Chess is the national sport of Russia. It is, therefore, as Soviet Communists like Vladimir Putin used to say, “no coincidence, comrade” that the proposal on missile defense that he rolled out at last week’s G-8 meeting was a sophisticated gambit, a crafty effort not to advance the protection of Europe and the United States from future Iranian missiles, but to block such anti-missile defenses. Call it Putin’s ploy.

In fact, in the manner of an accomplished master of the game – for example, his democracy-advocating nemesis, Garry Kasparov – Putin is playing on several different chess boards simultaneously.

First, there is the U.S.-Russian relationship. An enemy is required by every would-be totalitarian – and it is increasingly clear that, despite his laughable claim to being “the last democrat,” Putin’s behavior has the hallmarks of a new czar. For Vladimir Putin, it is us. By building up the notion that we are a threat, he is able to garner popular support for his growing consolidation of power and even repression at home. He is also able to justify a new military build-up and adventurism abroad in league with the likes of world-class anti-Americans like Iran’s mullahs, China’s Communist leadership, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Kim Jong Il of North Korea.

Then, there is the Russian-European “board.” Putin has reverted to traditional Kremlin behavior towards Europe: bullying, coercing and blackmailing, using threats of nuclear attacks and energy cut-offs and other forms of economic pressure Taking a move out of Stalin’s playbook, the man-who-would-be-Czar has even attacked one of the Baltic states, Estonia, albeit with cyber-warfare, not the old fashioned kind.

Finally, Vladimir Putin is trying to affect U.S.-European relations. His service in the KGB during the American-led effort to place intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe nearly a quarter century ago clearly left its mark on Putin. He is not only nostalgic for the Soviets’ superpower status that began to unravel when that deployment went forward. He is also well-versed in the type of divide-and-conquer strategy that narrowly failed to topple key NATO governments and prevent the INF missiles from being fielded.

Today, the Kremlin is hoping to capitalize on U.S.-European strains over Iraq and to use the wedge of opposition to Bush Administration plans to deploy a very modest anti-missile capability in Poland and the Czech Republic to create, and fill, a vacuum of power on the continent.

The Putin ploy seeks to advance these purposes in several ways:

The Russian president has offered a Russian radar in Azerbaijan as an alternative to the detection and tracking radar slated under the Bush plan for the Czech Republic. Never mind that the Kremlin’s obsolescent radar is not designed for the kind of sophisticated discrimination of warheads from decoys inherent in the proposed, modern American system. The idea is not to do the job. Rather, it is to confuse the issue, give Czech opponents an apparent alternative to having the new radar based in their country, and make the U.S. appear unreasonable. Continued...