Michael McFaul is Director at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Ken Olivier and Professor of International Studies in the Department of Political Science, and the Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
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Hoshimov: Hi everyone. This is Bekhzod Hoshimov, and this is Hoshimov’s Economics. Today we have a great guest. Our guest is Ambassador McFaul. Welcome ambassador McFaul.
McFaul: Thanks for having me.
Hoshimov: Let me introduce you to our audience. Ambassador McFaul is a professor at the Department of Political Science at Stanford, and he's also a Director at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He's a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. He's both an academic and a person who is deeply involved in policy. He served for five years at the Obama administration at the National Security Council at the White House, and as an ambassador to Russian Federation. He regularly writes op-eds for the Washington Post, and today, he wrote a co-authored op-ed on Ukraine. I just read it. Let me ask you about the most important topic of the day, this is December 1st, 2021: What's going on on the border of Ukraine. And, what should we worry about?
McFaul: Well, first thanks for having me. I used to work on Central Asia too when I was at the National Security Council, but that was a long time ago. But you're from, Tashkent. Where are you from?
Hoshimov: Originally? Yeah, so I'm from Tashkent
McFaul: Yes. It’s one of the greatest cities in the world, I've been to Tashkent many times. First visited in 1992. And I'm finally getting back to Uzbekistan this spring with a group from Stanford. After I get back, we'll have to have a longer conversation about politics in Central Asia. But we'll talk about whatever you want now. With respect to the border, you know, to remind your listeners, this is the second big buildup that Mr. Putin has done on the Ukrainian border this year. This one is qualitatively and quantitatively bigger from what I read and what my colleagues in the government, the U.S. government, and also friends of mine in Ukraine say. Mr. Putin has been obsessed with Ukraine for a long time. He doesn't consider Ukraine a truly sovereign country or a truly independent nation from Russia. He used to say that behind closed doors, now he says it rather openly and he's even published a long article. I was just looking at, called “On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians”. It's a 10,000-word piece by the way. Like obviously somebody wrote it for him, but, you know, he's had this view for a long time and, increasingly he has, I think, escalated in his rhetoric, the threats to Ukrainian sovereignty. I don't think, I know that the Biden administration is very worried about this. There was recently just a NATO ministerial in Riga. I think it ended yesterday where this was the main focus of attention, and most certainly in Kyiv, it's a focus of attention. I want to say very clearly that I do not know what Putin's true intentions are.
I've known Putin for a long time. We met first in 1991. I've written about him for many, many years as an academic. And then for the five years, I served in government. I interacted with him when he met with usually my bosses, President Obama, Vice President Biden, Secretary Kerry. But I want to be clear, I know a lot about Putin, but I don't know what his true intentions are and I don't believe anybody knows what his true intentions are. And I think that's important to understand, but because that's part of what Putin wants, Putin likes it when all of us are thinking about what he's doing, he likes to keep us on our toes. He likes to do unpredictable things, and then see how we respond. And I think that's a situation we're in right now. He's formally said some things about not wanting Ukraine to join NATO. Others in the Russian press have said, they're doing this because they're worried that Kyiv, the government in Kyiv is planning to take by force Donbas. That's an Eastern part of Ukraine. That of course is nonsense. There're no plans that I know of to do that. But you know, he's coercive and he's seeing what he can get in return from these coercive actions.
Hoshimov: I see. I think you've writing about Putin for a very long time and I think, you know how he thinks, but what explains his obsession with the borders of Russia and Ukraine for that matter. And why do you think he wants to act unpredictably? Is it a part of his character or is it like a grand strategy of foreign relations that he has?
McFaul: Yeah, that's a great question. Again, in my interactions with him and studying him, I do think there's a misconception in my country. Probably not in Uzbekistan, by the way, because Uzbekistan had a lot more close personal contact with Mr. Putin. But there's a misconception that he's just a transactional leader. He's a realist. You know, he doesn't really have an ideology. That's what many analysts argue and I think that's categorically wrong. Now I think it's also important to say before I go on, Putin's ideas have evolved over time. They are not the same today as they were in 1991 or, or 2000 when he became president. They've changed over time. And we can talk about that later if you're interested, but today, there are a couple of key concepts, ideological concepts, analytic frameworks that he has that I think drives his behavior abroad.
