Podcast: Ukraine Always Get What You Want with Michael McFaul

Transcript

Listen: Soon Ukrainians will head to the polls to a pick a president. And Putin is paying attention. Ian will dig into it and then dig a whole lot deeper with former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul. And of course, we've got your Puppet Regime.

TRANSCRIPT: Ukraine Always Get What You Want with Michael McFaul

Mike McFaul:

There's a word in Russian for it: "pobeda." Victory.

Ian Bremmer:

Hi, I'm Ian Bremmer, and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast, an audio version of what you can find on public television where I analyze global topics, sit down with big guests, and make use of small puppets. Let's get to it.

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Ian Bremmer:

Mike McFaul, professor here at Stanford University and the Hoover Institution, where we sit right now. Of course, also ambassador to Russia under the Obama administration. Great to be back with you.

Mike McFaul:

Yeah, good to have you back on your homeland.

Ian Bremmer:

Thank you very much. Yes, indeed.

Mike McFaul:

Old stomping grounds here.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah, I like being back at Stanford.

Mike McFaul:

Good.

Ian Bremmer:

So let me start right off. You have said, I mean, President Trump has recently said, that he has been the toughest president on Russia.

Mike McFaul:

Ever.

Ian Bremmer:

Ever.

Mike McFaul:

He added that word on occasion, yes.

Ian Bremmer:

Yes. You take exception to that. Why?

Mike McFaul:

Well, first on the "ever" part, let's just get that out of the way. I mean, let's not disparage what President Truman did, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, because we're sitting at the Hoover Institution. That's just silly. But the second thing is more interesting.

Ian Bremmer:

He did say Russia. He didn't say the Soviet Union. So on a technicality, you could give him a...

Mike McFaul:

That's good. That's good.

Ian Bremmer:

Well, you would know that, right?

Mike McFaul:

Yeah, that's good. That's a fair observation. But the other thing's more important to me, which is we can debate each piece and maybe we will, about what the Trump administration has done right and wrong vis-a-vis Russia. When I look at what the administration has done, I actually see a lot of continuity with the Obama administration. And by the way, when I say that, that pisses off both the Trump people and the Obama people. But if you think about what happened after Putin invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea-

Ian Bremmer:

Lot of sanctions.

Mike McFaul:

Three big things. Three big things, enhanced NATO, new sanctions, economic, political, and military support for Ukraine. That was the basis of the new policy. And on all three of those dimensions, the Trump administration has done the same. And in one of them, I would give them credit that they've even gone farther with Ukraine.

Ian Bremmer:

You mean on the military front.

Mike McFaul:

Yeah. They gave lethal...

Ian Bremmer:

Javelin, anti-tank missiles.

Mike McFaul:

Correct. They decided to give lethal assistance to Ukraine. That was something Obama was not prepared to do.

Ian Bremmer:

Which Trump could have stopped, no? As president?

Mike McFaul:

Yes, he could have.

Ian Bremmer:

But he didn't.

Mike McFaul:

Well, he didn't. That's right. I mean, remember, during the campaign, his people tried to take that plank out of the Republican platform.

Ian Bremmer:

In Cleveland.

Mike McFaul:

Yes.

Ian Bremmer:

And that was when Paul Manafort was running the campaign?

Mike McFaul:

Yes. And that was the Trump campaign that did that deliberately.

Ian Bremmer:

We don't know that Trump tried to do that personally. Do we know that?

Mike McFaul:

That's a fair point. Yeah, that's a fair point. Maybe that was Manafort. Some side deal that he was doing for somebody. That's a great point. I don't know.

Ian Bremmer:

But I say that only because it seems to me that level of detail kind of would be surprising, I think, to both of us that Trump would know.

Mike McFaul:

Right, but by and large, it's a policy that we got to contain Putin's Russia, and that is consistent. And most Democrats and Republicans I know in the foreign policy world agree with that. The problem is that the president himself shows very little enthusiasm for that policy.

Ian Bremmer:

How do you think about the fact that Trump has said all of these things that imply that he's a Putin buddy, and yet as president, pretty powerful guy, does seem like the administration's policy as you are articulating it, one of the top experts on Russia in the entire country, even the world, you're saying continuity with the Obama administration and actually frankly, a little bit tougher. How do you square that?

Mike McFaul:

Well, two things. One, there's incredible consensus within his administration about that we need to have continuity. And he laments it. He argues with them. That's pretty clear these days, especially about NATO. "Why are we in NATO?", he said many times. Well, everybody in his government disagrees with him. So that's one thing. If there were divisions, then maybe, you might see more of this.

Ian Bremmer:

Like with China.

Mike McFaul:

Or Syria. Syria's a great example where there was some division, although most people supported staying in Syria. And that little bit of wiggle room gave him the sense to say, okay, we're getting out of here.

