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WORK TITLE: From Cold War to Hot Peace
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 10/1/1963
WEBSITE: https://michaelmcfaul.com/
CITY:
STATE: CA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
Served as the United States Ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014. Prior to this, he worked for the U.S. National Security Council as Special Assistant to the President and senior director of Russian and Eurasian affairs.
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born October 1, 1963, in Glasgow, MT; married Donna Norton, 1993; children: Cole, Luke.
EDUCATION:Attended Leningrad State University (now St. Petersburg State University), 1983, and Pushkin Institute, 1985; Stanford University, B.A. (with honors) and M.A., both 1986; studied at Jagiellonian University, 1986, 1987, University of Lisbon, 1988, University of Zimbabwe, 1988, 1989, and Moscow State University, 1990-91; St. John’s College, Oxford, D.Phil., 1991.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, research fellow at Center for International Security and Arms Control, 1988-90, and research associate, 1992-94, assistant professor, 1995-2001, associate professor, 2001-05, professor of political science, 2005–, visiting research fellow at Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, 1991-91, codirector of Iran Democracy Project at the institution, 2003-09, and Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow, 2003–, director of Center on Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, 2005-09, deputy director of institute, 2006-09, senior fellow, 2007–, and director, 2015–, codirector of Stanford Cyber Initiative, 2017–.
National Security Council, special assistant to the U.S. president and senior director of Russia and Eurasia affairs, 2009-12; U.S. Department of State, ambassador to Russia, 2012-14. National Democratic Institute, Moscow, Russia, field representative, 1992; Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, codirector of Moscow Center, 1994, and director of Russian Domestic Politics Program, 1994-95, senior associate in Washington, DC, 1998-2001; board member, Institute for Corporate Governance and Law, 2001-09, Center for Civil Society International, 2002-09, International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy, 2005-09, Freedom House, 2005-09, International Research and Exchanges Board, 2006-09, Tharwa Foundation, 2007-09, Boris Nemtsov Foundation, 2016–, and National Security Education Board, 2017–; German Marshall Fund, member of advisory council of Alliance for Securing Democracy, 2017–; also member of number task forces and other advisory boards.
University of Pennsylvania, Rena and Angelius Anspach Lecturer, 2014; Cornell University, Henry E. and Nancy Horton Bartels World Affairs Fellowship Lecturer, 2015; Columbia University, W. Averell Harriman Annual Lecturer, 2015; University of California, Los Angeles, Bernard Brodie Distinguished Lecturer on the Conditions of Peace, 2015; Peking University, Distinguished Mingde Faculty Fellow at Stanford Center, 2015; George Washington University, Annual Walter Roberts Lecturer, 2017. NBC News, news analyst, 2014–; frequent commentator for major television networks in the United States and abroad. Also testified before House Committee on International Relations, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and other government bodies.
MEMBER:American Political Science Association, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Council on Foreign Relations, Phi Beta Kappa, Pi Sigma Alpha.
AWARDS:Rhodes scholar, 1986-88; fellow, Institute for the Study of World Politics, 1989, and International Research and Exchanges Board (for Russia), 1990-91; Fulbright scholar in Russia, 1990-91; Forum fellow, World Economic Forum, 1997; (with James M. Goldgeier) Lepgold Book Prize, best book in international relations, Georgetown University, 2003, for Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy toward Russia after the Cold War; Award for Excellence, Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy, Washington University in St. Louis, 2016; grants from numerous organizations, including but not limited to National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, Eurasia Foundation, Earhart Foundation, Mott Foundation, National Council for East European and Eurasian Research, Open Society Institute, Smith Richardson Foundation, and National Council for East European and Eurasian Research.
POLITICS: Democrat.WRITINGS
Contributor to books, including The Putin Russia: Past Imperfect, Future Uncertain, 2nd edition, edited by Dale Herspring, M.E. Sharpe (New York, NY), 2004; With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty, edited by Will Marshall, Rowman & Littlefield, 2006; Turning Points in the Cold War, edited by Kiron Skinner, Hoover Institution Press, 2008; Democracy in U.S. Security Strategy, edited by Alexander Lennon, Center for Strategic and International Studies (Washington, DC), 2009; and New Challenges to Democratization, edited by Peter Burnell and Richard Young, Routledge (London, England), 2009.
Columnist, Washington Post and Echo of Moscow, both 2016–. Contributor of hundreds of articles to scholarly journals and other magazines, including American Interest, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Comparative Politics, Constitutional Political Economy, Foreign Affairs, Harvard International Review, International Security, Political Science Quarterly, Publius: Journal of Federalism, and World Politics. Member of editorial board, Journal of Democracy, Post-Soviet Affairs, and Washington Quarterly.
Several of McFaul’s books have been translated into Russian.
SIDELIGHTS
Michael McFaul has devoted his career to the study of Russian culture and government, U.S.-Russian relations, and the promotion of democracy around the world. His fascination with Russia was evident as early as the 1980s, when he studied at universities in the U.S.S.R. After that he earned degrees in Slavic languages and Soviet-East European studies. The focus of McFaul’s original research, however, was more international in scope. He studied at universities in Poland, Portugal, and Zimbabwe. His doctoral thesis at Oxford University was devoted to a theory of revolution in an international (specifically U.S. and Soviet) context. McFaul’s research took him back to Russia in the early years after the 1989 dissolution of the U.S.S.R. and enabled him to witness the aftermath at close range. He retained intermittent contact with Russia afterward, even when his work focused on more international concerns.
McFaul returned to his alma mater, Stanford University, in 1995 and, except for his commitments to the Obama administration between 2009 and 2014, he remained there. He has been affiliated with the Center for International Security and Arms Control, the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, the Center on Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law, and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; he was appointed director of the institute in 2015.
In 2009 McFaul was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as a special assistant to the president and senior director of Russia and Eurasia affairs for the National Security Council. In 2012 he transferred to the Department of State as ambassador to Russia at a time when U.S.-Russian relations were deteriorating rapidly, a situation that would impact him both professionally and personally. After a turbulent two years McFaul withdrew from the diplomatic corps and returned to the university where his career had begun nearly twenty years before. The many books that McFaul has authored and edited since 1993 offer, by their very titles, a quasi-timeline of Russian history and its place on the world stage.
Russia's Unfinished Revolution and Between Dictatorship and Democracy
Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin was described by Markos T. Kounalakis in the Washington Monthly as “an erudite and well-documented history” spanning the years between the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev and the election of Vladimir Putin in the year 2000. It was Gorbachev who introduced the radical economic and political reforms of perestroika in 1986 and the concept of glasnost (or openness) in 1988, both of which set the stage for future democratic innovations during the administration of Boris Yeltsin, the first freely elected leader of Russia. Yeltsin resigned under a cloud of controversy, to be replaced by Putin. In this study, wrote Robert Johnston in Library Journal, McFaul “is unambiguously clear about President Putin’s antidemocratic tastes.” Kounalakis reported: “McFaul brings striking firsthand experience to bear: The access he managed to obtain, and the time he spent with the revolution’s various political players, brings fresh material and keen insight to the story.”
In 2004, midway through Putin’s first administration, McFaul coauthored Between Dictatorship and Democracy: Russian Post-Communist Political Reform. In it, he and his colleagues ponder “whether Russia is moving toward democracy and openness or reverting again to its autocratic traditions,” observed Richard Pipes in the New York Times,” a “trend they attribute to … Putin.” In Reviewer’s Bookwatch, Able Greenspan credited the authors for “a crystal clear picture” of two decades of reform.
From Cold War to Hot Peace
From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia may represent an epilogue to McFaul’s diplomatic career. He moved into the embassy in Moscow during a tense election campaign. Putin was running for his second stint as president of Russia, and he was under substantial pressure from his opponents, including pro-democracy activists. According to McFaul, Putin accused the United States of promoting and financing the opposition in order to open a door for a more American-style form of democracy. The new ambassador to Russia was once a well-known advocate of democracy and, as such, he became the focus of an ugly smear campaign. McFaul’s love for Russia was unassailable, so he was falsely accused of moral turpitude–pedophilia; his wife and children were subjected to daily surveillance and harassment.
According to McFaul, Putin’s attitude toward the United States and the Obama administration grew increasingly hostile and autocratic. Piece by piece he began to dissolve Obama’s agreements with his predecessor, Dmitry Medvedov, and promoted policies “to fan the fires of racism and intolerance that his base favored,” Bob Blaisdell explained in his Christian Science Monitor review of McFaul’s memoir. Although he was honored by the ambassadorship, McFaul was no politician, and he never claimed to be a natural diplomat. He was eventually declared persona non grata in Moscow, which enabled him and his family to return to their longtime home in the United States.
Comparisons of Putin’s strategies to those of U.S. President Donald Trump were unavoidable. According to McFaul, their similarities have made Trump “a highly useful tool” to Putin, according to a commentator in Kirkus Reviews. McFaul counsels patience: the increased tension of the “‘hot peace’ … era is here to stay,” Sara Jorgensen commented in her Booklist review. She called From Cold War to Hot Peace “an expert political chronicle that often reads like a fast-paced thriller.”
Other critiques were mixed, but generally favorable. “McFaul comes across as a likable and admirable person,” Blaisdell observed, a man who “regularly acknowledges his own possible errors.” A Publishers Weekly commentator called From Cold War to Hot Peace a “smart, personable mix of memoir and political analysis” and added: “The author’s privileged perspective as both an academic and policy maker makes this an essential volume.”
Advancing Democracy Abroad
Putin’s memory of the young McFaul was accurate. In fact, he was a pro-democracy activist when he visited Moscow in 1990. McFaul was in Moscow to research Russian intervention in African revolutionary movements when he found himself in the middle of Russia’s “unfinished revolution.” His attention may have been diverted by his close proximity to current events, but he did not abandon his advocacy for global democracy.
