We are talking about Vladimir Putin. “Dictators do not play chess,” says Garry Kasparov. He should know — he was the greatest human chess player. But since he gave up chess 12 years ago, he has become the old KGB guy’s noisiest dissident. “Dictators can’t afford strategy,” he tells me. “Putin cannot think long-term. Dictators think about today and tomorrow morning.”
Waking up in the morning is important for a dictator, because it means he is not dead. “Look, I read enough books on history to tell you that Putin’s future is uncertain. Bad news is that I don’t know how and when he is going to die. Good news is that he doesn’t know about it, either. It will not be natural causes, because