Ian Bremmer:

So you think really inside the administration, it is monolithic to be tough on Russia?

Mike McFaul:

In the margins, different places.

Ian Bremmer:

Back when Steve Bannon was chief strategist, certainly he was someone that felt very differently. But he's gone now.

Mike McFaul:

Well, he's gone from the administration, but I'm glad you brought him up because I don't think he's gone from talking about these issues with the president. And I don't just think this, talking to people in the government both present and former, there definitely is this argument floating about, not from the national security team, but from people like Steve Bannon saying, "These guys are all wrong. We've got to move away from it." And for them, and for Bannon in particular, it's part of a much bigger ideological struggle that he's engaging in.

Ian Bremmer:

If we take a step back, I remember during of course, this summit in Helsinki when Trump and Putin met.

Mike McFaul:

Yeah. So do I.

Ian Bremmer:

Together. And yet you played a role in that. And one of the outcomes was when Trump said that he thought it was what an incredible offer?

Mike McFaul:

Yes.

Ian Bremmer:

Putin was considering an exchange of investigations that would include you being sent to Russia, perhaps.

Mike McFaul:

Yes.

Ian Bremmer:

Or being interviewed in the US. Would that also have been okay?

Mike McFaul:

Yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

It was not necessarily sending you to Russia, right?

Mike McFaul:

Correct. Well, ultimately they wanted to send me to Russia because they've accused me of a crime. I was named formally. Putin talked about it at the press conference, but he didn't name the names. They then back in Moscow named the names. And I said, well, surely the White House is going to bat this back. But didn't, not initially. Every other part of the government, because I then went-

Ian Bremmer:

Including the State Department.

Mike McFaul:

... On instruction from my lawyer, then went and engaged with the Trump administration. And it was my impression that everybody said this was absurd, but there was this one guy that thought it was a great idea. So that was a very small but very tangible for me instance, where Trump is not in alignment with his government on Russia.

Ian Bremmer:

But it does speak to your broader point of the strong consensus within the administration on Russia compared to most other international issues.

Mike McFaul:

Yes. I think that's a good point. I think that's a great point.

Ian Bremmer:

So on Ukraine, where do the Russians want to go? Because it's one thing to take Crimea where the people all generally support you. It's another to try to take territory where the locals would actively resist.

Mike McFaul:

Right. I don't know the answer to that, and I don't want to presume that there is a grand strategy. It could just be this incremental stuff, one, just to see if he can get away with it. Two, to put pressure on the Ukrainians. Right?

Ian Bremmer:

Putin approval ratings decreasing. Does that, in your view, make Russia more or less likely to engage in such adventurism?

Mike McFaul:

Well, without question, in my analysis, Putin didn't sit down and talk about it with me.

Ian Bremmer:

You didn't go to Moscow to be interrogated.

Mike McFaul:

Exactly, right.

Ian Bremmer:

I mean, come on, you would've had access.

Mike McFaul:

But having looked at this, because he went in to Crimea actually the day I left as a US ambassador. So we were working that problem set, as we call it in the government.

Ian Bremmer:

Are you implying causality?

Mike McFaul:

Well, he didn't invade Ukraine on my watch, right?

Ian Bremmer:

Okay.

Mike McFaul:

But in all seriousness, I do think it is the case that part of the calculation to go in was because he was fading and his polling numbers were down back then, and it had the intended effect. It had that effect. He went way up to 80%. And remember, the Russian people on state controlled media, on television especially, which is where most people still get their news. This is being described as a American-led coup that overthrow the government in Ukraine that empowered Nazis in Kiev. And that word is very important in Soviet and Russian history. And therefore, Putin had to defend the ethnic Russians in Crimea lest the Nazis come in and slaughter them. Oh, and a NATO base would've come into Crimea as well. Right. So NATO and Nazis, the two N words, that's the way it was framed. And it had the intended effect. That's when he went up to 80. What I don't know is can you play that card again, right? Does it work a second time around? And that, I don't know. And I don't know how they're thinking about it.

Ian Bremmer:

Let's go to the other big foreign policy issue in the region for the Russians, which of course is Syria.

Mike McFaul:

Yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

Large numbers of Russians on the ground there, military capability advisors, all the rest. Assad certainly feels like he is winning or has won that war together with his allies, the Russians, the Iranians. How do the Russians feel about what they've accomplished in Syria?

Mike McFaul:

There's a word in Russian for it, "pobeda." Victory. They feel very good about it. So the conflict there, firstly, the peaceful protest back in 2011, and then the Civil War when it got militarized and then the extremists, that all happened when I was in the government. And probably while then I was ambassador, I spent more time on Syria than any other issue. It's also the longest chapter in my latest book because it's such a sad chapter, I think, for the Obama administration. But back then...

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. We lost.

Mike McFaul:

We lost. And...