In 2009, the same year that he was appointed to the National Security Council, McFaul published the book Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should and How We Can. He posits, according to John Coffey’s review in Parameters, “that people around the world would be better off under democracy and that promoting democracy serves American interests.” McFaul claims that, in general, enemies of the United States have always been autocracies and that no democracy has ever been an adversary of the United States. McFaul followed this book with two edited volumes: Promoting Democracy and the Rule of Law: American and European Strategies and Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Postcommunist World. His commitment was therefore fresh in the mind of the increasingly authoritarian leader of Russia when McFaul entered the embassy in Moscow in 2012.
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
McFaul, Michael, From Cold War to Hot Peace: The Inside Story of Russia and America, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Boston, MA), 2018.
PERIODICALS
Booklist, April 15, 2018, Sara Jorgensen, review of From Cold War to Hot Peace, p. 4.
Choice, July, 2010, M.G. Roskin, review of Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should and How We Can, p. 2191; December, 2013. A.R. Abootalebi, review of Transitions to Democracy: a Comparative Perspective, p. 723.
Christian Science Monitor, May 9, 2018, Bob Blaisdell, review of From Cold War to Hot Peace.
Foreign Affairs, May-June, 2010. G. John Ikenberry, review of Advancing Democracy Abroad.
Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2018, review of From Cold War to Hot Peace.
Library Journal, October 1, 2001, Robert Johnston, Robert, review of Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin, p. 128.
New York Times, June 3, 2004, Richard Pipes, review of Between Dictatorship and Democracy: Russian Post-Communist Political Reform, p. E8.
Parameters, summer, 2011, John Coffey, review of Advancing Democracy Abroad, p. 78.
Political Science Quarterly, spring, 2005, Peter Juviler, review of Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy toward Russia after the Cold War, p. 152; fall, 2005, Henry E. Hale, review of After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transition, p. 511.
Publishers Weekly, March 5, 2018, review of From Cold War to Hot Peace, p. 58.
Reference & Research Book News, May, 2006, review of Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine’s Democratic Breakthrough; June, 2013, review of Transitions to Democracy.
Reviewer’s Bookwatch, June, 2005, Able Greenspan, review of Between Dictatorship and Democracy.
Washington Monthly, October, 2001, Markos T. Kounalakis, review of Russia’s Unfinished Revolution, p. 57.
Washington Post, May 4, 2018, Archie Brown, review of From Cold War to Hot Peace.
ONLINE
Hoover Institution website, https://www.hoover.org/ (July 7, 2018), author profile.
Michael McFaul website, https://michaelmcfaul.com (July 6, 2018).
National Public Radio website, https://www.npr.org/ (May 4, 2018), transcript of interview by Rachel Martin on Morning Edition.
Stanford University website, https://politicalscience.stanford.edu/ (July 7, 2018), author profile.
Washington Speakers Bureau website, http://www.washingtonspeakers.com/ (July 7, 2018), author profile.
Michael McFaul
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Michael McFaul
7th United States Ambassador to Russia
In office
February 22, 2012 – February 26, 2014
President
Barack Obama
Preceded by
John Beyrle
Succeeded by
John F. Tefft
Personal details
Born
Michael Anthony McFaul
October 1, 1963 (age 54)
Glasgow, Montana, U.S.
Political party
Democratic
Spouse(s)
Donna Norton (m. 1993)
Education
Stanford University (BA, MA)
St John's College, Oxford (DPhil)
Michael Anthony McFaul (born October 1, 1963)[1] is an American academic who served as the United States Ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014.
Prior to his nomination to the ambassadorial position, McFaul worked for the U.S. National Security Council as Special Assistant to the President and senior director of Russian and Eurasian affairs. After his tenure as ambassador in Moscow, McFaul returned to Stanford University as a professor of political science.[2]
Contents [hide]
1
Early life and education
2
Career
2.1
Russian opposition visit
3
Recognition
4
Personal life
5
See also
6
See also
7
Footnotes
8
Further reading
9
External links
Early life and education[edit]
Born in Glasgow, Montana, McFaul was raised in Butte and Bozeman, where his father worked as a musician and music teacher.[3] During high school, McFaul participated in Policy Debate. His partner was current Montana Senator Steve Daines.
He earned a B.A. in international relations and Slavic languages and an M.A. in Slavic and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986, and spent time in the Soviet Union as a student, first the summer of 1983 studying Russian at the Leningrad State University, now Saint Petersburg State University, and then a semester in 1985 at Pushkin Institute.[3] As a Rhodes Scholar, he earned a DPhil in international relations from St John's College, Oxford in 1991.[2] He wrote his thesis on U.S. and Soviet intervention in revolutionary movements in southern Africa.[3]
McFaul received an honorary doctorate from Montana State University during the university's fall commencement in 2015.[4][5]
Career[edit]
In 1994, McFaul and one time close friend and colleague Sergey Markov helped found the Moscow Carnegie Center.[3]
McFaul's past engagement with Russian political figures included a denunciation of him in 1994 by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party and a member of the State Duma (the Russian parliament),[6] and a subsequent shooting incident in which a shot was fired into McFaul's office window in Moscow.[6] Two years later, Alexander Korzhakov, a confidante of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, invited McFaul to the Kremlin during the 1996 Russian presidential election, because of McFaul's research on electoral politics.[6]
In his capacity as a professor of political science at Stanford University, McFaul was the director of the university's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.[2] A Hoover Institution Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow, McFaul is a Democrat who was the architect of U.S. President Barack Obama's policy on Russia.[7]
In an interview to a news portal Slon.ru, McFaul described himself as "specialist on democracy, anti-dictator movements, revolutions".[8]
In 2009, McFaul joined the Barack Obama administration as a senior adviser in Washington, D.C., where he was the architect of the so-called "Russian reset" policy. In 2011, Obama nominated McFaul to be the 7th United States Ambassador to Russia. On December 17, 2011, the United States Senate confirmed McFaul by unanimous consent.[9] McFaul became the first non-career diplomat to be the U.S. ambassador to Russia.[7] McFaul announced his resignation from his posting to Russia on February 4, 2014, effective after the Sochi Olympics. In a blog post, he expressed his gratitude for the job and his sorrow at leaving Moscow, but explained that originally he had planned to spend only two years in the Obama administration, and after five years, his family desperately wanted to return to life in California.[10][11] John Tefft was confirmed as the next ambassador to Russia.[12]
After returning to academia, McFaul continued to be involved in geopolitics.[13] In October 2014, he stated that he believed the Russians continued to bug his and his wife's cell phones in the United States.[14]
Russian opposition visit[edit]
On January 17, 2012, soon after McFaul was appointed the new United States Ambassador to Russia and arrived in Moscow to assume his post, a number of organizers and prominent participants of the 2011 Russian protests, as well as some prominent figures of the Russian opposition parties, visited the Embassy of the United States in Moscow. On the entrance to the embassy, they were encountered by TV journalists who asked them why they were visiting the new Ambassador.[15] On the video later released on YouTube[16] and titled "Получение инструкций в посольстве США" (Receiving instructions in the Embassy of the United States) opposition activists appear flustered by the unexpected media attention. Later, when upon leaving the embassy and once again being encircled by journalists, the activists responded by declaring the journalists spreaders of "Surkovian propaganda" and made no other statement.[15] The visitors to Michael McFaul included: Yevgeniya Chirikova (member of Strategy-31 and Khimki forest activist leader), Boris Nemtsov (leader of the People's Freedom Party), Lev Ponomarev (human rights activist of the Moscow Helsinki Group), Sergey Mitrokhin (leader of Yabloko party), Oksana Dmitriyeva (deputy head of A Just Russia), Lilia Shibanova (head of the GOLOS Association elections monitor group).[15] Leonid Kalashnikov from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation also attended. [17] Two weeks later, journalist Olga Romanova who managed the financial spending of the December protests, also visited the American Embassy. She said that they discussed Russian protests and the United States Presidential election campaign with McFaul.[18]
As aftermatch of these events McFaul called Russia "barbarian country" YouTube[19]
Reaction to the incident was mixed: President Dmitry Medvedev, in his public comments at Moscow State University, largely exonerated McFaul by saying that meeting with opposition figures was a routine occurrence, although he warned the new U.S. ambassador that he is on Russian soil and should respect Russian political sensibilities.[20] The incident sparked a highly negative reaction in the Russian media[which?] and blogs.[which?][15][20] but an article in The Daily Beast wrote that McFaul's stance won plaudits from pro-democracy activists and Web-savvy Russian youth and that, "in the tight-knit world of Moscow’s opposition, McFaul has become something of an Internet celebrity, making him a true 21st-century diplomat."[21][dead link]
Recognition[edit]
Coit D. Blacker called McFaul "the leading scholar of his generation, maybe the leading scholar, on post-Communist Russia" and a Stanford news release said his knowledge of Russia "was an important resource to politicians. He advised President George W. Bush on his dealings with Russian President Vladimir Putin".[6][22]
An article in Russia Profile called McFaul one of the leading U.S. experts in democracy and democratic transitions.[20] An article in The Daily Beast described McFaul as "an earnest Stanford academic".[21]
Personal life[edit]
McFaul and his wife, Donna Norton, married in 1993 and have two sons, Cole and Luke.[23]
Michael McFaul is Professor of Political Science, Director and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995. He is also an analyst for NBC News and a contributing columnist to The Washington Post. Dr. McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014). Dr. McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University in 1991.
