00:00:05:00 - 00:00:25:14
Michael McFaul
All right. Thank you. Thanks Kal for having me back. I love the set up. You can't ask me a question unless you buy a book. Thank you for setting it up that way. Usually I have to linger around and answer all sorts of questions. But now we're mutually incentivized to answer your question, so I'll do that afterwards.
00:00:25:21 - 00:00:49:04
Michael McFaul
Thanks for coming. Great to see such a big turnout in the middle of the day. Here at UCLA. I love this place, by the way, I love UCLA. It is a great campus. I always love coming back here. By the way, I'm a big UCLA women's basketball fan. Congratulations. Kiki Rice is a is the niece of a good friend of mine, Susan Rice.
00:00:49:10 - 00:01:12:16
Michael McFaul
So I've been following you guys for a long time. She was going to go to Stanford, by the way, and she disappointed her aunt by coming here instead. She made the right choice. So congratulations. There's a lot going on in the world. And I'm half tempted. I wrote this book. You know, published it, you know, and stopped writing in about a year and a half ago.
00:01:12:18 - 00:01:28:19
Michael McFaul
So if you just want to talk about the world and ask me questions, we can skip the book talk. And we can just do that. And I believe in democracy as as you're going to see in a minute. If you want to do the book talk. But how many would just rather have a Ask me Anything Reddit session?
00:01:28:19 - 00:01:51:00
Michael McFaul
Let's vote for that. How many want to hear the book talk split? Oh, it's pretty close. All right, let's do both. Perfect. All right. All right, I'm going to go through the talk. Sorry. I need a supermajority. So there. And I have to give the talk. Right? Well, I want to give the talk, so let's do that.
00:01:51:04 - 00:02:06:25
Michael McFaul
But I'll try to not linger too much so we can get to all the questions you have. You're going to see. My talk has a lot to do with what's in the world. But, it's a bigger book than just what's happening in the last, year and a half or so. And I want to start with some history.
00:02:06:27 - 00:02:32:19
Michael McFaul
I can see some people in this room that remember this history and lived through it. Others of you, I love seeing all the students here. This is ancient history for you. But let's start with this is 30 years ago. The Soviet Union had just collapsed and it was a euphoric moment for Americans, small Democrats, and for me personally, I want to tell you that there's only one superpower in the world.
00:02:32:19 - 00:02:57:09
Michael McFaul
We were not threatened by any other countries. Two, democracies seemed like the only game in town. My colleague Frank Fukuyama wrote this famous essay, The End of History, because seemed like everybody wanted to become a liberal Democrat. Three. The debate between communism versus capitalism seemed to be over everybody, and even including the Chinese, seem to be moving towards markets, and private property.
00:02:57:11 - 00:03:25:28
Michael McFaul
And fourth, this clunky academic term, liberal international order, which actually wasn't so liberal, it most certainly wasn't international. And it wasn't that orderly. During the Cold War, like millions of people died during the Cold War. But for a moment, it seemed like it was working. When Saddam Hussein tried to annex Kuwait, we all got together. LED by George H.W. Bush with a resolution from the UN Security Council.
00:03:25:29 - 00:03:48:04
Michael McFaul
I want to emphasize that. And we said annexation is against the rules of the game here, folks, and collectively with the Chinese and Soviets on board, we pushed them out. And it seemed like it was working. That was 30 years ago. And for me, I was actually a student in Moscow at the time. If you look hard, you can see me right there.
00:03:48:07 - 00:04:19:19
Michael McFaul
I'm there. It was, for me personally, an incredibly euphoric time. Think of it. Look at this photo. This is Moscow. This is ... square. 200,000 people are there chanting for democracy. Chanting to be part of the West. And you can see Ukrainian flags. Georgian flags. Armenian flags too. But they were mostly Russian. And as an American, a young American who also believed in democracy, it was a really euphoric moment.
00:04:19:22 - 00:04:43:20
Michael McFaul
And I remind you of that because that wasn't 300 years ago. That wasn't millennia ago. That was just 30 years ago. Fast forward to our moment today. We are now in this confrontational period that many scholars and and policymakers say is a new Cold War. It started with the Russians. That book, by Edward Lucas, was published in 2008, by the way.
00:04:43:22 - 00:05:10:04
Michael McFaul
Well, and obviously, we are in a more confrontational relationship with the Russians. And then, tragically, it was no longer cold. It became a hot war, biggest war in Europe since 1945. First major annexation, in Europe since World War two. The first threat of a great power war, which still lingers today, by the way. In my opinion, we'll talk about that in questions since World War two.
00:05:10:06 - 00:05:36:06
Michael McFaul
And in October of 2022, when Putin threatened to use nuclear weapons to stop the Ukrainian advances at the time, that's the first threat of the use of nuclear weapons, definitely, since the Cuban missile crisis, and maybe have to go all the way back to when we used, nuclear weapons in 45 and then same dynamic with the Chinese 30 years ago.
00:05:36:06 - 00:05:54:06
Michael McFaul
Much more cooperative. 30 years. Today, people now talk about a new Cold War with China. And then add to that, I'm going to not talk about this, but I'll happy to talk about it. And questions add to it. We are now have another hot war. I was just having lunch with a bunch of colonels at Stanford, and I said, let's talk about the war.
00:05:54:06 - 00:06:15:24
Michael McFaul
And they said, which one? We are now have two major wars going on, right? So nothing like that euphoric period that I just described three decades ago. So the most important thing I want to do today, and in fact, if you don't remember anything from my talk, and that's fine. I'm not I won't be offended. But you still buy the book.
00:06:15:27 - 00:06:38:12
Michael McFaul
I want you to remember this slide. Yes. What happened for the younger folks in the room? That's Gorbachev on the left. That's Reagan there shaking hands. And maybe people have forgotten him. I hope not, but that's Barack Obama, President Obama, that's President Putin. I was at that meeting. That's Los Cabos, Mexico, in 2012. The meeting was a lot worse than that photo.
00:06:38:14 - 00:07:01:01
Michael McFaul
So what happened? How do we go from this to that? How did same thing with the Chinese. What happened that we're back in this new moment of Cold War 2.0, and I'm going to spend most of my talk today, and I'm watching the clock on the causes right, explaining that. And then if I have enough time, I want to talk about some similarities and differences with the Cold War, some lessons from the Cold War.
00:07:01:01 - 00:07:27:16
Michael McFaul
And then I'm going to end with some data and anecdotes for Hope. If you believe in democracy, all right. Causes three big things come together that drive in our era confrontation. If you read chapters two and three of the book, you'll see that these variables, these factors can sometimes line up to create cooperation, right. And my book starts in the 18th century to get some, some variation I wanted to see.
00:07:27:22 - 00:07:54:03
Michael McFaul
But for today, we're just going to talk about the moment. We're going to now all three of these big variables line up to drive confrontation. So first power, everything starts with power. Three chapters on power in the book. China's more powerful today. That's not a controversial statement. Russia is more powerful today. Way more than 1992. And tragically, by the way, the Russian military is more powerful today than they were in 2022.
00:07:54:05 - 00:08:17:18
Michael McFaul
That is a sobering, tragic development there. Their army is better and their drones are better. And that creates an even greater threat to our NATO allies. And in relative terms, we are relatively weaker, especially Vis-a-vis the Chinese. I'm going to break down power later in the talk. And I just realized this slide deck has US news.
00:08:17:21 - 00:08:45:19
Michael McFaul
We at Stanford We don't like U.S. news and World Report rankings. I think we're seventh there. We prefer the Wall Street Journal or number one with the Journal. But, lots of dimensions. You know, we can argue about the differences. But these are all powerful countries. And when countries are becoming more powerful again, when with declining powers, there are lots of instances in history where you get confrontation and sometimes war.
