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Michael McFaul on Trump, Putin, and Autocrats vs. Democrats
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Max and Maria spoke with Stanford professor and former ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul to talk about his latest book, and where things stand today in U.S.-Russia relations.
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- [00:07]
A
Welcome back. I'm Max Bergman, Director of the Stewart center and Europe Russia Eurasia Program at csis.
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B
And I'm Maria Snigavaya, Senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia.
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A
And you're listening to Russian Roulette, a podcast discussing all things Russia and Eurasia from the center for Strategic International Studies. Hello everyone and welcome back to Russian Roulette. I'm Max Bergman here with my co host Maria Snagovaya. And today we are joined by a very special guest, Ambassador Michael McFaul. Ambassador McFaul probably needs very little introduction to most of our listeners. Currently he is a professor of Political Science, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow all at Stanford University. He previously served on the National Security Council under President Obama from 2009 to 2011 and he was there before serving as President Obama's ambassador to Moscow from 2011 to 2014. And lastly, he is the author of a brand new book out at the end of this October called Autocrats Against China, Russia, America and the New Global. It's out from HarperCollins. We've got a link in our show notes. Please go and pre order a copy. Ambassador, you can send me a free copy for me giving a big plug here on Resident Roulette. But thanks so much for joining us today.
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C
Fantastic. Thanks for having me. I'll send you two copies. Thank you. I appreciate that. Pre orders are very important for books. Great. My pleasure.
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A
Maybe we'll start with the book and start with the recent Foreign affairs article that you had. We'll also put a link to the show notes there that was out with Abbas Malani, your co author. And you argue that Russia's allies shouldn't count on Moscow to support them. And maybe you could run us through your argument there and the arguments that you lay out in this new book that's coming out.
- [02:17]
C
Well, let me try. Those are big hard topics, but they're important topics. The piece that I wrote with the boss was about the Middle east, as you know, and looking at the where Russia was like when I was in the government a decade ago. By the way, when I was serving as U.S. ambassador, I would say the biggest issue that took most of my time in terms of bilateral relations was Syria. And in the last book I wrote about that time, the longest chapter I have in that book is called Chasing Russians Failing Syrians because we had a theory that if we could get the Russians together, we could end the civil war and that would bring peace to Syria. And we chased them all over the place to try to get that to happen. I did personally, and we failed. And then the following year, after I left 2015, Russia, Vladimir Putin lent his air force to support Assad. And that was a major escalation in terms of Russian involvement in the Middle East. And I would say part of a series of escalatory steps that Putin has taken in terms of using force. Punctuated, of course, most dramatically and tragically in 2022 when he invaded Ukraine. But compared to that period to now, you know, I'm sure I should be careful here, but the cables we were writing, if I were memory serves, I shouldn't say if memory serves me right, I'll just give you my opinion. So I'm not revealing anything secret. Russia had a pretty strong position in the Middle east back then. They had their traditional allies, allies, Iran, Hezbollah, Syria. They had a real full court press going on back then with Israel that I think honestly was quite successful and was sometimes frustrating to us. They also had in parallel this new courtship with the monarchs that was successful as well. And in the wake of Libya, remember, Libya exploded in 2011. We then intervened to try to stop what we considered was a threat to genocide in the second largest city, Benghazi. But then we kind of walked away, we the United States. And they got very involved in Libya as well. Fast forward to today and you saw first the collapse of the Assad regime. It took longer than I would have liked. And the future of Syria is very precarious, as you probably know better than I do. But. But that ally is gone. Hamas and Hezbollah are much weaker than they were 10 years ago. Those are proxies for. Not proxies, but partners with Russia on certain projects, most certainly Hezbollah in Syria and then Iran. And I want to be clear, I personally did not support this attack on Iran by President Trump. I'm not sure it's going to make us better off. I'm not sure. You know, let's judge it by the Iran nuclear deal that the Obama administration did, that we did, to see if it'll last as long as we did. But the reaction inside Iran and here now I'm relying on my co author, Abbas. He's the expert on Iran, not me. But was disappointment in Russia, like, hey, you know, we've been with you guys on all kinds of things and you couldn't protect us from being attacked. But even after the attack, you're not doing much for us in terms of a reaction. So I think that moment in the last couple of years, Russia's influence in the Middle east is significantly smaller than it used to be. And I don't want to exaggerate, but one could talk about the caucuses in a similar way, and I would go farther because it's on my mind, because we were talking about my time as ambassador, which I haven't done for a long time, by the way. But, you know, I used to spar with Foreign Minister Lavrov about diplomacy, you know, off, offline, kind of, you know, he was the grand expert. I was the idiot, you know, professor who becomes ambassador. And, you know, he's. He's got a wit and he can be very mean just in interpersonal skills. Right. And. And I think about that, and he used to criticize my diplomatic skills. And by the way, I made mistakes. We can come back to that if you're interested. But when I look at his tenure and I think about, like, where is Russia Today versus where they were 10 or especially 20 years ago? They're way more isolated, way less influential in terms of their stature in the world. With one giant caveat, which is in terms of international relations and multilateral relations, there's one big caveat, and that's the relationship with China. Maybe we'll come back to that in a minute. But there's this other piece that I know is controversial, but talking to you both, I want to flag it, which is that relations between states. Putin hasn't been so successful, but in nurturing, some would say in illegal ways. And at times it has been illegal. But in this ideological struggle, especially in Europe and the United States, I think his efforts at propagating Putinism or illiberal nationalism, and I'm not an expert on this call. Maria, you should jump in on this. This is more your field than mine. But I think that part has been more successful, and we've tragically underestimated that. Not in the Middle east, by the way, and not in the rest of the developing world. I don't think Russia has a lot of pol. Well, there's pockets of it. Right. But in Europe and the United States, Putinism, tragically, is a lot stronger than I would like to see.