Michael McFaul is a professor of Political Science at Stanford University and a Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he co-directs the Iran Democracy Project. Previously he directed the Center on Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) for International Studies at Stanford University. McFaul is a non-resident Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and serves on the Board of Directors of the Eurasia Foundation, the Firebird Fund, Freedom House, the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy, and the International Research and Exchange Board (IREX). He has authored, co-authored and edited a number of books including Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine's Democratic Breakthrough (2006), Between Dictatorship and Democracy: Russian Postcommunist Political Reform (2004), After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions (2004), Popular Choice and Managed Democracy: The Russian Elections of 1999 and 2000 (2003),and Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin (2001). McFaul is currently on n leave serving as the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council, where he is considered to be one of the top five national security players in government.
Michael McFaul is Professor of Political Science, Director and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995. He is also an analyst for NBC News and a contributing columnist to The Washington Post. Dr. McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014). He has authored several books, including From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin's Russia; Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; with Kathryn Stoner, Transitions To Democracy: A Comparative Perspective; with James Goldgeier, Power and Purpose: American Policy toward Russia after the Cold War; and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin. His current research interests include American foreign policy, great power relations, and the relationship between democracy and development. Dr. McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University in 1991.
CV: https://michaelmcfaul.com/sites/default/files/documents/DR.%20MCFAUL%27S%20CURRICULUM%20VITAE.pdf
< Ex-Ambassador Michael McFaul Traces U.S.-Russia Ties 'From Cold War To Hot Peace' May 4, 20185:07 AM ET Listen· 7:06 7:06 Queue Download Embed Facebook Twitter Flipboard Email RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Former U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul is out with a new book this coming week, revealing personal details about his role in fostering Washington's still-troubled relationship with Russia. "From Cold War To Hot Peace" is part memoir, part history, but McFaul also suggests another genre. MICHAEL MCFAUL: It's a tragedy about what we tried to do in the Obama administration. And on a personal level, it's a tragedy about what I tried to do with Russia for the last 30 years. MARTIN: Those years began with work as a pro-democracy activist in Moscow, watching the fall of the Soviet Union, and eventually became a troubled two years as former President Obama's ambassador to Russia. McFaul told me as soon as he arrived in Moscow in 2012, Vladimir Putin considered him an adversary. MCFAUL: By the time I got there, things had changed rather radically. Putin was now running for president. And just weeks before I showed up as ambassador, there were massive demonstrations on the street against Putin's regime - against falsification that had happened in the parliamentary elections in December 2011. And Putin's reaction to that was to blame us for fomenting revolution against his regime and, when I showed up, to blame me personally. MARTIN: So let's talk about what that ended up looking like because you are almost immediately painted as someone trying to unseat the current political system and to bring some kind of American-style democracy to Russia. Explain what kind of pressure you and your family were under. MCFAUL: Yeah, it was unpleasant. I don't want to sugarcoat it in any way. I loved being ambassador for so many different reasons. It was the honor of a lifetime, but Putin had a story he wanted to tell the Russians - that we were out to get them, that we were giving money to the opposition and that we were the enemy. And that was a way to mobilize his electoral base. Remember, he's running for president in the spring of 2012. And I, therefore, became a poster child of some of these attacks on the opposition. The night that a video went viral accusing me of being a pedophile - that was probably a low point in my time as ambassador. And to this day - if you Google my name and pedophile on a Russian search engine - Yandex - 4 million hits still come up. And I tell you that story because it's a story about disinformation, right? It's a story about distortion and using technology to frame debates in different ways. And I've got to say, honestly, we struggled with how to respond with it. We did not have a game plan for how to combat those kinds of very personal, horrible, ugly stories. MARTIN: So setting aside the smear campaign against you, which I understand was a difficult thing to live through, but the substance of the critique that you were there as a representative of the American government which would prefer there to be some kind of democratic government in Russia - I mean, that's not crazy... MCFAUL: Yeah. MARTIN: ...For Putin and Russian officials to think that you would prefer that, especially in light... MCFAUL: Yes. MARTIN: ...Of your activism in your younger years. MCFAUL: I think that's true, and I think that's a fair point. My activism from the past - of course Putin knew about it. And many of the people I knew from the early '90s were now in the opposition when I became ambassador, and that haunted me. And I did not - just to be clear - hand out money to the opposition or, you know, in any way act any differently than previous ambassadors in that domain, nor did I act any different than President Obama. When we traveled to Russia together in July of 2009, he sat down with civil society leaders. He sat down with opposition leaders. But back then, because the context was different - because the bilateral relationship was moving in a positive direction - it wasn't even news. MARTIN: How is President Trump perceived in Russia? MCFAUL: Well, during the campaign, as we now know well, the Russians preferred Trump for very rational reasons, by the way. As a candidate, he said he would look into Crimea as being part of Russia. He wanted to lift sanctions. He was critical of NATO and about democracy and human rights. He didn't say one word with respect to Russia during the campaign, whereas Secretary Clinton had the opposite view on all of those dimensions. And so they preferred Trump, and they helped Trump to get elected. I think the evidence for that is overwhelming. Whether it had a causal impact on the outcome is a different question. I think to fast forward to today, there's been a lot of disappointment in what he has been able to achieve. MARTIN: In Russia. MCFAUL: Yeah. Disappointment with Trump's ability to deliver on the promise of some kind of new relationship with Russia, but they still keep open the possibility that President Trump might be able to overcome the so called deep state and push U.S.-Russian relations in a positive direction. MARTIN: How do you think Putin in particular has capitalized on this moment in American history? Has Donald Trump created opportunities for Vladimir Putin? MCFAUL: So I think on the concrete policy objectives, they're disappointed, right? So sanctions haven't been lifted. They've been expanded. The Trump administration has sent new weapons to Ukraine. They did not expect that. But on a bigger level, the disarray inside the United States - that's a giant victory for Vladimir Putin. We're fighting among ourselves. We do not look like a leader in the world. We're in an isolationist period, and that creates more opportunities for Vladimir Putin to look like a global leader. There was some very scary opinion data out there. You know, in nine allies of the United States, citizens of those countries trust Vladimir Putin to do the right thing more than they do Donald Trump. MARTIN: The current U.S. ambassador to Russia is the one-time Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman. If you could sit down with him now, what guidance would you give him today? MCFAUL: I would say two things. One is continue to engage with the Russian government to look for opportunities for cooperation even if they're small things. You want to be a trustworthy voice that has relationships with the state. I actually had that kind of relationship with a lot of very senior Russian government officials in large measure because I got to know those people when I was at the White House in a more cooperative time. And then number two, do more of what he's doing. Engage with Russian society. Talk about the idea that we want a relationship not just with the state but with civil society leaders, with business leaders, with all dimensions of Russian society because that people-to-people engagement can help to lessen the blows when the government engagement is not going well. MARTIN: Michael McFaul. He is the former U.S. ambassador to Russia. His new book is called "From Cold War To Hot Peace." Ambassador McFaul, thank you so much. MCFAUL: Thank you so much for having me. (SOUNDBITE OF THE CHINEMATIC ORCHESTRA'S "ALL THINGS")
Michael A. McFaul
Professor of Political Science
Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute
Ph.D., Oxford University
View CV
About
Michael McFaul is Professor of Political Science, Director and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995. He is also an analyst for NBC News and a contributing columnist to The Washington Post. Dr. McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014). He has authored several books, including Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; with Kathryn Stoner, Transitions To Democracy: A Comparative Perspective; with James Goldgeier, Power and Purpose: American Policy toward Russia after the Cold War; and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin. His current research interests include American foreign policy, great power relations, and the relationship between democracy and development. Dr. McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University in 1991.
Michael A. McFaul, PhD
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor of Political Science
Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Director of the Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies
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American foreign policy, great power relations, and the relationship between democracy and development.
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Michael McFaul is Professor of Political Science, Director and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995. He is also an analyst for NBC News and a contributing columnist to The Washington Post. Prof. McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014). He was also the Distinguished Mingde Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center at Peking University from June to August of 2015.
He has authored several books, most recently “From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia.” Earlier works include Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; with Kathryn Stoner, Transitions To Democracy: A Comparative Perspective; with James Goldgeier, Power and Purpose: American Policy toward Russia after the Cold War; and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin. His current research interests include American foreign policy, great power relations, and the relationship between democracy and development.
Prof. McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University in 1991.
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Biography:
Michael A. McFaul is the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution as well as a professor of political science, director and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He also currently works as a news analyst for NBC. His areas of expertise include international relations, Russian politics, comparative democratization, and American foreign policy. From January 2012 to February 2014, he served as the US ambassador to the Russian Federation. Before becoming ambassador, he served for three years as a special assistant to the president and senior director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council.
He has authored and edited several books including, with Kathryn Stoner, eds., Transitions to Democracy: A Comparative Perspective (2013); Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should and How We Can (2009); with Valerie Bunce and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, eds., Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Postcommunist World (2009); with Anders Aslund, eds., Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine's Democratic Breakthrough (2006); with Nikolai Petrov and Andrei Ryabov, Between Dictatorship and Democracy: Russian Postcommunist Political Reform (2004); with James Goldgeier, Power and Purpose: American Policy toward Russia after the Cold War, (2003); with Timothy Colton, Popular Choice and Managed Democracy: The Russian Elections of 1999 and 2000 (Brookings Institution Press, 2003); Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin (2001); Russia's 1996 Presidential Election: The End of Bi-Polar Politics (1997); with Tova Perlmutter, eds., Privatization, Conversion and Enterprise Reform in Russia (1995); Post-Communist Politics: Democratic Prospects in Russia and Eastern Europe (1993); and, with Sergei Markov, The Troubled Birth of Russian Democracy: Political Parties, Programs and Profiles (1993). His articles have appeared in Constitutional Political Economy, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Organization, International Security, Journal of Democracy, Political Science Quarterly, Post-Soviet Affairs, and World Politics. His op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Politico, Time, and the Weekly Standard.
