Why Putin Is Playing Poker, Not Chess
Russia and the West are now at war. And the delicate dance leading to conflict between nuclear powers is a form of poker, not chess. Putin is used to bluffing and stealing the pot. He was shocked that the West called his biggest raise ever. Now what happens? Game theory and the poker concept of “pot odds” point to more escalations. Jason Pack argues that these can possibly be averted through eschewing negotiations and focusing on deterrence in his article ‘Why Putin is Playing Poker, Not Chess’ for New Lines Magazine. ‘If we look at Putin as trying to play a weak hand with a minimal stack of chips to best effect, certain dynamics of the current crisis come into focus. Let us consider the recent chain of events from this perspective. For over 60 years, exploiting Western media freedom, partisan divides and the profit motive has been a standard feature of Russian influence operations and active measures. Russia has progressively honed a specific doctrine or game-playing style in response to Western countermeasures. In recent years, it has found that the internet and globalization make disruptive actions inside an opponent’s territory a lot easier. Our era of enduring disorder is characterized by a diffusion of power centers in the free world and conversely, their consolidation in the authoritarian world’.
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