00:08:45:21 - 00:09:17:05
Michael McFaul
And so everything starts with power, right? I'm looking around. Anybody here from Moldova? Okay. Because I'm about to insult Moldova. No, I love all Moldova. I've been there. I was a government official. It's a great country, struggling. But. But let me say Burkina Faso or Kyrgyzstan. Any small country. You're not interested in me talking for 30 minutes about US Kyrgyz relations or US Moldovan relations.
00:09:17:07 - 00:09:39:11
Michael McFaul
And if you worry about security, you don't have to know, what kind of regime is there or what leaders are there, what their preferences are, because they don't have enough power. Right? So power. Yeah. Everything starts with power. But I don't think it's the whole story, because I can think of some countries that become much more powerful over the last 70 years.
00:09:39:13 - 00:10:00:22
Michael McFaul
Then I'm not losing any sleep about that. They might attack us. Germany. I don't I don't worry about war between Germany, United States, Japan. I don't worry about war between Japan and the United States. Poland. Poland's a lot more powerful today than they were 30 years ago. I'm not losing any sleep about going to war with them. They're losing sleep by going to war with us.
00:10:00:23 - 00:10:23:05
Michael McFaul
We're going to get to that later. And that should not be happening. But I, I was I focus on those countries because I'm not worried about them, because they're democracies and we're not threatened by democracies. We, tragically, are threatening some democracies, but for our whole history. Think about it. And we can talk about it in in questions in the War of 1812 is a complicated one.
00:10:23:05 - 00:10:47:01
Michael McFaul
We can talk about that. But if you think about historically or today, all of the countries that threaten us have been dictatorships or autocracies of some form, whereas we mostly had peaceful, enduring relationships with democracies. And that's why regime type is the second, variable is the second factor that we have to have in our complete story to talk about confrontation.
00:10:47:04 - 00:11:13:01
Michael McFaul
And since the euphoric period of 1991 92, China has become much more autocratic than they were before. Russia used to be a democracy. At least I think they were that that political system was a democracy in the 1990s. That's a contentious debate. They are now a full blown dictatorship, and these are just photos to represent what I write about in the books in detail.
00:11:13:03 - 00:11:32:29
Michael McFaul
Alexei Navalny, by the way, was a friend of mine that Putin killed, a couple of years ago. That that didn't happen, 30 years ago. And in the West, in the United States and the world, we we've been in a period of relative democratic decline. So this is Freedom House data. That's not my own data.
00:11:32:29 - 00:11:54:13
Michael McFaul
Just so you see, by the way, it starts in 2010. So it's a pre it's before Trump, but we are now, lower than we've ever been since the creation of Freedom House scores. And that's not an American trend. That's a world trend. We're now in the 20th year of a democratic recession in the world, according to Freedom House.
00:11:54:15 - 00:12:14:05
Michael McFaul
And as a result of that, autocrats are more, feeling more resilient and feeling like their ideas are good and we're not as confident about our ideas. And that is a second factor. That is, I think, driving this period of confrontation.
00:12:14:07 - 00:12:36:14
Michael McFaul
Now, haveing just said that about the decline, I want to make it complicated. My book is 500 pages for a reason, because the world is complicated, folks. I don't want to oversimplify it. At the same time that we just had those trends, I just showed you autocrats are still threatened by democratic ideas. Democratic leaders and democratic movements.
00:12:36:15 - 00:12:55:02
Michael McFaul
They are extremely paranoid about them, even if in terms of relative power, they're more powerful today than they were 30 years ago. So for Putin, these are the movements. These are the things he's really afraid of. He's not afraid of our ICBMs. He's not even afraid of NATO. I'll get to that in a minute. He's afraid of these folks.
00:12:55:04 - 00:13:17:08
Michael McFaul
People rising up to overthrow breakthrough semi autocratic countries. Georgia, Serbia and especially Ukraine. I'll say more about that in a minute. By the way, we just had another one of these in Hungary over the weekend. That is a threat to Putin. And the reason I know that I've known Putin for a long time. I met him in 1991.
00:13:17:09 - 00:13:39:17
Michael McFaul
So we go way back. We are not Facebook friends. But I've watched him. I've written about him and the government. I dealt with them. And this is the first time President Obama ever met Putin, out at his house in Moscow. And he went on about these, these things he talked about the mistakes that the Bush administration had made.
00:13:39:20 - 00:14:00:23
Michael McFaul
Talked about the Orange Revolution. But he really, you know, did a deep dive on Iraq 2003, huge mistake. President Obama agreed with them. You might remember that Obama was against that war. And he said, we're not going to do that kind of stuff anymore. This regime change stuff, we're we're not doing that. We have a different approach to the world.
00:14:00:25 - 00:14:23:19
Michael McFaul
And I think, you know, I speak Russian. I could listen to both sides. We walked up to the car, I could see, look listening to Putin. I could see that maybe Obama was convincing them that we are different. But then two years later, this happened, the Arab Spring. This is Egypt. But it started Tunisia, Libya, Syria. I want to be crystal clear about this.
00:14:23:20 - 00:14:45:11
Michael McFaul
I worked at the National Security Council during 2011. I actually worked a lot on the Arab Spring. We had nothing to do. To the best of my knowledge. There's compartmented. Yeah. I should be careful. To the best of my knowledge, we had nothing to do with overthrowing Mubarak in Egypt. He was our ally, after all. We reacted to this.
00:14:45:11 - 00:15:06:23
Michael McFaul
We reacted to these people on the street. Some of these are my friends, by the way. But in Putin's mind, he saw this, and he was like, Here's the deep state again. Here's the Americans again. Maybe Obama wanted to do something, by the way. He had a very he always spoke nicely about President George W Bush.
00:15:06:25 - 00:15:32:03
Michael McFaul
It was always the deep state. That's his that's his frame of how our our country works. And he said, okay, here they are again. And this is threatening to me because I'm an autocrat. And in overthrowing autocrats, that's a threat to me. And then same year. This is really important. Same year, this mass mobilization happened again in his country.
00:15:32:06 - 00:15:57:02
Michael McFaul
This is Russia. It was a parliamentary election stolen just like the rest of, you know, we saw it with our intelligence community, 67%. The falsification, that's no big deal. That's just normal. We didn't think anything of it. So I just saw you there. Hello? But this time around, these folks, we would call them the middle class.
00:15:57:02 - 00:16:21:24
Michael McFaul
They called themselves the Creative class had more resources, they own more things. And then they documented the falsification. Through these more creative NGOs that documented it. And then they had smartphones so they could record it. And then they got on Facebook and VKontakte and Twitter and showed everybody and this time people said, we don't want them to steal our elections like this.
00:16:21:26 - 00:16:44:09
Michael McFaul
One of their slogans, by the way, was, I don't know if you've heard of me before. No taxation without representation. You ever heard that one? That was one of their slogans. Because you can't take our money if we don't get our representatives in the Parliament. And this then grew to 200,000 people, demonstrating, you know, on weeks on end, it wasn't just one demonstration.
00:16:44:11 - 00:17:05:00
Michael McFaul
And when you get a bunch of people together, even at Stanford 50, you know, they kind of shout and go home. You get 100,000 together. They get right, you know, they get everybody gets kind of juiced up. And by the end of these, demonstrations, they went from, we want free and fair elections to we want a Russia without Putin.
00:17:05:02 - 00:17:28:21
Michael McFaul
[Russian] for the Russian speakers. That's what they screamed. That's a threat to Putin, right? Again, not our military power, not our NATO. This is a threat to his regime. And so he struck back and he said, we we're responsible for this. We, the United States of America, we're fomenting revolution against his regime. And that's right.
