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

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

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[MUSIC]
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>> Elizabeth Economy: Welcome to China Considered, a podcast that brings fresh
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insight and informed discussion to one of the most consequential issues of our time,
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how China's changing and changing the world.
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I'm Liz Economy Hargrove, Senior Fellow and co-director of the program
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on the U.S., China, and the World at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
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Today I'm excited to have as my guest my good friend and colleague Michael McFaul.
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Mike has many titles, professor, ambassador, and
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director of the Freeman Spogli Institute here at Stanford University.
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But above all, he is one of our country's topmost experts on all things Russia.
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And while many people say that the US-China relationship is
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the most important in the world, I would argue that certainly
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the relationship between Russia and China would be a very close second.
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And that's going to be our main topic for today.
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But before we move on to the substance of Russia's relationship with China,
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I want to take a few minutes, Mike, to ask you about your time as the architect of
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the Obama administration's Russia policy and your service as ambassador to Russia.
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So you're widely credited with being the architect of the Obama administration's
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Russia reset.
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What was that initiative?
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>> Michael McFaul: Well, first, it's great to be here with you.
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Thanks for having me on.
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Second, I liked what you just said about what are the most important bilateral
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relationships, because, yes, U.S. china, of course, is, I think,
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the most important one, but Russia, China probably is second for sure.
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So we'll talk about that in a bit on that ancient history,
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because I was in the government a long, long time ago, and
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whether I was the architect, I think that's probably overstated.
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But I did work on the Obama campaign.
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I worked three years at the White House before going to Moscow as the ambassador.
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And the way I understood reset, which may not be the way everybody
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else understood it, because you've worked in the government,
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you know that the interagency process can be noisy.
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But I actually took the concept right out of a book by one of my
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mentors here at the Hoover Institution, George Schultz.
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I knew George for a long time.
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I met him when I was a graduate student, and he gave me constant advice.
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He took me on trips from time to time.
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By the way, speaking of this topic, one of the panels he put me on in
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the early 1990s in Moscow was on a panel with Henry Kissinger and
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Lee Kuan Yew about the relationship between modernization and democracy.
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And that was a very humbling experience for me.
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So George was he also gave me some words of encouragement after that.
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But in his memoir, which I don't think gets enough attention, by the way,
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maybe because it's 1200 pages long.
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So nobody wants to read a book that long.
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Other people, including Henry, you know, rightfully get attention.
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But George, I think was an incredible diplomat.
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And in that memoir, and I think it's, I can even remember,
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I think it's chapter 29.
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It's called re Engaging the Soviets or something like that.
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And in that chapter, you know, the history, remember?
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And I don't know, but you know, I hope most of your listeners don't remember.
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I hope they're younger than that.
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But you know, when the Reagan administration came in,
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they had no relationship with the Soviet Union, right?
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That was the evil empire.
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They had no contacts at all.
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And Shultz comes in in 82.
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He doesn't join right away.
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And as Secretary of State, he looks at this and he says, this is crazy.
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We have to talk to these guys, these communists about certain things.
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Doesn't mean we have to check our values at the door.
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Doesn't mean we have to be friends and hold hands and sing Kumbaya.
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But on certain matters like arms control and nuclear weapons and what they
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back then called regional conflicts, there were things to talk about.
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And he talks about the strategy for doing that.
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And that to me was kind of the metaphor for
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what we were trying to do with the Russians.
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By the way, I think have some echoes for
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how one might think about dealing with the Chinese today.
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In that we had certain things that we wanted to achieve.
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We the United States of America, we the Obama administration.
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For instance, the New START treaty, the old START treaty was expiring in 2009.
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That was the first year of the Obama administration.
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We did our interagency process and talked to the President.
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We said we, we think it'd be a good idea to have a follow on treaty and
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even reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world.
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We can't do that without talking to the Russians, right?
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You can't sign the treaty on your own.
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And so we decided, we wanted to do that.
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We decided in another, I would say the major priority for
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President Obama was to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
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And we had a pressure track and an engagement track for that.
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And the pressure track with sanctions that then
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led to a nuclear deal several years later with the Iranians.
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And you can't do that without the Russians.
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So UN Security Council Resolution 1929, I still remember it from 2010,
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the Russians signed that, that was the most comprehensive
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multilateral sanctions resolution against Iran ever.
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And that's why we needed the reset, to get the Russians to do that.
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And I could go through the list.
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You know, we wanted to expand the war in Afghanistan.
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Whether that was good news or good policy or bad one, I'll let others join.
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Join that debate.
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But my job as the person dealing with Russia and Central Asia was to look for
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new transport routes to get to Iran that did not go through Pakistan,
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because we had planned to expand the war on terrorism to Pakistan, which we did
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rather dramatically in 2011 when we killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
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And when we came in, 90% of our supplies to Afghanistan went through Pakistan.
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By the time we did that military operation to kill Osama bin Laden,
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it was down to 50%.
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And that meant going through Russia.
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And I go into those details because these were what I consider American
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national interests, where the Russians could be useful.
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I think our critics thought of it as better relations with Russia.
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And, you know, maybe other people thought that was the goal,
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but I never thought that was the goal, by the way, Liz,
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I never think that should be the goal with any country in the world.
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I've never understood, like, having a good meeting,
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that that's a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.
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And so that was the kind of origins of the reset.
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And then to finish it, sorry for going on so long.
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You're making me nostalgic.
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It ended pretty dramatically when Vladimir Putin came back.
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And that's when I became the US Ambassador, by the way,
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just months before then.
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And it was just clear as day to me that he wasn't interested in any of these what
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the Chinese would call win win outcomes, just had no interest whatsoever.
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And so, paradoxically, I was in the role of explaining from Moscow,
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because that's what embassies do, that the reset was over at
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a time when many people in Washington were like, what do you mean?
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Like, we still have arms control to do.
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We still have other things we want to do.
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We still have business we want to do in Russia, you know.
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And when I was ambassador, that was the peak of investment and
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the peak of trade between the United States and Russia.
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But our memos were saying, this is not going to last.
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And tragically, we were right.
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But I was the guy.
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I was the most vehement opponent of the reset.
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Which I am oftentimes described as being the author of.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: So just so I'm clear, you were.
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Let's just, for the sake of argument,
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we'll still call you the architect of the reason.
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Let's just say you were.
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>> Michael McFaul: Happy to say that.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: You played a major role in the creation and the design of it.
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So you were the proponent of it at the outset, but once you got to Moscow,
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you realized that there wasn't going to be sort of a new geostrategic
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partnership with Russia across a range of issues.
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What triggered that sort of realization?
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And is that what had happened or did it happen even before you left for
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Moscow to become ambassador?
