened in the past, but also to find common ground for the majority of the country and for the free world how to move forward. It’s very important we keep the sort of positive attitude. People often ask me about my views of the future and why I’m always an optimist, and I say, “Look, if I have an optimist view of the future, I could be right; I could be wrong. But if I believe the future is bleak, it will be bleak for sure.” III: Reflections on America (43:19 – 59:54)

KRISTOL: I’m struck talking to you as a European intellectual what a distinctive view you have of America. I wouldn’t say it’s the typical view that Europeans have, even Europeans who are politically congenial – who I would find congenial, who I admire very, very much, who are fighters for freedom in the Cold War – but they tend to have a more jaded, kind of distanced European view of America. It’s kind of a little bit silly and they’re enthusiastic, but the European view of the world is kind of more serious and sophisticated. You seem to have more of a sense that America really is crucial to the future, and that there’s a kind of – and not just because it’s big and strong, but somehow, the American spirit is an important part of the human spirit, if I can put it in too grandiose a way.

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KASPAROV: I can try to divide this – Intellectually, I’m European. That’s the part of European culture or so, and I think that’s the somehow European university, especially those in the UK they are more cosmopolitan. By the way, less influenced by the hard-left propaganda, ironically. But, you know, I always looked at the big picture. For me, from the very beginning just of my conscious life, it was a fight between the free world and the unfree world. Between Communism and the free world of the United States, led by the United States. And the battle is not over. Denying the fact that the United States of America is the leader of the free world, it’s not doing a good service to our cause. Leadership is not necessarily – has the components of a cultural leader. As I said, you can divide these things. But it’s also not only military, it’s not about policing the world, this is about the spirit. The spirit of the free world, which is a spirit of innovations and risk-taking. has been always represented by the United States. Much stronger than in Europe. When you look at all the great things that we use now. Whatever the European think about America, maybe not being so smart, but everything that we have in our pockets, in our bags, all the new technologies, it could be made elsewhere in China, in Vietnam, but it’s originated, it’s conceived, it’s invented in one of the American garages. That tells you something about the spirit of the country. When you just look at the history of this country for last 150 years, from the end of Civil War to nowadays, it’s almost unbroken periods of innovations, of constant challenge, of creating new things. It’s boiling all the time. And, it also was a melting pot. It brought immigrants from other countries. It created conditions where people who could bring the best, sometimes the worst, from their countries of origin and from their cultures, from their habits and tradition. They could not just coexist, they could merge in a nation. It’s still has this huge potential. Though, of course, it doesn’t have the same vibration as before, but it will not be smart for European intellectual who’s trying to see this big picture to deny the fact that unless America reassesses its role in the world and assumes the leadership role again, the world will be in big trouble. KRISTOL: So I’m struck how much you’re not a traditional conservative with a little “c” in the sense of “let’s preserve the best of the past,” which I’m sure you’re for, and respect the Constitution and so forth. I am struck how much you emphasize innovation and risk-taking. KASPAROV: Again, it’s the fact that America was so successful is very much is engraved in the foundation of the republic. KRISTOL: Which was a big risk. KASPAROV: People often now are mistaken by the short American history. Oh, it’s you can start in accounting all the way down to the beginning of the 17th century but this whole history of the country, less than 250 years. But when you just look at the political system and from the sort of approval of the Constitution to these days – so we’re talking about less than 230 years – this is probably the most stable politically system – okay, maybe the United Kingdom. But if you look at all other European countries, they underwent drastic transitions. America had a system that is very much connected – you can see the connectivity between the current system and the ideas laid down by the Founding Fathers. There were changes, there were some upheavals, there was even a Civil War, but at the end of the day, the basis for, political bases for the republic – the main ideas that regulated the relations between the federal government and the states and sort of municipal institutions, they’re all here. That tells you that it worked. Period. It did work and trying to adjust to the demands of the time, it’s counterproductive. Times can change, but the sort of foundation of what, you know, helped you build the most successful economy and the most sustainable democracy in the world should not be revised. KRISTOL: And you’ve thought a lot, I’m sure, about risk-taking as a chess player and as a geopolitical analyst and a cultural thinker. Some young person is watching and saying, “I think that I have that