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A
That's, I think, a really profound point because I think you're right. When you look at the war in Iran, Israel's attack, it does seem that Iran was sort of just left in the lurch. And I wonder, maybe to tie this back to the new book that it was here was an axis of autocracies, whatever the name that you want to call it, and Russia really wasn't there for Iran. It seems like, you know, the one thing that alliances, democratic alliances have is that they seem much more sturdy. But where Russia has been more effective, as you know, is sort of eroding the rules based national system, the rules based international order, whether that's interfering in elections or invading Ukraine, invading a sovereign country, you know, eroding the UN Charter. And so maybe you could talk a little bit about your book there. And how are you seeing kind of the autocrats versus Democrats? Is this going in one way or the other? Maybe you talk. Tie that to your book, please.
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C
Yeah, great big hard topic. And there aren't black and white answers. I mean, one of the motivations for me writing this book, Autocrats vs. Democrats, was to add a lot of gray area to debates that I sometimes think are too black and white, especially about China. We'll come back to that in a minute. But about Russia. The book has three parts, by the way. The first part, and you can read each part without having to read the other. It's 550 pages. And when my mother saw it, she's like, oh my God, another giant book. Aren't you done with this? And just so you know, I am done with giant books. I'm done with all books. This is my last one. It was a big ambitious book.
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A
We'll see about that. Professor.
- [10:22]
C
I'm saying it here on Russian roulette. I am done writing books. There are other ways to express oneself, including like we're doing right now. But the book has three parts. One is just to explain this new era of competition or great power competition or new Cold war. And I debate whether that's the right metaphor or not. And to do that, I go back to the 18th century, first in US Russia relations and US China relations, to show variation and to underscore the point that we always haven't been in this confrontational moment, but it's the mix of power, regime type and individuals that sometimes push us. And more confrontational versus not. The second main part of the book is about what you just asked about, which is. And it has three different sections. One on the balance of power, one on the ideological competition, and then one on competing conceptions of the global order. Max, that you just mentioned. And you know, to summarize a complex argument in a couple of sentences. I go through all that to show that, yes, China is more powerful on every dimension than Russia, and in many dimensions is as powerful as the United States. And that's sobering and we need to account for that. But when it comes to intentions of using that power One of my central arguments is that because we just like measuring boats and GDP or when I mean boats, I mean ships, right? Or rockets or cruise missiles or GDP or BRI investments, of course, on those, all of those kind of metrics of capabilities, China's way ahead of Russia, and those are real challenges to America, don't get me wrong. But when it comes to intentions of using those capabilities, my argument is that Putin is way more revisionist in terms of the global international order that you were just talking about than Xi Jinping has been. And we constantly underestimate the threat from Russia. I was there when we pivoted to Asia. Remember, we were the first to pivot to Asia. And then, and then the Trump folks came in and they were going to do the same. And then Biden, the same thing. It's all about. All about Asia, all about Asia. We just need a, you know, a stable relationship with Russia so we can shift to Asia. And one of my arguments is that, you know, Russia's the more rogue state, Russia's the more revisionist state. And in terms of undermining, you know, precious things, us like thou shall not annex the territory of thy neighbor. I mean, that's an idea that came out of, out of World War II when we decided we didn't want to have that happen. Putin is way more revisionist. So it's not just about capabilities, it's also about intentions. And then on the ideological piece, which is complex and hard, because you have to figure out what they're trying to do in Beijing, Moscow or Washington, because I talk about all three countries. And then you have to try to measure impact, which is, as a social science problem, is really hard and complex. And that's the next project I'm working on here with colleagues, by the way, where others are going to write the chapters, by the way, I'm just going to give some direction. The impact part, that's really hard to trace. But even on that front, I would say the autocrats versus Democrats, there's that ideological dimension, and it's real and it's consequential. And those theorists and policymakers that say ideology doesn't matter, regime type doesn't matter, I just radically disagree with that. And I have lots of arguments to show why just focusing on power is insufficient. That's kind of an more academic debate. Right? But the ideological struggle, well, we'll come back to the Americans because, you know, Trump is really, it's not clear what side of that fence he's on. From time to time, autocrats or Democrats, we'll come back to the Americans, Americans, if you're interested. But between Putin and Xi, I see the Putin project as much more focused on, as I just said, illiberal nationalism that's more for the developed world. And Xi Jinping thought and his model and his ideas, much more focused in the developing world, Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, parts of the Middle East. And that's pretty striking to me, that they're both anti liberal, anti democratic projects. But what they're promoting in those two spaces is fundamentally different. And I would say, and I know in your town, Washington, this is not the conventional wisdom, it's part of the reason I wrote this book. But I don't see Xi Jinping's project as being as global and totalitarian, most certainly as the Soviet project was. So that comparison, some people say this is bigger threat than the Cold War. People who say that either don't remember the Cold War or never learned about it, because that's not the way I see their project is dangerous. Don't get me wrong. It's just different from that. But even in this micro, you know, this more immediate comparison of Putin vs Xi, I think Putin is the more revisionist person and he's more willing to use, you know, instruments, including military instruments, to seek his objectives.
