ToW #22 - Article from Businessweek: "What Chess Players Could Teach Obama About Handling Putin"

The dreaded stalemate.

    When it comes to modern politics, all that the public sees are the issues of the day. Everybody's eyes become so focused on current events and outrages that hardly anyone sees the big picture. In light of recent tensions between the U.S and Russia, including issues over Russia's handling of the Ukrainian revolution and housing of Edward Snowden, the American public is confused about the aggressiveness with which Russian-American relations are being handled. This is where Peter Coy and his article comes in; in an effort to clarify recent Russian-American politics, Coy likens the fight between these two superpowers to the game of chess. Coy is the economics editor and senior writer for Bloomberg Businessweek. Being a reporter for over 30 years, Coy is to be trusted when it comes to political analysis like this. As he writes to an audience that wishes to be informed about political and economic news, Coy takes on a few strategies to inform his audience, including a semi-informal voice and an article-long chess analogy.

    Readers of Bloomberg Businessweek tend to be both intelligent and strategic thinkers. Realizing this, Coy compares and contrasts chess strategies with the strategies of Obama and Putin. He establishes from the get-go that Putin is playing aggressively, fueled not by responsibility to lead but by personal desires. For the duration of the article, however, Obama's policies are questioned. Should he be on the defensive? Should he punish Russia's advances? Should he even be playing the zero-sum game of chess? This is where Coy brings in the strategic advice of chess experts, citing both an online forum responder who advocates fighting fire with fire and Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion, who argues for strategy outside the world of chess. For instance, as Coy concludes, where one cannot put indirect pressure on the opponent in chess, it is best for Obama to do this in reality. As it turns out, real-world political strategy cannot result in the suffering of one's entire populous for the sake of subduing the enemy king.

    In order to make his message better received, Coy combines his chess analogy with a fairly informal, passive tone. This makes his argument read more as analysis, a form of writing that cannot be so easily contested. It seems that, in the end, Coy took his own advice and subdued his chess-like aggression in favor of real-world reason.