Dr. McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his BA in international relations and Slavic languages and his MA in Soviet and East European studies from Stanford University in 1986. He was awarded a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford where he completed his D.Phil in international relations in 1991.
His research papers are available at the Hoover Institution Archives.
Michael McFaul
U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014); Stanford Professor and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow; Washington Post Columnist; NBC News Analyst; Author, From Cold War to Hot Peace
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Michael A. McFaul served as Ambassador of the United States of America to the Russian Federation from January, 2012, to February, 2014. Prior to becoming Ambassador, he served for three years as the special assistant to the President and senior director for Russia and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council.
McFaul is a professor of political science and a Hoover fellow at Stanford University. He is also director and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI).
He is the author and editor of several monographs including, Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should and How We Can (2009); with Valerie Bunce and Katheryn Stoner-Weiss, eds., Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Postcommunist World (2009); with Anders Aslund, eds., Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine's Democratic Breakthrough (2006); with Nikolai Petrov and Andrei Ryabov, Between Dictatorship and Democracy: Russian Postcommunist Political Reform (2004); with James Goldgeier, Power and Purpose: American Policy toward Russia after the Cold War (2003); and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin (2001). Most recently, he wrote From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia (2018), a revelatory, inside account of U.S.-Russia relations from 1989 to the present.
McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his Master of Arts degree in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. He was awarded a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford where he completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree in International Relations in 1991.
From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin's Russia
Sara Jorgensen
Booklist. 114.16 (Apr. 15, 2018): p4.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
* From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin's Russia.
By Michael McFaul.
May 2018. 512p. HMH, $30 (9780544716247). 327.73047.
American foreign policy is personal for McFaul (Advancing Democracy Abroad, 2010), who began observing U.S.-Russian relations as a student in the 1970s and 1980s, engaged them as a pro-democracy activist and academic in the 1990s and 2000s, served on President Obama's National Security Council, and was the American ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014. McFaul, therefore, witnessed the end of the Cold War, the dissolution of the USSR, and the two ensuing decades of complex Russian engagement with democracy that, he argues, ended with Vladimir Putin's return to power in 2012. His engaging political memoir centers on his work as part of the Obama administration and as ambassador in Moscow, as his ideas were tested by the constraints of policy making and challenged by life in a Russia that was rapidly returning to autocracy. He focuses on political elites and their actions, presenting them, including the often-stereotyped Putin, as complex, human characters. McFaul ends by bringing his depth of perspective to bear on current U.S.-Russian relations, concluding that the <<"hot peace" of the Putin era is here to stay>>. <
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Jorgensen, Sara. "From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin's Russia." Booklist, 15 Apr. 2018, p. 4. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537267977/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=2adcd99c. Accessed 9 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A537267977
McFaul, Michael: FROM COLD WAR TO HOT PEACE
Kirkus Reviews. (Mar. 15, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
McFaul, Michael FROM COLD WAR TO HOT PEACE Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Adult Nonfiction) $30.00 5, 8 ISBN: 978-0-544-71624-7
A former U.S. ambassador to the Russian Federation offers a gimlet-eyed view of the new Cold War.
In 2014, when he announced that he was leaving his post as the Obama administration's ambassador, McFaul (Political Science/Stanford Univ.; Advancing Democracy Abroad, 2009, etc.) writes that "a prominent pro-Kremlin nationalist told me he was glad to see me go." The reason: McFaul, unlike many politically appointed diplomats, actually knew something about the country, so much so, as a Stanford Kremlinologist, that Putin was said to have feared him. The author returns the favor. As he makes clear, Putin is no friend of the U.S., and in the most recent iterations of the Cold War, especially the proxy struggle to support or undermine, respectively, an independent Ukraine, he has become ever more anti-American while at the same time progressively "weakening checks on his power." In some sense, it did not help that Obama backed off from the old U.S. mission, nominal or not, of spreading democracy. Putin certainly had no problem with spreading autocracy, even as Obama "did not support the use of coercive power to pressure dictatorships into democratizing." But McFaul's post-mortem on the Obama-Putin relationship is of less immediate interest than his view of the current morass. As he notes, Donald Trump enjoys far greater popularity in polls in Russia than at home, and although Putin may not have directly made Trump president--"American voters did that"--Trump has proven to be<< a highly useful too >>for the Russian autocrat's ends. He has validated Putin's claim that the Western media are slanted and untrustworthy, refused to impose congressionally mandated sanctions, and, in his obsession with the "deep state," has played straight into Putin's conspiracy theories. Even if, as McFaul writes, "the American backlash against Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election has begun," it may come too little and too late.
Of interest to observers of the unfolding constitutional crisis as well as of Russia's place in the international order.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"McFaul, Michael: FROM COLD WAR TO HOT PEACE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530650614/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0fcb425e. Accessed 9 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A530650614
From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin's Russia
Publishers Weekly. 265.10 (Mar. 5, 2018): p58.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin's Russia
Michael McFaul. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $30 (496p) ISBN 978-0-544-71624-7
Stanford political science professor McFaul, who was posted to Moscow as U.S. ambassador from 2012 to 2014, provides useful insights into the changing relationship between America and Russia in this<< smart, personable mix of memoir and political analysis.>> McFaul first traveled to the then Soviet Union in 1983 as an undergraduate, and his resulting long-time interest in Russia turned to active engagement in 2007, when he was asked to advise the Obama campaign, a role that morphed into a position as special assistant to the president and senior director for Russian affairs. His tenure in the White House and then in Moscow coincided with increased tensions with the Putin regime, which ultimately accused the U.S. of interference in its elections and declared McFaul persona non grata, despite his energetic outreach to the Russian people, which included unprecedented interactions for an American on social media. McFaul does not believe Putinism as it exists today was inevitable, pointing to George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq as a "devastating blow to bilateral relations" that might otherwise have continued their post-9/11 progress. <
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin's Russia." Publishers Weekly, 5 Mar. 2018, p. 58. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530430302/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=9983a374. Accessed 9 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A530430302
Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should and How We Can
G. John Ikenberry
Foreign Affairs. 89.3 (May-June 2010):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org
Full Text:
Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should and How We Can.
By Michael McFaul.
Rowman & Littlefield, 2009, 304 pp. $27.95.
Ever since the Bush administration's "freedom agenda" foundered, democracy promotion--after a decade at the center of U.S. foreign policy--has fallen on hard times. McFaul offers a spirited defense of democracy promotion as a necessary component of the United States' global strategy. He makes a compelling case that established democracies are unusually reliable partners and that when the United States has intervened to disrupt democratic change--as it did in Iran in the 1953 coup--its long-term security interests have suffered. The book acknowledges that democratization efforts in the Middle East have not produced more stable allies and that elections can bring anti-Western radicals to power, but McFaul counsels patience. His most important contribution is his sketch of a reformulated democracy-promotion agenda that would begin with the restoration of the "American example," which was tarnished by Abu Ghraib and the "war on terror": the United States should tone down its grandiose rhetoric, renounce the use of force as a tool of democracy promotion, and engage autocracies. In the end, the specific promotion policies may matter less than the ability of the United States to provide security and open markets, both of which have historically created the most favorable conditions for democratic advancement.
Ikenberry, G. John
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Ikenberry, G. John. "Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should and How We Can." Foreign Affairs, May-June 2010. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A227885932/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f8a19632. Accessed 9 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A227885932
RUSSIA'S UNFINISHED REVOLUTION: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin
Markos T. Kounalakis
Washington Monthly. 33.10 (Oct. 2001): p57.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2001 Washington Monthly Company
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/
Full Text:
RUSSIA'S UNFINISHED REVOLUTION: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin by Michael McFaul Cornell University Press, $35.00
MUTUALLY ASSURED HEADLINES was the operational doctrine of newspapers during the height of the outwardly cool, yet constantly simmering, conflict between Moscow and Washington that ended nearly a decade ago. Since that time, Russian news has slowly, yet steadily, migrated from Page 1 to the business sections of American dailies.
Chandra replaced Chechnya in the news hole as the Soviet superpower broke down from a threatening nuclear adversary to a diminished (though nuclear-armed) Russian state. The prevailing news trend gives the popular impression that Russia is on the irreversible--if somewhat rocky--road to a functioning market economy and electoral democracy.
Two new books chart that progress and fill in the missing context and color of the often ignored, but dramatic story born in revolution 10 summers ago. Russia's Unfinished Revolution by Michael McFaul and Casino Moscow by Matthew Brzezinski are unintentionally complementary volumes. McFaul gives <
McFaul deftly takes us through the failed first republic that culminated in the shelling of the Russian White House and the establishment of a new political order in 1993--what he refers to as the second Russian republic. The result is a country where, despite the many imperfections of its electoral democracy, leaders are voted in and the law has a basis in the constitution.
The author, a political science professor at Stanford and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, came to study the Russian revolution somewhat by accident; he was focusing on revolutionary change in Africa and while researching such movements in Moscow, found that he was in the midst of something too big to ignore.
<
Brzezinski's book opens with an incident of startling violence: a break-in at the author's Kiev apartment during which he is beaten to a bloody pulp during a fruitless robbery attempt. Brzezinski, who was then a Wall Street Journal-stringerand later a staffer, uses his survivor's perspective to highlight the grim absurdity of the event that nearly left him dead.
Casino Moscow is a personal look at expatriates, economics, ethically challenged politicians and businessmen, and the place of the ex-Commie cowboy in the "Wild East" during the latter part of McFaul's second Russian republic. Brzezinski, a Canadian of Polish extraction (and nephew of Carter National Security Council chief Zbignew Brzezinski), seems to appreciate the eastern European absurdist tradition, which allows him to maintain an ironic distance between observation and emotion.