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B
Michael, thank you very much. And my vision also fully aligns with yours in that regard. So, of course, that brings us to the most recent and most horrible manifestation of Putin's revisionism, primarily the war in Ukraine. Been an outspoken critique of Russia's war in Ukraine, and have openly and consistently advocated for increased sanctions pressure on Russia as part of your Year Mark Fall expert Group on sanctions policy. I'm also a member. Thank you so much for your work on this front. Deeply appreciated. You also consistently argued online that the Trump administration has tools at its disposal to turn up the temperature on Russia, but has failed to do so. So my question, of course, is precisely along those lines. How do you understand the Trump 2.0 approach to Russia? Why? What is working? What is not working? Why is the administration so hesitant to introduce tough measures like sticks against Putin? And how do you see things playing out from here?
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C
Well, I think the two of you know the answer to that better than I do. I live in a far away for, you know, I live in the regions, as they say in Russian. Right. I live far away here in Palo Alto, many thousands of miles from the debate there. But I do have a few, you know, impressions. So, number one, I want to start with some good news. I applaud President Trump for trying to end this horrific, barbaric invasion of Ukraine. You know, he's. He said he was going to try, obviously didn't do it on the timelines that he promised, but he's been engaged. That's the. I applaud, that I even defend. And this is more controversial, his decision, his administration's decision to engage directly with the Russians and even Vladimir Putin to try to end this war. That's a necessary condition to try to mediate the end. So when, you know, when Secretary of State Rubio flew to Saudi Arabia to meet with Sergei Lavrov, I know many people criticize that. What are you doing meeting with these horrific people? And they are horrific people, in my view. And I knew every single person at that meeting personally, by the way. One of them is even a former graduate of Stanford University, by the way, Kirill Dimitriev. But I defended that. But the problem in Trump's strategy, from my point of view, is that he's thought that just inducements and some would say appeasement and just concessions to Putin will convince him to end his war. And maybe somebody convinced him that was a reasonable hypothesis. And we got to try that. If I were advising him, I would have said, that's not going to work from my historical experience of negotiating with this government and Putin and his people. But, okay, you tried that, but it hasn't worked. Let's just. You get judged. I think I wrote a piece. There's no participation ribbons in diplomacy. You get judged by results, not by participation. And the summits in particular, where he leaned in heavily and he made the really risky decision to invite this indicted war criminal, this person that terrorizes and kills Ukrainian civilians every single night, that has kidnapped Ukrainian kids, and he decided to invite that guy and literally rolled out the red carpet for him to treat him as a dignitary. So that was a very risky strategy to try to move the ball, but it hasn't. It hasn't achieved that result. I would say we're actually farther behind than we were before that Alaska summit. And so now, if you're still serious about ending the war, you have to shift to plan B and you have to have a coercive element to your strategy in addition to your engagement strategy. And, you know, I was very involved in the negotiations with the Iranians. Not directly, but in that strategy. When I worked in the Obama administration, we always talked about the engagement tract and the pressure track, and sometimes we would do this one, and sometimes we do this one. And it took years and years, right? It Took a long time, but it was the combination of coercive diplomacy and direct negotiations that led to that outcome, the Iran nuclear deal. And what I think President Trump needs is some more coercive instruments. And, you know, I think they're crystal clear. It's sanctions and weapons. What I don't know is if he actually wants to end the war anymore. That's the part I don't know. I sometimes hear that he wants to. I sometimes hear in the way that he talks that he's just frustrated and he's going to walk away. And my worst fear is that it's going to be kind of a replay of, if you remember, what happened with Kim Jong Un in the first administration. So he reached out. It was this audacious thing. People criticized him, and he said, well, this is the only way to do it. And he had his summits, and then it didn't achieve anything. And then at the end of it, he just walked away. And it's hard to say that, you know, we were better off as a result of that. That's my worst nightmare, that he leaned in. He did a little bit. But now he's going to pivot to other things. I hope I'm wrong, and I'm doing everything I can to try to convince him and people around him and people that know him better than I do that that would be a bad strategy, just not just for American national interests in Europe. And I'm emphasizing America on purpose, whether it's good for Ukraine or not. That's a different conversation. But I think it would be bad for American interests around the world. I was just in Taiwan a few months ago. There's no group of people on the planet watching what's happening in this war closer than the government and the parliament of Taiwan, because they understand if we capitulate there and then we roll back, that is bad for their security and their democracy. And it's not just in Taiwan. I hear this all over the world. The whole world is watching. If we retreat, I think that means a lot of other countries around the world are going to think, well, maybe I better hedge my bets and lean a little bit more towards Beijing and a little less towards Washington because they're withdrawing as a global player. Yeah.