Ian Bremmer:

The Syrian people lost.

Mike McFaul:

They were the biggest losers, yes. The chapter in my book is called "Chasing Russians, Failing Syrians," because at the end of the day, the people that were killed and people displaced, and we failed them. Having said all that, I mean, we had this argument with Putin. The first big argument that Obama and Putin had about this, I was there. And Obama said to him, "Here's our analysis. If we don't work together to put together a coalition government and a ceasefire, here's what's going to happen, Vladimir. More radicals are going to come, extremists are going to come. And then the people with the biggest guns are going to win, and the Syrian people are going to lose. And that will happen as long as Assad is in power." We were not about democracy. All this subsequent, I call it propaganda, about [how] we want a democracy in Syria, no.

Ian Bremmer:

America did not have strategic interest.

Mike McFaul:

Putin had a different view. He said, "The only way there's going to be stability in Syria is if we prop up Assad. Because he's a tough guy, and that's the way it works." This is now me connecting the dots, not Putin, but I think the historic analogy he had in place was Chechnya, where there was a civil war, extremists there. He backed a tough guy, and eventually the tough guy restored stability.

Ian Bremmer:

And became a key supporter of Putin.

Mike McFaul:

Of Putin, yes. Even though he wasn't before. Good footnote. Fast-forward, our analysis was right. That's exactly what happened. But Putin wasn't just an analyst. He became a player.

Ian Bremmer:

He's a practitioner, yeah.

Mike McFaul:

And in 2015, that's when he intervened. And that's when he changed the dynamics on the ground with the Iranians, with Hezbollah. It was an alliance. And that's when we lost.

Ian Bremmer:

How are they reacting to all of this? This level of focus and scrutiny on them and their dealings in our election, their dealings around the fake news and Facebook and getting access to campaign polling data and all that? Are they just enormously pleased because they have this kind of president that continues to say that he's being nice to Putin and has people around, or are they horrified that all of this is coming out and putting them in the spotlight? How do they think about that?

Mike McFaul:

Yeah. Well, I'd say a couple of things. And I think there's been an evolution in their thinking too. It hasn't been static, which is when Trump won, that was a giant party in Moscow. Everybody was very happy about that, and they're proud of their operation. I mean, they deny it, but when they really sit down and talk about it and people close to them, and why shouldn't they be proud of their operation? I mean, pretty, with low levels of investment, they got a big return, and the punishment for it has been pretty marginal. So in the wake of that, that seemed like a great victory. The next phase was they had some pretty big ideas about what Trump would deliver for them, and they've been frustrated that he has not done that.

Mike McFaul:

And it goes back to what we talked about before. There's Trump on the one hand, and there's the rest of the administration. Putin calls it the "deep state." I remember him talking about that even with Obama. He's got this theory of American power that these presidents kind of come and go, but there's this real group of CIA, Pentagon, national security types that run everything, and that's the way his country runs. So that's the way he thinks it is here.

Ian Bremmer:

By the way, on a scale of one to 10, how much would you say that there is truth and logic to that?

Mike McFaul:

Three to four, but not zero. He's right about it because there is continuity of government, there are bureaucrats. The CIA has things they do and think.

Ian Bremmer:

This is your Trump point.

Mike McFaul:

Yes, right? Yes.

Ian Bremmer:

I mean, at the end of the day, he is being prevented from doing a lot of things that you think he would otherwise want to do.

Mike McFaul:

Right. And even the people he chose at least the first time around, well, there's variation there. Tillerson's very different from Mattis, but HR McMaster, Secretary Mattis, yeah. I mean, these are people I know well. If you had asked, if you had interviewed me, if somebody said, "What are they going to do on Russia?" I would've said, "They're not going to do what President Trump has promised to do," and that's proven to be the case. Then there's the third piece of the destruction and polarization that Trump is doing within our society, and they see that as a good thing. We're arguing over shutdowns and we look like fools, and we don't look like a great power right now. Add to that the withdrawal doctrine that Trump has done where he withdraws from everything, international agreements, that is a good thing in terms of Putin's strategic thinking, without question.

Ian Bremmer:

Revisionism.

Mike McFaul:

Yeah. And I would say at the end of the day, that's the most important thing, that our own allies doubt us, that we doubt them, that we're just withdrawing. And that creates space. Literally in a place like Syria, but even more abstractly in places like Europe. If we're not going to be so engaged there, that creates opportunities for Putin. And what I'm talking about, I'm talking about the Italians and the Hungarians, where in those societies there's real debate whether they should look East or West.

Ian Bremmer:

Mike McFaul, thank you very much.

Mike McFaul:

Thanks for having me.

Ian Bremmer:

That's our show this week. We'll be right back here next week, same place, same time. Unless you're watching on social media, in which case it's wherever you happen to be, don't miss it. In the meantime, check us out at gzeromedia.com.

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