Autocrats vs. Democrats: The New Cold War with Michael McFaul

Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul joins Katie Couric to talk about his new book, Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder. McFaul says America’s retreat from global leadership hasn’t just left a vacuum: it’s helped autocrats like Putin and Xi fill it. So where does that leave democracy? Together, they dig into what happens when the U.S. pulls back, why isolationism is making a comeback, and what it will take to reassert our moral and political leadership on the world stage. It’s a fascinating–and surprisingly hopeful–conversation about power, principle, and possibility.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, everyone, I'm Katie Kirk and this is next question.
Michael McFall has spent his career studying what makes democracies
rise and how they fall. As many of you know,
he's a former US Ambassador to Russia and the author
of a new book called Autocrats Versus Democrats China, Russia,
America and the New Global Disorder. Mike says that under Trump,

(00:24):
America's retreat from global leadership has opened the door for
autocrats like Putin and she to flex their muscles and
for democracy everywhere to lose ground. He also argues the
real struggle isn't just in other countries, it's here at home.
He believes Trump has led us to a place of
legitimately debating whether our leaders still have to play by

(00:47):
democratic rules or if we're willing to let them act
yes like autocrats. Mike is my go to guy for
all things Russia and Ukraine. But believe me, he understands
what's happening in the entire world world better than just
about anyone I know. So here's my conversation with Mike McFall.

(01:08):
Michael McFall, so good to see you in person for
a change. I can't believe it welcome.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
To my phone on that substack exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
You look much better in person. You look great on
ta you look great on Instagram. But it's fun to
be with y'all.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Thank you, thank you so wow. You've written a light
little book called Autocrats Versus Democrats China, Russia, America and
the New Global Disorder. Tell me what you wanted to
do when you set out to write this book, Mike.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Well, honestly, uh, it took me years to write. I
do have a day job. I'm a professor at Stanford
and I run a big institute there, so I didn't
have hours and hours to work on it. But the
original it changed over time. The original motivation was, we
had a debate several years ago amongst foreign policy types
about whether we've entered a new Cold War with China

(02:01):
and it's sidekick Russia. And I wanted, like an academic does,
I wanted to interrogate that hypothesis. And I know something
about the Cold War written about that, I know quite
a bit about Russian and America. I had to learn.
I was ambassador to Russia and I lived there many times.
I have gone to China for decades, but to write
this book. I spent big chunks of time learn it.

(02:22):
That's the piece I had to learn about. And my answer,
and that's why the book's so big, was are we
in a new Cold War? The answer to that is yes.
The second question, are we really in a new Cold War?
The answer to that is no, because some things are similar,
but some things are different. And I go through that analytically,
talking about similarities but also differences. And I think that's

(02:46):
important because if we don't understand the world we live in,
we're not going to develop the what I think are
the proper policies. So that was the first motivation. But
the second motivation, that started in the first Trump administration
and then kept going in the Biden folks, and then
when he was re elected, was even more animating. I
had a few weeks to add a few things. And

(03:09):
it's not just about Trump, but he really catalyzed this.
I worry that we have entered a new era of
isolationism in the United States, prominent within the Republican Party,
but it's also in the Democratic Party, and I don't
think for America's long term interest that's a good strategy.
Then there's unilateralism that's become very especially under President Trump.

(03:33):
Let's just do whatever we want to do. We don't
have to care about our allies, we don't have to
care about multilateral institutions or norms. And I think that's
a lot. It's a short term that works. Long term,
I don't think so. So that became another motivation, and
then the title of the book Autocrats Versus Democrats. We're
now in a period where a lot of Americans, Democrats

(03:55):
and Republicans and independents don't think we should be supporting
ideas in the world democracy, human rights, and I get it.
You know, we're kind of tired of being the superpower and.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
The world's policeman.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
We don't want to be the world's policeman. And I
say very clearly in the book we should not be
the world's policeman. Most certainly we shouldn't use military force
to promote democracy. That's we're four for seventeen on that front.
Just so you know, I've done the math. The book
starts in the eighteenth century, but don't worry, I do
the whole I do two hundred years of history, have

(04:28):
pages thirty pages, So I've done that work. So you
don't have to but I think that's also a long
term mistake. I think supporting ideas of freedom and democracy
have not only been the right thing to do, but
I think it's been on our strategic interests. So that piece,
in a way, is the most controversial part of the book,
but may be the most.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
Important for people who are not foreign policy experts. Mike,
I wondered, if you could take the last twenty five
years and just give us a brief or on how
power has shifted and changed.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yep, well that's a I set up the book deliberately.
I'd do nine different chapters, power ideology, and then competing
conceptions of the global order, and they all start with
nineteen ninety one. Because in nineteen ninety one, we were
the world's hedgemon. We are the world's superpower, no challengers.
Nineteen ninety one, the whole world seemed like they wanted

(05:27):
to be democratic. That's when Frank Fukuyama writes this famous
essay End of History, because it just seemed like everybody
was going to be democratic, and most of the world
was moving towards capitalism and a liberal international order. All
those words are problematic, but if you remember, you know,
you'll remember but so your listeners will remember, there was
President H. W. Bush, in response to Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait,

(05:51):
said that's against the rules of the game here. We
can't annex countries. And he got the whole world together
and we pushed him out. So all the chapters start
with that. Fast forward three decades later. On the power front,
two countries have risen, China most prominently, but Russia is
much more powerful today than they were thirty years ago,

(06:11):
and that makes it the balance of power between autocrats
and democrats different than thirty years ago. We're still ahead,
by the way, and my book addends on an optimistic note.
I think will remain ahead as long as we do
certain smart things, but the Chinese have caught up. Second
change compared to thirty years ago is there's now an
ideological struggle between autocrats and democrats. The whole world did

(06:33):
not become democratic, and we failed on that. I personally
feel some failure in Russia, that we did things wrong there.
Russians did most things wrong themselves, but we miss that.
But it's not just between countries, and this is important
theme in my book. The old Cold War days. Remember
of the maps, there was the red team. There was
a blue team, you know Germany, Oh, their blue team.

(06:56):
Angola flipped, okay, their red team. And you know it's
communists versus capitalists or free world versus dictatorship. We had
some communists here in America, right, you know, as a
kid at Stanford, we had some communists up at Berkeley, right,
and I met them, but they were pretty marginal. Today
the fight is not just between countries, it's within countries.

(07:18):
So within Hungary, there's a fight between autocrats and democrats,
within Italy, within France, and within the United States of America.
That's different, that's new. And then the third piece on
the global order, I would say that's where there's most breakdown.
That's why the last word of the titles disorder, because

(07:38):
we don't agree on the rules of the game, and
many politicians, president Trump being the most important one, don't
even think that we should play by those rules. So
he just gave a speech at the UN which is
basically like, we're wasting money, we're wasting our time here.
And I think he's wrong about that. But millions of
people in the world agree with President Trump and not me.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Well, and a lot of people agree with you too.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
That's why I wrote the book. I want to convince
more people that can come in this which is going
to be a long term struggle. This book is written
for audiences for decades, not just what to do in
the Trump era. But I think, and I wrote it
mostly as an American, because I think in the long term,
we're better off being engaged in the world than not.

