One Question for Putin: Verbal Judo
Verbal Judo is the act of using words objectively and not necessarily artistically. There is a time and place for each.
The set up. I was speaking with an acquaintance who is an attorney in the military, and we were discussing a number of topics we found interesting. Well, then I asked: If you could sit down with Vladimir Putin (acting president of Russia) and you were allowed to ask him one question. What would it be, and why? My associate surprised me with the answer, “Honestly, I wouldn’t sit down with him. I mean, what good would it do?”
This got me thinking, my goodness, what a defeatist attitude. Had the founders of the United States felt this way, they would have never banded together to remove themselves and the citizens of the new states from the harsh rule of the British monarchy. And then it hit me. As sad as it is, more and more people today have become soft thinkers as opposed to hard thinkers — credit former assistant director to the CIA, Herbert Meyer — as it is coined.
Soft thinking revolves around emotions, and the words that incite a passion in its many forms out of those that hear or read those words. The problem with soft thinking is it’s fleeting because it has no bones, no real structure that can be measured. Anger to one person is not such anger for the next. The same can be said for joy, fatigue, intrigue, etc. Even nominal data considered qualitative in research (like race, and gender) have more value than soft thinking. In politics, anyway.
Hard thinking involves the opposite of soft thinking. It is a way of reasoning scientifically. If this is so, then a thing must first be an idea. The idea must next be experimented on. And finally, observation of the said experiment must take place, either proving or disproving the idea or hypothesis.
It is as a hard thinker that I will prepare my “specific” question for President Vladimir Putin. Please let me know if the outcome surprises you.
My goal. The goal of the question is to unbalance Putin in dialogue, in order to gain further insight into what he truly wants both as a man and the leader of his country. To me, this is verbal Judo.
METHODS
Methods will be laid out in three parts: I) general intelligence gathering, II) Filtering down for my specific question, and III) Asking the question.
PHASE I
Moving forward in any venue in life without first gathering intelligence is just simply not smart. Intelligence gathering is or can be messy when you first embark on the quest. I often think of an FBI war room scene in an action thriller where the protagonist and colleagues pin and write things up on a grease board to establish what they know and where they are now to where they want to be in the future and putting X, Y, or Z into a maximum-security facility. Now some reading this might think Vladimir Putin belongs in a maximum-security cell. It’s not for me to decide.
I want to play verbal Judo.
For starters, I will need information on Putin’s military and political career. I might even start my research with where he was born. How many siblings did he have? What occupations did his parents pursue? And so on. I might even delve into his hobbies, passions, favorite foods, cigars, wines, et cetera. I warned you it might get a bit messy. But the fun part is sifting through these items and trying to make sense of what is needed to yield the final outcome: A well thought out and strategically constructed question to set the stage for a perhaps more honest discussion.
Bits and pieces. I’ve confirmed Putin’s date of birth as October 7th, 1952, in Leningrad, Russia of the former USSR, now St. Petersburg, Russia. This information was confirmed by both the online Britannica and Wikipedia. Putin’s mother was a factory worker, and his father was conscripted into the Russian armed forces. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was the youngest of three siblings. Putin began his formal career as a lawyer, and would then go on to serve the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopastnosti or KGB, the Soviet equivalent to the United States’ CIA. He would later work for the FSB, considered to be a more democratic central intelligence offspring of the former USSR agency. Politics would be in Putin’s future in the 90s, and he would be named prime minister in 1999.
The Tucker Carlson interview with Vladimir Putin in February of 2024 was a two-hour piece that helped me look at various aspects of how Putin presented himself, and his positions on various political topics. Much could be extracted from that interview but for my purposes, I looked at:
· Putin’s recall of Russian-Ukrainian history
· Sensibilities & sense of humor
· And ability to think in objective terms.
I think an entire post could be written about the tidbits gathered from that interview — including Carlson’s masterful job of being a professional journalist and allowing the interviewee to build a case — but it will have to wait.
