Axis, Rivalry, or Chaos? The US-China-Russia Equation with Michael McFaul

Dr. Elizabeth Economy and Michael McFaul sit down to discuss the relationship between the United States, China, and Russia, the history of US engagement with Russia, his experience as the United States Ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama, and the increasing cooperation between China and Russia. McFaul begins by discussing early engagement with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev during the early Obama years, namely the signing of comprehensive multilateral sanctions with Iran, along with his role in crafting the Obama administration’s Russia policy. The two scholars then shift to a conversation about how Russia and China, namely Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, are attempting to reshape the international order, how the war in Ukraine has already changed this relationship, and whether a “reverse Kissinger” is possible from the perspective of the United States.

Recorded on June 3, 2025.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Michael McFaul is Director at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in the Department of Political Science, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995. Dr. McFaul is also an International Affairs Analyst for NBC News and a columnist for The Washington Post. He served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014).

He has authored several books, most recently the New York Times bestseller From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia. He is currently writing a book called Autocrats versus Democrats: Lessons from the Cold War for Competing with China and Russia Today. He teaches courses on great power relations, democratization, comparative foreign policy decision-making, and revolutions.

Elizabeth Economy is the Hargrove Senior Fellow and co-director of the Program on the US, China, and the World at the Hoover Institution. From 2021-2023, she took leave from Hoover to serve as the senior advisor for China to the US Secretary of Commerce. Before joining Hoover, she was the C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and director, Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is the author of four books on China, including most recently The World According to China (Polity, 2021), and the co-editor of two volumes. She serves on the boards of the National Endowment for Democracy and the National Committee on US-China Relations. She is a member of the Aspen Strategy Group and Council on Foreign Relations and serves as a book reviewer for Foreign Affairs.  

ABOUT THE SERIES

China Considered with Elizabeth Economy is a Hoover Institution podcast series that features in-depth conversations with leading political figures, scholars, and activists from around the world. The series explores the ideas, events, and forces shaping China’s future and its global relationships, offering high-level expertise, clear-eyed analysis, and valuable insights to demystify China’s evolving dynamics and what they may mean for ordinary citizens and key decision makers across societies, governments, and the private sector.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
[MUSIC]

>> Elizabeth Economy (00:08):
Welcome to China Considered, a podcast that brings fresh
insight and informed discussion to one ofthe most consequential issues of our time,
how China's changing andchanging the world.
I'm Liz Economy Hargrove, Senior Fellowand co-director of the program
on the U.S., China, and the World at theHoover Institution at Stanford University.
Today I'm excited to have as my guest mygood friend and colleague Michael McFaul.

(00:31):
Mike has many titles,professor, ambassador, and
director of the Freeman Spogli Institutehere at Stanford University.
But above all, he is one of our country'stopmost experts on all things Russia.
And while many people say thatthe US-China relationship is
the most important in the world,I would argue that certainly
the relationship between Russia andChina would be a very close second.

(00:53):
And that's going to be our main topic fortoday.
But before we move on to the substanceof Russia's relationship with China,
I want to take a few minutes, Mike, to askyou about your time as the architect of
the Obama administration's Russia policyand your service as ambassador to Russia.
So you're widely credited with being thearchitect of the Obama administration's
Russia reset.

(01:14):
What was that initiative?

>> Michael McFaul (01:16):
Well, first, it's great to be here with you.
Thanks for having me on.
Second, I liked what you just said aboutwhat are the most important bilateral
relationships, because, yes, U.S.china, of course, is, I think,
the most important one, but Russia,China probably is second for sure.
So we'll talk about that ina bit on that ancient history,

(01:39):
because I was in the government a long,long time ago, and
whether I was the architect,I think that's probably overstated.
But I did work on the Obama campaign.
I worked three years at the White Housebefore going to Moscow as the ambassador.
And the way I understood reset,which may not be the way everybody
else understood it,because you've worked in the government,

(02:01):
you know that the interagencyprocess can be noisy.
But I actually took the conceptright out of a book by one of my
mentors here at the Hoover Institution,George Schultz.
I knew George for a long time.
I met him when I was a graduate student,and he gave me constant advice.
He took me on trips from time to time.

(02:22):
By the way, speaking of this topic,one of the panels he put me on in
the early 1990s in Moscow was ona panel with Henry Kissinger and
Lee Kuan Yew about the relationshipbetween modernization and democracy.
And that was a veryhumbling experience for me.

(02:43):
So George was he also gave me somewords of encouragement after that.
But in his memoir, which I don't thinkgets enough attention, by the way,
maybe because it's 1200 pages long.
So nobody wants to read a book that long.
Other people, including Henry,you know, rightfully get attention.
But George,I think was an incredible diplomat.

(03:04):
And in that memoir, andI think it's, I can even remember,
I think it's chapter 29.
It's called re Engaging the Soviets orsomething like that.
And in that chapter, you know,the history, remember?
And I don't know, but you know, I hopemost of your listeners don't remember.
I hope they're younger than that.

(03:24):
But you know,when the Reagan administration came in,
they had no relationship withthe Soviet Union, right?
That was the evil empire.
They had no contacts at all.
And Shultz comes in in 82.
He doesn't join right away.
And as Secretary of State, he looksat this and he says, this is crazy.
We have to talk to these guys,these communists about certain things.

(03:46):
Doesn't mean we have to checkour values at the door.
Doesn't mean we have to be friends andhold hands and sing Kumbaya.
But on certain matters like arms controland nuclear weapons and what they
back then called regional conflicts,there were things to talk about.
And he talks about the strategy fordoing that.
And that to me was kindof the metaphor for

(04:07):
what we were trying todo with the Russians.
By the way, I think have some echoes for
how one might think aboutdealing with the Chinese today.
In that we had certain thingsthat we wanted to achieve.
We the United States of America,we the Obama administration.
For instance, the New START treaty,the old START treaty was expiring in 2009.

(04:31):
That was the first year ofthe Obama administration.
We did our interagency process andtalked to the President.
We said we, we think it'd be a goodidea to have a follow on treaty and
even reduce the number ofnuclear weapons in the world.
We can't do that withouttalking to the Russians, right?
You can't sign the treaty on your own.
And so we decided, we wanted to do that.

(04:52):
We decided in another,I would say the major priority for
President Obama was to stop Iranfrom getting nuclear weapons.
And we had a pressure track andan engagement track for that.
And the pressure trackwith sanctions that then
led to a nuclear deal severalyears later with the Iranians.