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A
Last week I was in Manila and Tokyo. So the Philippines and Japan, two treaty allies, having very similar concerns that I think many in Europe have about the staying power of the United States. But maybe I want to prod a little bit.
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C
Say more about that, Max.
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B
Say more.
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A
Well, in some ways, the conversation is a little bit better than in Europe. In Europe, I think there's a sense of like, oh, we're really in a new era. We kind of can't count on America. And what I got in the Philippines and Japan is that there's still. Yeah, America's still here. It's a little confusing, but we're not sort of where the Europeans are. And I actually think that that's right.
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C
Yeah, I agree.
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A
But, but on Ukraine, you know, to me, look, you know, the amount of military aid that we're providing Ukraine is, the trend is downward. They're not going back to, to Congress for more money. They're going to sell weapons to Europe. That's okay. It's not great, but it's better than nothing. The sanctions remain in place. But what do you make of both the tariffs of India and are there steps that you think Trump would take on the economic side? Because it doesn't really look like he's going to do anything on the military side. And then maybe, you know, a second question there is. It seems to me that the most likely outcome here is that we do sort of just kind of fade away from this conflict, we the United States, and that this war is going to go on. And so how do you see this war going forward into 2026? And what's your kind of take on, on where Ukraine stands? Do you, do you think they're in an okay position or how nervous are you as, as we look ahead?
- [24:39]
C
Yeah. Well, those are big, tough questions that I don't have easy or clear answers to. On your first question, just my, my normative or policy position. I want to state it before I try to predict what Trump's going to do. So I think it's a giant mistake for us just to say, Europeans, you got this. You know, we're glad to sell you weapons. I don't think that's in our long term national security interests. And I'm talking about American interests again, not Ukrainian or European interests. And here's why. Number one, I'm embarrassed as an American that we are now making money off of the Ukraine war and not helping the Ukrainians. I find that as an American, embarrassing. I believe in burden sharing. I think the president was right to try to up the ante. He forgets that Obama did that, too, and Biden did that, too. Okay, I get that we don't have to litigate. We'll let the historians do that. That started, you know, more money, NATO countries, the 2% that started under Barack, President Obama, but that he got it to 5% or three and a half, depending on which number. That's fantastic. Mr. President, I applauded you and I applauded him. But we are not sharing the burden when it comes to Ukraine. And I think that is not only morally reprehensible, I think it'll lead to long term negative consequences for our relations with our allies. And I want our allies to be strong and I want them to work with us. And by the way, I want them to buy our weapons too. And he is eroding that. So I think that's a mistake. We should be a participant in that. Selling weapons to the Europeans, but also providing new security assistance package and there's support in the American public for it. That polling is overwhelmingly clear. 82% of Americans don't like Putin. The President is not with the American people on this debate. But I just want to say first before I try to predict what he's going to do, because that's not where he is. As you rightly pointed out, I do think there are other actions that could be taken on the economic side. We just published the International Working Group on Russian Sanctions, sometimes referred to as the Yermak McFaul working group, but it's formally not that that's its nickname. And I say that just because we send our papers to everybody, not just the Ukrainian government and we want to work with everyone. We outlined there lots of things we could do short of even the more drastic things that the President has been talking about in terms of secondary sanctions on the Indians, for instance, just getting us in line with the European sanctions on the shadow fleet, that would be a great achievement. We're not there. That's easy. And who supports the shadow fleet? Think about that. Who thinks that's a good thing to have all those unsafe boats out there shipping Russian oil all over the world? I think that's pretty easy thing to do. Second, on the financial sanctions, I think that's a pretty low hanging fruit. And third, we don't have as much of the money as the Europeans do. But in my conversations with Europeans, they would welcome us, the United States transferring those Russian central bank assets, the limited ones we have, to a Ukrainian reconstruction fund. We could just put it into the deal that Trump did. That would win. Win. He could say we've put more money in there in addition to what they just did recently. That would be, I think, a very easy thing for him to do. And I just don't see a circumstance under any condition in which the President of the United States is going to give that money back to Putin. So why not do that? I think those are options for him. And, you know, my sense is there are some in the administration that support that the President of the United States is so far been reluctant to do so. And that then leads me to your second question. If I have to predict not what I want, but what I think, I think we will gradually see us just kind of treading water in the way we're doing now, selling weapons, not pulling out of the sanctions coalition, but not doing anything new. And it's just striking to me. There has not been one new sanction against Russia since President Trump returned to the White House, not one. And next to that, an inconvenient fact that he likes to forget about. Putin's war in Ukraine, especially his killing of civilians, has radically escalated, and it's escalated on Trump's watch, not Biden's watch. So he keeps talking about, I'm the tough guy. Putin would never do anything against me. Well, that's not happening now. Putin is escalating inside Ukraine, and then he's escalated with these, you know, these probes of in Poland and Romania. That's all on Trump's watch. That's not Biden's watch. So I think, you know, hopefully somebody can say, Mr. President, you look weak here. He is playing you. You have got to change his, your position on this. But I, you know, if I had to predict, he's had so many chances to do that, and so far he hasn't, which I guess to the Ukrainian war. And, you know, I'm not a general. I'm not going to pretend to be one. Even on your podcast. I do speak to a lot of Ukrainians every day, including those that are just recently at the front. And I would say two things. One, there's just, as you would imagine, just complete exhaustion with this war. Three and a half years, many people have been fighting this entire time. That is true. At the same time, the movement for capitulation, I don't see that in Ukraine at all. Most certainly not with the warriors. I think capitulation could lead to them to do something against it, by the way. And President Zelenskyy and his team understand that very clearly. I think that's sometimes forgotten in the west. And talking about Ukraine, because we just think Zelenskyy can just do any deal he wants and everything's fine. No, he can't. It's A, a democratic society, and B, they have a history in that country when they don't like outcomes, even in semi autocracies or semi democracies, they rally to do things against it. We just saw that recently and I've talked to many soldiers that say I'm not fighting for democracy, I'm not fighting for Ukraine. I'm just fighting to avenge the deaths of my, you know, my fellow warriors. Those people are not just going to roll over. So that therefore means, I think it's probably going to be, we're probably going to be having the same conversation a year from now. So there'll be some incremental progress. Hopefully some of the technological breakthroughs on the Ukrainian side, especially in terms of anti drone warfare, might happen in the next six to 12 months. Talking to those kind of companies and players that that could happen. But I don't see any moments where there's going to be a radical breakthrough on either side.