00:17:28:21 - 00:17:50:21
Michael McFaul
When I showed up to be the U.S. ambassador, by the way, three weeks after that, and they blame me for, they literally for the whole time I was there, they said I was sent by Obama to overthrow Putin's regime. And I kind of became the poster child of this argument, just so you know. And when I say poster child, I mean literally poster child.
00:17:50:23 - 00:18:17:04
Michael McFaul
And but this is, this is what Putin was afraid of. And then just a few years later, it happened again in Ukraine. Ukrainians call this the revolution of dignity. Putin calls it a CIA orchestrated revolution against his guy. And that's when he invaded first. That's when the war started in response to this, not anything else in response to this.
00:18:17:07 - 00:18:39:03
Michael McFaul
And then, as we all know, tragically, because he could not contain that regime, he could not squelch them. He launched his full scale invasion in 2022. And I think we have enough time. I want to I'm going to just do a little bit of a deep dive on this particular moment, because it's a it's a big debate in our country right now if you're from the United States.
00:18:39:06 - 00:18:55:01
Michael McFaul
And I want to be clear, you understand the way I interpret these events, which is the right way to to put these. And that's I didn't I didn't want to say that, but I think obviously I believe that. So there's a big argument in our country that, you know, we call this NATO expansion and all this stuff.
00:18:55:01 - 00:19:21:04
Michael McFaul
It was our fault. Putin had no choice. We just push and push and push and push. And finally he had to push back. I don't see it that way. I think it's about Democratic expansion, not about NATO expansion. That threatens Putin in Ukraine. And let me let me tell you two stories about that. First, I was in Russia with Vice President Biden in 2011.
00:19:21:07 - 00:19:40:09
Michael McFaul
We were there to get the Russians Russians blessing for the use of force in Libya. By the way, we did get that. People forget about that. That was a very different, situation than the war in Iran. We met with Medvedev to do that. But the next day we met with Putin and, got a little feisty over Georgia.
00:19:40:12 - 00:20:00:20
Michael McFaul
Vice president can be a little feisty, just so you know. And at one point, you don't mind playing the vice president? I don't know who you voted for. It's not a partisan thing, but you're going to be the vice president. I'm going to be Putin, okay? At one point, Putin and by the way, footnote if you're ever going to be in a meeting with Putin, come prepared.
00:20:00:22 - 00:20:19:03
Michael McFaul
Everything he does is is with a reason. He thinks it all out. There's not he's not, you know, winging it, folks. He he always in the meetings I was in, everything is for a reason. And at one point he stopped and he said, you know what your problem is what you got. And by the way, he doesn't blink when he stares at you can be kind of weird.
00:20:19:05 - 00:20:46:28
Michael McFaul
And he's done that to me a few times and sweat is coming down my back. But he doesn't smile. He didn't smile. I'm smiling too much. I'm not doing a very good Putin, but actually, my blue eyes and blond hair and white skin was about the story. And he said, your problem is you look at us, and because we looked like you and you weren't just like that, you think that we think like you, but we don't.
00:20:47:01 - 00:21:10:07
Michael McFaul
We are different. [Russian] We're not. And his point was, we are not part of your Western civilization. That's the language he uses. We are part of Russian civilization. Now. I think he's wrong about that. My personal view Alexei Navalny is just as Russian as Putin, and he believes in the West. He did believe in the West.
00:21:10:09 - 00:21:43:18
Michael McFaul
But his argument is that that decadent, liberal, LGBT loving Europe and America, that's not who we are. We are separate. And with that separate comes an argument about how to rule and Russian civilization going back a thousand years. Russia needs a strong hand, a czar, because that's part of our culture. That's his argument back home. And that's why we have to be separate from the West.
00:21:43:20 - 00:22:05:01
Michael McFaul
But he makes another argument that I heard privately, and now he said it publicly. And I remember the first time I heard it, it was shocking. He says we have a Ukrainian here. He says Ukrainians, they're just Russians with accents. They're not a separate nation. They're not a separate culture. They don't have any separate identity. They just kind of got lost on their way.
00:22:05:01 - 00:22:32:14
Michael McFaul
And he blames, by the way, the Bolsheviks in 1917, the CIA in 1991 that separated the Russian civilization. That's another argument he makes. But put those two things together. If the Ukrainians are practicing democracy, living in freedom, having free and fair elections, and wanting to join the West, that undermines his argument that that Ukrainians are just Russians with accents who should live in dictatorship.
00:22:32:21 - 00:22:53:15
Michael McFaul
And I think that's the right way to think about Putin's paranoia, about the West in general, but Ukraine in particular. All right. And it took too long. I can get a little obsessed with Putin. I'll go faster through Xi Jinping. But it's the same dynamic. I have a whole chapter on it, chapter nine, where these folks mobilizing against, autocratic rule, CCP rule.
00:22:53:20 - 00:23:26:28
Michael McFaul
These are the folks that threaten his arguments for legitimacy back in Beijing. Same with these folks, these young folks. I know many of these folks that started this. This threatens Xi Jinping way more than the Seventh Fleet. These folks practicing democracy from the same cultural background. This is Taiwan in 2022. These are the things that threatens autocrats even if, their power is rising and relative, you know, the balance of ideological movement in the world has been shifting against democracy.
00:23:27:01 - 00:23:47:10
Michael McFaul
Then the last variable. And I want to get to the end. So I'm not going to go on too long about this one, but I could, if you want me to. Even when you have power and regime type, that are consistent and don't change, I think you can still have a change in foreign policy orientation because of new leaders.
00:23:47:13 - 00:24:12:16
Michael McFaul
And in my discipline in political science, we don't spend enough time focusing on this. But after five years in the government, I just saw leaders and I saw that they had this causal impact on outcomes. And I most certainly think it's true. And the story that I write about in my book. So Vladimir Putin, I think he is, as an individual, more belligerent and more risk taking than some of the other leaders that might have come to power.
00:24:12:16 - 00:24:37:12
Michael McFaul
And in 2000. Same with Xi Jinping. You could have had the same power and the same regime, Communist Party dictatorship. But within that system, there were people that had they become the general secretary, I think would have been less belligerent and confrontational. In fact, some of those people are still around, still questioning whether this is the right course of action for China today in the United States.
00:24:37:12 - 00:25:00:18
Michael McFaul
It's most certainly the case that we had an election in 2016. And President Trump came in with a new group of advisors and they reframed the way they spoke about China, especially a little bit. Russia was more, continuity. That was, very impactful in terms of the way we dealt with China and Russia. You can read here.
00:25:00:25 - 00:25:22:05
Michael McFaul
That's from the National Security Strategy. H.R. McMaster is the main author of that. And framed it in this more confrontational way. That's different than the way the Obama administration framed it. I'm not sure the president was ever a supporter of this President Trump. I'm going to get to that in one second. But that definitely shifted, the way we were framing the threat.
00:25:22:08 - 00:25:54:02
Michael McFaul
And then the Biden folks came in and they didn't change anything on China. That's that's Tony Blinken there. He's just said the Trump folks were right. Now it's become complicated. Since my book came out, my 99% of my book was written before Trump's reelection. And so now you've got another Trump 2.0 where this individual is now radically departing from Trump one, he doesn't believe anything in national security strategy from Trump one and if you read their new one, it has nothing to do with it.
00:25:54:10 - 00:26:17:05
Michael McFaul
He now wants to be friends with Putin. I watch next month. He wants to be friends with Xi Jinping. And that's changing this, this confrontational period. I don't know if it will last or not, but you're also seeing leaders matter and Putin and Trump is having a very I think he's really over personalized our foreign policy, by the way, to detriment of our national security.