(05:14):
And you can't do thatwithout the Russians.
So UN Security Council Resolution 1929,I still remember it from 2010,
the Russians signed that,that was the most comprehensive
multilateral sanctionsresolution against Iran ever.
And that's why we needed the reset,to get the Russians to do that.

(05:34):
And I could go through the list.
You know, we wanted to expandthe war in Afghanistan.
Whether that was good news or goodpolicy or bad one, I'll let others join.
Join that debate.
But my job as the person dealing withRussia and Central Asia was to look for
new transport routes to get to Iranthat did not go through Pakistan,

(05:54):
because we had planned to expand the waron terrorism to Pakistan, which we did
rather dramatically in 2011 when wekilled Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
And when we came in, 90% of our suppliesto Afghanistan went through Pakistan.
By the time we did that militaryoperation to kill Osama bin Laden,

(06:16):
it was down to 50%.
And that meant going through Russia.
And I go into those details becausethese were what I consider American
national interests,where the Russians could be useful.
I think our critics thought of itas better relations with Russia.
And, you know, maybe other peoplethought that was the goal,

(06:39):
but I never thought that was the goal,by the way, Liz,
I never think that should be the goalwith any country in the world.
I've never understood, like,having a good meeting,
that that's a means to an end,not an end in and of itself.
And sothat was the kind of origins of the reset.
And then to finish it,sorry for going on so long.

(07:00):
You're making me nostalgic.
It ended pretty dramaticallywhen Vladimir Putin came back.
And that's when I becamethe US Ambassador, by the way,
just months before then.
And it was just clear as day to me thathe wasn't interested in any of these what
the Chinese would call win win outcomes,just had no interest whatsoever.

(07:22):
And so, paradoxically, I was inthe role of explaining from Moscow,
because that's what embassies do,that the reset was over at
a time when many people in Washingtonwere like, what do you mean?
Like, we still have arms control to do.
We still have other things we want to do.
We still have business we wantto do in Russia, you know.

(07:44):
And when I was ambassador,that was the peak of investment and
the peak of trade betweenthe United States and Russia.
But our memos were saying,this is not going to last.
And tragically, we were right.
But I was the guy.
I was the most vehementopponent of the reset.
Which I am oftentimes describedas being the author of.

>> Elizabeth Economy (08:05):
So just so I'm clear, you were.
Let's just, for the sake of argument,
we'll still call youthe architect of the reason.
Let's just say you were.

>> Michael McFaul (08:14):
Happy to say that.

>> Elizabeth Economy (08:15):
You played a major role in the creation and the design of it.
So you were the proponent of it atthe outset, but once you got to Moscow,
you realized that there wasn't goingto be sort of a new geostrategic
partnership with Russiaacross a range of issues.
What triggered that sort of realization?

(08:36):
And is that what had happened ordid it happen even before you left for
Moscow to become ambassador?

>> Michael McFaul (08:40):
Yeah, yeah.
Great question.
So, two things.
One, I never, ever use the wordgeostrategic partnership with Russia.
I constantly cross those kindsof grandiose ambitions out.
I always just wanted to focus onnational interests, and if we want to,
do we need the Russians ornot to achieve what's good for America?

(09:03):
And a speech that I obviously helpedto write that President Obama gave in
2009 in Moscow, it doesn't getenough attention, in my view,
because Obama gave a lot of speeches andit was in the midst of many others.
It was right after hisbig speech in Cairo.
But that speech isstructured exactly that way.
It's like, this is what we want to do.

(09:25):
If you want to help us,that'll be great, but if you don't,
this is what we're going to do anyway.
But I also want to be.
I want to be candid.
There were others in the Obamaadministration who talked in those terms.
And I was literally like my friend,President Medvedev.
Remember, there was a different president,right?

>> Elizabeth Economy (09:45):
Yeah.

>> Michael McFaul (09:45):
I would always cross out the word friend.
There's no friends in diplomacy,but that was that,
was, I want to be honest,that was a tension.
And, and it was with Medvedev.
Medvedev has gone off the deep end now.
He's an alcoholic.
He says the most outrageous things.
But I worked with the guy very closely forfive years.

(10:06):
He was different.
His future, by the way, was way moretied to the reset than Barack Obama's.
This was his whole argument for tryingto become president for a second term.
And, you know, maybe tragically,
he overreached in cooperating with us whenhe abstained on a UN Security Council

(10:27):
resolution to authorize the useof force against Libya in 2011.
Never in Russian orSoviet history had they ever authorized.
And by abstaining,he knew exactly what he was doing.
Right.I was,
I was actually in the meeting with him and
Vice President Biden when hetold us he was going to do it.
And I'll tell you honestly,Liz, I was shocked.

(10:49):
I did not believe it.
He definitely had somebuyer's remorse on that one.
But I tell you that storybecause that's where he was,
the guy that we're doingall this stuff with.
And before I got to Moscow,I got there In January of 2012,
Putin announced that he was running fora third term in September of 2011.

(11:12):
And that's when I knew all bets were off.
I remember briefing the presidentabout it and I said, you know,
we got a lot of things done,but this is over.
Obama analytically agreed with me.
We even talked about whether Ishould even go to MOSCOW as the U.S.
ambassador, given, you know,there's not going to be much to do.

(11:34):
And we all decided that would be sendthe wrong signal and kind of, you know,
appeasing Putin.
We didn't want to do that.
But no, it was that.
I can tell you exact date,September 24, 2011.
That's when I knew that our abilityto cooperate with Russia on interests
that advanced our security andeconomic interests radically reduced.

>> Elizabeth Economy (11:56):
Now, I mean, I still remember, I think Medvedev really was at
one point kind of the big hope forRussian reform and, you know,
continued reform domestically and I thinkpartnership with the United States dates.
But, yeah, that all ended.
Okay, so let's talk about your timeas ambassador, because you certainly
went far beyond simply thinkingabout geostrategic interests.

(12:21):
You really did, and I think partlyas a result of all of your academic
expertise as a Russia specialist,as a Soviet specialist,
really did engage quite deeply withcivil society in Russia as well.
And you became known for reaching out,I think, to activists and
to members of the sort of intelligentsia.

(12:43):
Can you talk a little bit about.
So once you got to Russia andyou were ambassador, first of all,
what was a day in the life ofAmbassador Mike McFaul like?
Again, given now that you'd hadthis change in the administration,
you were going to be dealing withPutin really front and center.
And you already knew that he wasn'tinterested in that same kind of
partnership with the United States.

>> Michael McFaul (13:06):
Well, so great questions.
It's fun to talk about the past.
So first, I want to go back to Schultz,because the idea of dual track diplomacy,
engaging with the regime andsociety at the same time,
that was a Reagan Schultz ideathat I stole from his memoirs.