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B
Michael, thank you and thank you for everything you've done on Ukraine. However, of course, the inevitable question that I have to ask you, given your mild criticism of President Trump for having engaged with Putin without the cursive measures as to whether you think the effort that you participate in specifically the Obama era reset in relations with Russia also be subject to the same criticism that indeed already at the time Russia's aggressive nature was revealed by, for example, the war in Georgia against Georgia back in 2008. And yet the United States, and you participated in it, did attempted this reset of the relations with Russia. How do you reassess this reset, the legacy of reset, looking backwards from today's perception. And do you still believe that was the correct policy course at the time?
- [33:02]
C
Well, I wrote a whole book about that which is very self critical, by the way. Not many memoirs are. I criticize our policies and I criticize some of my own actions. So that one's called From Cold War to Hot Peace. But everybody buy autocrats versus Democrats first. You can get that old one later. Let me say a macro thing and then a micro thing about Obama. I think the macro criticism we need to talk about first because Obama wasn't the first person to engage with Putin. Every president since he's been there has done the same thing. Clinton did it, Bush did it, he looked into his soul. Remember, Obama did it, Biden did it, Trump said it. I have always believed, and I have the publication record to prove it for me personally, that Putin was always an autocratic actor moving Russia in the wrong direction. Now, I know you've written about whether there was any democracy or not in Russia at all in the 90s. We can debate that if you want to later, but there's no doubt in my mind. I wrote my first anti Putin piece in March of 2000 in the Washington Post, warning about this autocratic drift that we're going to see. And tragically, it just got worse and worse and worse. So I was never in the camp that somehow we're going to have friendship with this guy and it's going to be good for the West. You know, I was one person in the government, but that was never my personal view. The thing I think the meta point that I want to make before getting to Obama is that I do believe it was the right strategy when the Soviet Union collapsed, that the west, and the United States as well, tried to engage with a democratic or quasi democratic. Let's not, you know, let's not get hung up on the adjectives and nouns. We can flip it around semi autocracy, but the idea of engagement as a way to pull them into the West, I think was the correct bet. And I was a part of it. I worked for an NGO promoting democracy in Moscow in 1992, the National Democratic Institute. I opened the offices there. I was part of that strategy. And we made big mistakes. We can talk about it in a minute if you're interested. But I think that strategy was the right one and it failed. I think what was missing, the other part of it was we had to have a hedge strategy in case it did fail. And that, I think is the mistake of Clinton, Bush, Obama and everybody else. And the hedge strategy should have been to bring in the rest of the countries of Europe into NATO as fast as possible when Russia was at its weakest and couldn't do anything about it. And to bring them into the EU and embed them in the west with all the constraints, and they haven't worked. I know the stories of Slovakia and Hungary, but that project should have been a big bang approach, not incremental. And then for countries like Ukraine that maybe couldn't have met the cut, we should have armed them to the teeth way before the Obama administration. That's my meta critique. Now on the specifics of Obama, I would just say a couple of things. One, that what happened in Georgia in 2008 and what happened in 2014 and 2022 in Ukraine are not exactly the same thing. The story of how that conflict started in 2008 is very different. By the time we got to the government, which was several months later. I want to remind your listeners the Bush administration, the mighty masculine Bush administration, right, did not give one weapon to the Georgians and did not Impose one sanction against any Russians. That's way before we showed up. And so when we got there, the option of going back to NATO and going back to the EU to say, oh, we should have done all these things that you all decided ahead of us not to do that was a heavy lift. We debated it and there was like, we're not going to win that argument. So we had a different strategy, and parts of it were successful and parts of it failed. And I won't try to go through it all. But the biggest difference between what Trump and Putin just did in Alaska and what Obama did with Medvedev, by the way, Putin was not president at the time. We did engage with them, but we did it with three conditions. One, we're doing this to achieve concrete outcomes that we think are good for the American people. Now, we can debate whether you think they were good for us, but we had a concrete list. I had a list 18 things when I