The shifting political chessboard
Meet ARCH —and the three new players of the old game
Until January 20, we had a pretty good idea of what the chessboard where the global game of thrones was being played looked like.
It looked pretty much as it had looked for the last eight decades — to be specific, since February 1945, exactly 80 years ago, when Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Josef Stalin met at Yalta to decide how to divide the world once World War II was won.
“But when the Trump administration took office, that shifted the chessboard completely,” Alexander Smukler of Montclair said. And he predicts that soon there will be another Yalta-style conference that again will reshape the world.
Mr. Smukler, who left the Soviet Union with his young family in 1991, just months before it imploded, has relied on his wide network of sources in Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, as well as his own access to information, to explain first the war in Ukraine and then its widening implications for the rest of the world to us.
Now, he said, as the war in Ukraine that began when Russia’s Vladimir Putin invaded that sovereign nation enters its fourth year on February 24, and as the anniversary of Yalta is marked, “that game is over.
“History chose a different path. There is a new player in the game of thrones, and because of him the whole game is changed.”
Now, Mr. Smukler said, “We are in a new stage. We are now witnessing a new opening. The “new player” — that’s President Donald J. Trump — “will completely change the entire strategy. Because since he came to power — and he climbed to the top of the political Olympus in an unusual way, definitely not a straightforward way — the whole atmosphere of the global game of thrones has changed.
“Right now, we have three leaders, who basically will control the whole world for at least four or five years. And they will start preparing for the new Yalta conference.”
Perhaps ironically, Yalta is a lovely resort city in the Crimea, a region over which Russia and Ukraine battle; it is extremely unlikely to host the next conference of world leaders. When we say “Yalta” in this context, we’re talking about the meeting, not the place.
“Eighty years ago, the three leaders — none of them young — who met at Yalta represented the countries that defeated Nazi Germany, after the bloodiest war in the history of mankind. Two of them — Roosevelt and Churchill — represented the free world, and the other — Stalin — was an authoritarian dictator whose hands were dripping with blood. But these three leaders had no choice but to meet and talk and finalize plans for peaceful coexistence in the world after World War II. It was a unique chance for them to meet and draft the rules that gave our generation” — the Baby Boomers, and also Gen X — “a chance to live and raise our children in a peaceful world.
“It’s important to understand that when they met at Yalta, it was before the nuclear era had begun.” Just barely, though. Six months later, the United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But, nonetheless, Yalta came first. “It still was a prenuclear world,” Mr. Smukler said. “The bombs hadn’t been unleashed yet. And the three world leaders met, and in a very short time they drafted the rules for peaceful coexistence.
“And then their trajectories in the global game of thrones went off in different directions.”
President Roosevelt died just two months later, in April 1945; his life had been so full of extraordinary accomplishments that it’s hard to make sense of its ending when he was just 63, but that’s how old he was when he died.
Prime Minister Churchill was voted out of office in 1945, just as the war in Europe ended. He returned as prime minister from 1951 to 1955, and lived until 1965, dying at 90, but his influence had waned considerably. His life, like Roosevelt’s, was extraordinarily full, but the British empire that he’d personified had begun to crumble.
Josef Stalin “ruled his empire, which he strengthened greatly after the Yalta conference” with an iron fist, but he died in 1953, and soon Khrushchev came to power, Mr. Smukler said. “That was the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet empire, although it took 30 years.
“The Yalta conference, and the conference at Potsdam that followed” — which saw the recently deceased Roosevelt replaced by President Harry Truman and Churchill by the much less colorful but highly competent Clement Attlee — “was an important moment in the history of mankind, because these different leaders, with different agendas, had the chance to meet and draft the rules that existed for 80 years,” Mr. Smukler said. “During those 80 years, those rules allowed us to avoid global conflicts. There were lots of regional conflicts, yes, but no global conflicts.”
At Yalta, “Roosevelt worked to implement his ideas about the creation of the United Nations. All three argued during Yalta but eventually came to agreements about how to divide Europe and create zones of interest for the Communist and democratic worlds. They drafted lines to separate the Communist and democratic worlds. The result was the creation of NATO and the Warsaw Pact.”
The plan was enormously detailed, even though some of it was oral rather than written, Mr. Smukler said. “They put in lines between states and drafted borders. Poland received part of Germany, and so did Russia, in what is called the Kaliningrad region. The United States received control in the Pacific region, and of Japan. It more lately became an independent democratic country, but after the war ended, the United States controlled it.
“What the U.K. got out of this was what was most important to Churchill — that Stalin could not take over the whole of Europe. Stalin and Churchill clashed, but Stalin was surprisingly weak, and he gave up a lot. Stalin wanted modern Austria, because the Red Army had occupied Vienna, and he wanted Finland,” but he got neither. “The biggest compromise was to divide Germany into two countries, which did not let it return to the global game of thrones as a strong player.”
Obviously, many of these borders have shifted again — the most obvious change, along with Japan regaining its independence, is Germany reuniting as one strong — albeit horror-and-guilt-acknowledging — player in the global game of thrones.