(13:26):
I want to be reallybrutally honest about it.
And he writes about it very eloquently.
And I said we should do the same thing.
And I remember invoking Ronald Reagan ina White House meeting, saying we should
be just like Reagan and you might thinkprogressive Obama, these guys, Reagan.

(13:46):
And there were people likeMcFaul is some cold warrior but
who really liked that idea?
Barack Obama.
He really likedthe comparison to Reagan and
especially when the Arab Spring started.
We'll come back to that maybe later.
But he liked that idea andultimately blessed our strategy and
we, unlike the current administration,we ran the interagency

(14:10):
process very militantly,I would say in some ways too militantly.
But we ran the IPC process rightat the Assistant Secretary level,
then the Deputies Committee,the Principals Committee, and
then we handed to the President a paperthat was our strategy towards Russia, and
he blessed it.
And right in there was,we're going to do this stuff.

(14:32):
And the first test of that wasnot when I was ambassador, but
was when President Obamatraveled to Moscow in 2009.
First big trip, by the way.
We debated whether we're goingto go to Russia or China first.
And we had a big debate about that andwe ended up going to Russia first.

>> Elizabeth Economy (14:48):
Well, it's probably better because that China trip was no
big success.
That fell flat as a pancake.
But anyway, keep going.

>> Michael McFaul (14:56):
Well, I should learn more from you on that because I remember I
was in Singapore somewhere right before orafter that trip, and
I remembered it was the,the readout was not, was not a good one.
Russia was a lot better, it did go better.
And I won't go through the details,but we did the meeting with Medvedev,
we did the meeting in the Kremlin,he had his dinner with Medvedev,

(15:16):
we had our four hour breakfast with Putin,and
then we spent a whole day on thiscivil society engagement, right?
So met with students,he gave a speech at a university,
met with the business community,met with civil society in a parallel
summit that we organized betweenour civil society and there.
And we even brought a friend ofBarack Obama's from Chicago who was

(15:40):
an activist with him inhis civil society days.
That was there.
And then the last meeting of the trip,
he met with the leaders of the opposition,the head of the Communist Party and
the leading liberal at the time,a guy named Boris Nemtsov.
They were all there andthat was our policy.
Not everybody supported it.
Liz, just so you know,that was very controversial.

(16:03):
There were people that said,you know, and this was, you know,
in terms of the architect,this stuff was all assigned to me.
And, and I would say,usually in a pejorative way, it's like,
why are we having these stupid meetings?
This is gonna piss them off and->> Elizabeth Economy: Sounds exciting
to me.
And I'll just say it reminds me very muchof Clinton's trip to China when he met.

(16:23):
Long one right.

>> Elizabeth Economy (16:24):
Activists and environmental activists.
I know because I was brought in to helpput together some of those meetings,
even though I wasn't inthe government at the time.
I thought it was terrific, thatengagement with sort of civil society and
the people of the country.
But, sorry, keep going.

>> Michael McFaul (16:39):
Well, so we did it.
And I can tell you that at one point,
the meeting with the businessleaders was going on too long.
You know how they can drone on thoseCEOs on both sides, by the way,
Russians and Americans.
And Obama was falling asleep on the stage.
White House staff is panicking,is like, well, the boss needs a nap.

(17:00):
We gotta cancel the next meeting.
And I went over to the, the civil societymeeting with a guy, Dennis McDonough,
who later became his chief of staff,and they said, we want to offer you,
Dennis McDonough instead of Barack Obamato be the, the keynote and the faces.

>> Elizabeth Economy (17:16):
I bet.

>> Michael McFaul (17:17):
Dennis McDonough.
Who the hell is he?

>> Elizabeth Economy (17:19):
He's a smart guy, but he's not.

>> Michael McFaul (17:21):
Yeah. Yeah. And that's when Dennis, to his credit,
reversed that call and said, no,we got to get the president over here.
And then the president, like,these are his people, like,
he loves a civil society meeting.
And that was.
We pulled it off, andit was not that controversial.
We had some hiccups and things.
But that's, that's in 2009.
By the time I get there in 2012,two big things had changed.

(17:45):
One, Putin is running for reelection,so he's in the presidential race.
And two, there have been massivedemonstrations against a falsified
parliamentary election in2011 that are still ongoing.
Hundreds of thousands of people led,by the way,
by some of the people that hadmet with President Obama in 2009.

(18:10):
So that's what I landed into.
And one thing that you'll appreciate,because you've worked
in the government that I think a lot ofpeople don't appreciate, don't understand,
that was our policy.
Every time Secretary Clinton,anybody went,
they always did thiskind of dual Track stuff.
We had the, you know,these meetings at the ambassador's house,

(18:32):
just like Ronald Reagan did, by the way,in May of 1988 in his very famous trip,
you know, when he met with Gorbachev,but also the human rights activist.
That was just our.
We just ran the play that way.
Right.And became kind of routine.
I traveled there with Bill Burns, and
I remember we met withthe civil society folks.
It was just.
That's the way we did it.

(18:54):
But things had changedbecause of those two factors.
And I was the brand new ambassador andI get there and, you know,
one of our, you know,this is part of work as embassies.
We had a big fancy visitor coming,actually, Bill Burns, and
he changed the schedule.

(19:14):
He was in Iraq andhe decided he wanted to come.

>> Elizabeth Economy (19:17):
What was his role at that time?

>> Michael McFaul (19:19):
He was Deputy Secretary of State.

>> Elizabeth Economy (19:22):
Okay.

>> Michael McFaul (19:22):
Or maybe under secretary.
Number three.Number two.
I'm forgetting now.
I think he had been on promoter.
Yeah, I think he wasnumber two at the time.
But, you know, in State Department world,you know, big important guy,
former ambassador to Russia, and,you know, he can't, you know, so
he came at that moment,literally my second day of work.

(19:44):
I had not even presentedmy credentials yet.
We had to do a special side ceremony, and
then I had the formalceremony a few weeks later.
And Bill was just running the play.
In a way, it was great that hecame then because he, you know,
he knew a lot of these leaders, and sowe went and met with them together for

(20:05):
day one of the government.
But on day two, we had our meetingwith civil society leaders,
with opposition parliamentarians.
Some key people, like Navalny,by the way, said no.
And by the way, Alexei Navalny, who Iknew well before I went to Moscow and
knew after his daughter actuallywent to school here at Stanford.

(20:27):
Liz.
I knew him and his wife, andI still know his wife and daughter.
He never met with me ever when I wasambassador because he just didn't want
the baggage of beinglabeled as a CIA agent.
But we had these meetings.
The meetings were for Secretary Burns.
I was accompanying him asthe new US ambassador.
But that's not the waythe Russian press portrayed it.