(08:25):
We're better off working with allies and multilateral organizations than not,
and we're better off promoting our ideas and values than not.
But I know that that's a debate, and so we
got to make people that like me. We got to
make better arguments, and we got to bring those arguments
not just to New York City and Washington and Palo Alto,

(08:47):
but to Montana and Idaho and South Carolina and Texas.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
So clearly, autocracies are on the rise. And I'm curious
if you had to look back, and you do in
this book and say what happened between this idea that
was perpetuated during the first Bush administration, this idea that
democracy was rising or democracies were rising all over the world,

(09:14):
And in fact, by the way, George W. Bush, who
campaigned against nation building, actually big yeah, you know right.
So I guess the question is why are autocracies on
the rise, and why did this vision that was initiated
by George Herbert Walker Bush not hold.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
It's a big, hard question, and that's why the book
is big and hard and hard, and you know, I
keep interrogating these hypotheses in real time because they're changing.
But I think there are three big things that happened.
One we thought and in retrospect we now know it
was wrong. But I don't want to claim that I

(09:57):
thought differently thirty years ago. But we had a theory
it's called modernization theory in academia. That is, China became
richer and modernized their economy, they would eventually democratize, and
so we helped them do that. We invested in China,
we brought them into the World Trade Organization, animated by
that theory. And it turned out not to be true.

(10:18):
They're more powerful today, they're richer today, they are not
more democratic today. Now I go through that in the book.
I don't think this is inevitable that they became more autocratic,
and I think Shijingping, as a leader, pushed them that way.
One of the themes of the book or that leaders matter.
That may sound obvious to you, but in academia that
there's a lot of our most prominent theories don't even

(10:41):
allow leaders in there to have a causal impact. I
radically disagree with that, but that was the first failure.
So we helped them grow stronger. Same with Russia in
a lesser extent. But I remember I wrote a piece
in nineteen ninety three our worst nightmare would be a
capitalist Russia that had recovered from the collapse of the

(11:02):
Soviet Union, led by a dictator. And I didn't know
it was going to be putin at the time, but
that's tragically exactly what happened. We didn't. We got that wrong. Second,
we did not do enough to support democracy in these
transition places like Russia, but not only Russia, other parts
of the post communist world. Hungary definitely do enough. On Hungary,

(11:24):
we should have had more conditionality for them. That was
a giant mistake. So we should have been leaning into
that more. And there's a reason why we didn't. I
want to explain that we did that after World War two.
Right World War two ended and our enemies we invested
tons of money in them, called the Marshall Plan in
Europe but also Japan to help them nurture markets and democracy,

(11:50):
and we got that right. Part of the reason we
got it right in forty five and we didn't in
ninety one is because of forty five, there was this
enemy to the east, right, the Soviet Union was out there,
and we thought, if we don't bring these folks in,
they're going to flip. They're going to be on the
Soviet side. Nineteen ninety one ninety two there wasn't that
enemy to the east, and as a result, we just

(12:10):
thought it's all going to happen naturally, and so we
didn't invest in that. Then. Third, we made some mistakes
at home, both in our foreign policy and domestically. I
think the invasion of Iraq. Let's start with Afghanistan and Afghanistan,
the world was behind us, NATO is behind us. They
went in with us, but then we overreached in a
rock and that led to a lot of like, are

(12:34):
these Americans really for the liberal international order? They're just
doing whatever they think.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
And ultimately we overreached in Afghanistan too, and.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
Then we overreached in Afghanistan. We stayed too long.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
I mean, initially people were for it, but then it
was this interminable war, and the idea that we were
going to change Afghanistan as a nation just was a
like fools errand, wasn't it?

Speaker 2 (12:59):
Yes? And Americans got tired of these wars. So that
was that piece, like, we're not really playing within the
international system. Now, different presidents did that in different ways.
I worked for President Obama. He was a big multi
lateral kind of guy. Right. We did use force in
Libya in twenty eleven, but we only did that when

(13:21):
we got a UN Security Council resolution to allow for that,
and I was part of that. I negotiated with the
Russians to get them to abstain. So it wasn't just
a straight line to that, but there was That was
that part of it. I think when President Trump came
back in, he you know, he just doesn't believe in
cooperation in these multilateral organizations. He just pulled out everything

(13:41):
in the book. I call it the Trump withdrawal doctrine, right,
pulled out of the Trans Specific Partnership, pulled out of
their run nuclear deal, pulled out of an arms controlled
treaty we had with Russia. And that I think left
people thinking, well, we're not who we say we are.
And then the last is the way we've been practicing

(14:02):
democracy at here at home. You can't say you're the
leader of the free world if you're not acting as
a free and democratic society at home. And so what
we used to have during the Cold War, and most
certainly in the early nineties, when everybody looked to our
system as the best system, that's no longer the case.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
Hi everyone, it's Katie Couric. You know I'm always on
the go between running my media company, hosting my podcast,
and of course covering the news, and I know that
to keep doing what I love, I need to start
caring for what gets me there, my feet. That's why
I decided to try the Good Feet stores personalized arch

(14:51):
support system. I met with a Good Feet arch support
specialist and after a personalized fitting, I left the store
with my three step system designed to improve comfort, balance
and support. My feet needs and back are thanking me already.
Visit goodfeet dot com to learn more, find the nearest store,

(15:11):
or book your own free personalized fitting. Still I don't
quite understand you know, Yes, so you're saying that we
didn't put certain safeguards in place as our foreign policy

(15:33):
was evolving over recent decades. But what else happened to
turn Hungary to make them less democratic? Was it immigration issues?
I mean what were the forces at home? Because leaders matter,
of course, I think you're right, probably you guys underestimate that,

(15:55):
but also the people matter, yes, right, So what has
happened in the countries and even Japan I read recently
was becoming more right wing? In Italy and Hungary and
now France right And it seems like all these nations
are really kind of and the US obviously kind of

(16:16):
turning away from sort of traditional democratic principles, right, and
more towards autocracies. Yes, so what the hell is going on?

Speaker 2 (16:26):
Well? Within the developed world, right, the developed democracies, the
old democracies, right, including our own, a couple of things
are going on. One, people aren't happy with how democracies delivering,
and part of us bringing in China into the World
Trade Organization that meant we lost a lot of jobs.
We lost a lot of manufacturing jobs. And President Trump,

(16:48):
who I think is a brilliant politician. I disagree with
most of his policies, but he's a really we've continued
to underestimate how good of a politician he is. He
tapped into that. He tapped into that, and he said,
you know, you lost your jobs because all these elites
billionaires saying, all these elites, but he figured that out,

(17:08):
and he's not the only one. You're right. It is
a transnational phenomenon. Basically in every country in Europe, to
different degrees, you have these illiberal nationalists, these populists, Victor
Orubon being the most famous, but they're almost in every country.
So that's the first thing that's happened. And then the second.
You know, the old debate was left and right right,

(17:31):
a debate about what the tax should be or what
the minimum wage should be, and that you know, in
the old days fifty years ago, that was democrats versus republicans,
liberals in America, social democrats in Europe. That was the
main axis of political questions. All of these populous they've
moved to another access, which is about identity politics. So

(17:54):
it's a two by two matrix now. And in the
identity politics, it's about your ethnicity, it's about the other
immigrants right coming in to take your jobs. And that's
how they've captured this very strange thing, like including in
my own family, by the way, Democratic Irish Catholic families

(18:15):
from you know, Wisconsin, that's where my dad's from. Montana,
that's where I'm from. That for decades voted for the
Democratic Party because we were the working class against the Republicans.
Who are you know, that's the rich people. Trump has
managed it by having this different access to appeal to
identity politics that say, you're getting ripped off because of