worked at the White House. Top of the list, new START Treaty. So we think the world of the United States was safer to eliminate 30% of the nuclear weapons in the world. And you do that through engagement with the Russians. You can't sign a START treaty without the Russians. Second, we thought it is in America's national interest to deny Iran a nuclear weapon. And so working with the Russians, we imposed the most comprehensive multilateral sanctions regime against Iran ever, in 2010. UN Security Council Resolution 1929. I still remember it. And that then led to the negotiations that led to the Iran nuclear deal. Concrete outcome. Some people think it was a bad one. I think it was a good one. And we did that because we engaged with the Russians. Third, northern distribution network. This was my pet project. We had an idea that we were going to expand the war on terrorism beyond the borders of Afghanistan, including Pakistan, from time to time. But to do so, we had to reduce our dependence on Pakistan. And when we came in, 95% of our supplies to our soldiers in Afghanistan went through Pakistan. So we had this idea to develop a northern route through Russia, through Central Asia. And by the time I left government, it was over 50% went through the northern route. And that was really important because in 2011, we did expand the war on terrorism and we went into Pakistan and we killed Osama bin Laden. That would have been much harder to do if 95% of our weapons went through Pakistan. And I'm not going to keep going. But the difference is these are. Again, we can debate whether Indian was good or not, but the difference was these are concrete Things that we got done, unlike just having a party for Putin or Medvedev. And I just think Trump gets it mixed up. The meeting, the summit, is a means to an end. It's not an end in and of itself. Then finally, because you've gotten on something you can see I'm passionate about. The reset came right out of George Shultz's memoir, just so you know. I took it right out of his book, chapter 27, I believe it is. It's called Re Engaging the Soviets. And George Shultz was a mentor of mine, a friend of mine here at Stanford and Hoover for many decades. And that was basically the blueprint for what we were doing. What George said in that book, he said, yeah, we got to talk to these folks that we don't like, because in that case, it was about nuclear weapons. But we're going to do two things. We're not going to check our values at the door, and we're not going to let them dictate what the agenda of these meetings are. And he writes about it very explicitly and talking about human rights, opening a consulate in Kyiv. And they're like, well, that's not, that's not big, you know, that's not great power politics stuff, you know, Mr. New Secretary of State. And they're like, no, no, for me, it's, it's part of the conversation. And then, you know, I think they did that. And then tangential to that was what they called. I might be putting words in their mouths, this might be my words now, but what I call dual track diplomacy, which is we're going to engage with the government, but we're also going to engage with society. And when Ronald Reagan went to Moscow in that very famous trip in 1988, he met with Gorbachev, he did all that stuff. But then he had a luncheon at Speed Spasser House, my future residence, where all the human rights activists were invited. And the Soviets didn't like it. They're like, what are you doing? And that's exactly what we did when President Obama went in 2009. Whether it achieved results or not, that's a different thing, but that's how we're different than the way Trump is practicing engagement with Putin today.
- [41:57]
A
I think that was a fantastic defense for me. Also, Putin wasn't the guy. He was prime minister. It was with Medvedev. There was sort of an effort, I think, to elevate him up to sort of sideline Putin. That didn't, didn't work. But I think that was another attribute for me, which being in the Obama administration, it felt that that was a key part of it as well. I want to maybe pivot to how you're seeing Russia today. Russia now. You know, this war is going on. It's three and a half years into it. I think Putin has done a pretty good job at insulating the Russian public from really feeling the effects. But the Ukrainians now are taking the war to the Russians. More oil refineries are going up in flames. There's some fuel shortages. Ukrainian missiles are falling on Russian cities. Of course, there's been a million casualties. The Russian economy looks like it's running into some rough waters. How do you see the Russian public right now and the Russian elites? Is there any grumbling? Is morale high? What's your kind of take on the mood inside of Russia? I mean, obviously, you're not in Russia. I haven't been able to travel there. Don't travel to Russia. You will get arrested. How. But how are you seeing it right now?
- [43:25]
C
Well, Maria could give you a much better answer than I can. I want to say that clearly, I. There was a.
- [43:31]
A
That's a general rule for this.
- [43:33]
C
Okay.
- [43:33]
A
Whenever I open my mouth, I'm like, that's good.