(20:51):
They portrayed it that Barack Obamahas sent this specialist on democracy,
specialists on color revolutions to foment
revolution against Vladimir Putin andhis regime.
And that narrative got locked inthe first week I was there, and
it was basically the narrative forthe entire time I was there.

>> Elizabeth Economy (21:16):
So just give us quickly a sense, and then we'll move up
to the present time and Talk a littlebit about Putin's current strategy and
what he's trying to accomplish, butjust a little bit then, I mean,
did you spend the next couple of yearsbasically in isolation in the embassy
because nobody would speak with you?
Or what was that like then to beambassador when you had already,

(21:39):
from the day one, basically had somekind of target painted on your back.

>> Michael McFaul (21:44):
So thanks for asking that question because others did after
me and you know, our ambassadors in China,you know how their lives have been.
And recently I was,we'll talk about that if we have time.
But that was not the case ina rather paradoxical way in
that because of my timeworking at the White House,

(22:07):
I knew all the senior leadersin the Russian government well,
and even people close to Putin.
Still, we had business to do.
And even their intelligence,their head of tthe FSB,
the successor organization to the CIA,in a weird- KGB.

(22:32):
[LAUGH] I'm just remembering.

>> Elizabeth Economy (22:36):
You mean the parallel?
[LAUGH]>> Michael McFaul: Well,
I screwed that up.
Thanks for catching me.
I just remembered it because I do rememberone very memorable time when the head
of RCA, John Brennan @ the timemet the head of their fsb.
And I was at that meeting.
Those are some pretty wild meetings.
And I tell you that because, you know,the big strategic, you know,

(22:57):
there was not as many things to cooperateon, but there were some things like,
like when, you know, these, theseterrorists attacked our runners at the,
in the Boston Marathon, we actually didquite a bit of cooperation between,
you know, their, the equivalent fsb andtheir system is like the FBI plus the CIA.

(23:20):
They also have this SVR that'smore like the CIA, but.
But their FSB is a biggerthing than the FBI.
But they cooperated with us.
Right.And, and
our FBI Director Muellercame when I was ambassador.
So it wasn't isolation.
There's actually quite a bit ofinteraction with the government.
But increasingly, they tried to constrainwhat I could do with civil society.

(23:46):
So I used to give a lot ofspeeches at universities, and so
they shut those down when Iwould travel to other cities.
You know, they would try to limitthe interaction that I could have with.
Non governmental folks.
And so that became a bit of a cat andmouse game, but it, but it didn't.
In fact, in my last week there, I met witha lot of senior government officials and

(24:11):
it was all about lamentsabout what could have been.
Yeah.
And so, I mean, during these two years,you clearly had a very sort of upfront,
close, personal view of Vladimir Putin.

>> Michael McFaul (24:23):
Yes.

>> Elizabeth Economy (24:24):
And you know, he has, of course, stayed in office since
then, you know, help us understandwhat it is that he wants.
I mean, you know,over the past decade or so or more now,
I guess since you were there,just about a decade since you left,
you know, Russia's sort of expansionisttendencies have obviously,

(24:47):
you know, come into full view.
What does Putin want?
What does he see as Russia'srole on the global stage?

>> Michael McFaul (24:57):
Yeah, well, I'll try to answer to the best of my abilities.
And this is where we get into the Russia,China relationship for sure.
I have observed Putin, we actuallymet in 1991, so we go way back.
I've written about him.
I think at one time I counted on my CV I.
The word Putin appears in over 65articles and books that I've written.

(25:21):
Say that somewhat embarrassingly cuzsome people say I'm obsessed with them.
I'm not obsessed with them, he'sa prominent person in Russian politics.
You have to deal with him.
And in the five years Iwas in the government,
pretty much every phone call,I think almost, not almost.
I think every meeting andphone call that the President had and

(25:43):
other government officials had with Putin,I was there.
I even flew to Los Cabos,Mexico, for a G20 meeting,
for a meeting with Putin thatPresident Obama asked me to come to.
That's very unusual inour diplomatic system and
kind of pissed off some of the White Housepeople, I can tell you that.

(26:05):
That came along afterwards.
But, but I, because, you know,I had a pretty good relationship with
President Obama and he wanted me tobe there to talk about your question.
Right.
Especially in the pre.
Brief and, andwhat I would say at 30,000ft.
And then we can go into detail.
A couple of things.
First, Putin has changed over the years.
I think it's a mistake a lot ofanalysts make that he's a KGB thug and

(26:28):
he always has been.
He always was.
And he is a KGB thug andhe always has been.
And he's never been a Democrat.
That is true.
But it is not true that he's alwaysbeen anti Western and anti Capitalism.
That was not true in those early years.
I met him because he worked withthe liberal, and I used the word liberal
in the kind of European sense, pro marketreformers around a very pro Western,

(26:54):
pro European mayor at the time,Anatoly Sobchak, in the early 90s.
That's the team that he was with.
He wasn't with the communists andthe fascists back then.
He was with them.
And when he was first elected president,you know, he said we should join NATO.
So this notion that NATO was thathe's always been against NATO,

(27:14):
that's completely not true.
He wanted to integrate with the west.
And he said, why not?
We're part of the liberalizing,Western oriented part of Europe too.
And then September 11th happened, 2001.
And I've heard him talk about that periodwhen he first met with President Obama.
He spoke very fondlyof President George W.

(27:37):
Bush and how that created.
We had a common enemy and we were fightinga global war on terrorism together.
And he kind of signaled that ifwe could like get back to that,
you know, things would bebetter in US Russian relations.
That was in 2009.
So I tell you that because I think thedefining moments of his shift in the way

(27:58):
he looked at the west was not NATOexpansion, was not even the Iraq War.
I remember how he talked about the IraqWar with President Obama, by the way.
He was against the Iraq war,they shared that view.
It was actually what he calls what othershave called the color revolutions.

(28:18):
Serbia 2000, Georgia 2003, butespecially the Orange Revolution in 2004.
Well, I'll just say from my perspective,I've written a book about it,
edited a book about it.
That was in 2004 that was a grassroots,
peaceful, mass mobilization toforce the government in power to.

(28:45):
To recognize the legitimate resultsof a free and fair election.
That's the way I perceive it.
And President Yushenkoeventually won because of that.
Mass demonstrations in the courts.
And that's the way I perceive it.
Actually.President Yushenko was just here recently.
He visited Hoover andhad him over for dinner.
We were talking about it,about the different perceptions.