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>> Michael McFaul: Yeah, yeah.
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Great question.
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So, two things.
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One, I never, ever use the word geostrategic partnership with Russia.
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I constantly cross those kinds of grandiose ambitions out.
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I always just wanted to focus on national interests, and if we want to,
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do we need the Russians or not to achieve what's good for America?
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And a speech that I obviously helped to write that President Obama gave in
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2009 in Moscow, it doesn't get enough attention, in my view,
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because Obama gave a lot of speeches and it was in the midst of many others.
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It was right after his big speech in Cairo.
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But that speech is structured exactly that way.
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It's like, this is what we want to do.
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If you want to help us, that'll be great, but if you don't,
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this is what we're going to do anyway.
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But I also want to be.
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I want to be candid.
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There were others in the Obama administration who talked in those terms.
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And I was literally like my friend, President Medvedev.
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Remember, there was a different president, right?
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>> Elizabeth Economy: Yeah.
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>> Michael McFaul: I would always cross out the word friend.
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There's no friends in diplomacy, but that was that,
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was, I want to be honest, that was a tension.
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And, and it was with Medvedev.
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Medvedev has gone off the deep end now.
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He's an alcoholic.
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He says the most outrageous things.
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But I worked with the guy very closely for five years.
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He was different.
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His future, by the way, was way more tied to the reset than Barack Obama's.
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This was his whole argument for trying to become president for a second term.
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And, you know, maybe tragically,
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he overreached in cooperating with us when he abstained on a UN Security Council
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resolution to authorize the use of force against Libya in 2011.
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Never in Russian or Soviet history had they ever authorized.
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And by abstaining, he knew exactly what he was doing.
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Right. I was,
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I was actually in the meeting with him and
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Vice President Biden when he told us he was going to do it.
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And I'll tell you honestly, Liz, I was shocked.
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I did not believe it.
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He definitely had some buyer's remorse on that one.
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But I tell you that story because that's where he was,
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the guy that we're doing all this stuff with.
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And before I got to Moscow, I got there In January of 2012,
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Putin announced that he was running for a third term in September of 2011.
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And that's when I knew all bets were off.
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I remember briefing the president about it and I said, you know,
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we got a lot of things done, but this is over.
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Obama analytically agreed with me.
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We even talked about whether I should even go to MOSCOW as the U.S.
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ambassador, given, you know, there's not going to be much to do.
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And we all decided that would be send the wrong signal and kind of, you know,
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appeasing Putin.
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We didn't want to do that.
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But no, it was that.
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I can tell you exact date, September 24, 2011.
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That's when I knew that our ability to cooperate with Russia on interests
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that advanced our security and economic interests radically reduced.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: Now, I mean, I still remember, I think Medvedev really was at
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one point kind of the big hope for Russian reform and, you know,
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continued reform domestically and I think partnership with the United States dates.
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But, yeah, that all ended.
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Okay, so let's talk about your time as ambassador, because you certainly
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went far beyond simply thinking about geostrategic interests.
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You really did, and I think partly as a result of all of your academic
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expertise as a Russia specialist, as a Soviet specialist,
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really did engage quite deeply with civil society in Russia as well.
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And you became known for reaching out, I think, to activists and
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to members of the sort of intelligentsia.
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Can you talk a little bit about.
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So once you got to Russia and you were ambassador, first of all,
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what was a day in the life of Ambassador Mike McFaul like?
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Again, given now that you'd had this change in the administration,
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you were going to be dealing with Putin really front and center.
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And you already knew that he wasn't interested in that same kind of
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partnership with the United States.
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>> Michael McFaul: Well, so great questions.
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It's fun to talk about the past.
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So first, I want to go back to Schultz, because the idea of dual track diplomacy,
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engaging with the regime and society at the same time,
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that was a Reagan Schultz idea that I stole from his memoirs.
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I want to be really brutally honest about it.
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And he writes about it very eloquently.
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And I said we should do the same thing.
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And I remember invoking Ronald Reagan in a White House meeting, saying we should
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be just like Reagan and you might think progressive Obama, these guys, Reagan.
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And there were people like McFaul is some cold warrior but
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who really liked that idea?
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Barack Obama.
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He really liked the comparison to Reagan and
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especially when the Arab Spring started.
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We'll come back to that maybe later.
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But he liked that idea and ultimately blessed our strategy and
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we, unlike the current administration, we ran the interagency
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process very militantly, I would say in some ways too militantly.
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But we ran the IPC process right at the Assistant Secretary level,
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then the Deputies Committee, the Principals Committee, and
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then we handed to the President a paper that was our strategy towards Russia, and
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he blessed it.
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And right in there was, we're going to do this stuff.
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And the first test of that was not when I was ambassador, but
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was when President Obama traveled to Moscow in 2009.
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First big trip, by the way.
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We debated whether we're going to go to Russia or China first.
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And we had a big debate about that and we ended up going to Russia first.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: Well, it's probably better because that China trip was no
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big success.
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That fell flat as a pancake.
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But anyway, keep going.
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>> Michael McFaul: Well, I should learn more from you on that because I remember I
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was in Singapore somewhere right before or after that trip, and
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I remembered it was the, the readout was not, was not a good one.
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Russia was a lot better, it did go better.
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And I won't go through the details, but we did the meeting with Medvedev,
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we did the meeting in the Kremlin, he had his dinner with Medvedev,
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we had our four hour breakfast with Putin, and
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then we spent a whole day on this civil society engagement, right?
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So met with students, he gave a speech at a university,
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met with the business community, met with civil society in a parallel
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summit that we organized between our civil society and there.
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And we even brought a friend of Barack Obama's from Chicago who was
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an activist with him in his civil society days.
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That was there.
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And then the last meeting of the trip,
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he met with the leaders of the opposition, the head of the Communist Party and
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the leading liberal at the time, a guy named Boris Nemtsov.
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They were all there and that was our policy.
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Not everybody supported it.
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Liz, just so you know, that was very controversial.
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There were people that said, you know, and this was, you know,
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in terms of the architect, this stuff was all assigned to me.
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And, and I would say, usually in a pejorative way, it's like,
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why are we having these stupid meetings?
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This is gonna piss them off and- >> Elizabeth Economy: Sounds exciting
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to me.
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And I'll just say it reminds me very much of Clinton's trip to China when he met.
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>> Michael McFaul: Long one right.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: Activists and environmental activists.
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I know because I was brought in to help put together some of those meetings,
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even though I wasn't in the government at the time.
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I thought it was terrific, that engagement with sort of civil society and
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the people of the country.
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But, sorry, keep going.
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>> Michael McFaul: Well, so we did it.
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And I can tell you that at one point,
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the meeting with the business leaders was going on too long.