“Why are we talking about Yalta now?” Mr. Smukler asked rhetorically. “Because three elderly leaders of the most powerful countries in the world met in order to make the world peaceful after they’d leave the stage.”
Now, again, the three most powerful men in the world — Donald Trump; the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin; and the president of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping — face a situation not unlike what their counterparts faced in 1945.
Mr. Smukler calls the countries these leaders represent ARCH — that’s for America, Russia, and China. It’s a new combination — goodbye Great Britain, and hello China — that represents the world as it is today, not as it was when World War II ended.
Who are those three men?
“The leader of the United States has very unusual, very controversial views about how to make change, both domestically and internationally,” Mr. Smukler said. “In my personal opinion, he does not want a war. We don’t have to go to psychologists — and I am not one — to know that this guy cares about his legacy. He is not a young man” — he is 78 — “and he knows, at least in my opinion, that in four years he will be off the political stage. He survived two assassination attempts, came back to the presidency despite being convicted of felonies, and makes it clear that he thinks that he is chosen.” (As Trump said at his inauguration: “I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.”)
“A person who feels that he is chosen would care not only about the current situation and how he looks today, but also would want his name not only on skyscrapers and on a page in American history but in his own chapter in world history.
“I think that his actions in the global game of thrones will be motivated by his intention to write his own page in the book of world history.”
Next, there’s Putin. “He also is not young. He will be 73 this year. And he absolutely 100 percent understands that his political time is going to be over soon, although he reserved for himself the opportunity to stay in power until 2036.
“In a few years, he will become the ruler who has been in power the longest in Russia — longer than Catherine the Great, longer than Peter the Great, longer than Stalin. His country is the biggest in the world in terms of territory, and it has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. He has an army that went through a brutal and bloody training during the last three years. And he modernized his military industry. By July 2028, his military production will be ahead of the rest of the world. Russia will be one of the most militarized countries in the whole world.
“What does Putin want?
“Just a few years ago, we said that he was cornered. That he would not survive. But unfortunately, the organized West was not able to defeat him on the battlefield” — through its inability, or perhaps more accurately its unwillingness, to get Ukraine the weapons it needed when it needed them — and Putin survived.
“He not only survived, but being a very successful chess player, he got out of the corner, by initiating enormous conflict in the Middle East, destroying the unity of the European countries, and getting a few democratic right-wing leaders like the prime ministers of Hungary and Slovakia and the president of Serbia, and most importantly by building a close relationship with India and China that helped him finance his aggressive military action against Ukraine. So now, I think, now that his front line is slowly, slowly advancing in Ukraine, it’s a time for him to think about his legacy, and his page in world history.”
Putin also wants to be seen as representing the Christian world — not the godless Western version, but the old, traditional, patriarchal, hierarchical world whose throne he likes to see himself as having inherited, Mr. Smukler added.
“And then there’s Xi,” the youngest of the three at 71, “who controls one of the most powerful and fastest-growing economies in the world. It’s obviously very powerful from a military point of view, and has the world’s second-largest population, after India.
“These three leaders together represent the largest part of the planet’s territory, they control more than 50 percent of the world’s mineral resources, and much more than 50 percent of the world’s GDP.
“And most important, each of them has a button — a red button, a green button — that if they press it can completely destroy humankind and our entire planet.
“And that’s why I think that they will meet, if not by the end of this year then next year, and they will talk about the future, and about coexistence. That’s because none of them — and this is very important, none of them — want a war. It is not in their interest to have a global war. They do not want World War III.”
The three aging men, each of whom attained power differently, have different but similar goals. “They have a common interest,” Mr. Smukler said.
Trump “wants to be written into world history.” Xi, who became “the authoritarian leader of China by a difficult path — which went through labor camps during the Cultural Revolution and was difficult and slow but got him to the top — has no interest in becoming involved in a global conflict that will destroy what he has done.
“And Putin completely recognizes that he made a major strategic mistake in invading Ukraine. His intention now is to change the world’s perception of him, and to come back as a world leader who could possibly sit in a new Yalta conference. He wants to erase the image of himself as a new Hitler.
“That’s why those three will meet and talk and draft a plan for how to coexist at least until the end of the 21st century.”
There’s a chance that the three might be joined by one more world leader, Mr. Smukler added. That would be Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, about to turn 71, “who would represent the influence and power of the Muslim world. He’s also an authoritarian who has been in power long enough to understand the complications of the global game of thrones.”
Those three — or possibly four — men will meet “to draft the new borders of Europe. We don’t know where they will be, but I don’t exclude the idea that Russia will tear apart Ukraine. Part of Ukraine again will become Poland, part of it will become Hungary, part of it will become Romania — Moldova will join Romania — and the biggest part of Ukraine either will become part of Russia or be turned into a small quasi-state. But Ukraine will be stripped for parts.
“Those three leaders will draft borders, which might be zones of control. Trump already has announced his interest in three zones of control — Greenland, Panama, and Gaza. They also will have to reshape the United Nations, which is now bankrupt, impotent, and worthless. See what’s going on in the International Criminal Court. The international health organization is bankrupt.” All those institutions will be remade or scrapped, Mr. Smukler said. “The whole system of peaceful coexistence, and the institutions that have global meaning, will have to be remodeled and modernized.
