Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped

This unpersuasive political screed from Kasparov, world chess champion from 1985 to 2005 and now a human rights activist, lays part of the blame for Vladimir Putin’s repressive Russian dictatorship at the feet of the U.S. and other world powers. After admitting that “Putin is no Hitler,” the author repeatedly compares the two. In his eyes, Putin sought “adulation and validation” at the Sochi Olympic Games just as Hitler did at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Kasparov also accuses the United States of “cowardice” for allowing Putin to annex the Crimea in 2014, tantamount to Neville Chamberlain’s “eager capitulation” to the Nazi annexation of the Sudentenland in Czechoslovakia in 1938. The author’s apocalyptic warnings about the dangers posed to the international community by Putin may find sympathetic ears at international human rights conferences, but he is unlikely to convince many Americans that they have a “moral responsibility” to provide military aid to Ukraine and return to Cold War “principles and policies.” Even Kasparov admits that “in the end, Putin is a Russian problem... and Russians must deal with how to remove him.”[em] (Nov.) [/em]