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You know how they can drone on those CEOs on both sides, by the way,
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Russians and Americans.
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And Obama was falling asleep on the stage.
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White House staff is panicking, is like, well, the boss needs a nap.
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We gotta cancel the next meeting.
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And I went over to the, the civil society meeting with a guy, Dennis McDonough,
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who later became his chief of staff, and they said, we want to offer you,
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Dennis McDonough instead of Barack Obama to be the, the keynote and the faces.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: I bet.
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>> Michael McFaul: Dennis McDonough.
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Who the hell is he?
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>> Elizabeth Economy: He's a smart guy, but he's not.
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>> Michael McFaul: Yeah. Yeah. And that's when Dennis, to his credit,
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reversed that call and said, no, we got to get the president over here.
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And then the president, like, these are his people, like,
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he loves a civil society meeting.
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And that was.
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We pulled it off, and it was not that controversial.
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We had some hiccups and things.
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But that's, that's in 2009.
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By the time I get there in 2012, two big things had changed.
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One, Putin is running for reelection, so he's in the presidential race.
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And two, there have been massive demonstrations against a falsified
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parliamentary election in 2011 that are still ongoing.
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Hundreds of thousands of people led, by the way,
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by some of the people that had met with President Obama in 2009.
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So that's what I landed into.
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And one thing that you'll appreciate, because you've worked
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in the government that I think a lot of people don't appreciate, don't understand,
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that was our policy.
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Every time Secretary Clinton, anybody went,
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they always did this kind of dual Track stuff.
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We had the, you know, these meetings at the ambassador's house,
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just like Ronald Reagan did, by the way, in May of 1988 in his very famous trip,
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you know, when he met with Gorbachev, but also the human rights activist.
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That was just our.
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We just ran the play that way.
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Right. And became kind of routine.
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I traveled there with Bill Burns, and
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I remember we met with the civil society folks.
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It was just.
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That's the way we did it.
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But things had changed because of those two factors.
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And I was the brand new ambassador and I get there and, you know,
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one of our, you know, this is part of work as embassies.
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We had a big fancy visitor coming, actually, Bill Burns, and
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he changed the schedule.
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He was in Iraq and he decided he wanted to come.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: What was his role at that time?
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>> Michael McFaul: He was Deputy Secretary of State.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: Okay.
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>> Michael McFaul: Or maybe under secretary.
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Number three. Number two.
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I'm forgetting now.
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I think he had been on promoter.
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Yeah, I think he was number two at the time.
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But, you know, in State Department world, you know, big important guy,
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former ambassador to Russia, and, you know, he can't, you know, so
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he came at that moment, literally my second day of work.
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I had not even presented my credentials yet.
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We had to do a special side ceremony, and
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then I had the formal ceremony a few weeks later.
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And Bill was just running the play.
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In a way, it was great that he came then because he, you know,
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he knew a lot of these leaders, and so we went and met with them together for
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day one of the government.
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But on day two, we had our meeting with civil society leaders,
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with opposition parliamentarians.
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Some key people, like Navalny, by the way, said no.
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And by the way, Alexei Navalny, who I knew well before I went to Moscow and
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knew after his daughter actually went to school here at Stanford.
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Liz.
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I knew him and his wife, and I still know his wife and daughter.
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He never met with me ever when I was ambassador because he just didn't want
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the baggage of being labeled as a CIA agent.
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But we had these meetings.
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The meetings were for Secretary Burns.
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I was accompanying him as the new US ambassador.
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But that's not the way the Russian press portrayed it.
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They portrayed it that Barack Obama has sent this specialist on democracy,
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specialists on color revolutions to foment
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revolution against Vladimir Putin and his regime.
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And that narrative got locked in the first week I was there, and
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it was basically the narrative for the entire time I was there.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: So just give us quickly a sense, and then we'll move up
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to the present time and Talk a little bit about Putin's current strategy and
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what he's trying to accomplish, but just a little bit then, I mean,
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did you spend the next couple of years basically in isolation in the embassy
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because nobody would speak with you?
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Or what was that like then to be ambassador when you had already,
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from the day one, basically had some kind of target painted on your back.
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>> Michael McFaul: So thanks for asking that question because others did after
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me and you know, our ambassadors in China, you know how their lives have been.
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And recently I was, we'll talk about that if we have time.
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But that was not the case in a rather paradoxical way in
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that because of my time working at the White House,
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I knew all the senior leaders in the Russian government well,
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and even people close to Putin.
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Still, we had business to do.
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And even their intelligence, their head of tthe FSB,
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the successor organization to the CIA, in a weird- KGB.
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[LAUGH] I'm just remembering.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: You mean the parallel?
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[LAUGH] >> Michael McFaul: Well,
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I screwed that up.
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Thanks for catching me.
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I just remembered it because I do remember one very memorable time when the head
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of RCA, John Brennan @ the time met the head of their fsb.
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And I was at that meeting.
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Those are some pretty wild meetings.
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And I tell you that because, you know, the big strategic, you know,
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there was not as many things to cooperate on, but there were some things like,
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like when, you know, these, these terrorists attacked our runners at the,
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in the Boston Marathon, we actually did quite a bit of cooperation between,
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you know, their, the equivalent fsb and their system is like the FBI plus the CIA.
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They also have this SVR that's more like the CIA, but.
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But their FSB is a bigger thing than the FBI.
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But they cooperated with us.
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Right. And, and
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our FBI Director Mueller came when I was ambassador.
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So it wasn't isolation.
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There's actually quite a bit of interaction with the government.
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But increasingly, they tried to constrain what I could do with civil society.
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So I used to give a lot of speeches at universities, and so
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they shut those down when I would travel to other cities.
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You know, they would try to limit the interaction that I could have with.
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Non governmental folks.
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And so that became a bit of a cat and mouse game, but it, but it didn't.
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In fact, in my last week there, I met with a lot of senior government officials and
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it was all about laments about what could have been.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: Yeah.
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And so, I mean, during these two years, you clearly had a very sort of upfront,
24:20
close, personal view of Vladimir Putin.
24:23
>> Michael McFaul: Yes.
24:24
>> Elizabeth Economy: And you know, he has, of course, stayed in office since
24:28
then, you know, help us understand what it is that he wants.
24:33
I mean, you know, over the past decade or so or more now,
24:37
I guess since you were there, just about a decade since you left,
24:41
you know, Russia's sort of expansionist tendencies have obviously,
24:47
you know, come into full view.
24:50
What does Putin want?
24:52
What does he see as Russia's role on the global stage?
24:57
>> Michael McFaul: Yeah, well, I'll try to answer to the best of my abilities.
25:00
And this is where we get into the Russia, China relationship for sure.