Or perhaps Brzezinski's perspective is less absurdis, than it is reflective of the humorous vein that foreign correspondents use to speak to each other about the daily routines and small ironies we're subjected to while reporting. We all have our favorite stories, and love to share details of the Aeroflot flight from hell or the meal that bites back. And we all love to characterize the dire situation in Russia by using the time-honored form of the revealing Russian anecdote: for the economy, the woman on the sidewalk with only one sock to sell, and for alcoholism, doing shots of NyQuil after the vodkas run out. But Brzezinski has done a remarkable job of collecting those anecdotes and creating a cohesive, enlightening collection of stories that adds individual, ephemeral, and entertaining detail to McFaul's grand historical sweep.
Brzezinski brings to life the characters of modern Russia's greed and adventure--larger than life figures like the cosmopolitan Chechen Umar Dzhabrailov, on whom the author Frederick Forsyth modeled the mafia-like character in his book Icon. "Umar," as the press referred to him, was the hotel-owning business partner of Paul Tatum, the American with whom Umar had a public disagreement and who later was assassinated in front of his landmark Radisson Slavyanskaya.
As the Bush administration prepares to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the victory over Soviet communism, the Russia that's emerged continues to play a critical role in today's foreign policy initiatives, from the ABM treaty to Chinese containment. And while Putin may not have the charisma to capture American headlines, Russian oil reserves will continue to entice speculators. McFaul and Brzezinski have done a good job at helping the claim jumpers and latter-day Cold Warriors ground any fantasies they may have in the accurate and often gritty reality.
MARKOS T. KOUNALAKIS was the NBC-Mutual News Moscow correspondent from the August coup in 1991 through the First Russian Republic.
Kounalakis, Markos T.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Kounalakis, Markos T. "RUSSIA'S UNFINISHED REVOLUTION: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin." Washington Monthly, Oct. 2001, p. 57. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A79515193/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=af0e8f4d. Accessed 9 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A79515193
Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin
Robert Johnston
Library Journal. 126.16 (Oct. 1, 2001): p128.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2001 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
McFaul, Michael. Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin.
Cornell Univ. Oct. 2001. c.384p. bibliog. index. LC 2001001667. ISBN 0-8014-3900-0. $35. INT AFFAIRS
McFaul was a U.S. student in Moscow during the eventful years that saw the collapse of the Soviet Union and the birth of its Russian successor, a process that he describes, rather surprisingly, as "a social revolution on the scale of other great revolutions of the modern era." His book retraces the political history of those daysand the subsequent decade of what he terms the First and Second Russian Republics, divided by Boris Yeltsin's October 1993 assault on the Russian White House. He has done an immense amount of research, and his narrative is dense and solidly anchored in a detailed bibliography. He perhaps underestimates the Russian proclivity for authoritarian state leadership, but he<< is unambiguously clear about President Putin's antidemocratic tastes. >>His book complements Steven Fish's Democracy from Scratch (Princeton Univ., 1994) and carries the often discouraging tale of Russia's quest for democracy forward to the new century. For academic libraries and political science specialists.--Robert Johnston, McMaster Univ., Hamilton, Ont.
Johnston, Robert
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Johnston, Robert. "Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin." Library Journal, 1 Oct. 2001, p. 128. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A79340248/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=01597984. Accessed 9 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A79340248
Transitions to democracy: a comparative perspective
A.R. Abootalebi
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 51.4 (Dec. 2013): p723.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 American Library Association CHOICE
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Full Text:
Transitions to democracy: a comparative perspective, ed. by Kathryn Stoner and Michael McFaul. Johns Hopkins, 2013. 446p index afp ISBN 9781421408132, $65.00; ISBN 9781421408149 pbk, $30.00
51-2333
JC489
2012-23935 CIP
In the tradition of Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead's Transition from Authoritarian Regimes (1986), Stoner and McFaul (both, Stanford Univ.) bring scholars and practitioners together to focus on causal dynamics of the transition to democracy. The book "seeks to trace the interaction between domestic actors and international actors in bringing about transitional opportunities." Contributors evaluate 15 cases of successful (e.g., Russia, Poland, Serbia, Ukraine, South Africa, and Chile), incremental (e.g., Ghana, Mexico, and Turkey), and near but failed (e.g., Algeria, Iran, China, and Azerbaijan) transition cases. They find that domestic factors like mass mobilization, indigenous civil society organizations, and an independent media and communications technology are more important factors explaining transition than earlier literature claimed. External factors--democracy advocate actors like NGOs and transnationals, democratic ideas and scripts, and foreign media--"boosted the work of indigenous organizations in cases that succeeded but were little involved in cases that failed." In the end, however, "domestic actors really make (or break) a transition to democracy." The book is solid in scholarship, methodology, and organization but is weakest in its policy advocacy for US and Western democracy-promotion (or sovereignty-violation) projects, given the controversial experiences in Iraq, Libya, and Egypt, for example. Summing Up: Recommended. ** Upper-division undergraduates and above.--A. R. Abootalebi, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire
Abootalebi, A.R.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Abootalebi, A.R. "Transitions to democracy: a comparative perspective." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Dec. 2013, p. 723. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A393972811/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e5f8039e. Accessed 9 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A393972811
Transitions to democracy; a comparative perspective
Reference & Research Book News. 28.3 (June 2013):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
Full Text:
9781421408149
Transitions to democracy; a comparative perspective.
Ed. by Kathryn Stoner and Michael McFaul.
Johns Hopkins U. Press
2013
446 pages
$30.00
JC489
The theoretical literature on democratic transition born of the bipolar international system of the Cold War largely neglected international factors in their causal explanations. The editors (both of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford U.) view this as a deficit to be corrected, which is the purpose of this comparative collection exploring the interaction between domestic and international actors "in bringing about transitional opportunities." They have sought a broad remit for comparison, including the US government, the European Union, individual European governments, democracy promoting foundations and non-governmental organizations, the United Nations, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization under their definition of democracy-promoting international actors and examining cases of successful and failed democratic transition. For each of the 15 country case studies presented, authors were asked to provide a general description of transitional events, first examining only domestic factors, and then to assess the role of international actors afterwards, in order to avoid "outside-in" bias in the analysis.
([c] Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Transitions to democracy; a comparative perspective." Reference & Research Book News, June 2013. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A332370790/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5a8e9372. Accessed 9 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A332370790
Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should and How We Can
John Coffey
Parameters. 41.2 (Summer 2011): p78+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2011 U.S. Army War College
http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/
Full Text:
Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should and How We Can
by Michael McFaul
Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2010
284 pages
$27.95
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Michael McFaul, Stanford professor of political science currently serving as Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian affairs at the National Security Council, has written a cogent case for the proposition<< that people around the world would be better off under democracy and that promoting democracy serves American interests.>> In lucid prose free of social science jargon, McFaul aims to rescue democracy promotion from the disrepute it incurred under George W. Bush's Administration, arguing that with the right policies the United State should and can make democracy promotion a cardinal principle of our foreign policy.
McFaul puts forward a minimalist definition of democracy as "electoral democracy," that is, a system where leaders are chosen by all citizens in competitive elections. Yet democracy, simply, merely allows majority rule over the minority. McFaul concedes that head-counting alone will not secure the political components of the "liberal democracy" he intends (e.g., constraints on executive power by other independent branches of government, freedom for all groups to express their interests and contest elections, independent associations and channels of expression, equality under the rule of law, an autonomous judiciary). McFaul seems to presume that "electoral democracy" will produce the blessings of "liberal democracy" instead of the ability of 51 percent of the people to beat the other 49 percent, a point to which we shall return.
The utilitarian standard of the greatest good for the greatest number underpins McFaul's brief for democracy. Democratic government, he maintains, "benefits the populace more than any other system." It is accountable, correctible, more conducive to individual freedoms, and more apt to produce competent leaders than autocracy. Moreover, democracies better foster economic growth, stability, and peace (at least with other democracies) than autocracies.
Expanding democracy would make the world a better place, McFaul believes; that, however, is not America's purpose. The author contends that enlightened self-interest commends democracy promotion because it serves US security and prosperity. History demonstrates that the internal character of foreign regimes affects American interests; all our enemies have been autocracies. Conversely, not all autocracies have been enemies of the United States; yet McFaul judges that the long-term liabilities outweigh the short-term security gains made by collaborating with autocracies (e.g., Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan). No democracy has been our enemy, on the other hand, and
democracy's expansion has enriched us. Promoting its spread would strengthen America and put us on the right side of world opinion. In a flight of fancy, the author envisions democratization extending to the Middle East and Asia, including Russia, China, even the Hermit Kingdom of North Korea. "Sound fanciful?" McFaul asks, "No crazier than dreaming the same for Europe in 1948." This, despite the fact that not a shred of the liberal-democratic tradition has marked the political cultures and histories of those countries.
If the goal of global democracy is grandiose, the practical measures McFaul sets forth to implement it are limited and achievable. America should eschew "regime change," encouraging instead incremental political liberalization and helping to consolidate democracy where it has already taken root. The United States should support civil society nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), condition US aid on domestic reforms, promote trade liberalization, and work with multinational organizations committed to democratic norms. McFaul's policy agenda is similar to the "neoliberal foreign policy" advocated by Ambassador Dennis Ross, currently Senior Director for the Central Region at the National Security Council (NSC), in his book, Statecraft. Ross proposes that the United States assist gradual political liberalization without forcing premature democratic processes. Ross would avoid the now-jaded term "democracy" altogether in favor of modest reforms in good governance, combating corruption, and respect for minority and women's rights.