(18:36):
the color of your skin, and he's not the only
one that's happening in all these places. And that also
then trends with these anti democratic ideas that you know,
maybe democracy is not such a great system of government
in the long run. I'm still pretty optimistic about America.
But other you know, Hungary flipped. And what's different between

(18:57):
Hungary and America is they only had a few years
of democracy and it wasn't delivering, and that created this
space for a guy like Victor Orbon. Exact same story
in Russia, by the way, with Vladimir Putin, exactly the
same story. He talks in the same way about the
immigrants and the liberals and the decadent liberal West impinging

(19:20):
on our conservative Russian values. That's the way he talks
about the world. And that's why you see this group
of people. They interact with each other all the time.
They have their own podcasts. By the way, so info Wars,
I've never been invited to info Wars. That's a very
famous podcast here in the United States. Those guys have
on this guy, Sasha Dugan, And you've never heard of him,

(19:44):
But Sasha Dugan. I used to know him when I
lived in Russia. He's an illiberal, nationalist populist. He's one
of Putin's chief ideologues. And I would say he has
more ideologically in common with a guy like Steve than
I do with Steve Bannon, even though Steve Bannon and

(20:04):
I are both American citizens, actually do get in Bannon,
I think ideologically are closer together, and that's that's something new.

Speaker 1 (20:12):
So you talked about identity politics and what's happening internally
in some of these countries. But how does that translate
to foreign policy and isolationism versus kind of being one
big global family.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
Right, Well, in the three different countries that are the
center of my book different ways. So in America, it's
meant this growing isolationist tendency deeper in the Republican Party,
but pretty deep in the Democratic Party, and it just says,
you know, we did too much abroad. We got our
problems at home. I mean my mom in Montana and

(20:46):
I have the same argument with her, Like Ukraine, Mike,
you know, you seem so passionate about it. Why don't
you care about us? And that's not fair to my mom.
She cares about FIFA and Ukraine. But it's a legitimate
I want to be clear, it's a legitimate reaction. I
get it. We tried to do too much. We spent
too much elsewhere. People want us to spend more at home.
We're in this isolationist move for Putin, it's a little

(21:09):
different for Putin. He wants to break up the liberal
international order. He thinks it's been bad for Russia. By
the way he defines Russian interests very antithetical to the
way my friends in Russia do or my Russian friends
living in exile. But he thinks we'd be better off
going back to the nineteenth century, eighteenth century spheres of influence.

(21:31):
And then second, he has this ideological thing that he
wants to erode NATO by, you know, making ideological bridges
with these people that are against the things we were
just talking about, the Victor Urban's Maloney farage in the
UK and Trump, and at least until recently, Trump seems

(21:52):
to be changing his ways, but that he wants to
just break it up and that he thinks it would
be better. China's got a different game. Chixingping has one
foot in the old international system. So if President Trump
recently was here in New York, gave a speech to
the United Nations and he's basically like, I could care
less what you guys do. You know? It was like

(22:15):
it sounded like we were going to quit the United Nations.
Chieshing Ping's not doing that. He's got a foot in
the United Nations. They're in the peacekeeper groups and the
multilateral different pieces of the United Nations because he thinks
that helps to advance Chinese interests. And I think he's
right about that, and I think it would be a
huge mistake if we walked away from the United Nations.

(22:37):
But he's also and I think it's actually a playbook
from after World War Two for us. He's also creating
new groups, new clubs that China is at the center of.
He's uniting the Autocrats, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization bricks RCP.
It's a trade organization to bring together bri Belton Roade initiative.

(23:02):
I go through all these acronyms in the book and
we don't. Let's not go through individually. But he's creating
an alternative international order that China will anchor.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
Is he going to be successful?

Speaker 2 (23:14):
I worry. I think he's being very successful. And I
think we're asleep at the wheel. And we got to
get back to a participating in the old ones by
the way that we set up, like where are we
walking away from our clubs? But b get more creative
of creating new clubs for democracies like we did after

(23:34):
forty five, where we brought them together, and we're just
not doing that. We're pulling back. And I worry that.
You know that in the short term we might be okay.
But you know, I've studied the thirties and that's when
we had a lot of tariff talk. That's when we're like,
you know, what's happening over Japan invaded China? Why should
we care? I don't know where that is. Why do

(23:55):
I care? And then Hitler and Stalin both invaded Poland
and millions of Americans still said, and by the way,
Stalin later invaded a bunch of other countries, and so
did Hitler, and we kept saying, that's not our problem,
and that tragically in nineteen forty one it became our problem.
Had we been more engaged in the thirties, I think

(24:16):
we could have avoided the disaster that was World War Two.
And I just worry that if we pull back, the
Chinese and the Russians aren't pulling back, they're going to
get more aggressive, and god forbid, could pull us into
a war, an unintended war over Lithuania and Europe. If
we're pulling back, we're sending signals of weakness or Taiwan

(24:37):
and Asia. I don't think that's in our strategic interest.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
Talk to me about sort of the China Russia relationship
for people who are not that well versed in terms
of the role that they're playing in each other's position
in the world, if you.

Speaker 2 (24:54):
Will, Yeah, they're playing a big role that we got
to pay more attention to. So generally speaking, I would
say that the Autocrats are more organized today than the Democrats. Right,
we got to get our team together. We you know,
we got to start running some plays. We got to
start building the same kinds of things that they're doing.
Think about the war in Ukraine. Let me rephrase that,

(25:15):
the barbaric, horrific invasion of Ukraine that Putin launched in
twenty twenty two. He gets drones from Iran, a dictatorship,
he gets money and components from China, a dictatorship, and
he gets soldiers. Think about that for a minute. Soldiers
from North Korea, another dictatorship. So they're all helping him

(25:36):
out to fight that war. We got to be as
organized as a are. And with Russia and China, they're
the two most powerful autocratic countries in the world. China
is way more powerful in terms of capabilities. And I
go through all that data and summarize it all in
the book. Putin is more aggressive with respect to intentions,
so he's weaker, but he's willing to invade countries. Sheijingping's

(25:58):
not invading countries. Sheijing things not annexing territory of his neighbors,
at least not yet. That's how they're different. But they're
mostly united in opposition to us because they think that
we're threatening their interests and threatening the legitimacy of their regimes,
and some people think, well, we should do a reverse Kissinger, right,

(26:21):
Remember Kissinger went to China and he peeled them away
to balance against the Soviets. I go through could we
do that in the book, and I just don't see
any opportunity for it. I think as long as Putin
and she are the two leaders of those countries, they're
going to be closely aligned, and what we need to
do is be as aligned as they are with our

(26:42):
allies in Asia and Europe.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
Like who, I mean, who should we be working on
our relationship with?

Speaker 2 (26:50):
Well, the president was just I've lost track. Maybe he's
already left. He was just in Japan. So in Asia,
everything starts with Japan and South Korea about to go
to South Korea, Australia, New Zealand. We got to strengthen
those alliances, not tear off our friends in this kind
of irrational way. You know, we got to have some

(27:11):
cohesion to that. I just think that's a huge mistake.
India is another country that we're now antagonizing. They're a democracy.
There's a complicated country because of their relationship with the
Soviets and you know, the non aligned movement, But we
need them on our side against the autocrats in Europe
and the NATO Alliance. The presidents just alienating countries for

(27:34):
no good reason, like you know, the fifty first state Canada. Really,
mister president.