25:06
I have observed Putin, we actually met in 1991, so we go way back.
25:12
I've written about him.
25:13
I think at one time I counted on my CV I.
25:16
The word Putin appears in over 65 articles and books that I've written.
25:21
Say that somewhat embarrassingly cuz some people say I'm obsessed with them.
25:26
I'm not obsessed with them, he's a prominent person in Russian politics.
25:30
You have to deal with him.
25:32
And in the five years I was in the government,
25:35
pretty much every phone call, I think almost, not almost.
25:39
I think every meeting and phone call that the President had and
25:43
other government officials had with Putin, I was there.
25:47
I even flew to Los Cabos, Mexico, for a G20 meeting,
25:52
for a meeting with Putin that President Obama asked me to come to.
25:59
That's very unusual in our diplomatic system and
26:01
kind of pissed off some of the White House people, I can tell you that.
26:05
That came along afterwards.
26:06
But, but I, because, you know, I had a pretty good relationship with
26:09
President Obama and he wanted me to be there to talk about your question.
26:13
Right.
26:14
Especially in the pre.
26:14
Brief and, and what I would say at 30,000ft.
26:17
And then we can go into detail.
26:21
A couple of things.
26:21
First, Putin has changed over the years.
26:24
I think it's a mistake a lot of analysts make that he's a KGB thug and
26:28
he always has been.
26:30
He always was.
26:30
And he is a KGB thug and he always has been.
26:33
And he's never been a Democrat.
26:34
That is true.
26:35
But it is not true that he's always been anti Western and anti Capitalism.
26:40
That was not true in those early years.
26:43
I met him because he worked with the liberal, and I used the word liberal
26:48
in the kind of European sense, pro market reformers around a very pro Western,
26:54
pro European mayor at the time, Anatoly Sobchak, in the early 90s.
26:59
That's the team that he was with.
27:01
He wasn't with the communists and the fascists back then.
27:04
He was with them.
27:06
And when he was first elected president, you know, he said we should join NATO.
27:11
So this notion that NATO was that he's always been against NATO,
27:14
that's completely not true.
27:16
He wanted to integrate with the west.
27:18
And he said, why not?
27:19
We're part of the liberalizing, Western oriented part of Europe too.
27:25
And then September 11th happened, 2001.
27:28
And I've heard him talk about that period when he first met with President Obama.
27:33
He spoke very fondly of President George W.
27:37
Bush and how that created.
27:40
We had a common enemy and we were fighting a global war on terrorism together.
27:44
And he kind of signaled that if we could like get back to that,
27:47
you know, things would be better in US Russian relations.
27:51
That was in 2009.
27:52
So I tell you that because I think the defining moments of his shift in the way
27:58
he looked at the west was not NATO expansion, was not even the Iraq War.
28:03
I remember how he talked about the Iraq War with President Obama, by the way.
28:07
He was against the Iraq war, they shared that view.
28:12
It was actually what he calls what others have called the color revolutions.
28:18
Serbia 2000, Georgia 2003, but especially the Orange Revolution in 2004.
28:25
Well, I'll just say from my perspective, I've written a book about it,
28:30
edited a book about it.
28:32
That was in 2004 that was a grassroots,
28:37
peaceful, mass mobilization to force the government in power to.
28:45
To recognize the legitimate results of a free and fair election.
28:50
That's the way I perceive it.
28:51
And President Yushenko eventually won because of that.
28:54
Mass demonstrations in the courts.
28:56
And that's the way I perceive it.
28:59
Actually. President Yushenko was just here recently.
29:01
He visited Hoover and had him over for dinner.
29:04
We were talking about it, about the different perceptions.
29:07
From Putin's perception, that was a CIA orchestrated couple
29:12
against his candidate, President at the time,
29:16
Yanukovych, who later did become president six years later.
29:21
And from Putin's perspective, that's when he
29:26
began to see us as the enemy that we support ideas of.
29:31
You wouldn't use the language I would, but
29:35
we support our people who have our ideological orientation.
29:40
And that's when he said, okay, I got to get A better game to support my ideas and
29:46
my ideological orientation in the world.
29:50
And I think we've been underestimating this ever since.
29:54
Is Putin transactional?
29:56
Yes. And
29:56
I used to hear that a thousand times in government meetings.
29:59
Putin's just transactional.
30:01
Is he a thug?
30:02
Yes.
30:03
Who's one of the richest people in the world?
30:04
Yes.
30:06
Is he also an ideological leader?
30:08
That is somebody shaped by his world, by the ideas of Putinism, or
30:13
what I would call illiberal nationalism, I would add to that.
30:17
Yes, and he ever since saw the United States as his central enemy,
30:24
seeking to weaken his autocratic regime at home and
30:29
seeking to support their allies against his ideological allies in the world.
30:38
By the way, I think Putin, until President Trump, his first election,
30:43
and especially now in this uncertain time, Putin's partially right.
30:49
I think we need to admit that.
30:52
Did the National Endowment for democracy support NGOs and
30:56
independent media in 2004 that helped that mass mobilization?
31:02
The answer to that is yes.
31:04
Did the U.S. agency for International Development support those kinds of
31:09
groups in the 2004 Orange Revolution?
31:12
The answer to that is yes.
31:14
I know because I was actually hired by USAID to do an evaluation of their
31:19
assistance programs leading up to the Orange Revolution.
31:23
Now, do we foment revolution and over.
31:26
That's a different matter.
31:27
You know, that, I think, is that's where we get in the argument about perception.
31:33
But supporting groups that monitor elections,
31:37
as we did in Russia in the run up to 2011,
31:42
in fact, we expanded the budgets of those NGOs.
31:46
I know, because I was part of those deliberations,
31:50
we see that as supporting free and fair elections.
31:53
Putin sees it as a strategy of regime change.
31:56
And ever since 2004, he's just been locked in on it.
32:01
And I remember very, yeah.
32:02
>> Elizabeth Economy: Let me just, just for a second, though,
32:04
I want to take you back to what you said earlier, though, which was that, you know,
32:08
he was a capitalist, he wanted to join NATO.
32:11
So both those things are true.
32:12
But was there ever a sort of a liberal democratic bone in his body or what?
32:19
>> Michael McFaul: You clarified that, Liz.
32:20
Markets, yes.
32:22
Being part of the Western multilateral, you know, liberal international order,
32:26
if there's such a thing left anymore.
32:28
But joining the G7, G8, joining the WTO, I,
32:31
part of those negotiations that was always there.
32:34
Never.
32:35
And I'm glad you made the distinction.
32:37
Never did he believe in democracy or those ideas.
32:41
He just, he just, and then he, he made that very clear in 2000
32:46
when he started to shut down any checks on the power of the president.