Judoka. My last piece of initial intelligence gathering for this project was Putin’s love and prowess in the sport of Judo. Putin played both Russian Sambo and Judo as a younger man, which was a common type of cross-training for Soviet athletes. Putin was also recently awarded an honorary eighth dan black blet in Kodokan Judo, a feat not many humans will ever acquire. If you don’t follow or practice Judo or Sambo, the meaning of this may be lost on you, but for those of us who enjoy the combat sports, this is a terrific bit of information.
PHASE II
So, now the filtering process begins. The fact Putin’s parents did not come from an aristocracy may be useful to posing my question. He was born into the Soviet Republic and has since seen Russia separate into a more democratic-driven country — although perhaps we should use the word democratic lightly here. Couldn’t find much about his siblings. His law background and his reciting of history when doing the interview with Tucker Carlson suggests his knack or proclivity for history, especially as it relates to Russia. He didn’t counter Carlson’s soft think words like fear, anger, and bitterness with more subjective words but rather suggested that they didn’t use such terms to describe politics. Afterall, it was just business, “…not a marriage…”. And finally, since 1999, he’s overseen Russia, either as a prime minister or president.
I hit a bump in the road here. While the intelligence collected was somewhat appreciable, it didn’t give me a true insight into who the man is — as much of the news networks talk and write about him with only their own speculations to go off. At this point, I had no idea what I was going to ask Putin in my one question project.
When you don’t have the required intimate knowledge of something or someone, you must employ fluid intelligence (encompassing your own experiences and given knowledge along with what you’ve learned about the subject).
Mr. Putin. I’m ready to play Verbal Judo.
Opening. After speaking with him through translators — English-to-Russian for him, Russian-to-English for me — I begin conversing in Russian. The accent is good (as I’ve studied the language since 2008) but the flow of conversation and grammar is most likely off. This will cause his eyes to widen, as he will not expect this. Why would he do research on a peon such as me, especially because I’m only allowed one question that he’s ready to deflect anyway as he’s fairly certain I’ll ask about the Russia-Ukraine struggle. I know because I’ve done this before. And when a native Russian speaker beholds a big, tall Hawaiian-Irish American begin to belt out the business in heavy Russian tones, it takes them off guard. I won’t slow my speech down because it impedes the flow of my message but will simply use English words here and there (when needed). Believe me, he will gather far more than just the gist of my point being made.
Note: Russian is in cursive and English is in standard font.
Me: “Mr. Putin, it’s very nice to meet you. Tell me please, I know you played and still play Judo and Sambo, but perhaps more Judo now, yes? I love Judo and Sambo and have played them a lot once my American football career was over.”
The hope is he’ll engage because you don’t earn an 8th degree black belt in something you don’t cherish. Rapport is a strong ally, so hopefully we’ve built it at that point.
And now we enter the last phase of the project. My question to Putin, which I will ask in English.
PHASE III
Thank you, Mr. Putin for allowing me the opportunity to ask you a question. I realize you were born into an era where the USSR was in full prominence and it’s likely you have since seen many changes to your country both socially and politically. If this struggle with Ukraine was about piecing the former Soviet Union back together like many in the west are hinting at, then countries such as Latvia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, etc., would all be preparing their armies to resist that action but that’s not what’s taking place. I have read that your family as well as many other Russian citizens were directly affected by Hitler’s nazi regime. Your father was gravely wounded in the war against those nazi occupants. And your older brother, Viktor, died as a young boy in 1942 due to illness and partial starvation as a direct result of the nazi occupation of Russia. Given the history of Ukraine’s former and current ties with nazi sentiment, will you drive them out and then give Ukraine its sovereignty, or will you drive the nazi regime out and take Ukraine for Russia?
Suggested Resources:
1. Hard Thinking by Herbert Meyer
2. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYfByTcY49k&t=4s