Speaker 1 (27:39):
Why do you think he's doing that?

Speaker 2 (27:40):
I don't know. I honestly don't know. But I have
lots of Canadian friends, including senior people in the government.
They don't find it humorous. They don't think it's a
humorous thing. Invading Greenland another one of our allies, Denmark, Like, really,
we can do anything we want in Greenland that we
have bases there, we can get mineral from there, we

(28:01):
can do it in a cooperative way. And the president,
you know, sometimes it's successful coercive diplomacy. And you know,
he's done some things I think were successful, what he
did in the Middle East. I applaud that. But for
your friends, coercion is not a long term strategy. So
we're strong enough that we can tell people what to do.

(28:23):
And most countries in the world don't have enough power
to not do what we tell them to do, including democracies,
but they don't like it. Nobody likes to be coerced
into doing things. You know, I grew up in Butte, Montana,
and there was this guy, Eddie. Butt's a really rough town,
that's a mining town. And I was a scrawny little
kid and Eddie was the bully of the neighborhood. And

(28:44):
for like three years of my life walking home from school,
if I ran into Eddie, I had to do it.
Eddie wanted, you know, give him my coat, and he'd
still sometimes beat me up, by the way. But did
I like it? So yeah, I acquiesced, you know, admitted
to Eddie. But eventually I got strong enough where I
didn't have to do that, you know. So coercion has

(29:06):
this short term kind of sugar high that you can
bully people, But in the long term that's not a
great way to have enduring friends and allies. And if
we're in the struggle between autocrats and democrats, which I
think will last for decades, we need our allies, our
democratic allies on our side, not just in the immediate

(29:27):
run but for the long term.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
But how do we reach closer relationships with other democracies
If the president increasingly is acting like Putin or she
or other autocrats around the world. In other words, it
would be one thing if it was a different president yes,

(29:51):
shoring up these relationships, that's right. But you've got somebody
who is acting a certain way that is more consistent
with authoritarians. Yes, right, I mean, yeah, how do you
do that? Then?

Speaker 2 (30:06):
So President Trump doesn't frame the world the way I do. Right,
He doesn't see the world as autocrats and democrats. He
sees the world as strong leaders and week leaders. So
that would be the title of his book, Strong Leaders
Versus week Leaders. And he doesn't really discriminate between autocrats
and democrats. Right. Sometimes he treats autocrats very favorably, and

(30:27):
you know, for a long time that's was what he
did with Putin. And then he loves Victor Orbon, Victor
Rban his buddy. Yeah, he talks about it all.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
The time, kind of his role model.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
He celebrates. I'm not sure he really understands what's going
on in Hungry, but he most certainly that's in his mindset.
Or Victor Urban that's a good European, you know, Macron,
bad European. Right, And so while you have that attitude,
you know, my strategy in terms of engagement, either with
the administration or in commenting on it, is to reduce

(31:01):
the amount of damage we do in the short run.
And by the way, we've achieved some things. When I
was finishing this book right around the time that president
was won the second time, I was worried we're going
to withdraw from NATO. I mean, he was talking about it.
We haven't done that. That's an achievement. The way he
talks about Putin today, he's a little more critical of Putin.
That's an achievement of trying to say this strategy is

(31:24):
not working. But my book's not just written for Secretary
Rubio and the people around the president right now. My
book's written for people for decades to make the argument
a for the next president why this strategy is better
than this the one that we're currently on, and be
to you know, future leaders, like I hope some kid

(31:46):
in Texas. I was just at ut Arlington and I
was talking to a bunch of young students. You know,
I hope that they'll read the book and when they
take over twenty years from now, they'll realize that engagements
better than going alone isolationist tendencies. So this is a
long term kind of fight about ideas within the United

(32:09):
States of America.

Speaker 1 (32:11):
You right, that China is not an existential threat to
the free world.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
And yeah, that's controversial.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
Yes, what everybody agrees with that, But it doesn't sound
like you. I mean, you position them early in our
conversation as I think a significant threat. Yes, So which
is it? Right?

Speaker 2 (32:30):
Great question, and it's a complicated question. And that's and
we need complicated diagnostics if we're going to prevail. So
existential threat means a threat to your existence. That's literally
what the word means. I looked at the data I
spent years going through trying to learn about China's capabilities

(32:51):
and tensions, and I could be wrong. I want to
be I want to be clear about this. You know,
we're all guessing about Xijingping, and and even I'm not
a China expert, but I know all the China experts
in America and in China, and they're all guessing and
arguing amongst themselves. So I could be wrong. But I
don't see the data to support the idea that Shijingping

(33:11):
wants to destroy America. I just don't see it. I
think he has a different strategy. He has a more
He wants to preserve his dictatorship, that's his number one priority,
and he wants to support other autocrats around the world.
That's his secondary priority. But he's not seeking to foment
a Marxist Leninist revolution here in the United States. I

(33:33):
just don't. If he is, he's hidting it well and
he's not achieving many results. Right. I don't see a
lot of demonstrations in America about we need more shijingping
thought here. By the way, that's different than the Soviets, Right,
the Soviets had that aspiration. I don't think he does.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
Do they still?

Speaker 2 (33:51):
No, No, they don't. They want America to be weaker.
They want us to you know, they want their ideological
friends to be on their side. But the idea to
destroy America, I don't. I don't think. I think Putin,
even Putin, who is not you know, somebody I'm very
critical of. He's pretty critical of me too, By the way,

(34:12):
I don't think that's in his game plan. But but
before I forget, but that doesn't mean that they're not
a significant threat to American security and prosperity and our value.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
So it's somewhere in between, somewhere between serious and existential.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
Yes, and that that's where we got to be. I
use the word Goldilocks solutions many times in this book. Uh,
and it's partly because I think we're just way too
polarized as a country and we're way too polarized in
our foreign policy. So you know, the China debate is
either you're a hawk or a dove, and I hate
both of those terms. I just I didn't like them

(34:49):
in the Soviet period. I don't like them for Russia
because it just it just you have to have a
you have to have an assessment of the threat and
then develop a strategy to advance ants our national interests.
And sometimes with China that means confrontation. So my book,
I talk about we need to prevent war over Taiwan.

(35:11):
I think that's a really important thing for all American
leaders to do, and that means spending more for their defense.
And they need to spend more on their defense, and
China will see that as confrontational. We got to live
with that, and at the same time, we should be
cooperating more with China on issues of climate change. I

(35:32):
just think it's crazy that this is a real threat
to America and by the way, an existential threat climate change.
I think the President is one hundred percent wrong on this.
So we're going to pull out. You know, he's got
these crazy ideas about how solar and wind are bad.
By the way, the Chinese are investing a lot in those,
but we should be cooperating with them at that and

(35:54):
I think that mix cooperation and containment is the right
strategy for with China.

Speaker 1 (36:01):
Why do both Russia and China want to get America
to be as polarized as possible? I mean, you know,
you always hear about these Russian bots seeding discontent, and
they're there China too, right, I mean, so why are
they doing that?

Speaker 2 (36:21):
Well, they're doing it. They're very active, putin more active,
and especially in twenty sixteen. You know, there's this new
mythology that this is Russia hoax. And if you say
it a million times, Americans believe it. It was not
a hoax. It was real. They stole emails from the
Democratic Party and put them out to weaken Hillary Clinton.