32:51
And that's when I wrote my first anti Putin piece was in March of 2000,
32:56
saying in the Washington Post saying this guy is going to destroy democracy.
33:01
>> Elizabeth Economy: And no doubt he remembered that piece.
33:03
>> Michael McFaul: He most certainly did.
33:07
He does his homework about people,
33:09
I can tell you that when he meets with them and people like me.
33:12
>> Elizabeth Economy: Okay, but to the point now of how he sees Russia's role
33:17
on the global stage and maybe in relationship to China,
33:22
what do you see today in terms of from the Chinese perspective?
33:28
Of course, there's a lot of discussion about never calling and
33:31
Xi Jinping is always very careful never to call Russia.
33:34
Junior partner.
33:35
>> Michael McFaul: Yes.
33:36
>> Elizabeth Economy: Analysts in China, you know, are, are not quite so polite and
33:40
you definitely have the sense that there are scholars in Chinese,
33:44
scholars who clearly see Russia as the junior partner to China.
33:47
Some of them, in fact, think, you know,
33:49
they should be more closely aligned with the west and not with Russia.
33:52
So there's a lot of debate in the Chinese space on this.
33:55
But, but how does Putin see it?
33:58
>> Michael McFaul: So, so Putin, once he decided we're the main enemy and
34:02
he's going to fight us wherever we can.
34:07
He thinks in ideological terms and autocrats versus democrats.
34:12
And in that world, China and Xi Jinping is his most important strategic partner and
34:18
China is his most important strategic country in the world, without question.
34:25
There's just no question in his mind that, that that's the way he sees China and
34:30
he wants China to join him in this fight against liberal internationalism,
34:34
democracy, you know, all these things that we were just talking about before.
34:41
And you know, I'm not the, I'm not an expert on China,
34:43
but I most certainly have tried to learn about China and I've met.
34:46
>> Elizabeth Economy: a lot of. Time going there recently.
34:48
>> Michael McFaul: Well, I was just there a couple weeks ago meeting with some of
34:50
those scholars you're just describing, right?
34:52
And there's a lot of churn among experts about whether this,
34:56
you know, this relationship is good for us or not.
34:59
And, you know, this guy's kind of crazy.
35:01
You know, he's kind of gone off the deep end here.
35:03
They kept.
35:03
In my meetings in, in Beijing recently, Liz, because I don't speak Chinese.
35:08
I was meeting with the Russia, a lot of Russia specialists who speak Russian, and
35:12
they kept using a word in Russian that's, that's very familiar in Russian, but
35:16
it kind of sounds weird in English.
35:18
Hooligan.
35:19
>> Elizabeth Economy: Yes.
35:20
>> Michael McFaul: hooligan.
35:21
>> Elizabeth Economy: Yeah, I remember that from my time,
35:24
yes, in the Soviet Union.
35:26
>> Michael McFaul: My gun off, what is he doing?
35:27
Yeah, but you didn't ask me that question.
35:29
You asked me the question about Putin.
35:31
So Putin wants the illiberal International to all get together to fight the,
35:37
the, you know, the democratic world.
35:40
And he thinks that that's what he's doing throughout, you know, well,
35:45
before he invaded Ukraine a second time, right, he, he,
35:48
he first invaded Ukraine to do that, to punish them for the,
35:52
what they call the revolution of dignity, what he calls a CIA coup in 2014.
35:57
But then he went in heavily to support Assad, you know, and that, that worked for
36:02
a long time, not forever, thankfully, but, you know, he deployed his air
36:07
force to help Iran and Hezbollah and Assad maintain autocracy there.
36:11
He's provided same kind of assistance to Venezuela and
36:15
North Korea and Iran, and in some ways help him.
36:20
And so that's the role that he wants Xi Jinping to play.
36:25
And he sees, he and Xi Jinping as the great leaders of this alliance.
36:32
Not everybody in Russia shares that view.
36:34
In the same way that we should be careful, you know,
36:39
to disaggregate different views in China in a time of.
36:45
Well, let me back up first of all, before Putin invaded Ukraine the first time,
36:50
when I, you know, I was there the day I left the.
36:53
Moscow.
36:54
The day he invaded Ukraine the first time, 2014.
36:58
And that was planned, you know, months ago.
37:00
But it just so that happened at the same time.
37:04
And, and what I.
37:05
The buildup was happening and, you know, we.
37:07
Lots of debates about it, and, and in Russia at that time,
37:11
there were not just human rights activists, which, you know,
37:17
there were those people as well, but there were big business people that,
37:22
that had made their bet with the west, not with Xi Jinping in the east,
37:28
and they wanted to make money in Europe and the United States.
37:33
You know, while I was ambassador, we were working on helping to create what
37:38
would have been the largest joint venture in the history of capitalism,
37:43
which was between Rosneft, their state owned company, and ExxonMobil.
37:48
$500 billion.
37:50
That's what they were talking about.
37:51
And I want to be clear, we were supporting that.
37:53
The Obama administration thought that that was going to be good for
37:57
stabilizing our relationship.
37:58
And we always had this argument which turned out to be flawed.
38:02
And I remember it very vividly because there was always,
38:06
I used to sit across the hallway from our China folks at the White House and
38:11
Obama was saying, we need to have Putin and Russia to have more to lose the next
38:16
time they think about invading, because they just invaded Georgia in 2008.
38:22
They need to have more to lose the next time they think about invading.
38:25
That was part of our strategy.
38:27
And they always talked about China has a lot to lose when they think about using
38:31
military force.
38:32
The Russians don't.
38:33
But I tell you that story because there were a lot of Russian entrepreneurs and
38:38
their supporters in the business world that thought that war was a giant mistake.
38:43
And they also thought the bigger invasion in 2022 was a giant
38:48
mistake in part because it meant that all their options for
38:52
dealing with our companies closed and now they're forced.
38:57
And I won't name names because these were all private conversations.
39:00
But if you're in like the telecommunications world,
39:03
you want options.
39:05
You don't just want to have to buy everything from China.
39:09
Now those companies, they just have to buy from China.
39:13
If you're in this, you know, I want to, I better be careful.
39:18
I don't want to the company.
39:20
>> Elizabeth Economy: No, I don't want you to get in trouble.
39:22
And I don't want the companies in trouble either.
39:24
>> Michael McFaul: Yeah, yeah, but the companies are just,
39:25
they're too small in Russia.
39:27
But, but, but just, just speaking more generically, right,
39:30
like if you're building a, a search engine company, I can talk about that one.
39:34
Yandex.
39:36
You want your investors to be Western investors.
39:39
You don't want to be relying on the Chinese and
39:41
you don't want your investor to be Chinese.