(29:07):
From Putin's perception,that was a CIA orchestrated couple
against his candidate,President at the time,
Yanukovych, who later did becomepresident six years later.
And from Putin's perspective,that's when he
began to see us as the enemythat we support ideas of.

(29:31):
You wouldn't use the language I would, but
we support our people who haveour ideological orientation.
And that's when he said, okay, I got toget A better game to support my ideas and
my ideological orientation in the world.
And I think we've beenunderestimating this ever since.

(29:54):
Is Putin transactional?
Yes.And
I used to hear that a thousandtimes in government meetings.
Putin's just transactional.
Is he a thug?
Yes.
Who's one of the richestpeople in the world?
Yes.
Is he also an ideological leader?
That is somebody shaped by his world,by the ideas of Putinism, or
what I would call illiberal nationalism,I would add to that.

(30:17):
Yes, and he ever since sawthe United States as his central enemy,
seeking to weaken hisautocratic regime at home and
seeking to support their allies againsthis ideological allies in the world.

(30:38):
By the way, I think Putin,until President Trump, his first election,
and especially now in this uncertain time,Putin's partially right.
I think we need to admit that.
Did the National Endowment fordemocracy support NGOs and
independent media in 2004 thathelped that mass mobilization?

(31:02):
The answer to that is yes.
Did the U.S. agency for InternationalDevelopment support those kinds of
groups in the 2004 Orange Revolution?
The answer to that is yes.
I know because I was actually hiredby USAID to do an evaluation of their
assistance programs leadingup to the Orange Revolution.

(31:23):
Now, do we foment revolution and over.
That's a different matter.
You know, that, I think, is that's wherewe get in the argument about perception.
But supporting groupsthat monitor elections,
as we did in Russia in the run up to 2011,
in fact,we expanded the budgets of those NGOs.

(31:46):
I know,because I was part of those deliberations,
we see that as supporting free andfair elections.
Putin sees it as a strategyof regime change.
And ever since 2004,he's just been locked in on it.
And I remember very, yeah.

>> Elizabeth Economy (32:02):
Let me just, just for a second, though,
I want to take you back to what you saidearlier, though, which was that, you know,
he was a capitalist,he wanted to join NATO.
So both those things are true.
But was there ever a sort of a liberaldemocratic bone in his body or what?

>> Michael McFaul (32:19):
You clarified that, Liz.
Markets, yes.
Being part of the Western multilateral,you know, liberal international order,
if there's such a thing left anymore.
But joining the G7, G8,joining the WTO, I,
part of those negotiationsthat was always there.
Never.
And I'm glad you made the distinction.
Never did he believe in democracy orthose ideas.

(32:41):
He just, he just, and then he,he made that very clear in 2000
when he started to shut down anychecks on the power of the president.
And that's when I wrote my first antiPutin piece was in March of 2000,
saying in the Washington Post sayingthis guy is going to destroy democracy.

>> Elizabeth Economy (33:01):
And no doubt he remembered that piece.

>> Michael McFaul (33:03):
He most certainly did.
He does his homework about people,
I can tell you that when he meetswith them and people like me.

>> Elizabeth Economy (33:12):
Okay, but to the point now of how he sees Russia's role
on the global stage andmaybe in relationship to China,
what do you see today in termsof from the Chinese perspective?
Of course, there's a lot ofdiscussion about never calling and
Xi Jinping is always verycareful never to call Russia.

(33:34):
Junior partner.

>> Michael McFaul (33:35):
Yes.

>> Elizabeth Economy (33:36):
Analysts in China, you know, are, are not quite so polite and
you definitely have the sense thatthere are scholars in Chinese,
scholars who clearly see Russiaas the junior partner to China.
Some of them, in fact, think, you know,
they should be more closely alignedwith the west and not with Russia.
So there's a lot of debate inthe Chinese space on this.
But, but how does Putin see it?

>> Michael McFaul (33:58):
So, so Putin, once he decided we're the main enemy and
he's going to fight us wherever we can.
He thinks in ideological terms andautocrats versus democrats.
And in that world, China and Xi Jinping ishis most important strategic partner and

(34:18):
China is his most important strategiccountry in the world, without question.
There's just no question in his mind that,that that's the way he sees China and
he wants China to join him in thisfight against liberal internationalism,
democracy, you know, all these thingsthat we were just talking about before.

(34:41):
And you know, I'm not the,I'm not an expert on China,
but I most certainly have tried tolearn about China and I've met.

>> Elizabeth Economy (34:46):
a lot of. Time going there recently.

>> Michael McFaul (34:48):
Well, I was just there a couple weeks ago meeting with some of
those scholars you're just describing,right?
And there's a lot of churn amongexperts about whether this,
you know, this relationship is good forus or not.
And, you know, this guy's kind of crazy.
You know,he's kind of gone off the deep end here.
They kept.
In my meetings in, in Beijing recently,Liz, because I don't speak Chinese.

(35:08):
I was meeting with the Russia, a lot ofRussia specialists who speak Russian, and
they kept using a word in Russian that's,that's very familiar in Russian, but
it kind of sounds weird in English.
Hooligan.

>> Elizabeth Economy (35:19):
Yes.

>> Michael McFaul (35:20):
hooligan.

>> Elizabeth Economy (35:21):
Yeah, I remember that from my time,
yes, in the Soviet Union.

>> Michael McFaul (35:26):
My gun off, what is he doing?
Yeah, but you didn't ask me that question.
You asked me the question about Putin.
So Putin wants the illiberal Internationalto all get together to fight the,
the, you know, the democratic world.
And he thinks that that's what he'sdoing throughout, you know, well,
before he invaded Ukraine a second time,right, he, he,

(35:48):
he first invaded Ukraine to do that,to punish them for the,
what they call the revolution of dignity,what he calls a CIA coup in 2014.
But then he went in heavily to supportAssad, you know, and that, that worked for
a long time, not forever, thankfully,but, you know, he deployed his air
force to help Iran and Hezbollah andAssad maintain autocracy there.

(36:11):
He's provided same kind ofassistance to Venezuela and
North Korea and Iran, andin some ways help him.
And so that's the role thathe wants Xi Jinping to play.
And he sees, he and Xi Jinping asthe great leaders of this alliance.

(36:32):
Not everybody in Russia shares that view.
In the same way that we should be careful,you know,
to disaggregate differentviews in China in a time of.
Well, let me back up first of all, beforePutin invaded Ukraine the first time,
when I, you know,I was there the day I left the.