(36:42):
That's just a fact. And you know, if you disagree
with me, be in touch. I've written a lot about it.
Did it have an impact on that twenty sixteen election?
We haven't been able to measure that. We social scientists, right, well.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
How can you really measure something like that it's very.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
Difficult, and that I think we just need to be
able to say both those things at the same time.
But did they want to Absolutely If you read Russia today,
they are seeking to divide and polarize our society every
single day, and by the way, they're out there on
our platforms. And the reason is it's I think it's
really clear, pretty straightforward. If we're fighting amongst ourselves, we're

(37:21):
not fighting them. And one of the big themes of
my book, so I compare Cold War to today, right,
and we already talked about it similarities and differences, and
they're both and I have you know, my book talk,
I have you know, charts of similarities and differences. We
won't go through them all because it's a long list.
But a big difference. We already talked about isolationism in America.

(37:43):
But another big difference is our level of polarization inside
our country. Now. We had we had polarization in the
late sixties and early seventies. People forget that, and it
was it was that was real, But this is worse
and that helps our enemies. And and you know, my
greatest threat is actually not the Chinese and the Russians,

(38:05):
but ourselves. If we continue down this path, we're going
to weaken our economy, We're going to weaken our ability
to inspire people abroad, and that serves our adversaries, does
not serve America.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
So how do we get out of this mess? According
to you know the world? According to Mike McFall, Yes,
how do we stop this trajectory of growing autocracies all
over the globe, including at home, and get back to
a more cooperative global order and go from disorder to order?

Speaker 2 (38:46):
Yeah? Again, big hard question. It took me three chapters
to answer your question. So I have. By the way,
my editor really did not like this.

Speaker 1 (38:55):
I was going to say, can you can you write
this book Autocrats Versus Democrats? For dummy?

Speaker 2 (39:00):
Well, I have a great slide deck and we're going
to post it on your website. Okay, I can do
this book in thirty five minutes. Remember that name that
tune show name that. I can summarize this book in
thirty five minutes with a lot of great slides and
great foot Well.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
Like you should do a Ted talk and then we can,
yeah and push that up because it's honestly, there's it's
so complicated because it's involving history and wars and various
governments all over the world. I think it's a lot
to put to get your arms right.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
It is, and that's I will send you the talk, okay,
But I just so you know, the first draft was
twelve hundred pages long and had six thousand notes, so
it took me two years to make it five hundred.
But I do so without apology because the world is complex,
and I worry there are too many populoas in the world,

(39:53):
including in our country, that just make everything super simple
Manichean black and white, you know, enemies and friends, and
that I think was going to get us in trouble.
But to answer your big question with a few quick sentences, one,
I have a chapter on mistakes during the Cold War
that we shouldn't repeat. We'll come back to that in

(40:15):
a minute. But the core chapter, we did do some
things right during the Cold War, and I think we
need to get back to doing them, and that the
list is really simple. One. Allies that was our superpower
during the Soviets. We need them today. We got to
stop pissing off our allies. We need to strengthen them
to the American economy. Why did we win the Cold
War ultimately, because we outperformed the Soviets, the West Germans

(40:39):
outperformed the East Germans, the South Koreans outperformed the North Koreans.
We have to keep our economy strong. We're doing pretty
well on that. I'm not sure if it's because or
in spite of Trump's policies you.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
Worry about, and it's going to stay steady given sort
of the tariff situation everything else that the chickens will
come home to produced and hurt us economically.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
I worry a lot about it. And three the big
things I worry about. One tariffs, Two immigration policy. How
do we win the Cold War? The best and the
brightest came from all over the world, including China and Russia,
to Silicon Valley and other places to help us, and
we're shutting that down. And I worry. Maybe this sounds
parochial as a Stanford professor, but a genius thing we

(41:24):
did during the Cold War was we invested in research
and development. We created the best universities in the world,
and that helped us win the Cold War. That's what
the Chinese are doing now and we're not doing it.
In a long term. I worry a lot.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
About that, and immigrants in many ways for the backbone
or the accounty, of.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
Course, and we will. That's a strength we have if
we use it properly.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
Visa not just the people who are you graduate students.
I'm talking about the people who were helping farmers, you know, in.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
The houses in Montana. I just was talking to some
contract or. These tariffs and immigration policies are hurting contractors
in Montana.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
So that is one area you say, So keep the
economy strong.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
Allies economy. Third, instead of breaking down the trade and
investment world in the free world like the President's doing,
we need to rebuild it. Now. We made mistakes, I
got it. But the answer to the mistakes of the
World Trade Organization is not to blow it up. It's
to reform it. So get back to that, especially in
the free world. And then fourth, and finally, get back

(42:32):
to supporting democracy, freedom, liberty, choose your word, right. I
want to do it in a nonpartisan way. That was
crucial to winning the last struggle between autocrats and democrats
in the Cold War. And we're we're just shutting it
all down. So USAID, US Agency for International Development created
by John F. Kennedy in nineteen sixty one. It's not

(42:57):
an accident. That's the height of the Cold War. He
rightfully decided we needed to compete with the Soviets and
the developing world with economic assistance. President Trump just shut
it down. Let me tell you, the Chinese are not
shutting down their Belton Road initiative.

Speaker 1 (43:13):
They're expanding out in Africa and all this the world.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
We're offering nothing Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio
Free Asia. These are all, you know, government subsidized media.
And there's problems with it, and I've written a hundred
articles about that. But shutting it down, that's not prudent reform.
It make it more independent. The Chinese are not shutting
that down. National Endowment for Democracy. So I'm going to

(43:40):
be republican here, right, nonpartisan. I mentioned Kennedy. Let me
mention Ronald Reagan. By the way, a lot of the
themes of this book echo a lot of Ronald Reagan.
I would never have imagined as a kid when I
protested against Reagan in his embrace of the apartheid regime
in South Africa, that i'd say that. But I am
saying that it was something called the Nation Endowment for

(44:00):
Democracy when he had this idea, we should provide assistance
to small deed democrats around the world, and now the
president and his team they're shutting institutions like that down.
So I think getting back to that those four things
will be fine. But then you asked about the inside
the United States, and that's harder one because I'm not

(44:22):
I don't pretend to be an expert, but I have
some ideas in the book anyway, and you said if
McFall could bizarre, there are definitely institutional reforms for our
democracy we could do to reduce polarization. Our campaign finance
laws are just atrocious. We need more transparency and we
need more equality of who can fund them. Redistricting, you know,

(44:46):
we're going through this crazy time. I'm out in California
and you know it's Prop fifty and I voted for
it for next Tuesday because we have to respond to Texas.
But thankfully the resolution in California says it'll just be temporary.
We can't just have these places with no competition in
electoral districts because that means the most radical in both

(45:09):
the Democratic Party and the Republican Party win. We got
to get rid of that. And even the electoral college.
I mean, I know this is going to sound like blasphemy,
but that is not a democratic institution.

Speaker 1 (45:21):
Well, I don't know if it's blasphemous. You're not the
first person to say.