39:45
You want to be, and you, you think of your expansion of your business.
39:50
China's cut off from you if you're Yandex.
39:52
But, but Turkey's not.
39:54
And, and, and all of the, the developing world is not.
39:58
You want to compete with Google in that space.
40:02
And by invading and being cut off, I mean, Yandex then had to divide up, and
40:07
their head of the company now lives in Israel.
40:10
Right. He's starting his own company.
40:11
So I just want to remind people that that debate,
40:16
I presume I can't go to Russia.
40:19
I'm sanctioned there.
40:20
But those kinds of people, they don't like the idea that their only partners
40:25
in the world and their only markets in the world are Russia.
40:29
And that junior partner thing that you talked about,
40:31
there's a big debate about that.
40:33
And Russia is like, okay, we're gonna sell them natural resources and
40:38
we're gonna buy their cars.
40:40
That feels a little imperial to them.
40:42
That feels like, okay, we're now in that world.
40:46
And that is an uneasy world, not for Putin, but for Russian economic elites.
40:53
>> Elizabeth Economy: But clearly they're not having any influence on Putin.
40:56
And, and to that it seems, and I know, because you wrote a very good piece
41:01
in Foreign affairs with my good friend who was on this podcast before,
41:06
Evan Medeiros, about the fact that the idea that the Trump administration
41:12
had of splitting the reverse Kissinger or the reverse Nixon,
41:16
about pulling Russia away from China really had no possibility of succeeding.
41:23
Is that right?
41:24
>> Michael McFaul: Yeah, yeah, of course.
41:25
Because for Putin, Right.
41:28
You know, tragically put, Russia today is a totalitarian dictatorship.
41:32
I actually think it's, it's more authoritarian than the,
41:35
the late Soviet era.
41:36
I've written about that.
41:38
But doesn't matter what these guys think, it doesn't matter what society thinks.
41:44
And you're going to buy Chinese cars whether you like it or not,
41:47
because that's all that's available.
41:50
And in Putin's view, you know, of course, he is courting Trump and
41:54
he's trying to, you know, get concessions, and rather successfully so
41:59
far that, that, that play may have run its course.
42:02
But, but of course he's doing that vis a vis Ukraine.
42:05
But he has no intention of pivoting against Xi Jinping for, for
42:10
a variety of reasons.
42:12
First of all, this ideological thing is real for Putin.
42:15
And I think.
42:16
>> Elizabeth Economy: [INAUDIBLE] right?
42:18
>> Michael McFaul: Well, yes, you've written about that.
42:19
I just think people, if you, if you don't study people, countries, and
42:24
you just treat them as like unitary actors in a, in a theoretical world,
42:28
then it's hard to understand that.
42:30
But, but, but if you do look at individuals and their worldview and
42:34
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.
42:40
And this idea we're Just going to pivot to the west because it's in our
42:43
economic interest.
42:44
That's not Putin.
42:46
Number two, he also understands enough about the west to understand that, that,
42:50
you know, President Trump may be there for three years, but
42:54
he's not going to be there for 30 years.
42:57
And the stability he has with the relationship with Xi Jinping and
43:01
the Chinese Communist Party, there's just no comparison.
43:05
And number three, you know, what would we get out of a pivot like that?
43:10
Like, like, okay, now they're on our side.
43:12
What, what do we get from Putin?
43:14
Like, you know, I just think that, and, and, you know, I don't,
43:18
I don't know the history as well as you do about the actual Nixon goes to China, but
43:22
I think one could even ask that question about back then, but
43:26
most certainly now like this.
43:28
So what, what are they going to do to help us deal with China?
43:32
You know, they're going to be on our side in some fight over Taiwan.
43:36
No way.
43:37
And even if they were, like, they're not doing so well in Ukraine,
43:41
I don't think they're a great ally for us.
43:44
So I just don't think it's going to work.
43:46
I actually think pulling the Chinese away for the Russians,
43:50
I'm not an expert on that, but that seems like a much more interesting play.
43:55
But that's probably a different podcast for a different guest.
43:58
>> Elizabeth Economy: Yeah. And I would say probably just about as
44:01
likely as you think that Russia from, from China.
44:05
I think, you know, President Xi Jinping has said on any number of occasions now
44:10
that Vladimir Putin is his best friend.
44:12
>> Michael McFaul: Best friend, yes.
44:13
>> Elizabeth Economy: In the international [INAUDIBLE]
44:14
>> Michael McFaul: He uses that phrase,
44:14
yes. >> Elizabeth Economy: And he doesn't
44:15
speak like that.
44:16
I mean, I think it's important to recognize that's not, you know,
44:19
typical for him to say.
44:21
So I think he takes this relationship incredibly seriously, as I,
44:25
I think you're saying Vladimir Putin does.
44:28
So I think the ties that bind them are- >> Michael McFaul: Besties forever, yeah.
44:31
>> Elizabeth Economy: Quite strong at this point.
44:34
So let me just ask, you know, two more questions.
44:37
You know, first, does this relationship between China and
44:40
Russia change when the leaders change?
44:43
Like, to what extent do you think this is a structurally based relationship?
44:47
Or is there the opportunity, you know,
44:50
some radically different leader comes into Russia or even maybe to China, and
44:54
you get, you get a real reset in this relationship?
44:59
>> Michael McFaul: Well, I'll let you answer the question on China, on Russia.
45:03
The answer to that is yes.
45:05
And we don't have to think about it in a counterfactual terms because we've
45:09
already seen it.
45:11
And, you know, beginning with Gorbachev, but then When Yeltsin came in,
45:16
Yeltsin said, I don't want to be part of that world.
45:19
I want to be part of your world.
45:21
And he went all in to try to be part of the west and democracy and
45:25
capitalism and joining our clubs.
45:28
He saw Russia's long term national economic and
45:32
security interest to the west, not to the East.
45:38
And so it's already happened now.
45:40
It wasn't as successful as he wanted.
45:43
And the people around him.
45:44
And again, there are reasons why we didn't get that right.
45:49
And in the book I just finished writing, I talk about lessons learned from the past
45:53
and let's learn what we did wrong and in that moment.
45:56
But it already happened.
45:57
So if it already happened, it can happen again.
46:00
That's the first thing I would say.
46:01
Is it likely to happen quickly after Putin?
46:05
My answer to that is no.
46:08
I do tragically think that 25 years of Putin in power
46:13
has just destroyed those that thought that Russia's interests were in the West.
46:24
They're there and they'll someday be revived.
46:27
And at the end of the day, when you ask Russians, after a second or
46:31
third vodka, are you European or Asian?
46:34
They say, we're European.
46:37
Putin does not lose, by the way, this is an interesting thing.