- [43:35]
C
That's good. I'm glad. I'm glad we all understand that. And, you know, there. Max, there was a time in my career when I really did know Russia well. I lived there for many years, wrote books about domestic politics in Russia. But after I was banned in 2014 and threatened to be indicted and arrested in 2018, obviously I don't know inside Russia at all. I interact with Russians every single day. I've been interacting with several Russians just in this morning from different walks of life inside, mostly outside of Russia, but sometimes inside. But I really want to confess I don't have a sense for that. And then the second thing I want to say is don't trust anybody who says they do know the answer to that question, because I think we need to be humble about what we can and cannot know about closed, totalitarian societies. And that's what Russia is. I think Russia's more totalitarian today than it was in the late Brezhnev period. I could defend that if I had another 60 minutes. It is. And so we just don't know. We need to acknowledge that the way I think about it generically, and then I can get into specifics about elites, if you're interested. Well, first, let's go back to 2014, when I did live in Russia, and there was the conflict was building up. I left Russia. I was not the ambassador when Putin invaded the first time, but I was there right before then. And among elites, economic elites, nobody wanted to take Crimea and invade Ukraine now. And even some of the more creepy crawler characters that you may be surprised by that. I also. It's your job as ambassador to talk to everybody. By the way, I'm noted for somehow talking just to Alexei Navalny when I was ambassador. Just so you know, I never talked to Alexei Navalny once while I was ambassador in person. But I did talk to guys like Igor Sechen, because that's your job. And I just sensed that this is like, okay, we just spent all this time integrating. And by the way, Ross Neff, the company that Iger Sechen still runs, they had just cut the biggest joint venture deal in the history of capitalism, $500 billion deal with ExxonMobil. They didn't want to be cut off either. And I tell you that because then 2022, it was even more acute in that elite economic circles. Sechin's a different character because he's close to Putin, and he doesn't get to have Rosnev without Putin. And so that crowd, that siloviki crowd, the fsb, KGB types, that's a different crowd. But the rest of the. I don't know of anybody that thought this was a good idea, and none of them like it. Their money's frozen. They're living abroad. Some of them, they're living inside. Their kids, you know, go to school in various different places. So there is a lament, but no courage to do anything about that. But there is a lament that's at the elite side, on societal side, I would say, you know, there is a hardcore, you know, equivalent to the maga, hardcore voters for Putin that love him no matter what, believe everything they see on his channels. Reminds me of my relatives who love President Trump, and I have many of them, and no matter what, he can do no wrong. And that group is there. You know, maybe it's 30%, maybe it's bigger, but it's there. And we kind of know demographically who they are. The older you are, the less education you have, the less money you have, and the more rural area you live, the more you're likely to be there, and you're likely to be in that information bubble that is, you know, Trumpism, excuse me, Putinism. Then there's another group, and it's much smaller, but it exists.
- [47:40]
A
And.
- [47:40]
C
And I think we make a mistake if we think they don't exist, you know, 20%, maybe. My opposition friends would say it's higher than that, but probably lower than that. That are people in Russia that don't support the war at all, hate Putin. And they are the exact opposite demographic, right? Younger, urban, educated, rich. That's who they are. And I know some of those people, but they're not going to do anything about the war. No way. They've seen what's happened to other people, so they're just, they're just getting on with their lives. I just, literally just saw somebody in that category who somehow had a visa to be in the United States talk about the sanctions problems and asking this person who I used to know, well, you know, they're just living their lives. They're talking about getting their kids in the right private schools. And they don't want to hear. They don't want to hear about it. That's how they're living. And then there's the Balota, right? There's the group in the middle that is just apolitical. They support Putin because he's the leader. And if another person came along and said, I'm ending the war, they would flip in a heartbeat. Or if Putin himself said, we've won the war, we're done, they would flip in a heartbeat and say, okay, we're moving this direction. But I want to underscore, none of that suggests that there's a societal dimension towards trying to end this war. I have poked and I know all the Russian opposition leaders closely, and I know all the media outlets and I know all the pollsters, all of them. I used to do that for a living. And I just don't see any serious evidence to suggest a societal pressure to end the war. And that, tragically, I think, is the truth. I hope I'm wrong, but that, I think, is where. That's my reading of the situation now.
- [49:41]
B
Michael, fantastic comment. And which brings me to our last question, unfortunately, today, directly related to your current. Your previous answer in your academic publications, you often flagged made the point that Vladimir Putin and his personality background is primarily the key factor, One of the key factors underlying today's negative spiral in U. S. Russia relations, obviously the war. And I just want to also recommend your excellent article in the International Security where you make this point. I would argue that in my own analysis, I think the problem goes beyond just Putin, at the very least the rest of the elite.
- [50:18]
A
But.
- [50:18]
B
But I also wanted to connect this to your more recent conversation with the Russian blogger Yuri Dutt, the opposition blogger, who sort of who followed your arguably shifted, shifting stances on that particular position. Exactly. Echoing what you just said in your previous answer, that it goes beyond just Putin. Right. And he basically reacting to some of your public commentary, accused you of basically blaming the Russians for the war. While the way he framed this question is whether Americans have the right to claim that Russians are collectively responsible for the war. Given the US record in Iraq. Could you elaborate a little bit about it? So your shifting stances on this position, why you think this has provoked quite a strong reaction from the Russian Internet community. And in general, where do we go from here? What does it mean for Russia's futures?