Speaker 2 (45:26):
On the case. When I'm talking about this book and
I mentioned that, I get a lot of flak like,
how dare you that's our system? Well, when that constitution
is written, we also had slavery, you know. I mean,
we need to update that, and doing so would reduce
polarization because with the electoral college today, millions of Americans,

(45:46):
including a lot of Republicans in California. I don't know
if people know this, but there are millions and millions
of people that voted for Donald Trump in the state
of California and they don't get any attention during the
election because we all know it's going to go blue.
If you got rid of the electoral college and every
person's vote mattered, you would have a different set of campaigning.

(46:07):
And the last thing I'll say, just in a note
of optimism, I do think it's our elites and our
media and folks that fund the campaigns that have pulled
us in this polarization way. And the reason I think
that is I'm from Montana. I have relatives of voted
for Donald Trump, my former high school debate partner. That's

(46:27):
how I got interested in Russia. He's a senator, Senator
Steve Daines, he's a Republican. And I got to tell you,
when I'm chatting with my relatives and friends back home,
we agree on eighty percent. You know, there are marginal
things we disagree about. I just don't think most Americans
are as polarized as elites. I think we're mostly purple.

(46:49):
And one of the data points that gives me hope.
I worked on Barack Obama's campaign very proudly, and then
worked for him for five years. Do you know that
he got forty seven percent of the vote in my
home state of Montana. Forty seven percent. M King got
forty nine. Now that was a while ago, but it

(47:09):
wasn't one hundred years ago. And just let me tell
all your viewers and listeners. We don't have a lot
of black people in Montana. So that's Barack Obama used
to say that all the time. He says, there's not
a lot, there's not a lot of my people there.
But I'm going to win the state and He's a
super competitive guy. By the way, I've played basketball with
ons in one so we went over three and I
thought he was going to fire me that day. He's

(47:31):
super competitive. He really wanted to win Montana. But I
tell you that because preferences don't change that fast. That
was just two thousand and eight. It's not like there's
been this radical change. And I do think these institutional
changes could get us there, but maybe some leaders that
also didn't talk in such polarizing ways. I think that

(47:52):
could help us get us to more consensus because we
for the things I worry about, we need it. If
we don't get our act together domestically, we're going to
have a lot of troubles on the international stage.

Speaker 1 (48:12):
Hi everyone, it's me Katie Couric. You know, if you've
been following me on social media, you know I love
to cook, or at least try, especially alongside some of
my favorite chefs and foodies like Benny Blanco, Jake Cohen,
Lighty Hoik, Alison Roman, and Ininagarten. So I started a
free newsletter called Good Taste to share recipes, tips and

(48:32):
kitchen mustaves. Just sign up at Katiecuric dot com, slash
good taste. That's k A T I E C O
U R I C dot com slash good Taste. I
promise your taste buds will be happy you did. I

(48:56):
know we wanted to leave on a hopeful note. But
when you say that, I have to say, what do
you envision? Because honestly, I don't see any signs that
we are going to become less polarized. In fact, it
feels like we're only going to get more polarized, at least,
you know, if you look. I mean, we could have

(49:18):
a longer conversation about whether it's the media. And you know,
Jonathan Heit wrote that great article about why the last
ten years have been uniquely stupid and talking about extremists
having more of a voice on social media. But let's
say we don't become less polarized. We don't have leaders
that appeal to our better angels, right, and we have

(49:39):
people who are sowing anger and discontent and enragement through engagement.
So what does that look like in ten years? Not
only what you were saying about your fears about the
world stage. Yeah, I mean, paint the worst case scenario
for me, Well, paint.

Speaker 2 (49:57):
And then I'm going to come back to you this
case because doing all I can to fight against it.
The worst case is that we just become a you know,
it's happened to many countries before, or where we become
a middle power. We're declining power, a world dominated by
the Chinese and the Russians, and everybody's buying their goods
and trading with them. We become poor as a result

(50:18):
of that. We most certainly will become poor if we're
a island with our tariffs and a world that's run
by the Chinese, we become poorer here in the United States,
There's just no doubt about that.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
What about making America great again?

Speaker 2 (50:32):
Mike, Well, those we're not doing that, and we need
to get back to that. I want to make America.
I think America's pretty great already, by the way, and.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
That that's a pretty loaded statement anyway, And you know,
hearkens back to a very different times.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
To the nineteen thirties. That's where the American First Committee,
and well, that's a good analogy, you know, you do
if you follow these isolationist policies and these divisions at home.
I mean, we had full blown Nazis, you know, in America,
millions of them. I didn't learn that as a kid
in Montana. I've learned it to write this book. That
was a bad course we were on that was not

(51:06):
going well.

Speaker 1 (51:06):
And now we have a lot of neo Nazis here.

Speaker 2 (51:09):
We do, but we also have a lot of people
that are not neo Nazis, and we have a lot
of people that do believe in democracy versus not. The
data is on my side on that here in America,
and it's on my side around the world. I think
most people agree with Churchill. I'm paraphrasing, but he said,
you know, democracy is a horrible system of government except

(51:31):
for all those others tried. And the data shows that
people in all over the world tend to agree with
Churchill different variations. So that makes me optimistic. But the
second thing the optimistic note that might be analytically where
we're going, right, Like as a social scientist, if I
put on my political science hat and I have to

(51:54):
look at the data that may be where we're going.
Or if I was briefing a which I sometimes do,
and they say they always say give me your base
case scenario where they want my analysis, I might have
to say, well, that's where we're going. But I'm not
just a social scientist. I'm American, and I don't like
where we're going. And I wrote this book in part

(52:16):
to make the case for why there's a better strategy
for our national interests abroad, including reducing polarization at home
that leads to a better world for my kids and
hopefully grandkids, more prospers, more secure, more free world both
at home in America. I outline what those ideas are,

(52:38):
and then we got to get out there and fight
for them. And part of what I'm going to do
with this book is go to places where I was
just at the University of South Carolina last week, right, and
not everybody in that room agrees with me, and I'm
glad to be in that room. I've just been to
Texas twice and I'm going back for two more stops
in Texas, going to Montana, Idaho, Ohio, Pennsylvania. I won't

(53:03):
go through the whole less, but I'm not going to
Yale and Princeton and Harvard. I kind of know what
those debates are. And I want to tell you two things. One,
everywhere I go, the rooms are completely sold out. So
when people say Americans don't care about foreign policy, that's
not true in San Antonio or Arlington or Columbia. And

(53:25):
I get their selection bias. Who comes to see McFall
I get it, I get it. But I get bigger
crowds in those places than I do in Palo Alto
or Washington, d C. And people are not all agreeing
with me, but people want to have this conversation. And
one other really surprising thing. There's this sense that all

(53:46):
we care about is our material interests and money, and
we've got to cut foreign assistance because it's too much money.
And actually it's just a fraction. That's a narrative that's
out there. The president wants you to believe that. My
biggest applause lines, or when I say in the fight
between Putin and Zelenski, I want America to be on

(54:09):
the side of good versus evil. And I use that
language on purpose because I think it is a fight
between good and evil, and it's a fight between democracy
and autocracy, and it's a fight between imperialism and a
country that's fighting for its independence. And when I say
those things, that's when people stand up in a plod.
So I'm not willing to accept that we're all just

(54:30):
cynical people caring about ourselves. I actually think we care
about right and wrong. And if I'm wrong, I'm going
to spend a lot of time proving myself wrong by
talking about this book around the country.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
This future you and vision. Can it happen if MAGA
is the leading political philosophy or at least in a
position of power in this country or does that have
to change?