46:40
He wants to make the argument that they're not part of Europe.
46:44
In fact, I witnessed it one time when he was meeting with Vice President Biden
46:49
where he looked right into, I remember it was jarring, where he looked at Putin and
46:53
he said, excuse me, he looked at Biden and he said, you know,
46:57
your problem is you guys look at us and you look at our skin.
47:01
And he, you know, he kind of went like this and he says,
47:04
because we look like you, you think that we think like you, but.
47:07
But we don't.
47:08
We're different.
47:10
That's his worldview.
47:11
>> Elizabeth Economy: Wow. >> Michael McFaul: But that is not.
47:12
There are a lot of Russians who don't think that way.
47:14
And especially when you think about, are we like the Chinese?
47:17
Are we more like the Germans?
47:19
They're have a kind of deeper kind of civilizational view on that,
47:24
but they're not in power now.
47:27
And the regime that he's put in place is, is deep.
47:32
Like, it's structurally going to take a long time to unravel Putinism.
47:38
Not unlike how long it took to unravel Stalinism.
47:42
So I don't see it changing in the short term, but in the long term,
47:46
I am more optimistic.
47:48
And it's really hard to understand what Russians think.
47:51
The data is horrible.
47:53
And we have some very clover social scientists trying to do various.
47:59
Polling and, you know, different kinds of methods to get at it.
48:03
But there is something I think is true that I think most people
48:08
who follow Russia agree with, which is that the older,
48:13
less educated, more rural you are, and the poorer you are,
48:18
the more likely you are to support Putin.
48:21
And conversely, the younger, more educated, more urban,
48:26
richer you are, the more likely you are to be an opponent to Putin.
48:31
Now, being an opponent doesn't mean you're going to go out and protest.
48:33
The costs of that are too high.
48:35
You know, people have literally, including one of my friends, Alexei Navalny,
48:39
have been killed for trying to do that.
48:41
Right.
48:42
So just because people aren't protesting,
48:44
we shouldn't presume that we understand their preferences.
48:46
But that means that Putin's lost the future.
48:49
Right.
48:50
Those people are the ones most skeptical.
48:55
But for them to have impact on the regime, I think it's going to take a long,
48:59
long time.
49:00
>> Elizabeth Economy: Yeah, so last question.
49:03
If you were advising, given everything that you've just said,
49:07
if you were advising President Trump today, and assuming that he was listening.
49:13
What would be the sort of single most important thing you think he should
49:18
be thinking about doing with regard to the US policy toward Russia and
49:23
sort of the Russia-China, I don't call it an alliance, but partnership?
49:32
>> Michael McFaul: Well, I've never briefed President Trump.
49:34
I doubt I ever will.
49:37
But if I had that opportunity first, I'd frame it in his language.
49:41
Trump talks a lot about strong leaders, right?
49:47
Way back to 2015, cuz I just finished writing this book,
49:50
that's when he first talked about Putin, he's a strong leader.
49:53
He likes strong leaders.
49:54
I think he said similar things about Xi Jinping.
49:57
He also frames the world, not autocrats and Democrats like I do, but
50:02
in Winners and losers, right.
50:04
He uses that language a lot.
50:06
Winners, losers.
50:08
So that's his frame.
50:09
And I would say, Mr.
50:10
President, I think you need to reevaluate who you think are winners and losers and
50:15
strong and weak leaders in this relationship between Russia and Ukraine.
50:22
Look at just what happened over the weekend, Mr. President.
50:24
Look at this audacious, fantastically successful operation that just blew up,
50:31
if you believe the reports, and we have to verify them, I got it.
50:36
But 41 strategic bombers of the Russian Air Force and
50:40
not a single Russian intelligence officer or soldier was lost in that operation.
50:47
And, Liz, maybe, you know, and you can't tell us,
50:49
maybe the United States has the ability to pull an operation off like that.
50:53
Maybe the Chinese do.
50:54
I don't know that, but they haven't done it before.
50:58
And we know The Russians can't, Mr. President,
51:00
because if they had that capability, they would have done it a long time ago.
51:04
So who's the winners and losers here?
51:06
In the long run, think about siding more with the Ukrainians.
51:13
And in the long run, if you think about our challenges, anything about great
51:18
power, competition over decades, and I think that's the way one needs to think
51:22
about it, I want those Ukrainian drone companies to be on our side.
51:26
I want that capability to be on our side.
51:29
I want that innovation to be on our side.
51:32
And by the way, they're Democrats.
51:36
They want to be part of the democratic world, the free world,
51:40
whereas Putin has no inclination to do that.
51:44
His best friend is in Beijing.
51:46
His best friend is not in Washington.
51:48
So I think it could, that would be my advice.
51:51
And the other thing I would say to President Trump is I applaud him for
51:56
trying to end this horrible war, by the way, this barbaric,
52:00
horrible invasion of Ukraine.
52:02
And even though I've gotten in trouble with some of my friends in the Biden
52:06
administration, I even think it was right to establish a channel of communication
52:11
through Rubio, Secretary Rubio, meeting with Foreign Minister Lavrov.
52:16
I wish that channel was the channel and not these other ones.
52:21
But if you wanna negotiate, you gotta talk to the enemy.
52:26
Again, invoking George Shultz, that's what he said in 1982, you gotta do that.
52:31
But the strategy of just giving Putin every concession he wants and
52:35
pressuring Ukraine has not led to the end of the war.
52:40
And so now Trump's got to go to plan B.
52:42
And the one thing I can tell you about Putin having dealt with them,
52:46
when he gave all those concessions, Putin looked at that as weakness.
52:50
He looked at this as a sign of weakness.
52:52
You appease him, he looks at that as weakness.
52:57
And so what did he do?
52:57
He upped the ante.
52:59
He said he wanted more things.
53:00
He said, well, now you got to recognize these four regions of Ukraine and
53:04
Crimea as part of Russia in order for us to do the ceasefire.
53:08
And I negotiated with these guys, including with Putin.
53:11
That's very consistent with them.
53:13
And so if Trump wants to change the narrative about looking weak and
53:17
he wants to create permissive conditions for an actual end of this war,
53:22
he should increase the sanctions.
53:24
There's already a bill.
53:26
His buddy Lindsey Graham drafted it.
53:28
He could just say, I support it.
53:30
It would sail through the U.S. congress.
53:32
And then he should, I don't know,
53:36
it's a bridge too far to say Trump.
53:40
Another military assistance package for Ukraine.
53:43
I don't see him doing that.
53:45
But why not take those Russian central bank assets we have frozen in
53:49
the United States and give those to the Ukrainians so
53:52
that they could buy our weapons?
