It all began on February 28 at the most climactic geopolitical moment of 2025, when Volodymyr Zelenskyy confronted an increasingly aggressive tagteam composed of US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office. Losing patience with the Ukrainian president who was clearly begging for reassurance that the US would not veer away from the policies of former President Joe Biden’s administration over the past three years, Trump blurted out: “You right now are not in a very good position. You’ve allowed yourself to be in a very bad position. You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having the cards.”

Perhaps failing to process the deeper meaning of the metaphor, Zelenskyy replied, “I’m not playing cards. I’m very serious, Mr. President. I’m very serious.” This was followed by Trump’s retort: “You’re gambling with lives of millions of people, you’re gambling with World War III, and what you’re doing is very disrespectful to this country.”

We may be witnessing the birth of a linguistic trend. The United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, picked up Trump’s metaphor and applied it to the unfolding drama concerning an eventual ceasefire in Ukraine.

“If Putin does not deliver, and I must tell the house that I currently see no sign yet that he is, the G7 meeting helped us ready the tools to get Russia to negotiate seriously. We’re not waiting for the Kremlin. If they reject a ceasefire, we have more cards that we can play.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Cards to play:

According to the context, it can refer to physical or financial resources, personal or national prestige, or one of many other expressions in English, such as “the gall to,” the “gumption” or “guts” or even the more vulgar “have the balls to.”

Contextual note

The dollar has dominated global trade for 80 years. US soft power has had a similar success as it managed to spread US brands, movies and fast food across every national boundary. Once articulated thanks to the subtleties of the French language, diplomacy has now been redesigned in the US of A and exported around the globe. Less than 30 years ago, a political actor and thinker such as Zbigniew Brzezinski could evoke the metaphor of the noble game of chess to evoke the logic of international relations. Trump and Lammy have redefined it as a game of poker.

Even amateur chess players know that the tactic at the core of poker’s logic — the art of bluff — has no role to play in chess. On the chessboard everything is visible and subject to very precise laws of movement and interaction. Chess players spend years refining their understanding of the complexity of the interactions that define the game. It requires an absolute respect for rules and the ability to anticipate and react to an opponent’s strategies and moves.

Poker’s logic turns around one simple concept and one tactical variant: winning cards and dissembling. Cards acquire meaning through random groupings. Otherwise they are meaningless.

Poker is to chess what astrology is to astronomy. Our perception of the constellations from the vantage point of Earth is a matter of pure chance. Those groupings have no correlative meaning in reality. The appearance of the meaning announced by astrologers is the result of pure chance. Astronomy seeks to determine real relationships and account for plays of force.

Lammy’s explanation of how he sees diplomacy reveals how the mindset of modern diplomats more closely resembles that of a poker player than a chess player.

“We can all see the impact the G7’s unprecedented sanctions have had on Russia’s faltering economy; social spending down, inflation and interest rates sky high. There can be no let up in our efforts.

In Canada we discussed where we can go further to target their energy and defence sectors, further squeeze their oil revenues and use frozen Russian assets. At the same time we will keep up our support to Ukraine – Europeans clearly need to shoulder our share of this responsibility.”

Because there is no dialogue, no real interplay, the tactic devised takes no serious account of the adversary’s strategy. It’s simply a question of measuring the potential power of the hand one holds. In the current context, we should note that most objective observers see Europe and the various European countries as being in a position of singular weakness. Having for decades accepted subordination to the whims of the US, Europe holds no cards in its own hand capable of winning the kind of game they imagine they are playing against Russia. Instead, their stated belief in their means to achieve victory appears to be nothing more than bombast and bravado.

This strategy can be summed up in a single word: bluff.

Historical note

The game of chess apparently emerged in India somewhere around the 6th century, inspired by the metaphor of warfare. Initially called “Chaturanga,” it simulated a battle between four divisions of the Indian military: infantry, cavalry, elephants and chariots. Chess players use their understanding of combinatorial possibilities to devise and apply a strategic plan leveraging the force required to penetrate the opponent’s defense while protecting their king, who represents the integrity of the society and army engaged in battle. The winner’s reward is essentially the satisfaction of having successfully weathered the attack of the opponent and proved one’s strategic capacity and tactical skills. Along the way, pawns and other pieces are sacrificed before one of the kings can be faced with imminent extinction through a declaration of checkmate.

In other words, chess contains high drama based on the metaphorical stakes of life and death. As it is usually paid, the aim is not to kill or obtain material gain, but rather to demonstrate skill. The reward is the respect one earns for the demonstration of one’s skills.

In contrast, success at poker relies on understanding how pure chance may or may not play out in the course of a game whose winning configurations are hidden from view. The player has limited choices that can only be executed through the act of betting. Essentially, the player can do two things: bet in a meaningful or intentionally deceptive way and, to some extent, vary one’s demeanor in a way that might lead the opponent to guess wrongly about the cards one holds in one’s hand. Unlike chess, where winning serves to confirm the player’s skill, poker plays focus on taking the winnings rather than proving their skills.

The American geopolitical strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski was Polish. In Eastern Europe, the game of chess has, for centuries, been honored and cherished, breeding a culture that privileges the notion of strategy, which it unambiguously deems nobler than the naked greed of the poker player. Generations of aristocrats, but also their bourgeois successors in the 19th century, viewed chess not just as a game but as a tool developing their sense of cultural competition and exchange. It stands as a symbol of the intellectual and strategic prowess that can be deployed in adversarial situations of international tension.  

A major cultural shift took place in the 20th century. Two World Wars reframed the very idea of war that had now come to be seen essentially as a contest for economic domination that could be carried out with modern means of massive destruction. With an ever-increasing emphasis on economic and monetary gain, the idea of proving one’s strategic skills to achieve geopolitical status gave way to the obsession with securing resources and wealth. Quite naturally, poker replaced chess as the apposite metaphor for the conduct of international relations in a world in which diplomacy has taken a back seat.

Busy with doing deals, Trump probably never had time for chess. Why should he, since it holds no obvious key to wealth? But a review of Biden’s diplomacy reveals a similar disinterest for the subtlety of strategic interaction. Biden may not have thought of himself as a poker player, but he definitely was no chess player. Nor was his choice to lead whatever he believed might fall into the category of diplomacy: former Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

In the 21st century, nations are playing with two-dimensional cards. They long ago abandoned the artistically sculpted figures of traditional chess pieces.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.