00:26:17:05 - 00:26:39:03
Michael McFaul
And it's most certainly true with respect to China and Russia. All right. I'm going to go through these fast, don't worry. And we'll have plenty of time for questions. So are we in a new Cold War with China and Russia to you, I'm going to say yes. And to you I'm going to say no. And both those things are true.
00:26:39:05 - 00:27:07:21
Michael McFaul
And we have to embrace that complexity if we're going to understand the 21st century great power competition. So first, Russia similarities. Yes. Two nuclear superpowers, just like the Soviet era, just like the Cold War. Yes. Two large conventional militaries. Yes. Economic asymmetry. We had that with the Soviets in the 20th century. We have it with Russia, the 21st century ideological competition.
00:27:07:27 - 00:27:28:00
Michael McFaul
Yes. There is a battle between autocrats and democrats. So those are similarities. You could if you just stopped looking at things, you'd say it's the same as a Cold War, but the differences are pretty pronounced too and because I went on too long about Putin, I won't go through this whole slide. Let me just talk about the ideological struggle for a moment.
00:27:28:07 - 00:27:51:08
Michael McFaul
How it's similar and that it's autocrats versus democrats, but it's different in one really big way. So when I was a kid at Stanford, I went to school, kind of at the end of the Cold War, took some great classes on the Cold War. And in rooms like this, there would be maps of the world, and it would be, the blue team and the red team.
00:27:51:11 - 00:28:17:09
Michael McFaul
Right. Blue states. That was the free world or the capitalist world, and the red states, that was the Soviet Union, that was Romania, that was Poland. The conflict was between states. The ideological competition was between states today. And then let me let me be careful here. There there were some communists in America. This is a Stanford joke.
00:28:17:09 - 00:28:42:28
Michael McFaul
They're all up in Berkeley. You know, there were some small d Democrats in the Soviet Union. I had the privilege of meeting those people when I was a student there, but they were not. They were not making foreign policy. They're not elected officials. Right. So I want to be clear about that. I'm making big generalizations. But today, the main ideological struggle with the Russians and Putinism is not between states.
00:28:43:00 - 00:29:14:08
Michael McFaul
It's within states. He is propagating a version of illiberal, populist nationalism. He's spending a lot of resources, to spread those ideas, including on your phones right now, I guarantee you, and through the Catholic Church, excuse me, through the Russian Orthodox Church, through all kinds of ways, using soldiers too. And that battle is ongoing within Hungary, within Italy, within France, within the United States of America.
00:29:14:10 - 00:29:38:02
Michael McFaul
That's different. And the fact that our current president has more ideologically, space that he shares with the president of Russia than he does with me, even though we're both Americans. That's different than the Cold War, folks, and we've got to get that right. We got to figure that out. I don't think we've paid enough attention to this.
00:29:38:05 - 00:30:02:03
Michael McFaul
Chinese, China. Similar thing. Two superpowers. Check. Just like the 20th century. Different regime types, same thing. Ideological competition all over the world. True in the Cold War. True today. And my prediction, tragically, is that this is going to last for a long, long time, decades. Very similar to the Cold War. But on the differences. They're really big as well.
00:30:02:06 - 00:30:21:03
Michael McFaul
The biggest one that that everybody here knows, you know, highly intertwined economy between the United States and China. On the one hand, we didn't have that with the Soviets. But the more important piece, even if we try to cut that off China, the Chinese economy is fully integrated into the global economy. That was not true during the Cold War.
00:30:21:03 - 00:30:46:22
Michael McFaul
A big different challenge. We have to acknowledge that that's not like the Cold War. Second ideological competition. It's real. I have a whole chapter, chapter on exporting Xi Jinping Thought. They they are very sophisticated at this. They're kind of leaving out the developed world, the Europe in America. Maybe, maybe it's happening down here. But I don't see any evidence of them trying to foment revolution, Marxist revolution, where I live.
00:30:46:24 - 00:31:14:25
Michael McFaul
They're more focused on their model of economic development through authoritarian ways. But and this is probably one of the most controversial hypotheses in the book. I do not see the same rigor and ambition of ideological export from the CCP and XI Jinping that we endured and defeated during the Cold War. I just don't think it is there, but it's not as intense.
00:31:14:27 - 00:31:34:23
Michael McFaul
The Soviets wanted everybody to be communist. That was their doctrine. They wanted the United States to be communist. Then that was that was their doctrine. And they they invested a lot. They over invested, thankfully. But that was their approach. I don't see that ambition from Xi Jinping. A lot of our politicians, I just saw one on TV yesterday.
00:31:34:25 - 00:31:57:20
Michael McFaul
They say China is an existential threat to the United States. Existential took me a long time to learn what that word meant. As a kid at Stanford. Still don't know what ontological means, but, that word means to wipe us off the planet of the Earth. That's what an existential threat is, folks. I don't see that ambition.
00:31:57:20 - 00:32:21:17
Michael McFaul
I don't see those intentions. And I worry that if we assign that ambition to them, we're going to make mistakes in our foreign policy. But even if I'm wrong about that, I know a lot more about Russia and the United States than I know about China. Let's say I'm wrong about that. And let's say when Xi Jinping is hanging out with his comrades in the in the sauna, they're just dreaming about, you know, making California Marxist-Leninist.
00:32:21:19 - 00:32:44:26
Michael McFaul
I know some people think we are already, but they don't have the capability to do that either. And I think overestimating their capability is a dangerous thing. And then one big difference. These two guys are together. They were split during the Cold War. Have to figure out how to manage this competition when they're more united. All right, two more last points.
00:32:44:26 - 00:32:49:09
Michael McFaul
Lessons from the Cold War.
00:32:49:12 - 00:33:13:21
Michael McFaul
Three things. Don't repeat our mistakes, emulate our successes, and realize some things have nothing to do with the Cold War. So the first slide is about our failures. And this does not get enough attention. And the debate, especially about China, because we won the Cold War, we think we just got to do it again. We're going to run the play and we're going to win.
00:33:13:23 - 00:33:41:07
Michael McFaul
And I think that's an accurate reading of the Cold War. We made some big mistakes, misperceptions of the threat, overreach, embracing good dictators. We didn't have to do any of those things. And those were detrimental to us prevailing in the Cold War. And the metaphor I use, one of the biggest honors of my life, was I got to be the head coach of the third grade basketball team in Moscow for my son, Luke.
00:33:41:09 - 00:34:01:01
Michael McFaul
We just moved there, and, and he was the star of the team, by the way. Not so hard to do if you grow up playing basketball here in America, to move to a country where everybody plays hockey. The boys, he became the star. And so our play was, by the way, he he played on the women's, practice team for our women's team for the last four years.
00:34:01:03 - 00:34:18:04
Michael McFaul
And one time had to beat Kiki Rice. That's how that in practice. That's why we know about Kiki's skills. Anyway, our play was give Luke the ball and get out of the way. And you may say, that's not fair to those poor Russian kids. They wanted to shoot. You know, they didn't want to shoot they because they would drop the ball.
00:34:18:04 - 00:34:42:01
Michael McFaul
They didn't know how to dribble. They just wanted Luke to. He was our offense. And so if Luke stayed in the game, we did well. We won. But sometimes Luke would get three fouls in the second quarter and we have to sit him down and and then everything would collapse. But if we won at the end, nobody remembered that he had three fouls in the second quarter because we forgot about that mistake.
00:34:42:03 - 00:35:00:21
Michael McFaul
But if we lost, people remember it. And I think that's a metaphor. You can still win at the end and make mistakes. We are not learning from these mistakes. In fact, I think we're repeating some of them right now. But we also did some smart things in the Cold War allies. Fantastic big advantage we had vis-a-vis the Soviets prosperity.