53:54
And then why not allow them to leverage the mineral deal that President Trump and
54:01
President Zelensky just did recently to allow them to buy more weapons from us?
54:09
What they really need is they need interceptors to replenish those patriot
54:12
systems they supplied.
54:14
And I think doing that would signal to Putin that he's not abandoning Ukraine and
54:19
might finally create the permissive conditions for
54:23
him to get serious about negotiating.
54:25
>> Elizabeth Economy: Great ideas.
54:27
And I think that last point also fits within President Trump's desire to do
54:31
business, to make everything a transaction and a deal.
54:35
Right?
54:36
Yeah. And yeah, so all good advice,
54:39
maybe someone from the administration will take it up.
54:44
>> Michael McFaul: Maybe they'll be listening to your podcast.
54:46
>> Elizabeth Economy: Yeah, that's it.
54:46
That's it.
54:47
>> Michael McFaul: Right, that'll be our hope.
54:49
>> Elizabeth Economy: So, listen, I know you have a new book coming out.
54:52
You've teased it a little bit.
54:54
It's called Autocrats vs Democrats: China, Russia, America, and
54:59
the New Global Disorder.
55:00
I can scarcely think of anything that's more timely coming out at the end of
55:04
October.
55:05
You want to give us the elevator pitch, the one line teaser for it?
55:09
I know it's going to be great, but what do you want everybody to know about it?
55:14
>> Michael McFaul: Well, I want everybody to buy the book.
55:16
[LAUGH] That goes without saying.
55:19
[LAUGH] I don't care if you read the book, but I want you to buy the book.
55:22
>> Elizabeth Economy: I say the same thing.
55:24
[LAUGH] >> Michael McFaul: But
55:25
I just say two things.
55:27
You know, one, this book came out of a debate that you're closer to than I am
55:31
about whether we've entered a new Cold War or
55:33
not that started back in the first Trump administration.
55:37
And I actually have studied the Cold War, I wrote my PhD about the Cold War.
55:42
And I came into that debate to say it's an oversimplified debate,
55:47
it's too black and white.
55:50
So some say It's Cold War 2.0, and I say, no, here are the differences.
55:54
And some say it has nothing to do with the Cold War.
55:56
And I say, no, you're wrong about that, there are some similarities.
55:59
And so it's a complex book in that, in that sense, Liz, I learned a lot from you,
56:05
by the way, in writing it, and maybe that will bring the book sales down.
56:10
>> Elizabeth Economy: The fact that you learned a lot from me.
56:12
>> Michael McFaul: No, no, that is a complex book.
56:14
It's a complex book.
56:15
>> Elizabeth Economy: I know what you mean.
56:17
>> Michael McFaul: And you know, on these debates about do leaders matter?
56:19
You know, I learned that all from you on China.
56:22
>> Elizabeth Economy: No, no, no, we started from the same perspective,
56:24
but go ahead.
56:26
>> Michael McFaul: But I mean, there's the analytic piece about power regimes and,
56:32
and I use that piece to explain great power relations, but
56:37
then on this policy debate, I make things more complex to say.
56:43
And then there are some things have nothing to do with it.
56:46
So there are lessons from the Cold War successes that we should replicate now.
56:51
And by the way, Trump's not replicating any of those in that chapter.
56:55
By the way, there's some mistakes we made in the Cold War.
56:57
We got to learn those, too, so that we don't repeat them.
57:00
And tragically, I don't see that happening to the way they should.
57:03
But then there's a whole bunch of things that you know better than I do for
57:07
China and Russia, not just China, that have nothing to do with the Cold War.
57:11
And so we can't superimpose that metaphor to come up with policy prescriptions for
57:17
that piece.
57:18
And that, that piece, by the way, deals a lot with some of the good things that
57:21
the Biden administration and you did to say we should continue those things.
57:25
And there are things that have nothing to do with the Cold War.
57:29
That's what the book.
57:31
So that's the analytic piece.
57:32
But the real reason for.
57:33
Right, the second, bigger important reason is I'm
57:38
pretty nervous about where we are as a country in the world.
57:43
I think we're making a lot of mistakes right now.
57:46
And they're cell phone goals, we're doing them to ourselves.
57:50
We're pulling back, we're dismantling usaid,
57:53
we're getting in fights with our allies, we're.
57:57
Somebody's decided trade's no longer useful,
58:01
that we don't wanna support democracy.
58:06
And I actually think that all of those things I just described advance
58:10
American national interests.
58:12
And to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
58:15
Yes, we need to reform usaid.
58:17
Yes, we need to reform our trading regime.
58:19
But to think that we're gonna go back to some early late 19th century world and
58:24
everything's gonna be great, I radically disagree with that.
58:28
And I fear for my country if we try to go back to that
58:32
in many of the ways that President Trump wants to.
58:36
So I wrote the book to try to explain why that's the wrong approach.
58:42
And my book tour is going to be Alabama and Texas and Ohio and Montana and
58:47
Idaho, in addition to other places, because I think those of us
58:52
that believe this, we have to convince the American people of it.
58:57
I think we haven't done a good enough job of taking these ideas, even our elite
59:02
universities, Liz, like, we gotta go to these places and explain why it was so
59:07
smart during the Cold War to set up these research universities.
59:12
They produce fantastic successes, and we need to replicate that, but
59:16
we have to convince the American citizens to do it.
59:19
So I know it's a bit of a paradox to write a complex book for
59:24
all Americans, but that was my objective, and that's what I hope to achieve.
59:31
>> Elizabeth Economy: I think it sounds terrific.
59:33
And I never think we should underestimate the ability of
59:38
Americans to understand complex, smart, analytical arguments.
59:45
>> Michael McFaul: 100%.
59:46
>> Elizabeth Economy: I think we do that to our detriment.
59:48
So my guess is, Mike,
59:50
that you have a second New York Times bestseller on your hands.
59:54
And I'm really looking forward to reading it and to hearing you speak more about it.
59:59
And I just want to thank you for a really rich conversation, especially for
1:00:03
reminding us of the importance of, you know, looking back and
1:00:08
understanding, you know, what we did well, what we didn't do so well,
1:00:12
and what that means for how we should be thinking about the present time.
1:00:18
>> Michael McFaul: Fantastic conversation.
1:00:19
Thanks for having me.
1:00:21
I thought we would not have enough to say, but we had a lot to say, so
1:00:24
I really appreciate that.
1:00:26
>> Elizabeth Economy: I never had that fear having been on a panel with you
1:00:29
before.
1:00:31
If you enjoyed this podcast and want to hear more recent discourse and
1:00:34
debate on China, I encourage you to subscribe to China Considered via
1:00:38
The Hoover Institution YouTube channel or podcast platform of your choice.