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temperament, but I sometimes thing, maybe, I should go the safer path, maybe it’s a mistake.” What have you found over the decades in terms of – what allows you to judge what risks are worth taking or how to get temperamentally in a place where you have the confidence to take the risks you might take? KASPAROV: It’s very individual. There’s no universal tip. There’s no magic pill you take and you become a great decision-maker. People are different. Some of us are more aggressive. Some of us are more defensive. There is nothing wrong with being dynamic or just more cautious. It’s all about knowing who you are. It’s all about knowing, reading yourself. Being relentless in analyzing your strengths and weaknesses. Some people should be more decisive in taking risks, some should be more cautious. But statistically, taking risks, I believe, it’s more beneficial because unless you learn from your risk-taking decisions, even from failures, you will never improve. If you want to improve, if you want to reveal your potential, you have to take risks. In the modern environment, it’s what I call the attacker’s advantage, it doesn’t mean you are doomed to succeed. You can fail, but in big numbers, your chances of overall success are improved. KRISTOL: Just curious now – was there a moment in your own biography, especially in chess-playing biography, where you really saw this or were you always an aggressive player and you just got better and better? Was there a moment when you thought or your coach said to you, you know – KASPAROV: I learned how to sort of analyze the moves I made. Good moves or bad moves. There’s always plenty of very useful, valuable information from your own decisions. Since I was involved in fighting the top of the professional chess from early age so I had plenty of information available for analysis. And as long as you capable of analyzing your moves, your decisions, as long as you’re comfortable criticizing yourself or making mistakes, even finding what you did wrong in the game you won, because there are always mistakes, you are fine. It’s all about your ability to improve. The reason I was able to stay on top of the world of chess for so long was that winning the game was not sort of the only priority. Of course, winning or losing, that’s the game of chess or any other game. But I thought it would be very important to make the difference. Making the difference, again, as long as you are trying to make this difference and just to change something. No matter small or big, again you’re fine. Because it means your body, your brains, they’re all work in synergy, and they are just trying to – It’s like upgrading you. You cannot upgrade your hardware, but you’re upgrading your software. Always trying to be in this search mode. KRISTOL: That’s interesting because I’ve been so struck in the US, especially in the last few years though, the degree to which people do more and more analysis. Businesses do. Politicians do. They have more and more data. And it makes them more and more cautious. It’s a different kind of – They’re not analyzing with a view to improving in a way or justifying a risk, they’re analyzing with a view to persuading themselves that they have to be – KASPAROV: This is one of the paradoxes of the abundance of information. We live in a time where people expect that you can read everything on the screen. You can have many answers, you can have all the answers, but at the end of the day, it’s about asking the right questions. It’s about starting the whole process. And realizing at what point I should stop looking at the screen and switch on my brains and trying to make the difference by combining my intuition, my creativity with brute force of calculation. Because everybody is look at the same screen. Everybody has access to the same information now. And, you know, if you want to minimize the chance of making mistakes, then you will find enough reasons on the screen not to make the move. I’m arguing that not taking risk today, it’s much riskier decision because you are not learning, you are not moving. You create status quo, which is stagnating. That is one of the reasons that the political center, whether it’s in Europe or America, now is being destroyed because they just try to stop – They try to freeze the time, but it doesn’t work this way.

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If you are selling status quo and somebody else is selling radical ideas, you always lose no matter how bad these ideas, whether it’s Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, or ISIS. The radical views that are just offering dynamic movement, and participation of individuals, no matter how bad and ugly these ideas are, they are always superior to the status quo or stagnation concept that is being available from the so-called mainstream political parties. KRISTOL: Static analysis is really one of the great mistakes I think people make in every walk of life. It’s hard to make yourself think dynamically. I’m just curious – any thinkers, writers, or historical figures had a big influence on you as you went through your own life thinking about this? Will you cite an example or book that you sort of had a particular – or helped you think about this – or is it mostly from your own experience? KASPAROV: It could be a long list because I read quite a few books. KRISTOL: But if a student came and said, “I want to start really thinking about the kinds of issues you are talking about.” Any particular biography or novel. Account of a historical situation or figure? KASPAROV: As the book that is for me that comprises its history, but also this sign of a great personality and it’s kind of poetry, I would recommend for a student, the History of The English-Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill. It’s just I wouldn’t say it’s historically very accurate and he’s not very objective, but it’s how democracy was built. That had a very profound influence for me because now I could understand better sort of the, like, sort of internal mechanisms of the Anglo-Saxon democracy that was conceived and built in England and just was developed further across the Atlantic. KRISTOL: That’s probably the book of Churchill’s that’s most neglected, and he himself thought it was very important to write. And he began in the 30s, I believe, and then put it aside, of course. And then he came back to it after the war, and he had many other things to do after the war and he could have just been the most famous person in the world and given speeches, and he became Prime Minister again. But he really spent a fair amount of time – he had research assistance, of course, and all that – but for, I think, the reasons exactly you cite. KASPAROV: The book has personality. Reading the book – KRISTOL: When did you read it? As a young man? KASPAROV: About 25 years ago. Late 80s, early 90s. I read many times over and over because it’s great language. It also, you hear the voice, and you understand the personalities. The people play their role. Okay, I read many other books. But this one stands alone as, again, something that came from individual who was not just a historian, a researcher, a writer. He was one of these great individuals. He was also a player at this stage. KRISTOL: Garry, thank you for that recommendation. Thank you for the conversation. And thank you for joining us on CONVERSATIONS. [END]