Number one, he believes that the west and the United States in particular, and when I was ambassador in Moscow, me personally, are out to weaken Russia and to overthrow his regime. He genuinely believes that. It's not true. You know, that certainly was not true when I worked in the government, but he generally has this fear of the west That's number one. Number two, he fundamentally frames foreign policy vis-à-vis, the United States in zero-sum terms. So if it's plus two for Russia, it's minus two for the United States and vice versa. Other leaders in Moscow, including Medvedev, including Gorbachev, including Yeltsin, did not frame the world in zero-sum terms. They thought that there could be good things for Russia and good things from the United States from cooperation: plus two for America, plus two for Russia at the same time.
But Putin sees the world in zero-sum terms. Third, he believes that there's something unique about Russian culture and Russian history. It's kind of a conservative Orthodox set of values. And he believes that he is the protector of those values that are being attacked and undermined by liberal decadent values from Europe and the United States. And so that's the ideological part, right? Where he really does believe that there are these innate cultural values that go back a thousand years, you know, to Russ, and that gets to this Kyiv, that I'll get to in a minute. And the west and our liberal ideas are attacking those Russian ideas. And so he wants to defend them. You know, in the first 10 years of his time in power, he was defending those ideas mostly within Russia, but today he now seeks to find ideological allies outside of Russia.
And by the way, I think he's had some success with that. There are other people that share those values with him: Mr. Orban in Hungary, Salvini in Italy, Le Pen in France, and I would even see, former President Trump here in my country, where there was a kind of ideological affinity about conservative, Orthodox values, anti-liberalism anti multilateralism, and that's another part of the way it shapes his views. And then the last piece to that must be added this particular obsession with uniting the Slavic peoples, right. He thinks it's an artificial barrier between Ukrainian people and Russian people, Belo Russian people and Russian people that came about as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union. But I think he sees it as part of his mission to try to bring together that Slavic nation and therefore, you know, an independent Ukraine threatens that.
And then the last piece I would say to that it's related, but it's worth underscoring. You know, Putin's worldview, on the state, the Russian state (he wouldn't use these words, these are now my words). He would say, we need a strong state. But what that translates into is an autocratic state, you know, a Tsar, Vozhd was, you know, kind of paternalistic leader that can lead the rest of the nation. Right. And he believes that's connected to old Russian history. It goes away back. And by the way, there's some evidence that supports that most of Russian history they've been ruled by autocrats, not democrats.
Hoshimov: But all the countries in the world, right? Like, 3000 years ago, whatever, there was no democracies.
McFaul: That's right. That's a very good point by the way that most countries, for most of their history have not been ruled by democratic institutions, and elected by the people. But the power came from God, or it came from a communist party, or, but it didn't come from the people. So, the experiment with democracy is just a few hundred years old compared to this longer stand thing, tradition. And, by the way, maybe he's right. I don't know if he's right., Maybe this experiment with democracy will fade away and we'll go back to an old period. I don't happen to believe that. And I most certainly don't want that, but it's a hypothesis about history. I don't want to pretend that I know, but because he has that view, a democratic Ukraine is a threat to his ideology, because if these Slavic people that he considers just like to be Russians can govern themselves democratically, then that undermines his argument about why there should be autocracy in Russia. And that, I think you put all those things together that helps to explain his obsession with democratic Ukraine today.
Hoshimov: Let me point out something that you have mentioned about zero-sum games. I mean zero-sum games are usually defined to be a game which says if somebody is winning, somebody must be losing. And in my writing and experience and so on, I also realized that it's a very common ideology among military people and alikes. But it is much rarer among people who are like traders or entrepreneurs or something. Understanding that fundamentally, that if somebody wins a deal or something, it doesn't mean that the other side should lose. I mean, within the United States, you can see people who think the world is a zero-sum game and some people are not like that. What do you think explains fundamentally why some people view the world in zero-sum terms and some people don’t? Not Putin particularly, but overall, like, what's your theory of zero-sum game worldview?
McFaul: Well, that's a great question. That's a really big philosophical question. You probably know the history in terms of economic theory a lot better than I do. I do think, it does depend on the domain space or the sector. And some competitions are zero-sum. Not all can be solved by win-win outcomes. But I also believe that it's very dangerous for either countries or companies or individuals to frame everything in zero-sum terms, because I think that makes the world worse off. So I strongly believe philosophically in that, I'm liberal that way. I believe that trade makes[us better off], as long as it's willful trade and not coercive trade, and if I have a talent, or I have a product and you want to, you don't have it but you want to give me something of value in return. We're both better off by that transaction. That's number one, number two, there are certain kind of just basic coordination games. I don't want to use economic slang. There are certain kinds of coordination that if we don't do, we're both worse off, right? We both lose. And, you know, the classic example of course, in academia is we all have to decide on what side of the road we're going to drive on. And that's not an ideological thing. That's just a very transactional thing so that we don't kill each other when we're on the road, right? Well, that's a rule that makes us better off. And, and so, that's another kind of basic coordination that makes individuals better off, but I think there are applications of that to countries too, like we all lose if the planet burns.