This meliorist approach was taken by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton during her July trip to Ukraine, Poland, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia. The theme of Clinton's trip was democratic promotion, and in a speech (crafted, we can assume, by McFaul) to the Community of Democracies in Krakow, Clinton stressed the importance of civil society in building the sinews of representative government and free markets. Noting the recent assault on NGOs by autocratic regimes, Clinton offered cooperative steps and US financial support for embattled NGOs. "Democratic values," she proclaimed, "are a cornerstone of our foreign policy."
"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men," James Madison wrote, "the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions." McFaul's minimalist "electoral democracy" will not create the "liberal democracy" he desires. For that "auxiliary precautions" are necessary. Popular rule, the Founders understood, offers no guarantee of decent, stable, effective self-government. McFaul wants to give voice to the people of the world. Our Founders sought to temper and refine the peoples' voice. Majority rule by itself provides no check on a bad or foolish majority. To secure that end the Framers devised a democratic-republic with an elaborate system of checks and balances to divide and limit power to safeguard individual liberty. McFaul rightly warns that the Anglo-American concern with individual liberty may not be suitable for different political cultures. He does not draw the implication that decent, stable, effective self-government may not be feasible for most peoples.
Political culture matters above all else. Missing from McFaul's account of democracy's prospects is recognition of how the vastly different political cultures of peoples--their collective beliefs, values, habits--shape the kind of polity they are capable of. McFaul claims the argument that certain prerequisites (e.g., liberal institutions, the rule of law, literacy, absence of widespread poverty) are necessary for successful democratic development is true only "in the extreme" without explaining why. He states the people of the world want democracy now, bringing to mind H. L. Mencken's quip that "democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard." Nearly all the democracies in the world cited by McFaul lack a track-record. The Anglo-American community represents the only long-standing success of liberal-democracy in the world, a long, arduous struggle beginning with the Magna Carta. When the Americans made their revolution, they did so in the name of the traditional rights of British citizens, who had the benefit of a century and a half of practical self-government during a period of benign imperial neglect. McFaul dismisses Hong Kong and Singapore as exceptions to the rule that liberalism does not evolve from autocracy, alluding to the fact that those policies were the legatees of a British colonial tradition that bequeathed to them a legacy of the rule of law, civil liberties, and honest administration.
In an insightful essay explaining the connection between culture and the values and habits conducive to democratic governance, Lawrence Harrison shows that not all cultures are equal and that few, least of all in the Muslim world, match the Anglo-Protestant culture for fostering viable self-government. Reflecting on the causes which maintain the American democratic-republic, Alexis de Tocqueville cited, in addition to material factors such as general prosperity, above all the political culture of the Anglo-Americans: "The laws and customs of the Anglo-Americans are therefore that special and predominant cause of their greatness which is the object of my inquiry." Beyond the good fortune of physical circumstances and well-adapted laws, Americans' customs accounted for their success: "Almost all the inhabitants of the territory of the Union are the descendants of a common stock; they speak the same language, they worship God in the same manner, they are affected by the same physical causes, and they obey the same laws."
Global democracy promotion underestimates the uniqueness of the Anglo-American experience and lacks a sense of limits essential to a prudent American foreign policy. McFaul is at pains to distinguish his policy from that of the George W. Bush Administration; nonetheless, McFauls' project shares the missionary zeal of Secretary Condoleezza Rice's "transformational diplomacy," a grand design to "change the world itself" by constructing an international order reflecting American values. Secretary of State James Baker's table of "Ten Commandments" reminds us that values are not the only thing in foreign policy and that "stability" is "not a dirty word." Foreign policy cannot be conducted according to the principles of Mother Teresa. "Foreign policy is not social work," Baker notes. In the lives of nations nothing is forever; national interests, however, must be secured in the present and near-term, inevitably requiring compromise and trade-offs. Secretary Clinton recognized this in her visit to Azerbaijan, where she muted her democratic reform message in deference to Azerbaijan's strategic importance as a transit route to Afghanistan.
If the spread of democracy is unlikely to cast autocracies into the dustbin of history along with slavery and imperialism, as McFaul hopes, assisting gradual political liberalization abroad could ameliorate the lot of peoples in developing countries. McFaul sometimes conveys the impression that shoving bad autocracies off the path of history is all that needs to be done to let a thousand democratic flowers bloom. Responsible self-government, though, is hard to establish, harder still to maintain. The story goes that a lady approached Ben Franklin on a Philadelphia street outside the Constitutional Convention, asking, "Mr. Franklin, what have you given us?" Franklin replied, "a republic, madam, if you can keep it." When Tocqueville surveyed the American scene, he was struck by the wide array of private associations and groups that supplied the life-blood of the democratic-republic. What do Americans typically do when confronting a problem? They form a group to solve it! Quietly and unobtrusively supporting the elements of civil society abroad--labor unions, consumer and environmental groups, women's and human rights groups, business associations, media outlets, government watch-groups, and the like--not only can improve peoples' lives, but, most crucially, give them practice in the art of self-government. Lincoln thought the capacity of men to govern themselves "a problematical proposition." It remains so today.
Reviewed by John Coffey, retired Foreign Affairs Officer at the US State Department
Coffey, John
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Coffey, John. "Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should and How We Can." Parameters, Summer 2011, p. 78+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A273615214/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=34e10576. Accessed 9 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A273615214
McFaul, Michael. Advancing democracy abroad: why we should and how we can
M.G. Roskin
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 47.11 (July 2010): p2191+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text:
47-6515 JZ1480 MARC
McFaul, Michael. Advancing democracy abroad: why we should and how we can. Rowman & Littlefield/Hoover Institution, 2010. 287p index afp ISBN 9781442201118, $27.95
McFaul (special assistant, National Security Affairs) now promotes democracy for the Obama administration after being criticized for undue optimism about Russia's democratization in the 1990s. McFaul praises democracy--it brings freedom, prosperity, peace, and US security, but minimizes the difficulties of installing it. McFaul knows and refutes every argument made by democracy-skeptics (e.g., they are too frightened of extremist movements). He also lashes the Bush 43 administration for its counterproductive invasions. He argues that firm diplomatic, economic, and multilateral efforts can promote evolutionary change. Turkey's AKP (e.g., Justice and Development Party) is a positive example of this. He provides how-to advice, such as: "The best bang for the buck is support for independent media," and urges the creation of a Department of Development and Democracy. McFaul does not discuss impediments to democracy, such as social prerequisites, demagogues, and cultural antipathy to anything Western. He barely mentions China, and does not consider why several attempts at democratization in China failed. McFaul is uninterested in modernization theory, for it suggests democracy takes root only when people are ready for it. Instead, he argues it all depends on forceful, consistent US policy. If it fails, it's the fault of the US. Summing Up: Recommended. ** Upper-division undergraduate and graduate collections.--M. G. Roskin, emeritus, Lycoming College
Roskin, M.G.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Roskin, M.G. "McFaul, Michael. Advancing democracy abroad: why we should and how we can." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, July 2010, p. 2191+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A251858195/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=944c1956. Accessed 9 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A251858195
Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine's Democratic Breakthrough
Olga Kesarchuk
Demokratizatsiya. 14.3 (Summer 2006): p466+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2006 George Washington University
http://www.gwu.edu/~ieresgwu/programs/demokratizatsiya.cfm
Full Text:
Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine's Democratic Breakthrough, Anders Aslund and Michael McFaul. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006. 216 pp. $16.95 cloth.
In addition to granting the Ukrainians a chance to start consolidation of their fragile democracy, Ukraine's Orange Revolution in the aftermath of the fraudulent 2004 elections has provided the international scholarly community with valuable material for research. Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine's Democratic Breakthrough represents a pioneering effort to analyze the event and its broader implications.
Anders Aslund and Michael McFaul, both established scholars with proven expertise on the region, have guided the work of a group of authors in this volume. These contributors have diverse backgrounds and include academics, experts, and actors in the revolution. Revolution in Orange aims at grasping the event in all its complexity, and comes close to achieving this goal.
An obvious challenge in writing a book on the Orange Revolution is that it was an event that could have easily not taken place. Indeed, as some contributors point out, astrologists may be better able to explain the revolution than social scientists. All contributors to the volume reject the idea of the spontaneity of the protests, but acknowledge the uncertainty of the outcome until it actually happened. Many things could have gone "right" or "wrong" as the revolution was unfolding. The multiplicity of factors determining the eventual outcome of the protests and their influences on each other does not allow for constructing strict and meaningful causal chains. Everything was a dependent and independent variable simultaneously. To their credit, the contributors to Revolution in Orange still attempted to identify the relations between these variables and sketch them for the reader.
Another major difficulty in writing on the Orange Revolution is that the revolutionary process did not stop in December 2004; it continues even now. The Ukrainian events of 2004 must still earn the right to be called revolutionary. In the foreword, Jessica Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, notes that the true meaning of an event as major as the Orange Revolution can only be determined with the passage of time. However, the Orange Revolution will undoubtedly have a historic significance, not only for Ukraine but also for the broader region.
The Orange Revolution offers inspiration and experience for oppositions in other countries that wish to repeat Ukraine's path. Unfortunately and unavoidably, the world's authoritarian rulers are also likely to be diligent students of the Ukrainian lesson of regime collapse. Ukraine teaches them how to act to preserve their power. Belarus and Kazakhstan have already avoided colored revolutions during their last elections, if only for now.
