How well does Garry Kasparov understand geopolitics?

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The main thing that’s wrong with Kasparov’s tweet is that neither President Trump, nor any elected President or head of state, is going to be deciding strategy. That’s the job of his military advisors. His job is to decide policy.

It’s tempting to think of running a country as moving pieces on a chessboard. It may have been like that back in the Middle Ages where kings didn’t have legislatures to contend with, but generally you can’t just pick up and move things around.

Trump can move a carrier battle group or two to North Korea but he can’t decide on his own to go to war with them. Every move has to be weighed carefully and considered with both China and Congress, both of which can make him miserable. (unfortuately, the country with the most to lose, South Korea, is not so privileged)

As President, he’s going to be presented with a short menu of military and policy options to choose from. He chooses the direction we move in, other people actually carry us there.

Second, if you were to turn geopolitics into chess, there would be no endgame. Especially not for a country as large and powerful as the US. The endgame is where you take your dwindled reserves and tactical and material advantage you’ve cultivated over the course of the game and force a win. The US never has any kind of scarcity of resources.

Again, this is one of those things that might have made sense if we were in the Middle Ages plotting the conquest of a neighboring kingdom. Not in this world.