If we don't have a way to control climate change, it doesn't matter if you're living in Uzbekistan, Russia, America or China, we all will eventually lose from that. And then there's higher forms of cooperation, where in the marketplace and in politics long term iterative win-win outcomes lead to a world that we are all better off it. When I worked for President Obama, he most certainly believed that. And he thought that even sometimes you had to forego short term wins for these long term gains that were more cooperative. But Putin, you know, listening to him talk, I think he was suspicious of that. And he was suspicious of it because he thought that the multilateral institutions that we wanted them to cooperate in, I was part of, for instance, to make it less abstract. I was part of the negotiations to get Russia into the World Trade Organization. And our argument to them is “You get into the WTO, that'll be good for the Russian economy, and it'll be good for our economy”. Putin looks at organizations like the WTO, and he thinks “Oh, no, that's just an institution that expands American hegemonic power, an Imperial power”. And therefore, he was much more suspicious of those kinds of organizations.
Hoshimov: Yeah. Thank you for that input about WTO. Because Uzbekistan is one of the few, I think the only, country with Turkmenistan that didn't join WTO. So I am looking forward that Uzbekistan will join.
On August 23, in your op-ed you mentioned that, I quote, “Global struggle between democracy and dictatorship and the fight for peaceful Europe, Ukraine is on the front lines”. So, do you think that this statement is almost exactly what Putin thinks as well? Ukraine is the place where basically the fate of the world is being debated, if you will?
McFaul: Well, without question, it is in Europe and I think it has implications for around the world. But that's a great question. And my answer is absolutely yes, that he does think that this is the frontline state and he wants to win. And he understands with his analytic framework, that if Ukrainian democracy fails, that will be a giant victory for autocratic leaders like himself. And especially in the space that he's working in. And by the way, you know, Ukrainians understand that. But also, you know, I'll call them small de Democrats, in Georgia and Moldova and Belarus, they also understand that if Ukraine falls, it will weaken their struggles for democratic futures.
Hoshimov: Why do you think the democratic ideas around the world, including Russia and China and even the U.S. for that matter or Central Europe, for example, Turkey and so on and I can go on, the small de democratic ideas are not as popular as they were say, 18 years ago, or 15 years ago, even? What's going on, what's up with this unpopularity of democratic ideas?
McFaul: Well, big, hard question. I think it's a conflation of a variety of factors, right? There's just no a monocausal explanation. But three things are at the top of the list. So first, we had this massive wave called the third wave of democratization started in Portugal in 1974. And anytime you have a big wave of democracy, the first two waves, there's always a rollback, right? Cause some countries become democratic states and they don't consolidate. So that's happening all over the world. Number two, and another thing I would add to that this wave was so big that you had democratic experiments in a lot of lower income and middle-income countries, and those are places where it's the hardest to consolidate democracy.
So, as you know, well as an economist, in political science, we talk a lot about modernization. I think modernization, which is the more well to do, society is, the more likely it is to be democratic. I think over the long stretch of history that still holds true. And I associate that theory with my former colleague here, Marty Lipsett, who used to teach here at Stanford with me. Modernization doesn't predict breakthroughs though. Breakthroughs happen for a variety of reasons, right? Breakdown of empires, wars, economic collapses. So you had a lot of those breakthroughs, and I think, you know, the collapse of the Soviet Union was one of the biggest ones, of course. You had this wave of new democracies, but they happen in places where the permissive conditions for democratic thought consolidation were weaker than say Portugal or Spain back in the seventies. So that was one thing. Second thing, you've had a crisis within the old democracies that you alluded to, right? So, in my country, but in many of the old established liberal democracies, they haven't been delivering in terms of economic growth, that has to do with globalization and the export of manufacturing jobs that came with that. So that's a problem. And then add to that, the rise of some powerful autocracies, China being the most important, but also Russia. And so, if you have a rising autocracies, as you're in your neighborhood, that creates difficulties for consolidating democracies. So you put all those three things together. I think that's why we're in, we're now, I think, in the 16 to year of democratic decline, having said all that, though, I want to be clear. I'm a huge optimist about democracy in the long term I am not in the camp that thinks that this is the beginning of the end for two reasons. One, I think, democracy is a horrible system of government, except compared to all the rest as Winston Churchill said, very famously. And I think in terms of delivery of things that people want, democracies, I still think outperform autocracies across a range of issues, not just economic, but across a range of issues. Number two, if you look at public opinion polling around the world, democracies have fallen. That's true, but not that radically, there is not a giant demand for communist party dictatorship around the world. You don't see that in a public opinion polling at all. And even on the mobilization part. , Let me pause for a minute. But I can't think of a massive social movement in the last 30 years where people went on onto the streets and they said, “Give me communist party dictatorship, I want communist party dictatorship”, , that doesn't happen. And therefore, you know, I'm cautiously optimistic that we're in this lull, but I don't think it'll last forever.