00:35:00:25 - 00:35:29:22
Michael McFaul
We outperformed their economy. Huge important variable for us on our side, promoting democracy. We didn't do this perfectly, as I just intimated, but soft power. And I don't like soft power. Powerful instruments of power called USAID, Voice of America, National Endowment for democracy, created by Democrats and Republicans. Right. USAID, that's Kennedy, and NED that's Reagan, I think, were instrumental in us prevailing in the Cold War.
00:35:29:25 - 00:35:53:07
Michael McFaul
And we should emulate all these things again. So how are we doing? How is Trump doing in terms of learning these lessons? You're already laughing. I didn't even make my joke. So I'm going to give him a C plus. Oh my goodness, people are shocked. That's too, that's too generous. A c-plus at Stanford is a failing grade.
00:35:53:10 - 00:36:12:08
Michael McFaul
He says, hey, you know, you might if you get somebody a c-plus at Stanford, you're going to hear from them. All right, let's stop joking about that. So some things the economy is doing. Well, I don't know if that's because of Trump or in spite of him. We got to keep doing that. The the military, we don't need 1.5 trillion.
00:36:12:08 - 00:36:38:03
Michael McFaul
That's crazy amount of money. But do we have to spend more on the military compared to previous years? I agree with those that say that. But on the rest of it, he's not doing well. He is most importantly destroying our one greatest superpower, which was alliances. Greenland. Like what could be more idiotic than to get in a fight with Denmark over invading Greenland?
00:36:38:05 - 00:37:00:17
Michael McFaul
Greenland's part of the NATO alliance. Folks, we don't need to annex it. And that tension is just completely unnecessary. Same with talking about making Canada the 51st state and this drama now about NATO over the war in Iraq and Iran. I think it's just really detrimental to our long term security interests. Second, I'll skip capitalism for a moment advancing democracy around the world.
00:37:00:25 - 00:37:20:06
Michael McFaul
He just shut it all down. He doesn't care. He doesn't think about autocrats versus Democrats. He thinks about strong states versus weak states, strong leaders versus weak leaders. That's actually what he thinks about. And then maybe leaders that like him and leaders that don't he's having a lot of he's losing a lot of friends even. He even lost the prime minister of Italy last week.
00:37:20:09 - 00:37:45:24
Michael McFaul
But, they he hasn't framed it that way. And so they just came in and does just shut down all these instruments of our soft power. I think that is a catastrophic mistake. We're working back because we're a democracy. We're not a dictatorship. And the Congress is helping us, but we cannot afford to do that. And then here at home, you know, you can't, be the leader of the free world if you don't practice democracy here at home.
00:37:45:27 - 00:38:09:25
Michael McFaul
And that, I think, is really hurting our reputation abroad in ways that I think have negative consequences for our security and prosperity. And then we have two new things isolation, unilateralism and isolationism. And they're both true. I think a lot of people are making a mistake saying, oh, Trump, he's not an isolationist. He's a unilateralist because he's using power all over the world.
00:38:09:27 - 00:38:28:27
Michael McFaul
He's doing both. He's pulling out of things both in his first term and his second term. He just pulled out of 40 organizations in the United Nations. And it wasn't. I mean, you're more expert than I am. Like, nobody even noticed. Like, because we're we're overwhelmed with so much else, but we're doing both of those things that's different from the Cold War.
00:38:28:29 - 00:38:49:11
Michael McFaul
We were engaged, and, you know, it was a debate and, you know, containment was this elastic term. But the notion that we're going to pull back, that is different and that I think we've got to reverse. And then the other one, polarization. Yes, we had polarization. Like, you know, we had polarization in the late 60s and early 70s.
00:38:49:11 - 00:39:16:15
Michael McFaul
Right? So it was not it was not the romantic time that sometimes I used to think it was. But it's nothing like today, today. And I'm deliberately putting a Republican here. So make sure you don't think this is a partisan statement. The center is disappearing, and and that makes it hard for us to have a coherent, grand strategy for advancing our interests around the world and in many ways.
00:39:16:15 - 00:39:33:06
Michael McFaul
And I and I talk about this in my book, the greatest threat in terms of dealing with the Chinese and the Russians, I think, is more here at home than what they're doing in their countries. Both things are true. But this worries me the most. But, I am going to end on an optimistic note in two minutes.
00:39:33:06 - 00:39:57:20
Michael McFaul
So, Despite everything I just said, I still would rather be on the team democracy rather than team dictatorship. I may show you some data and then some anecdotes to to finish first. Military power. If we stay together. Notice Greenland is blue there. This is one of those maps. We got better allies than China and Russia do together.
00:39:57:20 - 00:40:15:15
Michael McFaul
And they got problems with their alliance that I write about in the book. And if you add up all of our military power compared to their military power, we have a lot more military power than they do economic power. It's a similar story. Yes. China has done this fantastic, period of growth for the last 3 or 4 decades.
00:40:15:15 - 00:40:36:05
Michael McFaul
They are catching up with us. Russia, not so much. But when you put together the free world versus the autocratic world, this is wrong. That that's not it's. Yeah. Eight eight. Right. Russia's jumped into, used to be nine of the ten democracies, largest economies in the world were democracies. That just changed two weeks ago.
00:40:36:05 - 00:41:01:07
Michael McFaul
Russia is now in the top, but we're still eight of the ten folks. We're still got a lot of economic power in the free world. You stretches out. So the top 20, you had one autocracy, Saudi Arabia. We still got a lot more economic power best universities, including the one we're talking about right here. Huge advantage if we maintain them, if the federal government doesn't destroy them, companies, we still win.
00:41:01:07 - 00:41:31:14
Michael McFaul
If this as well that's going to be a challenge to keep ahead. But we're still ahead on all of these dimensions. And China rose not because they became more communist. China became more economically powerful because they became more like us. And now Xi Jinping is messing around with that model in terms of his policies. And I think that creates real challenges for them to continue to grow.
00:41:31:17 - 00:41:52:10
Michael McFaul
And then add to that, it's really hard to go from middle income to high income country. And they have a huge inequality problem, as do we, by the way. And they have a giant demographic problem much bigger than ours. I think there are real reasons to to conclude that 30 or 40 years from now, China will not be growing, the way they have been for the last four decades.
00:41:52:12 - 00:42:16:22
Michael McFaul
And then finally, ideational power. I agree with this old white conservative guy that democracy is a horrible system of government, but it's better than all the rest. And guess what? The whole world agrees with that. If you look at the public opinion, people would rather choose their leaders than have a colonel or a, you know, a theocrat or a Communist Party guy choose them for them.
00:42:16:22 - 00:42:45:20
Michael McFaul
That is not an American idea. That's a universal idea. And if we get back to engaging with these ideas and hearing to them them at home and supporting them abroad, I think this is one of our greatest comparative strengths. Vis-a-vis the Chinese and the Russians. Last thing I'll say on, on this piece, penultimate thing, we've been here before, so we've had periods of democratic recession before, got down to 12 in the 1930s.
00:42:45:20 - 00:43:05:15
Michael McFaul
We recovered from that, got down, you know, it seemed in the late 60s, early 70s, Marxism-Leninism seemed to be taking over the entire world. All of these guys, one of them still around, by the way, you know, and it seemed like it was just we had to slow down the cancer. That was communism. That's what Kissinger said.
00:43:05:15 - 00:43:31:28
Michael McFaul
And 15 years later and the Soviet Union collapsed. So that suggests it could happen again. The longer term archway is also on the side of more open systems of government than dictatorships. But I want to end on something personal. I've had the incredible privilege in my life of meeting small d Democrats. Some of them I've already talked about.