Speaker 2 (54:56):
No, it has to change. But I'm optimistic there too.
Mega is not the most They're a minority in America.
Let's be clear. The data is just overwhelmingly clear their
minority within the Republican Party. It's kind of fifty to
fifty there. But then there's a lot of other Americans.
There's all the people in the Democratic Party, and then
there's most of America forty percent I think are independent

(55:18):
and don't vote. So there's a lot of people that
disagree with that. But then you've got to fight for
that too. I want to be clear, this is not
going to just happen. And with respect to democracy in America,
this is the biggest challenge to our democratic institutions of
my lifetime by far, and people more expert than I.
I'm not an expert on America but they would they

(55:40):
go back to the Civil War to say this is
as big as that. But I know we've talked about
some of the other countries, Victor Orubon, Vladimir Putin.

Speaker 1 (55:49):
Oh, I saw the protests in Hungary over the weekend.

Speaker 2 (55:52):
So they're fighting, they're back. That's an amazing thing. And
the difference between early Hungary and especially Russia two big things.
So there are parallels between Trump and Putin. I wrote
that piece first in twenty seventeen, by the way, where
I just saw he's rolling back the press, he's all

(56:13):
the oligarchs are coming towards Trump and it was slower,
but this time around it man, it feels like early
Putin era. Right. Who owns the media? Right? And then
who shows up to the inauguration and then took off
Jimmy Kimmel, Right, That reminds me of There was a
show called Kuklei that Putin took off because he didn't like.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
Because they were making fun of.

Speaker 2 (56:34):
They were making fun of him, and he took it off.

Speaker 1 (56:36):
Wasn't it a puppet show?

Speaker 2 (56:37):
It was a puppet show. Was fantastic, fantastic, It was
so funny, it was so good. They made fun of everybody,
by the way, they didn't just make fun of Putin,
but he didn't like I think it was the height
stuff that really got under his skin. He's a pretty
short man. So I see those tendencies. But I also
see protests. A lot of people dropped Disney. I was

(56:57):
one of them, by the way. I canceled even though
we had it. But when I figured out we did
that mattered. Then King's protests millions of people showed up.
That matters. So you know, you can see it half empty,
half full. I'm cautiously optimistic that our institutions are stronger
than the early Putin era. Right, we wouldn't be doing

(57:21):
this three years into the Putin era if this were
a parallel and two and we have governors, and we
have a party that could be a little stronger, in
my view, opposition party. But we do have more independent
media than the Russians. They just had one channel now
for now, but then we got to fight for it.
We got to fight for it. And we also have

(57:42):
something that the Russians didn't have, and that they had
just had about a decade of an experiment with democracy
and it wasn't delivering, Just like a lot of Americans
think our democracy wasn't delivering. But we've had two hundred
years of this. It wasn't an accident that protest was
called no Kings because that goes back to seventeen seventy six,

(58:04):
not just back a few years.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
Well more almost two hundred and fifty.

Speaker 2 (58:08):
Almost two hundred and fifty years. Yeah. Actually we'll celebrate
that next year. So I just think you just can't
sit on your couch and cry about it. That will
not make our country better. But I I'm cautiously optimistic
that democracy will not collapse and that we might get
back to some more Goldilock solutions that I write about

(58:31):
as opposed to this extremism.

Speaker 1 (58:33):
I can't let you go without asking you since I
call you all the time anytime something happens, and with
Russia and Ukraine to get your latest take on the situation. Honestly,
it's very hard for the average person to keep up
with is putin you know on the AUPs. Is you
know Donald Trump trying to cozy up to him. Does

(58:54):
he hate Selensky? Does he like Selensky? Is he insulting Selensky?
Is embracing it? So what is the latest and how
do you see this getting sorted out? If it does well.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
It's understandable that it's hard to follow because it changes
every three days. And with President Trump. You know, President
Trump used to be consistent on Putin, right, We've talked
about that for many years. He used to love Putin.
He was this guy. When they met in twenty eighteen
at their big sum in Helsinki, Putin said, you know,
we have these Americans we'd like to interrogate, and he
handed the list and Trump said, that's a great idea.

(59:29):
And I was on the list. I remember those days
in a very personal way. You know. Lately, Trump's been
all over the board, and I think he's finally figuring.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
Out that he can't trust Putin.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
Yeah, he's you know, it should have taken it shouldn't
have taken him this long. But Putin's playing for him.
He gave him all these concessions, and Putin overreached. He
asked for more, and I think that that upset the president.
I'm glad about that, but then you know they're they're
just last week there a bunch of Ukrainians in town,

(01:00:02):
and then Zelensky came on Friday and was going, well,
I'd heard lots of good readouts of those meetings, and
then Putin, out of the blue calls Trump and they
have a good call, and then he says, well, let's
go meet in Hungary. And then the meeting with Zelensky
turned out to be not very friendly. Right, So I
just wish the president would have a little more consistency

(01:00:22):
on what he's doing. But where we're at tragically is
not that different since the last time we talked. The
war continues. Putin continues to kill lots of civilians. He
thinks that's the way he's going to exhaust that country. Incrementally,
Russians are taking more and more Ukrainian territory incrementally, little

(01:00:44):
bits and pieces, small villages, with killing lots of Russians
to take him. But that's the trend line, and therefore
if we want to end this war, we have to
stop that forward progress. War's ended two ways, stand me
in on the battlefield or one side wins. It's very rare.
There are different kinds of outcomes, and I think stalemate

(01:01:06):
is a necessary condition to get Putent to negotiate, and
that means we need to help with more weapons and
more sanctions for Zelenski and I'm glad that the President
is selling weapons to our European allies to give to Ukraine.
But I got to tell you, is that American I'm
also embarrassed by that. You know, the President talks all

(01:01:27):
the time about burden sharing, and I appreciate that we
should share the burden with respect to NATO, but why
not share the burden with respect to Ukraine. And that
American companies are making money off of the war in
Ukraine and we're not helping the Ukrainians, we the American taxpayers.
I just think that's morally wrong. And I also don't

(01:01:49):
think it's at our national interest. If we stop Putin
in Ukraine, that means we don't have the threat of
war in Lithuania that would drag US into a war
because of our NATO allies. If we stop Putin and Ukraine,
that makes Shijingping think a little harder about invading Taiwan.
And if we stop him there, it makes the rest
of the world lean a little bit more towards the

(01:02:11):
democratic countries and a little away from the autocratic country.
So I actually think the stakes could not be higher,
and we got to get more engaged.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
So what is going to happen now he is meeting
with Putin, right, how likely is it that the US
will stop Putin and stop this war? And how long
can Selenski and Ukraine hang on? Mike, Well, they're struggling.