(36:53):
Moscow.
The day he invaded Ukraine the first time,2014.
And that was planned,you know, months ago.
But it just sothat happened at the same time.
And, and what I.
The buildup was happening and,you know, we.
Lots of debates about it, and,and in Russia at that time,
there were not just human rightsactivists, which, you know,

(37:17):
there were those people as well, butthere were big business people that,
that had made their bet with the west,not with Xi Jinping in the east,
and they wanted to make moneyin Europe and the United States.
You know, while I was ambassador,we were working on helping to create what

(37:38):
would have been the largest jointventure in the history of capitalism,
which was between Rosneft,their state owned company, and ExxonMobil.
$500 billion.
That's what they were talking about.
And I want to be clear,we were supporting that.
The Obama administration thoughtthat that was going to be good for
stabilizing our relationship.

(37:58):
And we always had this argumentwhich turned out to be flawed.
And I remember it very vividlybecause there was always,
I used to sit across the hallway fromour China folks at the White House and
Obama was saying, we need to have Putinand Russia to have more to lose the next
time they think about invading,because they just invaded Georgia in 2008.

(38:22):
They need to have more to lose the nexttime they think about invading.
That was part of our strategy.
And they always talked about China hasa lot to lose when they think about using
military force.
The Russians don't.
But I tell you that story because therewere a lot of Russian entrepreneurs and
their supporters in the business worldthat thought that war was a giant mistake.

(38:43):
And they also thought the biggerinvasion in 2022 was a giant
mistake in part because it meantthat all their options for
dealing with our companies closed andnow they're forced.
And I won't name names because thesewere all private conversations.
But if you're in likethe telecommunications world,

(39:03):
you want options.
You don't just want to haveto buy everything from China.
Now those companies,they just have to buy from China.
If you're in this, you know,I want to, I better be careful.
I don't want to the company.

>> Elizabeth Economy (39:20):
No, I don't want you to get in trouble.
And I don't want the companiesin trouble either.

>> Michael McFaul (39:24):
Yeah, yeah, but the companies are just,
they're too small in Russia.
But, but, but just,just speaking more generically, right,
like if you're building a, a search enginecompany, I can talk about that one.
Yandex.
You want your investorsto be Western investors.
You don't want to berelying on the Chinese and
you don't want yourinvestor to be Chinese.

(39:45):
You want to be, and you, you thinkof your expansion of your business.
China's cut off from you if you're Yandex.
But, but Turkey's not.
And, and, and all of the,the developing world is not.
You want to compete withGoogle in that space.
And by invading and being cut off,I mean, Yandex then had to divide up, and

(40:07):
their head of the companynow lives in Israel.
Right.He's starting his own company.
So I just want to remindpeople that that debate,
I presume I can't go to Russia.
I'm sanctioned there.
But those kinds of people, they don'tlike the idea that their only partners
in the world and their onlymarkets in the world are Russia.

(40:29):
And that junior partnerthing that you talked about,
there's a big debate about that.
And Russia is like, okay, we're gonnasell them natural resources and
we're gonna buy their cars.
That feels a little imperial to them.
That feels like, okay,we're now in that world.
And that is an uneasy world, not forPutin, but for Russian economic elites.

>> Elizabeth Economy (40:53):
But clearly they're not having any influence on Putin.
And, and to that it seems, and I know,because you wrote a very good piece
in Foreign affairs with my good friendwho was on this podcast before,
Evan Medeiros, about the fact thatthe idea that the Trump administration
had of splitting the reverse Kissinger orthe reverse Nixon,

(41:16):
about pulling Russia away from Chinareally had no possibility of succeeding.
Is that right?

>> Michael McFaul (41:24):
Yeah, yeah, of course.
Because for Putin, Right.
You know, tragically put, Russiatoday is a totalitarian dictatorship.
I actually think it's,it's more authoritarian than the,
the late Soviet era.
I've written about that.
But doesn't matter what these guys think,it doesn't matter what society thinks.

(41:44):
And you're going to buy Chinesecars whether you like it or not,
because that's all that's available.
And in Putin's view, you know,of course, he is courting Trump and
he's trying to, you know, get concessions,and rather successfully so
far that, that,that play may have run its course.
But, but of course he's doingthat vis a vis Ukraine.

(42:05):
But he has no intention of pivotingagainst Xi Jinping for, for
a variety of reasons.
First of all,this ideological thing is real for Putin.
And I think.

>> Elizabeth Economy (42:16):
[INAUDIBLE] right?

>> Michael McFaul (42:18):
Well, yes, you've written about that.
I just think people, if you,if you don't study people, countries, and
you just treat them as like unitaryactors in a, in a theoretical world,
then it's hard to understand that.
But, but, but if you do look atindividuals and their worldview and
you sit in a room with them,you realize that they don't think like us.

(42:38):
They don't act like rational actors.
And this idea we're Just going topivot to the west because it's in our
economic interest.
That's not Putin.
Number two, he also understands enoughabout the west to understand that, that,
you know, President Trump may be there forthree years, but
he's not going to be there for 30 years.
And the stability he has withthe relationship with Xi Jinping and

(43:01):
the Chinese Communist Party,there's just no comparison.
And number three, you know, what wouldwe get out of a pivot like that?
Like, like, okay, now they're on our side.
What, what do we get from Putin?
Like, you know, I just think that,and, and, you know, I don't,
I don't know the history as well as you doabout the actual Nixon goes to China, but

(43:22):
I think one could even ask thatquestion about back then, but
most certainly now like this.
So what, what are they going todo to help us deal with China?
You know, they're going to be onour side in some fight over Taiwan.
No way.
And even if they were, like,they're not doing so well in Ukraine,
I don't think they're a great ally for us.

(43:44):
So I just don't think it's going to work.
I actually think pullingthe Chinese away for the Russians,
I'm not an expert on that, but thatseems like a much more interesting play.
But that's probably a differentpodcast for a different guest.

>> Elizabeth Economy (43:58):
Yeah. And I would say probably just about as
likely as you think that Russia from,from China.
I think, you know, President Xi Jinpinghas said on any number of occasions now
that Vladimir Putin is his best friend.

>> Michael McFaul (44:12):
Best friend, yes.

>> Elizabeth Economy (44:13):
In the international [INAUDIBLE]

>> Michael McFaul (44:14):
He uses that phrase,
yes.>> Elizabeth Economy: And he doesn't
speak like that.
I mean, I think it's important torecognize that's not, you know,
typical for him to say.
So I think he takes this relationshipincredibly seriously, as I,
I think you're saying Vladimir Putin does.
So I think the ties that bind them are->> Michael McFaul: Besties forever, yeah.