00:43:32:06 - 00:43:54:14
Michael McFaul
Some of them are no longer with us. But I guarantee you, if you invite these folks to your campus, you will be inspired by that. So this is President Zelensky at Stanford a few years ago. Look how young you look, there. He's an inspirational guy. I want to be on his side. I don't want to be on the opposite side.
00:43:54:16 - 00:44:17:10
Michael McFaul
Tsikhanouskaya who I also who stood up at Stanford recently, not a while ago now. Like, spend an hour with her. You're going to be want to be on her side. It's better ideas. And these are. These are heroic figures, folks. How many heroic figures do we have on the autocratic side? How many slides do you have of hundreds of thousands of people cheering for dictatorship?
00:44:17:13 - 00:44:40:12
Michael McFaul
They're not there. These people are inspirational figures. All of these folks in this photo are fighting, autocracy around the world. So I'm pretty clear. Just on a anecdotal, emotional side, the Democrats got better ideas and they got better leaders. I'm on the side of the Democrats, and I hope you are, too. Thank you for listening.
00:44:40:15 - 00:44:58:10
Michael McFaul
Thank you. Let's go to questions. You don't need me. Just. We have about 20 minutes. All right. Okay. Just do it. Ask me. Anything can be done. Not be about the talk. Doesn't mean I'm going to answer everything, but you can ask me anything. So, Yeah. I'll just go ahead. Yeah. Maybe just. Yeah. Go ahead. Sure.
00:44:58:10 - 00:45:25:09
Audience Member
I am curious why it has to be an us vs. them discussion. And then as far as military spending, why is increased funding better. And also related to that do we have more civilian kills than the other side over the last couple decades?
00:45:25:11 - 00:45:39:19
Michael McFaul
Those were big, hard questions, on the first one, it's a it's a good question. I noticed there's a slide missing because I'm trying to tighten this up.
00:45:39:19 - 00:45:57:12
Michael McFaul
You can see I have I have a long talk and this is the short talk, one of the slides that's missing about lessons learned from the Cold War is when we learned how to cooperate with the Soviets after the Cuban Missile Crisis. And we got things got really scary, and it looked like we were going to blow up the world.
00:45:57:14 - 00:46:20:06
Michael McFaul
And everybody said, hey, wait a minute, we got to we got to manage this better, most minimally. We have to have more communication so that we know what the preferences are of the other side. Right. That's that's the symbolism of the red phone. But I would say more generally, when I was the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, I used to say this to my team all the time, we're going to have a lot of disagreements with the Putin government, right?
00:46:20:06 - 00:46:39:21
Michael McFaul
He came into government, right? It, you know, just a couple months. He came back to being president just a couple of months after I got there. But we can never have disagreements based on misperceptions and miscommunication. And I worry about that, especially with the Chinese. We had so much more going on a decade ago than we do today.
00:46:39:26 - 00:47:02:09
Michael McFaul
That can lead to bad outcomes. So that I'm going to make sure that slide is back in next time. That was a mistake on our side. I'm giving another talk at UC Irvine tomorrow. It'll be there tomorrow. Thank you for that amendment. But it was more than that. It we learned that there were some issues where the Soviets and the Americans had mutual interests.
00:47:02:15 - 00:47:32:21
Michael McFaul
Right. So we got rid of smallpox with the Soviets, you know, ideological difference. We got rid of smallpox, npt the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. We decided it's in our mutual interest to freeze the number of government countries in the world getting nuclear weapons. We did that together with them. You know, we did space cooperation during the height of the Cold War, and we learned how to have space over here to cooperate on and still, compete over here.
00:47:32:26 - 00:47:49:05
Michael McFaul
And I think that's a really important lesson, especially with the Chinese. One very important condition of making it work is you can't link these things together or you won't get anything done. But I think that's an important lesson you got to be able to do both at the same time. On the kill rate. I don't know the kill rate.
00:47:49:05 - 00:48:11:23
Michael McFaul
I mean, if, that's a good question and it raises the hypocrisy of American foreign policy, I can tell that's what you wanted to get to. And and I would just say two things. And I write about this in detail in my book. There's a whole chapter in my book about American failures. Okay. Whole chapter. So I'm not ignoring it.
00:48:11:26 - 00:48:31:18
Michael McFaul
But my solution to that is not to do what sometimes I hear Trump does. You know, when he first ran for president, you know, Scarborough asked him on Morning Joe. Well, you know, you really want to partner with these guys. They kill the Russians, they kill all these people. And he said, well, we kill a lot of people, too.
00:48:31:21 - 00:48:48:08
Michael McFaul
Lately they're like, well, they're going to do economic terrorism around the world. Well, we can do that too. This tit for tat thing. Right? And that the whole world is just about power and we're powerful. And so we're going to be powerful and we're not going to talk about values. I think that's a road to nowhere for our country.
00:48:48:10 - 00:49:08:27
Michael McFaul
So yes, we made mistakes, but let's correct for those. And two wrongs don't make a right. That's what my mother taught me. You know, just because I'm not going to go into our history of our family, but, I think just that then. Then we're just like everybody else. Then we're just an imperial country annexing territory, and I think we lose.
00:49:08:27 - 00:49:25:05
Michael McFaul and Audience Member
I think our our great superpower is our ideas. Right? Yeah. In your opinion, do you think Vladimir Putin has kompromat on Donald Trump? And if so, what are those repercussions?
00:49:25:07 - 00:49:50:09
Michael McFaul
Next question. No, just kidding. I said, hey, you can ask me anything, but I don't have to answer everything. The serious answer is this ideological dimension, I think, is the real driver. Right. That's what unites them. But that doesn't mean that your, your question to me could also be true. And I just want to tell you honestly, I don't know.
00:49:50:11 - 00:50:20:16
Michael McFaul
And, I've been asked this question a lot. I first did my talk about the Putin Trump bromance in 2015 was first time I gave that lecture. I'll send it around if you're interested. I don't know. I do know that, without talking about things I shouldn't that whatever you do, if you go to Moscow and whatever you do in the Ritz Carlton does not stay in the Ritz Carlton.
00:50:20:19 - 00:50:47:00
Michael McFaul
It goes straight over across the street to the Kremlin. And and, when we first went there with in 2009, we built. Because if you pay taxes. Thank you for doing this. We built this submarine like structure inside the presidential suite that had its own power, completely disconnected. You walked in, you kind of ducked down to have private conversations with President Obama.
00:50:47:01 - 00:51:19:07
Michael McFaul
That's how I. How you need to roll if you're going to work in that that country. So I think I'll stop there. But when you were to Carnegie, were you ever did anyone ever make any inroads or tried to lure you, into, unprofessional activities? Not me personally, but it happens all the time. All the time. And, honestly, one of the hardest decisions I had to make as, ambassador, and it happened with people on my staff.
00:51:19:07 - 00:51:39:13
Michael McFaul
No, I think about it. That's two things. Actually, one, I'm not going to get into, I want to be careful here, but, they're good at this. Let's just say they're good at. By the way. We're pretty good at it, too, just so you know. But they are constantly, I mean, I have to deal with the Russians all the time right now.
00:51:39:16 - 00:51:57:25
Michael McFaul
Cyber stuff all the time. I'm. They have not left me alone. But this kind of that the stuff you see in the movies, that's what they do. That, they're good at it. But I want to be clear. I'm making a generic statement. I do not have any, information, about the president with with regard to that at all.
00:51:57:25 - 00:52:17:20
Michael McFaul + Audience Member
And I, I very deliberately never talk in a speculative way about it. Student. Yeah. Next. So you you're optimistic about democracy? Yes. Of great power competition. From your vantage point, what is the future of the global?
