Who gets to play with white?

The West (US/EU) makes the first move every time. The expansion of NATO. The imposition of sanctions and embargoes on technology. They are often aggressive openings. It is their rules-based order. The regime changes. Economic warfare with tariffs, for example.

In addition, they regularly cheat. There is information manipulation like with those so-called weapons of mass destruction and now the so-called nuclear bomb. They bend the rules in their favor and use double standards. It is not about being right, but it’s about getting your way.

This is all possible because the West plays with white. The U.S. Dollar is the world reserve currency and it makes this possible. They have (veto) control of the UN, WHO, WTO and so on. But most of all, it is in their nature. It is their way of approaching the world. Europe colonized the world and the U.S. now has more than 800 military bases spread across all continents.

If you’re used to playing with white for a few hundred years, you don’t want anything else. You have become afraid to play with black because you don’t know how to defend yourself. Because you are afraid of the other person, expecting they behave just as you do.

Chess, Checkers and Go

Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov; a preference for white. Alexander Georgiev and Alexei Chizhov; a preference for white. Gu Li and Ke Jie; a preference for white. This makes sense, because white gets to start (even though in Go you have compensation for black). White has the initiative and black must then follow first.

We see a difference between these games with the geopolitics of Russia and China. Where the players choose white, the leaders let the West play with white. Of course, this also has to do with nature. China and Russia have no desire to impose their ideology on others.

They are not out to get more land. They want to trade, but not at the expense of the other. Their culture is not focused on outward hegemony, but inward tradition. That does make them sit with the black pieces facing the West waiting for the opening move.

You can have excellent strategies and even play offensively with black, but initially it is always reactive rather than proactive. You let the other set the game and can only end up where you want to be in the middle game or endgame. And when you’re not paying attention, white has already cheated again.

Unequal playing field

The West can go into debt for their aggression (dollar privilege), but China and Russia must save cash. The U.S. simply prints billions of U.S. Dollars for their wars in Iraq, Ukraine and Iran. China has to justify every Yuan to its own people. Russia and China constantly face sanctions and embargoes.

China and Russia have long been naive in believing that the West would play by the rules they themselves imposed on the world. China avoids direct confrontation and Russia tries to argue with logic, but such strategies, in the case of the West, only delay the inevitable.

But perhaps we have already entered the end game and the odds have turned anyway. We see the West hastily sacrificing white pieces and China is a master at waiting for the enemy to make a mistake that allows you to win without fighting. Russia is a champion of being able to cash in after which it knocks out the opponent.

As a European, I look through my Western glasses and naturally feel the rush of white from my culture. But if I zoom out, I can also see how China and Russia have put the black pieces in a winning position. The question now is whether the U.S. can stand its losses and not, out of sheer desperation, then wipe the entire game board off the table.

Soft Power

The West has elevated propaganda to an art; they have been world champions at it for many decades. Western propaganda accompanied by vulgar threats causes many non-Western countries to naively doubt the truth. Also because they are often shown a carrot or outright bribed.

China and Russia have been blackened in the West for decades and they have little to no soft power to change that image. And even in the non-West, the Global South, they are neither blindly trusted nor followed in their still lonely struggle against the West. The U.S. is mostly hated in the Global South, but China and Russia are not necessarily loved either.

BRICS+ has been around for a while, but there are now first-time countries that can be called a BINO. BRICS In Name Only. Countries that are trying to eat both sides. Countries that are not getting right behind the vanguard and thus not making a clear choice. China and Russia need to keep looking behind. What could they do about this?

China and Russia hope the West will go bankrupt rather than throw the bomb. But what are they actually doing in terms of soft power? How do the non-Western countries think about them? How do the Western countries think about them? Do they still have work to do in that, which will also be able to feed into their strategy and culture?

Control and Respect versus Trust and Friendship

Different life stages of an organization, in conjunction with its environment, also require different types of leadership. An organization building up requires a building leader while an organization in operation requires a managing leader. When the environment is hostile, it calls for a leader who can control and command respect.

A culture can be inward-looking with control and outward-looking to command respect. A culture can also be outward-looking with friendship and inward-looking with trust. So how do you get from control to trust and from respect to friendship? What do you do internally and what externally? To my mind, this is where Russia has the most work to do.

Don’t underestimate the importance of friendship. Respect does not equal friendship. Cooperation based on respect is different from cooperation based on friendship. Friendship does not require you to be the best of friends, but friends trust each other, and trust goes far beyond respect. Friendship is the essential basis for any relationship.

Trading based on friendship means a true win-win situation. Trade is the way to bring countries together and live together in peace and prosperity. The culture should be allowed to focus on friendship because that is what humanity needs to truly progress as a species. Are China and Russia already doing that, outwardly?

When China and Russia start playing with white

Suppose in five years we have escaped WW3 and BRICS+ begins to shape the multipolar world, what do we see? What did we see when the West withdrew from South Africa? What did we see after the fall of the U.S.S.R. in the Eastern European countries? What did we see after the fall of the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire and all those other empires that were stranded in time?

What are we going to build together? Something truly new or more of the same? Just repeat the same thing? What is actually the common thread of what caused all those empires to fall? What does man still have to learn? What is the underlying problem in all those systems that failed? What do humans need to do within themselves and with each other? What will we organize together?

Which cultures will struggle if we start focusing on each other and striving for friendship? Which cultures are open to change, to substantial change if necessary? In a friendship you may remain yourself, but it is also important to have a shared set of universal values. Is that possible? Throughout the world? Soon or in two thousand years?

What future leaders will flesh this out? Do we share the same vision, beyond current problems, toward the long-term future? Are we teaching this to our youth? Are we educating people who can go beyond old wounds and ingrained tradition and innovate the system in such a way that everything will be different?

Will everything become different?

Only if we play with white and invent an entirely new opening. But maybe we as humanity should invent a new game. A game where every player wins and no one can lose. But for that we have to be able to question everything. Everyone must be willing to let go of everything. Are we ready for that yet or do we just need some more repeating cycles?

In eighty years we will probably get this opportunity again. Or if the bomb drops in 200,000 years. It doesn’t matter much for evolution, it thunders on anyway.

Nico Cost