>> Elizabeth Economy (44:31):
Quite strong at this point.
So let me just ask, you know,two more questions.
You know, first,does this relationship between China and
Russia change when the leaders change?
Like, to what extent do you think thisis a structurally based relationship?
Or is there the opportunity, you know,
some radically different leader comesinto Russia or even maybe to China, and

(44:54):
you get,you get a real reset in this relationship?

>> Michael McFaul (44:59):
Well, I'll let you answer the question on China, on Russia.
The answer to that is yes.
And we don't have to think about it ina counterfactual terms because we've
already seen it.
And, you know, beginning with Gorbachev,but then When Yeltsin came in,
Yeltsin said,I don't want to be part of that world.

(45:19):
I want to be part of your world.
And he went all in to try to bepart of the west and democracy and
capitalism and joining our clubs.
He saw Russia's long termnational economic and
security interest to the west,not to the East.
And so it's already happened now.

(45:40):
It wasn't as successful as he wanted.
And the people around him.
And again, there are reasonswhy we didn't get that right.
And in the book I just finished writing,I talk about lessons learned from the past
and let's learn what we did wrong andin that moment.
But it already happened.
So if it already happened,it can happen again.
That's the first thing I would say.

(46:01):
Is it likely to happenquickly after Putin?
My answer to that is no.
I do tragically think that25 years of Putin in power
has just destroyed those that thoughtthat Russia's interests were in the West.

(46:24):
They're there andthey'll someday be revived.
And at the end of the day,when you ask Russians, after a second or
third vodka, are you European or Asian?
They say, we're European.
Putin does not lose, by the way,this is an interesting thing.
He wants to make the argumentthat they're not part of Europe.

(46:44):
In fact, I witnessed it one time when hewas meeting with Vice President Biden
where he looked right into, I remember itwas jarring, where he looked at Putin and
he said, excuse me,he looked at Biden and he said, you know,
your problem is you guys look at us andyou look at our skin.
And he, you know,he kind of went like this and he says,
because we look like you,you think that we think like you, but.

(47:07):
But we don't.
We're different.
That's his worldview.

>> Elizabeth Economy (47:11):
Wow. >> Michael McFaul
There are a lot of Russianswho don't think that way.
And especially when you think about,are we like the Chinese?
Are we more like the Germans?
They're have a kind of deeper kindof civilizational view on that,
but they're not in power now.
And the regime that he's put in place is,is deep.

(47:32):
Like, it's structurally going to takea long time to unravel Putinism.
Not unlike how long ittook to unravel Stalinism.
So I don't see it changing inthe short term, but in the long term,
I am more optimistic.
And it's really hard tounderstand what Russians think.
The data is horrible.

(47:53):
And we have some very clover socialscientists trying to do various.
Polling and, you know,different kinds of methods to get at it.
But there is something I thinkis true that I think most people
who follow Russia agree with,which is that the older,
less educated, more rural you are,and the poorer you are,

(48:18):
the more likely you are to support Putin.
And conversely, the younger,more educated, more urban,
richer you are, the more likely youare to be an opponent to Putin.
Now, being an opponent doesn't meanyou're going to go out and protest.
The costs of that are too high.
You know, people have literally, includingone of my friends, Alexei Navalny,

(48:39):
have been killed for trying to do that.
Right.
So just because people aren't protesting,
we shouldn't presume that weunderstand their preferences.
But that means thatPutin's lost the future.
Right.
Those people are the ones most skeptical.
But for them to have impact on the regime,I think it's going to take a long,

(48:59):
long time.
Yeah, so last question.
If you were advising,given everything that you've just said,
if you were advising President Trumptoday, and assuming that he was listening.
What would be the sort of single mostimportant thing you think he should
be thinking about doing with regardto the US policy toward Russia and

(49:23):
sort of the Russia-China, I don'tcall it an alliance, but partnership?

>> Michael McFaul (49:32):
Well, I've never briefed President Trump.
I doubt I ever will.
But if I had that opportunity first,I'd frame it in his language.
Trump talks a lot about strong leaders,right?
Way back to 2015,cuz I just finished writing this book,
that's when he first talked about Putin,he's a strong leader.

(49:53):
He likes strong leaders.
I think he said similarthings about Xi Jinping.
He also frames the world,not autocrats and Democrats like I do, but
in Winners and losers, right.
He uses that language a lot.
Winners, losers.
So that's his frame.
And I would say, Mr.
President, I think you need to reevaluatewho you think are winners and losers and

(50:15):
strong and weak leaders in thisrelationship between Russia and Ukraine.
Look at just what happened overthe weekend, Mr. President.
Look at this audacious, fantasticallysuccessful operation that just blew up,
if you believe the reports, andwe have to verify them, I got it.

(50:36):
But 41 strategic bombers ofthe Russian Air Force and
not a single Russian intelligence officeror soldier was lost in that operation.
And, Liz, maybe, you know,and you can't tell us,
maybe the United States has the abilityto pull an operation off like that.
Maybe the Chinese do.
I don't know that, butthey haven't done it before.

(50:58):
And we know The Russians can't,Mr. President,
because if they had that capability,they would have done it a long time ago.
So who's the winners and losers here?
In the long run, think aboutsiding more with the Ukrainians.
And in the long run, if you think aboutour challenges, anything about great
power, competition over decades, andI think that's the way one needs to think

(51:22):
about it, I want those Ukrainiandrone companies to be on our side.
I want that capability to be on our side.
I want that innovation to be on our side.
And by the way, they're Democrats.
They want to be part ofthe democratic world, the free world,
whereas Putin has noinclination to do that.

(51:44):
His best friend is in Beijing.
His best friend is not in Washington.
So I think it could,that would be my advice.
And the other thing I would say toPresident Trump is I applaud him for
trying to end this horrible war,by the way, this barbaric,
horrible invasion of Ukraine.
And even though I've gotten in troublewith some of my friends in the Biden

(52:06):
administration, I even think it was rightto establish a channel of communication
through Rubio, Secretary Rubio,meeting with Foreign Minister Lavrov.
I wish that channel was the channel andnot these other ones.
But if you wanna negotiate,you gotta talk to the enemy.
Again, invoking George Shultz, that'swhat he said in 1982, you gotta do that.

(52:31):
But the strategy of just givingPutin every concession he wants and
pressuring Ukraine has notled to the end of the war.
And so now Trump's got to go to plan B.
And the one thing I can tell youabout Putin having dealt with them,
when he gave all those concessions,Putin looked at that as weakness.
He looked at this as a sign of weakness.