00:52:17:22 - 00:52:39:19
Michael McFaul
Okay, another small question. Yes. Small question. So first, I don't know. And let's just be honest, who knows? I predicting the future political scientists. We're not very good at it. I want to tell you honestly, I also worked in the government for five years. The CIA is not that good at it, either. We didn't get the Green Revolution right in Iran.
00:52:39:19 - 00:52:59:08
Michael McFaul
We didn't get the Arab Spring right in 2011. We didn't get ... right. And we didn't get, Ukraine's revolution of dignity because it's hard. And and if anybody comes here and I know some of them, I'm not going to name them. They're going to tell you what's going to happen in Russia in 20 years or what's going to happen that don't believe them, like we don't know.
00:52:59:08 - 00:53:17:26
Michael McFaul
Come on. We need to be humble about our ability to predict. But what I would say a couple of things. I mean, normatively what I would say and it's, it's I have a whole chapter in the book about it is yes, things are broken. Yes. They didn't work. Yes. We let the Chinese into fast to the WTO. All of that is true.
00:53:17:26 - 00:53:37:25
Michael McFaul
Yes, NATO needed to spend more, just on the NATO thing. One small thing. I think some people forget we all stopped spending in Europe because of what I told you at the beginning of my talk, you know, go back to the Cold War. The Germans were spending like, I'm doing the top of my head. So, you know, don't ChatGPT me in real time and say I'm wrong.
00:53:38:00 - 00:53:56:15
Michael McFaul
But I think it was like 4% and they had 400,000 soldiers. And then the Soviet Union collapsed and we all got relaxed. Right. So this notion that that they didn't they didn't we, we were not involved. That's just not empirically true. The president keeps trying to make that argument. It's not true. And now they're doing the right things today.
00:53:56:17 - 00:54:24:00
Michael McFaul
But what I would say is, yes, all those things are true. But the prescription to that is not to pull out and say, we're we're strong enough. We you know, back in the Hobbesian world, dog eat dog world, we got enough military power. We can go alone. I don't think that's the right strategy. A lot of people believe that Democrats and Republicans, we're going to be better off in this with no institutions in the world.
00:54:24:05 - 00:54:48:04
Michael McFaul
I don't think that's right for two reasons. One, if it's broken, fix it, don't leave. And for the simple reason that if we leave, the Chinese are not going to leave so we can quit the United Nations. The Chinese are not going to quit that institution. Same with the WTO. And then they're already gaining more and more influence because of our indifference.
00:54:48:10 - 00:55:10:11
Michael McFaul
That's not good for our long term national security interests, not good for our long term prosperity. Those groups have causal influence. Second, and I have a whole chapter of this in the book. The Chinese, in addition to growing their influence in these old institutions of the old order, they are very busy creating new ones that they're the center of.
00:55:10:11 - 00:55:30:22
Michael McFaul
Right. Shanghai Cooperation Organization, BRICs, AAIB, Belt and Road Initiative. I think I go through all of them. They have regional ones. They're they're doing it. So do we think they're so stupid that that that we're we're we're on our own and the Chinese are stupid. They're wasting all these resources. I don't think that I think there's a reason they're doing it.
00:55:30:25 - 00:55:51:07
Michael McFaul
And I think we need to get back into it. And my one of the things I write about in the book, Not Global, I think that was a we can't do that right now, but bringing the free world together like we did at the end of World War two through more institutional connectivity, especially about things like, critical minerals and AI.
00:55:51:10 - 00:56:07:28
Michael McFaul
We got to be in that business because they're going to be in the business whether we are not. So there I kind of disagree with Carney. You know, the Prime Minister Carney made this big speech briefly. I highly recommend it. One of my students works for him, so, I highly recommend her. She's just super smart.
00:56:07:28 - 00:56:29:24
Michael McFaul
But this rupture thing, I think analytically is right. But then he proposes middle power is just all got to get together. And I don't think that's a great solution for middle powers. And I don't think it's a great solution for my country as well. Yes. Way in the back, I was wondering about, Russia invading Ukraine.
00:56:29:24 - 00:56:52:05
Michael McFaul
Supposed to be a three day war. You know, it's gone on for years and years. Yeah. How long can, Russia sustain a possible forever war? And it's their. How is their economy doing? Would you would you estimate. So again, I don't know, don't believe anybody that tells you that the war is going to end in 2027 on February 22nd.
00:56:52:06 - 00:57:13:10
Michael McFaul
It's not I, I don't know what I do know, couple of things. I work on sanctions. I run a group, a working group on sanctions. We've published 23 papers, and they've had that a lot of our ideas have been adopted over the years. And, and that the beginning of 2026, the beginning of this year, we got together on zoom.
00:57:13:10 - 00:57:36:07
Michael McFaul
This is the Ukrainians, Europeans and Americans, a few Canadians, actually, one Russian. And the assessment of people that are smarter about the Russian economy than I am. They were predicting this this one guy, ..... If you're really interested, I highly recommend reading his stuff. We're predicting this is going to be a really challenging year for them on a lot of dimensions.
00:57:36:07 - 00:57:59:05
Michael McFaul
2026. They just had a big conference of economists yesterday where people are saying things that they've never said before who live in Russia. These are people I know. Well, that's interesting. And then we just gave Putin a big gift. Because of the war in Iran. And maybe, you know, I agree with some of the objectives that war I disagree with that.
00:57:59:05 - 00:58:22:28
Michael McFaul
We needed to go to war. Well, we haven't got to that yet. Maybe we will. But there are secondary and tertiary consequences anytime you use military force. And one of them is we just sent billions and billions and billions of dollars to Putin, and he's better off because of that. But the other thing that's also interesting in the war is remember the Ukrainians balance of power stuff, right?
00:58:23:00 - 00:58:45:17
Michael McFaul
Everybody. And including me, on the eve of that horrible day, I remember it very, very vividly. I was corresponding with one of my friends in Ukraine the day the Putin invaded, the country. And she said, her name is .... We have this big program. We train a lot, have a lot of leaders from Ukraine, has been coming to Stanford for actually 25 years.
00:58:45:20 - 00:59:08:16
Michael McFaul
Svitlana was one of them. And she's leaving with her baby. The biggest traffic jam in the history of the country. And she said to me, Mike, don't underestimate us. We're we're going to be okay. We've taken on some really horrible countries in the past. And she just she said, I just can't. And I don't use words like this.
00:59:08:16 - 00:59:31:04
Michael McFaul
I'm just quoting, I just can't believe we have to fight this bastard alone. And that's when I was like, okay, that. And I've been trying to not make that through. To be part of that in whatever way I can ever sense. And some of the things that have happened are truly extraordinary. So another one of our fellows, former prime minister of Ukraine, founded a drone company.
00:59:31:07 - 00:59:49:21
Michael McFaul
And I toured this factory in 2023. I didn't tell my wife I was going there. She didn't want me to be in Ukraine. And, you know, it was a it was a quick tour. But this company, it's called Youth Force. They're the ones that made these sea drones that you probably read about taking out these Russian ships.
00:59:49:23 - 01:00:09:01
Michael McFaul
They've. Now they're the best in the world at this. Well, one of the best. I don't want to disparage anybody's companies. And they just did a venture round. They're now valued at $1.5 billion. That is, they are making tremendous progress. So are the Russians, by the way, in this drone fight. But they are now beginning to take territory.
01:00:09:03 - 01:00:24:29
Michael McFaul
Ukrainians are taking territory here. And there's no way that Putin is going to be able to conquer Donbas for 2 or 3 years. I'm not I don't want to pretend to be a general, but I talked to a lot of ours and theirs that that just is no longer in the cards. So then it's one of two scenarios.