Hoshimov : I see. This question is related to your recent essay in American Purpose in which you call to create some sort of an institution, that you call international platform for freedom that would help promote democratic ideas, through education and so on and so forth. How do you think the U.S. has to handle its unique role as the largest and richest democratic country in the world? Do you think that Americans have to invest more in that or do you think that things that happened in Iraq and Afghanistan and as people say that “the promotion of democracy” failed and that's why we shouldn't do it? Like where do you see yourself in that debate?
McFaul: Well, the first thing I would say is, first let's focus on why and then the what, right. So why should Americans care about democracy in the world? I think there are three big reasons. A moral reason as I hinted at, it's a better system of government and if you're a moral person, then you should want that kind of system of government for others. That's the moral reason. So second, let's say you're a completely immoral person and you don't care about how people in Uzbekistan live or, anywhere, you just don't care. I think if you look at the long stretch of American history, we have benefited from more security and more prosperity as a result of more democracy in the world.
So just from interest-based argument, we should want more democracy. So think on the security side. There are maybe a few exceptions depending on how you code countries, right? But I would argue, thinking about our history, every serious enemy of the United States, including ones that we've had gone to war with from time to time has been an autocracy, never have we been threatened by a democracy, that’s argument number one. Number two. If you think about when we've had to go to war either cold war or hot war, our closest allies have always been democracies, enduring alliances have always been with the democracies. Now we've had some autocratic allies from time to time, and you know, whether we needed them or not is a very important historical argument. I actually once wrote an article back in 2005 about, the former president of Uzbekistan when we did a deal with Mr. Kareemov to set up a base there. And I wrote this article called the false promise of autocratic stability and I was writing about Uzbekistan, but I was writing about other countries. I said, they're two problems with autocratic allies, number one, they can change their mind in a heartbeat. And in November they are your ally, in December they're not. And that happened with us in Uzbekistan because of what happened in Uzbekistan in Andijan in 2005, if I'm right, he just flipped on us on a dime, democracies can't do that. It's harder for them just to abandon their alliances. And number two, another problem with autocratic allies is they get overthrown. Democratic allies don't get overthrown in revolutions.
And here is the case I like to talk about is the Shah of Iran. He was a great ally for America, fantastic ally for 39 years. 39 years He was there for us, but that 40th year, or maybe it was 38 years, and then the 39th year, I'm not remembering, but that year that he fell, he created this giant problem for us, that we are still living with in terms of American security, because of the Iranian revolution. Revolutions don't happen against democratic, consolidated democracy. So, you know, we have had these autocratic allies from time to time, but they're not reliable. And then the third thing I would say, the transition from autocracy to democracy also enhances our security. So who are some of our closest allies today they're countries that did make that flip Germany, Japan, Italy, all of those countries that flipped.
Now there are our allies, and I would say the same about Poland, right? Poland's a great ally of ours. Estonia is a great allies of ours. They went to war with us in other places because they flip from dictatorships to democracies. And then finally, we don't have time to get into it in detail, but the expansion of the democratic world also led to the expansion of economic opportunity for American companies and therefore American individuals, right? The collapse of communism was good for the American economy Boeing sells planes now to former communist countries that they didn't before. People debate how to measure that, but, economic prosperity and opportunity, oftentimes follows after democratic transitions.
Hoshimov: Thank you. To your point about overcoming there's a funny Russian joke: “In democracies, people vote every four years and in autocracies they vote every day”, something like that. So let me finish up, with the last question for today. Last year in December when we were actually scheduling this meeting, I saw you on Twitter writing the next year, in 2021, you would want to spend learning about Uzbekistan. Can you share, what you have learned so far and you know, where you're at in your learning process?