“Those three leaders have no choice but to meet. They want to meet. That will be their legacy, and it will make them written into world history, just as Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin are.”
The alliances between the three leaders and their countries can and will shift, Mr. Smukler said, but they know that there would be no way to win such a fight, on the global level. Trump, say, “has fought to get back to the White House. So now he will start a global war and as a result spend the rest of his life in a bunker? That is not him. No way.” There are no cameras in bunkers.
“Putin understands that his country is exhausted. It has lost almost a million soldiers. And he’s probably sick. He has to figure out who can replace him and continue Putinism. Or maybe he’ll die on the throne. In that case, who will be his heir? He does not want to be written into history as the new Hitler. He wants to be the new Stalin — because people have forgotten about the gulags, the labor camps, all the deaths. Today Stalin is remembered as a negotiator. He’s remembered for the Yalta conference.
“So Putin does not want to start a global conflict.”
And Xi, too, “wants China to prosper. He understands that he will achieve more with soft power than with a war. Negotiating and dividing the world into zones of interest will be much easier and more important to him than starting a war with us over Korea or Taiwan.”
In general, Mr. Smukler said, “they’re all too old for this.”
And remember, Mr. Smukler said, we’re not talking about morality. Roosevelt and Churchill were men of honor. The others? Not so much. But that’s not relevant here. What is relevant — what is the main difference between the Yalta conference in 1945 and the new summit that will happen in 2025 or 2026, is that “80 years ago, there was no nuclear button.” Now there is.
One of the biggest changes that has resulted from the trashing of the old chess board is that the importance of the war in Ukraine has diminished.
“It’s become regional rather than global,” Mr. Smukler said. “Trump has said that it’s not our problem. It’s Europe’s problem. If Europe wants to send troops there, fine.
“Putin is advancing there, very slowly, losing thousands and thousands of lives, destroying cities.
“The Russians finally occupied the city of Toretsk, after occupying parts of it for months, sacrificing thousands of lives, and totally destroying the city.” Now they’re going after Pokrovsk and Chasiv Yar, which will be taken similarly, with massive loss of life and total destruction of the city; then they’ll move onto other large industrial cities.
“It’s obvious to everyone in the world that after three years of war Ukraine is exhausted. They have no more human resources to throw in. Zelensky is very reluctant to mobilize children, to take 18- to 25-year-olds. Ukrainians are running away from the front lines. Ukraine is not getting enough weaponry, but Russia is, because Russian industry is completely militarized now, and Russia is getting whatever it needs from North Korea, including soldiers. North Korea has lost several thousand of their soldiers, but it can easily send more.
“So Ukraine will collapse in approximately six months, if it gets the same level of military support they’re getting now. If that support is diminished, it possibly could collapse sooner. So every expert and analyst understands that the war can be stopped only by negotiation. Russia is advancing on the battlefield; yes, it’s losing incredible numbers of soldiers; yes, it’s completely leveling cities.”
That brings up another point about which Mr. Smukler is passionate.
“Nobody in the world wants to talk about that destruction,” he said. “The cities are completely demolished, and nobody talks about it. We talk about the cities in Gaza, but not about Ukraine. All the people who lived in those cities are either dead or relocated. Relocated where? Where are those people?”
Talking in a Christmas Eve interview about the war in Ukraine, “Putin said something unusual for him,” Mr. Smukler said. “He said that ethnic Jews are responsible for suppressing the Russian Orthodox church in Ukraine.”
This is what Putin said:
“These people that are attacking the church, they are not atheists. They are absolutely faithless people, Godless people. Well, ethnically, many of them are Jews, but you haven’t seen them visit any synagogue…. These are people without kin or memory, with no roots. They don’t cherish what we cherish and the majority of the Ukrainian people cherish as well.”
Remember that dictators have their own, highly specific senses of humor, Mr. Smukler said. So after Putin made that statement, “he pointed at a Jewish guy, Alexander Khinshtein, who is the governor of the Kursk region.” There’s much bloody, deadly, pointless fighting going on there; the Russians are winning incrementally, but really no one is winning. The region is likely to become a bargaining chip, Mr. Smukler said.
“So look at what Putin has done. Look at the irony of this. He appointed a Jewish guy to become the governor, who basically is opposing Zelensky.” That, of course, is Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, who is Jewish.
“That Khinshtein is Jewish is a strong point in Russian propaganda. And from a Jewish point of view this is unique. Jews are leading armies.
“There are 1,000 people who Putin could have appointed. When he picked Khinshtein, trust me, he did it on purpose.”
So that’s the situation as Mr. Smukler sees it now. The world is safer now, he said, because it’s far less likely that someone will push the nuclear button that will end the world. There is much reshuffling and reorganizing and rearranging to do, and then the global game of thrones will begin again, the board newly reset, the motivations unchanged, and the world, as always, moving forward, inevitably but uncertainly.
And then the game will continue.
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