01:00:24:29 - 01:00:45:09
Michael McFaul
It just goes on forever because Putin, he's a dictator and he doesn't have to worry about, societal preferences. Or, you know, maybe he eventually cuts a deal, but the Ukrainians are not going to give up Donbas. And I think the president needs to give up on that, that tactic. I just don't see any support for that idea right now.
01:00:45:12 - 01:01:13:24
Michael McFaul + Audience Member
Yes. Behind you sir. Sorry, I meant you that always what I see. Yeah. Are you a student? I always get the first questions to students. Yeah, I wanted to ask that, given the current tensions and calls for the European strategic autonomy, how do you see, that is going to evolve the relationship? Of the US with both NATO, the European Union.
01:01:13:27 - 01:01:34:01
Michael McFaul
So I, I'm very frustrated by this debate right now about NATO. I, I write about it quite a bit. And if you want to read my, ongoing commentary, I'm on Substack at McFaul's world. And I wrote about your question in more detail than I'll give it right now. I'm frustrated, even with some of the Europeans.
01:01:34:01 - 01:01:51:10
Michael McFaul
And let me try to explain that. So, I just, you know, looking at the Cold War and looking at our, our ability to compete with China, Russia today, I firmly believe, you know, I quoted Churchill once, I'm going to quote him one more time. He had a lot of quotable things. He said over the course of his life.
01:01:51:13 - 01:02:15:26
Michael McFaul
He once said the only thing worse than going to war is going to war alone. And he's right about that. But the part that the president is getting confused, in my view, is that NATO is not an expeditionary force. It's not an alliance to go out, to fight here, there and everywhere. It was not designed to do that.
01:02:15:26 - 01:02:41:22
Michael McFaul
Go look up the, you know, check out the The Founding doctrine. It's a defensive alliance that says an attack on one is an attack on all. And then we will collectively help defend our allies. And the only time that's article five, the only time it's been invoked was when we were attacked on September 11th, 2001. The United States was attacked.
01:02:41:25 - 01:03:02:09
Michael McFaul
Right. And it's even has a if you read it, there's a there's a geographical field, North Atlantic. Right. That those are geographic things. We were attacked and then they went to war with us. Nobody attacked them. Europeans died with us in Afghanistan. President seems to have forgotten that when he says they've never done anything to us, they did.
01:03:02:11 - 01:03:32:13
Michael McFaul
What's wrong about this frame with the president right now? Aside, let's just leave aside the idiotic things of of of annexing territory of NATO allies. That's just that's not even interesting for me to talk about. Of course, that's ridiculous. But what he gets wrong is, you know, he went to war with Iran. He made a decision to do that without consulting our allies, without, going to the U.N. Security Council, without consulting the American people through our legislative branch.
01:03:32:14 - 01:03:51:11
Michael McFaul
Right. Those are mistakes, in my view, all of the wars to back to to the question about where we been to war. You know, sometimes we did all those things, but but even George W Bush, I was against the war in Iraq. That was a mistake, in my view. But he tried to convince the U.N. Security Council failed.
01:03:51:14 - 01:04:11:24
Michael McFaul
He tried to bring the allies along. Some came, some didn't. And then he he took it to the American people. And, you know, maybe he didn't play so clearly with intelligence and all that. You know, we don't have time to go into that ancient history. But you know what? 75% of the American people, by the time we launched that war, were with them.
01:04:12:00 - 01:04:31:29
Michael McFaul
I think off the top of my head, 72 senators voted with them. Trump didn't do any of that. Nothing. He consulted one of our allies, Israel. But he didn't he didn't do that process. And so afterwards he says, well, come on, you guys got to help us out. And by the way, in a very paradoxical, contradictory way, says we don't need NATO.
01:04:31:29 - 01:04:55:26
Michael McFaul
They're paper tiger. But you got to help us open the Strait of Hormuz, right? Both of those things can't be true. I just think that was a damage, own goal damage. We're doing that to ourselves. We shouldn't do that. I also believe that, I'm troubled by our allies changing their thinking about our access to our bases in the middle of a war.
01:04:55:29 - 01:05:11:23
Michael McFaul
I don't like that. I think we should codify what the rules of the game are. What? Our overflight. Basing rights are, and that we haven't done that for a long time. And I wrote an article, a couple of weeks ago where I said we need to amend this treaty. Hasn't been amended for a long time.
01:05:11:26 - 01:05:32:19
Michael McFaul
And I said, let's do a deal. Let's say thou shall not invade a NATO country. It seems kind of absurd, we have to say that. But we have to say that. And then we will codify basing rights ahead of time so that we don't get into this mess right now. Because I just think that that to me, would make NATO stronger.
01:05:32:21 - 01:05:46:15
Michael McFaul
I could say more, but I want to take a few more questions. Great question. So we only have time for one. All right. One question. So be really be really, really good question. Okay. Sorry. Excuse me.
01:05:49:11 - 01:06:17:14
Audience Member
Hi, Professor McFaul thanks for being here. My question is. Well, it's kind of like a clarifying point on, your presentation is that when you talk about, how our greatest or, like, challenge is, like, within the US and, like, not necessarily like, with our adversaries. I do you mean like specifically like within like US domestic politics or also our, like our debates around foreign policy such as like what's happening in Gaza, for example.
01:06:17:16 - 01:06:43:27
Michael McFaul
Yeah. Great question. Great one to answer, I'll be short. So I meant two things that I conflated in the interest of time. One, that slide, that slide that I showed you that did more damage to America's reputation around the world than any other day in my lifetime. When people saw that. And I travel a lot all over the world that just like you guys, are no longer inspiring the rest of the world as a leader of the free world.
01:06:44:01 - 01:07:04:07
Michael McFaul
So that stuff and the erosion of democracy that that continues, that we cannot tell other countries that they need to support democratic values if we're doing that at home. Now, Trump, I want to be clear, Trump doesn't want to support Democratic values. He doesn't care. He doesn't care in Venezuela. He doesn't care in Iran, folks, this notion that he cares about liberating people, I see no evidence for that.
01:07:04:10 - 01:07:23:13
Michael McFaul
So the he's not concerned with that because he doesn't you know, he doesn't care about democracy in either place. I do, and I see these things related. But the second point is also true. Separated that because there's so much polarization. And I have another slide. It's a is a Gallup poll. I took it out to be shorter. And now I'm going to put it back in again.
01:07:23:19 - 01:07:41:22
Michael McFaul
It's a great Gallup poll. I'll put it out on Twitter later today. Follow me. I still call it Twitter on purpose. I'll put it out. It's a great graph and it shows, you know, it's a to a paraphrase in the interest of time, do you respect the other citizens of your country or not?
01:07:41:25 - 01:08:07:11
Michael McFaul
And it's, you know, it's kind of the Europe and the North. It's Canada in the United States of Mexico, the highest 90% of Canadians respect their fellow Canadians. We're the lowest. We're divided 5050. We don't respect the other. And what that means for foreign policy is we can't come up with coherent strategies that I think are in the national interest because we're so polarized.
01:08:07:13 - 01:08:25:17
Michael McFaul
And I see it even, you know, the war in Iran, you're seeing it like, if we were more united, I think we would have a more coherent strategy there. And that's why I worry about that piece as well. But I'm but end I want to go back to where I ended. These are temporal conditions and the United States of America.
01:08:25:20 - 01:08:46:00
Michael McFaul
I think we have the power to renewal for one simple reason. Autocrats don't have that power. If you make a mistake, you can live with a guy like Mao for 2 or 3 decades. We still today in our country. And you just saw it in Hungary, have the power for renewal because we still have free and fair elections.
01:08:46:03 - 01:08:58:22
Michael McFaul
And I think we're going to we're going to have market corrections for all these things. And I'm not making that argument as a Democrat or a Republican. I'm making that argument as an American. Thanks a lot. Thanks for being here.