Michael McFaul tackles Russian-American relations with Los Angeles Community
Map of Ukraine, Crimea, and Western Russia. (Illustration by Conner Savage)
On Tuesday, Nov. 19, at Valley Beth Shalom Synagogue, community members gathered for an opportunity to pick the brain of diplomat and Stanford professor Michael McFaul. McFaul was the United States Ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the White House National Security Council for three years before that. McFaul highlighted insights from his book "From Cold War to Hot Peace," which he promoted as a nuanced view of Russian-American relations from the standpoints of history, diplomacy, and social science.
Former LA city Councilman and member of the Board of Supervisors, Zev Yaroslavsky introduced McFaul, his decades-long friend. They worked together at a National Democratic Institute delegation in Moscow, where McFaul first met Russian President Vladimir Putin, then a deputy to the mayor of Leningrad.
McFaul expressed Russia’s yearnings for democracy after the collapse of the Soviet Union. “They were developing democratic ideals. They were developing markets, they wanted to be part of the West,” McFaul said.
Marking a change in power dynamics, the Bush-era of United States history demonstrated a lot of interference on the international stage. McFaul said, “When Russia was weak, we took advantage. We expanded NATO, bombed Syria, we invaded Iraq. We supported color revolutions in Ukraine in 2004 and Georgia in 2003. And finally, [then prime minister] Putin just said ‘I have to push back. Enough is enough.’”
The Obama Administration's diplomacy attempted to improve Russian-American relations under Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
McFaul recognized former president Obama’s optimism for diplomatic ‘win-win outcomes’ with his diplomatic initiatives later dubbed "The Reset." In Prague 2010, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) was signed. Praising its success, McFaul said, “By signing that document, we got rid of 30 percent of the nuclear weapons in the world at the time. We got 71 votes in the U.S Senate to ratify that.”
Another of those outcomes was the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) wherein Russian cooperation allowed a northern route for U.S. military supplies to travel, circumventing the dangers of terrorism in Pakistan. “Some might say it was even a military partnership,” said McFaul.
In 2011, Obama violated Pakistani sovereignty in order to execute the mission of killing Osama Bin Laden, founder of Islamic terrorist group Al-Qaeda, who orchestrated the devastating Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
“At the peak of the reset, most Russians had a favorable opinion of us. And most Americans had a favorable opinion of Russians,” said McFaul. “That was just several years ago.”
When Vladimir Putin assumed his role as Russian President in 2012, attitudes toward the United States altered drastically. McFaul pointed to the United States’ instances of global interference as the key seed of Putin’s inherent mistrust.
Starting at the end of 2010, there was pervasive unrest in countries like Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and Libya. Citizens from these countries took part in uprisings, demonstrations, and rebellions in a movement now known as the Arab Spring. McFaul said America’s support of democracy in those countries provoked Putin.
“For him, the Arab Spring was confirming his hypothesis about American power," McFaul explained.
In the 2012 Russian election, Vladimir Putin was inaugurated to the president’s office, even after many video monitoring systems recorded ‘carousel voting.’ As reported on by BBC Russia reporter Maria Vassilieva, witnesses described decentralized authorities orchestrating voters to cast multiple ballots. Thousands of Russian citizens protested in March 2012 and spoke out about the fraud.
Putin blamed the United States not only for Russian citizens protesting, but also for the demonstrations happening in Libya and Syria. It was at this time that McFaul served as the United States Ambassador to Russia, and consequently became the literal poster child for anti-American disinformation campaigns and propaganda.
Putin was enthusiastic about building support for the Eurasia Economic Union, which aimed to bring economic cooperation between former Soviet states and to leverage power against the European Union. “And yet, two years later Putin invaded Ukraine, annexed Crimea and guaranteed, I think forever, that Ukraine’s never going to join his club,” said McFaul.
“[Putin] thinks you're the enemy. Your values, your norms, your multilateralism, your democracy, your liberal values,” said McFaul. “I can’t travel to Russia today because of the new fight that we’re in.”
U.S. intelligence agencies investigated Russia's interference in our 2016 presidential election. As a result, 12 members of Russia’s military intelligence were indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Russia's efforts to undermine Hillary Clinton's candidacy and bolster Donald Trump's was carried out through the release of stolen electronic property and a misinformation campaign perpetrated by Russian troll farms. These efforts also served the larger goal of creating and amplifying political tension in the United States.
The seriousness of Russia's interference in the 2016 election is highlighted in Congress' current impeachment investigations into President Donald Trump. The U.S. House of Representatives is currently holding hearings on potential charges of abuse of the presidential office by Trump that will inform whether articles of impeachment will be drafted.
McFaul weighed in on the matter, saying, “I think that the evidence is overwhelming, is in part underscored by how the other side can't actually do anything with the facts, so they have to attack the messengers in ways that I find deeply troubling.”
One argument of defense for the president from Republican lawmakers was the conspiracy theory perpetrated by Trump and others, of a debunked narrative of Ukrainian interference in our election.
Fiona Hill, a U.S. national security expert on Russia who testified on Capitol Hill Nov. 21, commented on the irresponsibility of such conspiracy theories.
“Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country, and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that is being perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”
McFaul has intimate experience with Trump's devotion to Putin, who along with other Americans, was nearly subjected to Russian interrogation last year. This exchange of proposal by Putin was formally rebuked by the Senate, who has levied sanctions against Russia for their military intelligence's role in the 2016 election interference.
With respect to the Trump’s current foreign policy attitudes of isolation, McFaul said, “What [Trump] gets wrong is that the means to that is sometimes engagement, sometimes it's coercion, sometimes it's war. That’s your toolkit. So far, I would argue that he has not achieved one concrete thing.”
Alarmed by our current relations, Russian-born attendee Sofia Vilner, a naturalized U.S. citizen since 2002, said, “A lot of Russian Jews, they believe Trump. So it’s really upsetting to me. Everything is like smoke-and-mirrors, ‘alternate facts.’ It’s all propaganda.”
“We are in a moment of democratic erosion around the world,” said McFaul, voicing concern about our diminishing global alliances. “If we are going to meet the challenges of China, and Russia, and Iran, we need our democratic allies. It has to be more than just a protection racket.”
Randy Steinberg, a Los Angeles legal recruiter disagreed with the president’s approach. Echoing McFaul’s take on the danger of Trump getting re-elected, Steinberg said, “[Trump] will use that as a mandate to do whatever he wants.”
In spite of the current political climate, McFaul expressed optimism for the future of U.S.-- Russian relations by highlighting that Putin had not institutionalized his autocracy through the creation of a national party. "We're not very good at predicting revolutions… I think we might be surprised when the Putin era ends, how quickly [Russia] could become a democratic, European, normal, boring country.”