(52:52):
You appease him,he looks at that as weakness.
And so what did he do?
He upped the ante.
He said he wanted more things.
He said, well, now you got to recognizethese four regions of Ukraine and
Crimea as part of Russia in order forus to do the ceasefire.
And I negotiated with these guys,including with Putin.
That's very consistent with them.

(53:13):
And so if Trump wants to changethe narrative about looking weak and
he wants to create permissive conditionsfor an actual end of this war,
he should increase the sanctions.
There's already a bill.
His buddy Lindsey Graham drafted it.
He could just say, I support it.
It would sail through the U.S. congress.
And then he should, I don't know,

(53:36):
it's a bridge too far to say Trump.
Another military assistance package forUkraine.
I don't see him doing that.
But why not take those Russiancentral bank assets we have frozen in
the United States andgive those to the Ukrainians so
that they could buy our weapons?
And then why not allow them to leveragethe mineral deal that President Trump and

(54:01):
President Zelensky just did recently toallow them to buy more weapons from us?
What they really need is they needinterceptors to replenish those patriot
systems they supplied.
And I think doing that would signal toPutin that he's not abandoning Ukraine and
might finally createthe permissive conditions for

(54:23):
him to get serious about negotiating.

>> Elizabeth Economy (54:25):
Great ideas.
And I think that last point also fitswithin President Trump's desire to do
business, to make everythinga transaction and a deal.
Right?
Yeah.And yeah, so all good advice,
maybe someone fromthe administration will take it up.

>> Michael McFaul (54:44):
Maybe they'll be listening to your podcast.

>> Elizabeth Economy (54:46):
Yeah, that's it.
That's it.

>> Michael McFaul (54:47):
Right, that'll be our hope.

>> Elizabeth Economy (54:49):
So, listen, I know you have a new book coming out.
You've teased it a little bit.

It's called Autocrats vs Democrats (54:54):
China, Russia, America, and
the New Global Disorder.
I can scarcely think of anything that'smore timely coming out at the end of
October.
You want to give us the elevator pitch,the one line teaser for it?
I know it's going to be great, but whatdo you want everybody to know about it?

>> Michael McFaul (55:14):
Well, I want everybody to buy the book.
[LAUGH] That goes without saying.
[LAUGH] I don't care if you read the book,but I want you to buy the book.

>> Elizabeth Economy (55:22):
I say the same thing.
[LAUGH]>> Michael McFaul: But
I just say two things.
You know, one, this book came out ofa debate that you're closer to than I am
about whether we'veentered a new Cold War or
not that started back inthe first Trump administration.
And I actually have studied the Cold War,I wrote my PhD about the Cold War.
And I came into that debate to sayit's an oversimplified debate,

(55:47):
it's too black and white.
So some say It's Cold War 2.0, andI say, no, here are the differences.
And some say it has nothingto do with the Cold War.
And I say, no, you're wrong about that,there are some similarities.
And so it's a complex book in that, inthat sense, Liz, I learned a lot from you,
by the way, in writing it, andmaybe that will bring the book sales down.

(56:10):
The fact that you learned a lot from me.

>> Michael McFaul (56:12):
No, no, that is a complex book.
It's a complex book.

>> Elizabeth Economy (56:15):
I know what you mean.

>> Michael McFaul (56:17):
And you know, on these debates about do leaders matter?
You know,I learned that all from you on China.

>> Elizabeth Economy (56:22):
No, no, no, we started from the same perspective,
but go ahead.

>> Michael McFaul (56:26):
But I mean, there's the analytic piece about power regimes and,
and I use that piece to explaingreat power relations, but
then on this policy debate,I make things more complex to say.
And then there are some thingshave nothing to do with it.
So there are lessons from the Cold Warsuccesses that we should replicate now.

(56:51):
And by the way, Trump's not replicatingany of those in that chapter.
By the way, there's somemistakes we made in the Cold War.
We got to learn those, too,so that we don't repeat them.
And tragically, I don't see thathappening to the way they should.
But then there's a whole bunch of thingsthat you know better than I do for
China and Russia, not just China,that have nothing to do with the Cold War.

(57:11):
And so we can't superimpose that metaphorto come up with policy prescriptions for
that piece.
And that, that piece, by the way, dealsa lot with some of the good things that
the Biden administration and you didto say we should continue those things.
And there are things that havenothing to do with the Cold War.
That's what the book.
So that's the analytic piece.

(57:32):
But the real reason for.
Right, the second,bigger important reason is I'm
pretty nervous about where weare as a country in the world.
I think we're making a lotof mistakes right now.
And they're cell phone goals,we're doing them to ourselves.
We're pulling back,we're dismantling usaid,

(57:53):
we're getting in fights with our allies,we're.
Somebody's decidedtrade's no longer useful,
that we don't wanna support democracy.
And I actually think that all ofthose things I just described advance
American national interests.
And to throw the babyout with the bathwater.

(58:15):
Yes, we need to reform usaid.
Yes, we need to reform our trading regime.
But to think that we're gonna go back tosome early late 19th century world and
everything's gonna be great,I radically disagree with that.
And I fear formy country if we try to go back to that
in many of the ways thatPresident Trump wants to.

(58:36):
So I wrote the book to try to explainwhy that's the wrong approach.
And my book tour is going to be Alabamaand Texas and Ohio and Montana and
Idaho, in addition to other places,because I think those of us
that believe this, we have toconvince the American people of it.

(58:57):
I think we haven't done a good enough jobof taking these ideas, even our elite
universities, Liz, like, we gotta go tothese places and explain why it was so
smart during the Cold War to setup these research universities.
They produce fantastic successes,and we need to replicate that, but
we have to convincethe American citizens to do it.

(59:19):
So I know it's a bit of a paradoxto write a complex book for
all Americans, but that was my objective,and that's what I hope to achieve.

>> Elizabeth Economy (59:31):
I think it sounds terrific.
And I never think we shouldunderestimate the ability of
Americans to understand complex,smart, analytical arguments.

>> Michael McFaul (59:45):
100%.

>> Elizabeth Economy (59:46):
I think we do that to our detriment.
So my guess is, Mike,
that you have a second New York Timesbestseller on your hands.
And I'm really looking forward to readingit and to hearing you speak more about it.
And I just want to thank you fora really rich conversation, especially for
reminding us of the importance of,you know, looking back and

(01:00:08):
understanding, you know, what we did well,what we didn't do so well,
and what that means for how we shouldbe thinking about the present time.

>> Michael McFaul (01:00:18):
Fantastic conversation.
Thanks for having me.
I thought we would not have enough to say,but we had a lot to say, so
I really appreciate that.

>> Elizabeth Economy (01:00:26):
I never had that fear having been on a panel with you
before.
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