- [51:12]
C
Yeah, big hard questions and I'm not going to have easy answers. First on that analytics social science question about do leaders matter? Are there other things that matter? Thanks for flagging the international security piece because I say there very clearly, of course other things matter. I think one of the tragedies of the international relations academic debate in particular is we just get into this like you gotta, you gotta pick one variable and you gotta ride it. So power matters, you know, John Mersheimer. And then you just gotta ride that forever and you can't add anything to it. And then it becomes more ideological debates, I would say, than academic debates. And in that article, I try to. I start with power matters. In my book that you advertise, Autocrats versus Democrats. The first three chapters on the contemporary period are all about power. So I want to first say, of course, power, regime type, and societal attitudes in history, they all matter. Our job as social scientists is to figure out when they matter, under what circumstances, and then how do they change over time. With respect to Putin and Russia, I do not believe it was inevitable that when I was living in Russia in the 1990s and writing books about Russia's unfinished revolution, I wrote that book in 2001 that 25 years later Russia would be an imperial dictatorship invading Ukraine. I do not think that was inevitable. I think actors played a role in that regime, type played a role in that, and that there was contingency and agency involved in that history. And that's my main argument. And you know this literature as well as I do. There's a big debate and I'm on that side and I've run the counterfactuals. Right. I do believe that Putin was an accidental president. He had no mass following. When he became president in 2000, he was a mid level bureaucrat that nobody knew. I knew him, I met him in 1991 because I used to know Russia really well. But most people had no idea who he was. And then there was, as we say in academia, an exogenous shock. So that's what we like, an exogenous shock. The 1998 financial crash that meant that the government in Russia at the time had to be disbanded because it was still a democracy and the heir apparent to Yeltsin. And there's no doubt in my mind, I've done the research on this very closely, that the heir apparent back then was a guy named Boris Nemtsov, that they were running the play. They brought him back, he was a friend of mine, and he debated whether he should come back. By the way, he was worried that it might ruin his career. He came back, he was the first deputy prime minister, but not in charge of economic policy because they wanted to insulate him. And then everything came crashing down. I can't say for sure would Boris Nemtsov had won that election without the 98 crash. But those that argue it could never happen, Give me a break. This guy won two elections in the middle of a recession, a depression, with a Jewish PhD in physics. And these are his words, not mine. He said, mike, I won with those conditions, you don't think I can win now? And again, that's a counterfactual. But the idea that it was inevitable that NEM Soft would not have won and Putin would take it over, I just think the evidence does not support that. Now what I don't know is had that play run its course and had he become president, would these other societal factors overtake them? That's a harder question. But the idea that they would become an imperial dictatorship, I think there's way more contingency to that. But you got to a very important update to that, which is to say that after 25 years, 26 years of Putin, Dick's dictatorship, to not assume or presume or just assess that there would be an impact on societal attitudes from that process, of course, the answer is yes. I can't think of a country that had a leader for 25 years that societal positions did not change. So Boris and himself would have no chance of winning today in election. I think that is clear. And by the way, I deeply regret doing that interview with Yuri. Dude, I said I didn't want to do it. And then people are like, come on, you got to engage with everybody, you got to talk to everybody. And then I at least said, I'm not going to do it in Russian. And then I still regret it because I said some things I don't. I didn't want to say Russians have a right to have multiple passports. Right, I made a mistake on that. But you're getting to something that I know you know well about me. And I want to be very clear about it. I have changed my views on that. And you know, by the way, people should change their views with new evidence. That's called science. And the data has changed. The activities of Russians inside and outside of Russia have changed to suggest that, yes, of course, it's not just Putin's war, it's Russians war. And as I said on that show, it's Russians that are doing these atrocities inside the lands that they're occupying. It's Russians that are kidnapping these kids. It's not just Vladimir Putin. And I think there has to be some accountability in society. And I want to say, by the way, there are Russians inside Russia that agree 100% with me. 100% with me. They are friends of mine. They're not going to speak on your program or speak out, but they feel this responsibility. They feel that. And it's a hard issue. It's a hard, you know, it's not a black and white issue. But I, you know, I was in Europe recently and you know, listening to Russians, maybe they're Belarusians, maybe they're Ukrainians speaking Russian, but you know, to be in Italy and listen to these Russians and my Russian's not so great anymore, but it's good enough to listen to what they're talking about and their shopping sprees and going back to Moscow. There's something that really riles me about rich Russians from Moscow shopping in Italy when they are doing all these horrific things in Europe. And so maybe I shouldn't have said that. I don't want to generalize about all Russians. But the idea that there's not some societal responsibility, it's not black and white, but it's also just that they have no responsibility. I think they do. And the Russians that I friends of mine, including people inside Russia today, they agree with me.
- [58:38]
A
Well, Ambassador McFaul, we're going to have to leave it there. Mike, thanks so much. It's been an excellent, wide ranging conversation. I think we've covered the waterfront.
- [58:47]
C
We've covered a lot. You guys covered a lot.
- [58:49]
A
Yeah, we covered a lot.
- [58:50]
C
Cast.
- [58:51]
A
Yeah, we probed, poked and you responded well. And before we go, just a reminder, please pre order the book Autocrats First Democrats, China, Russia, America and the New Global Disorder. You can get that. You can pre order it from HarperCollins or wherever you order your books. A huge thanks to all our listeners. And as always, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to our show and give us a five star rating. Additionally, don't forget to check out our sister podcast, the Euro File, wherever you get your podcasts and we will see you next time.
- [59:32]
B
You'Ve been listening to Russian Roulette. We hope you enjoyed this episode and tune in again soon.
- [59:37]
A
Russian Roulette releases new episodes every two weeks on Thursdays and is available wherever you get your podcasts. So please subscribe and share our episodes online.
- [59:47]
B
And be sure to check out all the latest analysis by the Europe, Russia and eurasia program@csis.org.