The book's contents can be grouped into three broad categories. The chapters by Anders Aslund and Adrian Karatnycky offer a perceptive analysis of the role of elites in the Orange Revolution. Aslund's goal in his piece is to explain the revolution through a detailed study of the relationship between the old regime of Leonid Kuchma and Ukraine's powerful economic actors, usually referred to as the oligarchs. The concept of state capture employed by Aslund proves particularly useful for understanding this relationship: most of the Ukrainian oligarchs made their fortunes because of preferential treatment from the president and access to the state decision-making process. The post-2000 transformation that decreased the dependence of the Ukrainian oligarchs on the state, and turned rent-seekers into producers, is a fundamental development that eventually led part of the business elite to defect to the opposition. Aslund offers an insightful and revealing analysis of this process.
Karatnycky complements the analysis of elites in the Orange Revolution through discussion of the rise of the Ukrainian opposition. His focus is on political defectors because the major opposition figures have come from the regime itself. Whereas Ukraine's "early" national-democratic opposition was too weak to move the country in the desired direction, the new opposition was equipped with impressive financial resources and thus was better fit to counteract the regime. In addition, the opposition had successfully internalized the painful lessons of its defeat during the so-called Kuchmagate scandal in 2001, which paved the way for its triumph in 2004.
The crucial role of civil society in bringing down the regime is the focus of the next few chapters of Revolution in Orange. As an opening, Taras Kuzio traces the evolution of public attitude toward the regime. For Kuzio, Kuchmagate is a central event in Ukraine's political history because it revealed the low public trust in state institutions, low popularity of President Kuchma, and a growing gulf between the ruling elite and society (45). As Kuzio notes, it was the detachment of the elite from the population that led the former to underestimate the mobilization potential of the public, which eventually played into the hands of the opposition.
The transformation of Ukraine's civil society is a difficult subject to wrestle with, but Nadia Diuk does it in a skillful and thorough manner. Diuk argues that the degree of civil society's organization was a factor that shaped the mode of regime change and the outcome of transition. Diuk's analysis of the understanding of civil society by the Ukrainians and the nature of Ukrainian civic groups is rich and perceptive. She makes an excellent point by arguing that the relatively developed civil society in Ukraine gradually became well informed about the regime's transgressions, but was unable to "establish a final link to the government to provide the interaction that would help resolve citizens' problems" (75). Thus, taking to the streets became a natural next step. The growing relationship between civil society organizations and the political opposition helped ensure the success of the protests.
The particular significance of the civic youth organization Pora in bringing down the regime is acknowledged in the essay by Pavol Demes and Joerg Forbig. The authors demonstrate how Pora contributed to the crystallization of some of the social and political factors that allowed the protests to succeed. Under the conditions of restricted media, civil society representatives took the role of providing alternative sources of information to citizens across the country on themselves. The stages Demes and Forbig identify in Pora's organizational development provide a good understanding of why it succeeded later. Demes and Forbig emphasize cooperation and coordination of efforts, a strong locus on students and youth, employment of modern communication techniques, the securing of resources to finance the campaign, a close partnership with democratic political actors, and a strict adherence to nonviolence as Pora's recipe for success.
Olena Prytula is well qualified to elaborate on the role of mass media during the Orange Revolution, as she knows the situation inside out. Prytula has been the editor in chief of Ukrayins'ka Pravada, a respected Internet newspaper that has been on the frontlines of fighting Kuchma's regime. Prytula introduces her reader to the topic by tracing the state of the mass media in Ukraine from the early 1990s. Her article is a story of the regime's well-planned and consistent oppression of the mass media. It is also a story of a few daring persons creatively and persistently fighting back and finding ways to provide alternative viewpoints for the public, and those few who preserved the right to be called journalists among the mass of de facto propagandists. Prytula points out that corporate and public control over the media are necessary to ensure that the censorship of the Kuchma epoch does not return and the Ukrainian media successfully transform themselves into an objective and professional watchdog.
The role of international actors in Ukraine's Orange Revolution is discussed in the next two chapters. Oleksandr Sushko and Olena Prystayko analyze the involvement of the West. The question of Western influence on Ukraine's domestic developments was controversial and subject to dual treatment during the revolution. What the West and Ukraine's opposition regarded as support for democracy, the regime often presented as interference into domestic affairs. While acknowledging the importance of international actors in determining the outcome of the struggle between the two camps in Ukraine, Sushko and Prystayko are extremely cautious not to overemphasize this involvement. In their view, international efforts became an effective instrument of changing the situation only when combined with political and judicial procedures and domestic civil activity. Sushko and Prystayko provide a good account of the major Western actors involved in the Ukrainian revolution, along with the methods, mechanisms, and objectives of this involvement and the dilemmas Western actors faced in Ukraine.
Nikolai Petrov and Andrei Ryabov of the Carnegie Moscow Center analyze Russia's role in the Orange Revolution. They suggest that Russia's involvement was the "Kremlin's greatest foreign relations blunder since 1991" (145) and support this statement with rich and persuading argumentation. Out of a desire to keep Ukraine in Russia's sphere of influence, the highest Russian officials provided blunt support to Kuchma's appointed successor Viktor Yanukovych, who actively played "the Russian card" during the campaign, promising to conduct pro-Russian policies in Ukraine. For Petrov and Ryabov, the one-sided approach Russia took ultimately limited its space for maneuvering during the elections and made it a "hostage of the interests of President Kuchma and his associates" (147). In the Ukrainian elections, the Kremlin ended up playing Kuchma's game and became an object of this game itself.
In the concluding chapter, Michael McFaul has done an excellent job of placing the Orange Revolution in a comparative perspective. Ukraine's revolution was preceded and followed by similar prodemocracy breakthroughs in Serbia, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan. This set of events with similar outcomes allows for drawing broader conclusions about their origins and meaning for the theories of democratization. Although he acknowledges that each regime change was caused by a unique constellation of factors, McFaul identifies several conditions that were present in each of the cases discussed. These were: the semiautocratic nature of the old regime; its unpopular leader; strong and well-organized opposition; an ability to persuade the public that the election results had been falsified; the existence of independent media to inform citizens about the falsified vote; a political opposition that was able to mobilize the population to protest against fraud; and a division between the intelligence forces, the military, and the police. Generalizing about revolutions is difficult, as their outcomes are determined by a multitude of factors that interact with each other in various ways. No list of factors is ever sufficient or necessary for the revolution to take place. The task is compounded by the fact that both the presence and extent of the identified factors matter for the outcome. McFaul himself admits that "[t]he stars must really be aligned to produce such dramatic events" (188). While the factors McFaul identified were important, a consideration of a failed case of prodemocratic or antiauthoritarian movements might have strengthened the argument.
One of the book's major strengths is that it takes the Orange Revolution apart and reassembles it to give the reader a better understanding of the phenomenon. Another important feature of the book is that all of its contributors surpass the original goal of analyzing the proximate causes of the revolution and, according to the editors, discuss the deeper, structural processes at work (7). The authors demonstrate the development of the Orange Revolution as a long-term process. The cheerful crowds of protesters on the streets of Kyiv so pronounced in the media were only the culmination of a number of processes that had been taking place long before. Arguably, there is no other way to study Ukraine's revolution. Most authors also regard Ukraine's revolution as being far from over. They are both optimistic and realistic about Ukraine's future. The transformation process that may consolidate Ukraine's fragile democracy will take decades to complete and will be full of challenges. It will experience setbacks and reversals. Ukraine's democratization is still an open-ended process, and the authors of Revolution in Orange recognize this fact.
Different chapters of the book touch on the same events and processes. The editors acknowledge the presence of repetition in the volume that, according to them, is to provide a diversity of perspectives on the subject. In practice, there is little variation in approaches the authors take in studying the revolution. Although the volume does not have an explicit overarching argument, the authors agree on the major issues discussed. In the opinion of this reviewer, the repetition in Revolution in Orange serves to underscore the importance of certain events and factors. The contributors reinforce and reemphasize each other's points.
The book's authors set a specific cut-off date of January 23, 2005, the day Viktor Yushchenko was inaugurated as Ukraine's new president, for their analysis. The open-endedness of the process justifies the need to stop at some point and confine analysis to the events that have already taken place. Although the time constraint limits the scope of the analysis, it narrows the book's focus to the Orange Revolution as a crucial event in Ukraine's democratization, rather than the process of democratization per se. Readers of Revolution in Orange in 2006 and in the future will have more knowledge of postrevolutionary developments and will bring this knowledge into their evaluation of the book. But this should not diminish the value of the analysis Revolution in Orange presents. An important asset of the book is that most (but not all) authors try to avoid abruptly stopping their stories and elaborate on the implications of the Orange Revolution for Ukraine's democratization in a broader perspective.
A major shortcoming of the book is that sometimes its arguments lack clarity and coherence and need further development. Some contributors could have made their stories more dynamic. The book does not connect sufficiently to theories of democratization. It would be helpful if the authors analyzed how the Orange Revolution confirms or invalidates these theories.
Revolution in Orange is a valuable case study for a student of democratization who wants to become familiar with Ukraine's political development in the past decade, but offers little new information for the reader who was watching the dramatic events in Ukraine unfold. Still, Revolution in Orange will join other books by Andrew Wilson and Askold Krushnelnycky in providing a comprehensive introduction to the subject.
OLGA KESARCHUK
University of Toronto
Copyright [c] 2006 Heldref Publications
Kesarchuk, Olga
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Kesarchuk, Olga. "Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine's Democratic Breakthrough." Demokratizatsiya, vol. 14, no. 3, 2006, p. 466+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A152513769/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a3d4750c. Accessed 9 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A152513769
Revolution in orange; the origins of Ukraine's democratic breakthrough
Reference & Research Book News. 21.2 (May 2006):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2006 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
Full Text:
9780870032219
Revolution in orange; the origins of Ukraine's democratic breakthrough.
Ed. by Anders Aslund and Michael McFaul.