Speaker 2 (01:02:37):
I just met with some warriors from Ukraine just a
few days ago, and I'm always amazed by two things.
Just their incredible resilience. I just met with I don't
think she'd mind me talking about it. Somebody's been fighting
on the front line the entire war, volunteered. A woman
when her country was invaded, became a sharpshooter, became a sniper,

(01:02:58):
and is now working on count or intelligence more fit
to use her capabilities. And I have the privilege of
interacting with Ukrainians pretty much every day, sometimes here, sometimes
over various ways of communication, and the way I would
describe it is they're exhausted, they need more soldiers, and

(01:03:20):
they're worried about what's going to happen to their country.
But they also don't really have options. One of my
Ukrainian friends very vividly said when I asked him your question,
he said to me, Mike, I want to quote that
grand military strategist Mike Tyson the boxer, and he said

(01:03:43):
Mike Tyson asked, was once asked, don't you get tired
in the twelfth or thirteenth round and you just feel
like quitting? He said, of course, I feel like quitting.
But I know that the consequences of quitting are much
worse than the consequences of keep fighting. And that's the
Ukrainian mentality. There's a myth sometimes here in America that
I encounter that if the Ukrainians just stop fighting, Putin

(01:04:05):
will stop fighting. No, he won't. He'll just keep killing
Ukrainians and he'll march all the way to Kiev and
he'll take their entire country. So they don't have a choice,
and therefore stalemate is the answer. And I want to
be cautiously optimistic. There's been some drone technology breakthrough. There's
been these longer range missiles that we haven't given the Ukrainians,

(01:04:27):
but they are developing their own that I think could
help shift the balance of power to be more equal.
That might create the permissive conditions for a ceasefire. But
we're not there yet, definitely not there yet.

Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
Ideally. I mean, if you were advising Donald Trump prior
to this meeting with Putin, what would you, in the
best of all possible worlds, want him to say to
Vladimir Putin to stop this war.

Speaker 2 (01:04:57):
I think he needs to credibly say to Putin if
they meet, because there's some talk that they might not
meet right away. There's a bunch of garble about it,
as there oftentimes is to the point. I mean, you know,
they say the meeting's on and then they haven't. We'll see,
they may meet somewhere else, but they'll eventually talk. The president,

(01:05:18):
you know, he believes an engagement. I support that. By
the way, he's got to talk to him. But he
has to credibly commit to being with Ukraine for the
long haul, because Putin believes. In fact, I'll say this
as an anecdote, as I was leaving Moscow in twenty
fourteen in the build up to the first invasion of Ukraine,
it actually happened the day I left Moscow. That's just

(01:05:40):
a coincidence.

Speaker 1 (01:05:42):
Falls gone, Yeah, Mcfall's gone.

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
That was just a coincidence. But I was on my
way out and it was clear that this was brewing,
and I met, you know, Putin and I we did
not have a good relationship, but I actually it's your
job as an ambassador to deal with the government. I
knew a lot of the people very close to him,
and I had a long dinner with the first Deputy
Prime Minister on my way out and we talked about

(01:06:06):
this and he said, Mike, we believe we have two
great advantages over you when it comes to Ukraine. One,
we care more because there are neighbors there, and he
and we had add there are Slavic brothers and sisters,
which that's a that's wrong, but that's what they think.
They think Ukrainians are just Russians with accents they're they're not.

(01:06:29):
But one we care more, and two, you Americans have
very short attention spans.

Speaker 1 (01:06:34):
I knew you were going to say that, and he.

Speaker 2 (01:06:35):
Said that was twenty fourteen, he said that to me.
And I think Putin's banking on both those things. And
so President Trump needs to tell him that he's wrong
about that, that we're not going to go away, if
we're going to be there for as long as it takes.
And Trump, this is a great trump card he has.
I was trying to think of a different word. This

(01:06:56):
is a great instrument of leverage he has that he
is not known for. Somebody with a long attention span.
He is not known for somebody that cares about Ukraine.
So if he says it, that has way more weight
than you know McFall or even as a secretary Rubio,
he has that credibility Trump does, ironically, So that's what

(01:07:18):
he should say, and then he should back up his
words with actions that you know. Part of the problem
with Trump is every now and then I'll say something
tough and he doesn't follow through sometimes and I think,
you know, new sanctions. I just did a few new ones.
I applaud that new sanctions and new weapons would would
show that you're backing up your words with actions.

Speaker 1 (01:07:38):
Well to be continued on calling you after that treating
if it ever happens.

Speaker 2 (01:07:44):
Tragically, I think this is going to go on for
a while, so he can talk again.

Speaker 1 (01:07:47):
Well, the book is Autocrats Versus Democrats? How many years
in the making, six.

Speaker 2 (01:07:52):
Off and on. You know, I had a day job.
I ran a big institute and I teach at Stanford,
so it wasn't like I was working in it full time.
But it's been many years. The most ambitious book I've
ever written, but it's also the most important given what
we you and I were just talking about this is
a fight for our future. So I do think it's
the most important book I've ever written.

Speaker 1 (01:08:13):
Well, thank you so much for sharing your perspective, not
just obviously talking about this book, Mike, but for your
willingness to talk to me on a Saturday afternoon. We
call you at the last minute and say, always a pleasure,
can you please do a live interview with me? I
so we all appreciate your being so accessible and available

(01:08:37):
and instructive on all these very complex but vitally important issues.
So great to see you.

Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
Well, Thank you, Thank you for having me. It's always
fun to talk to you, and we get I appreciate
when you say, because this book is complex, but at
the essence, there's a few core things. You know, there's
autocrats and democrats, and one side is better than the other.
And I think we need to make that case to
the American people and talk about it in plain terms,
not just political science mumbo jumbo or foreign policy speak,

(01:09:10):
which happens way too much in Washington or Stanford University.
And you give me a chance to do that. I
appreciate that. Great.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
Well, I'd love to audit your class. Do you have
like an Introduction to US Foreign Policy from the nineteenth
to the twenty first century, something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:27):
Teach that class from time to time. So one last thing.
I've been teaching a seminar on this book for the
last several years, and it's about usually about twenty two
students and half American, half foreign a half graduate student,
half undergraduate. And I can't tell you how much I've
learned from them, because I've had some of the smartest

(01:09:48):
people in the world go through some of these arguments.
And I just shout out to Stanford students that help
me write this book. They pay because they think they're
learning from people like me. But I have this incredible
uh uh just it's such a luxury that I live
and I love Stanford and I live there and I

(01:10:08):
support our sports teams and I'm all into Stanford, but
mostly to interact with smart people. They think they're learning
from me, but I learn a lot from those.

Speaker 1 (01:10:17):
It's like reverse mentoring. I feel the same way. And also,
you know, they've grown up in very different environments and
circumstances and times, and I'm sure their perspective is invaluable.
So go Cardinal, Go Cardinal.

Speaker 2 (01:10:30):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:10:31):
Thanks Mike Thanks for having me, Thanks for listening everyone.
If you have a question for me, a subject you
want us to cover, or you want to share your
thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world, reach out
send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to
hear from you. Next Question is a production of iHeartMedia

(01:10:54):
and Katie Couric Media. The executive producers are Me, Katie Kuric,
and Courtney Ltz. Supervising producer is Ryan Martz, and our
producers are Adriana Fazio and Meredith Barnes. Julian Weller composed
art theme music. For more information about today's episode, or
to sign up for my newsletter, wake Up Call, go

(01:11:16):
to the description in the podcast app, or visit us
at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me on
Instagram and all my social media channels. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Hi everyone, it's Katie Couric.

(01:11:37):
You know I'm always on the go between running my
media company, hosting my podcast, and of course covering the news,
and I know that to keep doing what I love,
I need to start caring for what gets me there
my feet. That's why I decided to try the Good
feet stores personalized arch support system. I met with a

(01:11:57):
Good Feet arch support specialist and after a personalized fitting,
I left the store with my three step system designed
to improve comfort, balance and support. My feet, knees, and
back are thanking me already. Visit goodfeat dot com to
learn more, find the nearest store, or book your own
free personalized fitting.