McFaul: Yeah, so I'm not far along as I want to be, because I have these day jobs that get in the way. But I'm writing a book right now about great power competition in the 21st century, right? So it's China, the U.S. and Russia. And I want to learn lessons from the Cold War, writing mostly for an American audience and I want to make sure we learn the good, the smart things we did in the cold war that helped us prevail. And I also want us to learn the negative lessons from the cold war, so that we don't repeat them again in the 21st century. And I think there are both positive lessons and negative lessons that we have to learn. In writing this book, a major area of competition between Russia, China and the United States is Central Asia.
I think, there are some very powerful things that we can learn by understanding better how that competition is playing out, in that part of the world. And related to many of these things that we've just been talking about, right? Democracies, autocracies trade, the way China does things versus Russia, coercion versus win-win outcomes. And I want to say, invite me back, cuz I, I hope to make a major trip in spring to Central Asia to do some field work. But my working assumption right now is the United States needs to avoid framing our competition in Central Asia strictly in terms of zero sum competition. Because I think that's dangerous. I think it's dangerous for a couple of reasons. Number one, I don't think it's true.
I just learned recently I really fascinating example, the serving ambassador to the United States from Uzbekistan was just here at Stanford last week or two weeks ago. And he told me about this amazing story. And then I looked it up and I was shocked by it, Uzbekistan just recently made a purchase. I want to say 300 million purchase from Boeing, of some Dreamliners. That's got to be good for Uzbekistan. I think it's for Uzbek air. I know it's good for Boeing and Boeing is a company that employs a lot of Americans, so it's good for the American workers too, in my opinion. But here's a fascinating piece of that story, in terms of win-win outcomes. Number one, there are lots of components in the Dreamliner that rely on Russia. and my I'm out of data, so I'll be careful here, but, you know, Boeing has a giant partnership with several companies in Russia that provide component parts to the Dreamliner. So that purchase is not just good for Boeing. It's also good for their partners in Russia. But the most amazing part that I learned, is that the financing for that purchase came from a Chinese bank. Not from an American bank. Because they gave better terms than what American EXIM bank did. Now I think American EXIM should give better terms to Uzbekistan . Think about how interesting that story is. Lots of people are benefiting. And if we had a policy in the United States that said Boeing cannot take financing from Russian banks or Chinese banks, that makes Uzbekistan worse off, that makes China worse off and that makes the United States worse off. So that's an example of win-win. But there are other sectors I want to be clear that are much more zero sum. And that where, I believe United States has to reinvigorate their engagement with Uzbekistan, with Kazakhstan, with Tajikistan, so that we can help balance against what I would say are more coercive players in that neighborhood. And, Central Asia's got a pretty tough neighborhood. And so, to have more players in that neighborhood to provide more options, I think makes the societies of Central Asia better off. And I think it makes America better off.
Hoshimov: Well, what's your most favorite Uzbek restaurant in Moscow? and what did you like about it?
McFaul: I'm going to forget the names, because it's been so long. Cause I was, as you know, I tragically am on the Putin sanctions list, I cannot travel to Russia these days, but I want you to know this, I was a U.S. ambassador for a couple years. I was there with my wife and my two sons and we had fabulous chefs that worked for us at Spasso house. So we didn't have to go anywhere to have fantastic food, but whenever we went out to restaurants, my wife, and I, had a fondness for Georgian food. We still do, in fact, I'm gonna have Georgian food tomorrow night. Now that I think about it at our house, but my two sons, they were, they were fanatics about Uzbek food. So anytime there was a chance for them to vote where to go, it was always Uzbek, there was one place on Novy Arbat in particular. And I won't remember the name of it. I can see it in my head. I'm going to look it up and I'm going to email you it, but it was only about 10 minutes from our house. That was their favorite place because, they love shashlik they're big meat guys. Whenever they got to vote, it was always Uzbek. So we went to that one and there was another one , I can't remember the name of it, but that was another one that was farther away from where we lived. But we spent a lot of time eating Uzbek food when we lived in Russia. But don't tell the Russians. I said that we love their food too, but my sons had particular obsession with Uzbek food when we lived in Moscow.
Hoshimov: I think Uzbek food is very, very popular like Georgian and in Moscow. So thank you for your time again. I'm gonna invite you, in spring after your trip to Uzbekistan.
Mcfaul: Oh that’ll be fantastic. That'd be great.
Hoshimov: Yeah. Thanks a lot. Thanks for your time.