Carnegie Endowment/Intl. Peace
2006
216 pages
$16.95
Paperback
JN6639
The eight chapters presented here by Aslund (Institute of International Economics) and McFaul (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) review different aspects of Ukraine's 2004-2005 "Orange Revolution," in which charges of electoral fraud were parlayed by the political opposition led by Viktor Yuschenko into political power (although Yuschenko was himself voted out of power about a year later, shortly after this book appeared). Chapters look at societal attitudes towards government, the history of Ukraine's civil society groups, the role of the network of nongovernmental organizations known as Pora, the role of the media, and the influence of the Western powers and of Russia.
([c]20062005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Revolution in orange; the origins of Ukraine's democratic breakthrough." Reference & Research Book News, May 2006. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A145686398/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4c5d4f13. Accessed 9 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A145686398
After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transition
Henry E. Hale
Political Science Quarterly. 120.3 (Fall 2005): p511+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2005 Academy of Political Science
http://www.psqonline.org/History.cfm
Full Text:
After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transition by Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, eds. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2004. 280 pp. $60.00.
Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss have edited a stimulating volume in which leading political scientists working on the former Soviet Union demonstrate the utility of a sophisticated combination of post-Communist area expertise and comparative social science methods. Although the editors describe the book as a "sampler" of cutting-edge work by top researchers, the volume in fact coheres very nicely around two central themes: state building and regime transition.
Philip G. Roeder launches the discussion of state building. Observing that the recent collapse of Communist regimes constituted the "second most intense burst of new states to enter the international system since 1815" (p. 21), Roeder is chiefly interested in why almost all of them were nation-states. The answer, he avers, is that the USSR, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia all featured systems of "segmental federalism" that incubated nations and imbued their representatives with enough resources to out-compete rival claims to statehood. These nation-states' initial victories, however, did not typically translate into strong statehood. The chapter by Stoner-Weiss, mobilizing an impressive array of original data, demonstrates that the influence of Russia's central state on regional policy making and governance declined to near-negligible levels in important spheres during the 1990s, a weakness continuing even under President Vladimir Putin and doing great damage to the economy. Vladimir Popov's chapter undertakes a comparative analysis, contending that state weakness has been a primary factor undermining the economic performance of post-Soviet states relative to that of other post-Communist countries, China, and Vietnam. Popov further argues that attempts to democratize in weak states can cause "institutional collapse," thwarting both true democracy and economic growth.
The theme of regime change also runs strongly throughout this volume. Timothy J. Colton examines the masses, exploring how they relate to Russia's emergent political parties, through a series of surveys conducted in 1999-2000. Noting that many Russians remain stoutly nonpartisan, Colton finds that others have come to identify with parties in a highly patterned manner. He prudently warns, however, that mass partisan consciousness could be rendered irrelevant should Russia's elites move decisively away from democratic institutions. McFaul's chapter directly addresses this possibility, arguing for the importance of leaders and balances of power in determining the democratic fates of states. If a pro-democracy (pro-autocracy) leader comes to office and the balance of power is in favor of that leader, s/he can be expected to impose democracy (autocracy) on that country, a claim buttressed by an analysis of almost all post-Communist states. Valerie Bunce ventures a claim somewhat at odds with McFaul's, stressing the importance of context and historical legacies over leadership choice. Nicely uniting the book's state-building and democratization themes, she argues that a strong state is necessary if a democracy is to be fully functional and that Russia's lack of a strong state (due largely to historical legacies) deserves much of the blame for the low quality of Russian democracy. She then makes a provocative suggestion: given that contextual factors work strongly against attempts to establish high-quality democracy in Russia, it may be that the low quality of Russia's democracy is, in fact, responsible for its durability. James M. Goldgeier and McFaul conclude the volume by arguing that the fate of international relations is intimately tied up with the fate of democracy. The world, they contend, is essentially divided between a liberal, peaceful, democratic "core" and a "periphery" where foreign policy is informed primarily by realist balance-of-power considerations. A democratic Russia could mean its joining the democratic core, whereas an authoritarian Russia will remain outside this core, potentially destabilizing this core or preventing other states from joining it.
HENRY E. HALE
George Washington University
Hale, Henry E.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Hale, Henry E. "After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transition." Political Science Quarterly, vol. 120, no. 3, 2005, p. 511+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A136261774/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=b7ead559. Accessed 9 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A136261774
Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy Toward Russia After the Cold War
Peter Juviler
Political Science Quarterly. 120.1 (Spring 2005): p152+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2005 Academy of Political Science
http://www.psqonline.org/History.cfm
Full Text:
Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy Toward Russia After the Cold War by James M. Goldgeier and Michael McFaul. Washington, DC, Brookings Institution Press, 2003. 450 pp. Paper, $10.95.
This book gives the reader more than its title indicates. Its authors trace U.S. policy in conjunction with both Russian foreign policy and changes in Russian democratization, human rights issues, and economic development from the late 1980s into 2003. Their focus is on U.S. policy toward the USSR and Russia after the Cold War. particularly during the presidencies of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. James Goldgeier and Michael McFaul have made use of their contacts to interview many of the actors involved.
Their theme is that ideas count, that "the worldviews of key decision-makers play a central role in the making of American foreign policy" (p. 333). Ideas change with administrations and contest each other within administrations, in U.S.--Russian relations, the ideas and actions of the United States under George H.W. Bush featured a "prudent realism" (p. 9) (felicitous term!), foregoing attempts at influencing democratization in Russia, favoring the status quo of a power balance.
The idealistic efforts of the Clinton administration involved assisting regime transformation and promoting democratization and economic reform. Its idea of mission can be traced back to the vision of America as a "city on the hill" that we hear so much about these days. But as this detailed account makes clear, the complexities of the U.S.-Russian relationship have prompted the tempering of idealism with realism in setting policy priorities, and have tested the reliability of reformist assumptions.
Ideas may carry particular weight at times of rapid change. But perceptions of change in Russia may overestimate possibilities for reform, as this account reminds us. U.S. perceptions lagged behind in regard to such changes as the diminution of Russia's power. The administrations of both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton (during its early years) overestimated the military power of Russia. Perhaps not without long-term benefit, one should say, this spurred efforts to incorporate Russia into a framework of cooperation with the West, such as befitted and might mollify a great power. Tensions had arisen in relations with Russia over NATO's eastward expansion and over U.S. opposition and military response to Serbia's genocidal policies against Kosovar Albanians. The deal with Russia included its membership in the oversight "quartet" of the EU, UN, United States, and Russia. The United States helped to arrange a special relationship with NATO and in 1998, Russia's entry into the G-7 group of leading economic powers.
Such concessions to Russia seem to have carried no serious cost. But in trying to support Russia's departure from the Communist legacy of state economic centralism, the U.S. administration overestimated Russia's receptivity to economic reform of the shock therapy variety. In fact, the book might have dug even deeper--were it a study primarily of internal politics--into whether there was some validity to the objections of the parliamentary opposition to Yeltsin-supported shock therapy in 1992-1993. Support for "loans for shares" privatization in 1995-1996 induced the emerging oligarchs to support the reelection of Yeltsin, purported champion of democracy, in 1996.
Shares securing bank loans gave bank owners--the oligarchic new billionaires--access to Russia's economic (and, for a time, political) commanding heights. From there they could look down in relative safety on the financial collapse that wiped out the savings of millions of less fortunate compatriots. And, as the book points out, at least U.S. robber barons created new wealth, whereas the Russian oligarchs were then merely grabbing existing assets. One might add that after seven decades of Communism, and with an all but demolished private sector and semblances of legality, Russia had little or none of the "fire in the ashes" that Theodore White discerned in Western Europe after World War II.
The attacks of September 11 brought a new level of cordiality into relations with Russia. Yet the Bush administration's worldview injected new strains and ironies into relations with Russia. That happened when President George W. Bush's vision of a crusade against evil sent U.S. and allied forces to invade Iraq. But no Cold War split of East and West resulted here. Yeltsin's successor, President Vladimir Putin. aligned himself with France, Germany, and other parts of "old Europe" against the U.S. invasion, in the name of adherence to international law, the UN charter, and Security Council resolutions. The Russians pointed to the absence of convincing grounds for invading Iraq, and to double standards for pushing democracy in Iraq and Iran but not in Egypt or Saudi Arabia. Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov added to his extensive criticism of the U.S. invasion of Iraq "serious doubts about a democracy imposed by Tomahawks" (p. 328).
For all their differences by early 2003, including Russian military sales to Iraq, Putin and Bush maintained a certain cordiality, while U.S. reservations about Russian attempts at reform and concern over the ongoing horrors of war in Chechnya faded from top priority "'once the war was over" (p. 329). But how quickly things changed after the writing of this book. The war in Iraq only seemed to be over. Also. I must question the notion that Bush was simply promoting "Wilsonian ideals"--in either principle or practice. The National Security Strategy document of 2002 briefly cited in the book (p. 14) departs from Wilsonian idealism in principle (in its emphasis on the U.S. ability and willingness to go it alone, if necessary) and in practice, by bypassing intergovernmental institutions.
Considerable detail supports the finding that for all its power, the United States has turned out to be either unwilling, or when willing, unable to significantly influence domestic change in Russia. But as an observer of Russia on and off since the 1950s, I suggest keeping in mind for the future the long-term influence of diffuse and persistent nongovernmental contacts related to cultural exchanges, human rights, and religious revival.
PETER JUVILER
Barnard College, Columbia University
Juviler, Peter
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Juviler, Peter. "Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy Toward Russia After the Cold War." Political Science Quarterly, vol. 120, no. 1, 2005, p. 152+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A131971628/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d2b42a3a. Accessed 9 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A131971628
'From Cold War to Hot Peace' offers a US ambassador's up-close view of Russia
Bob Blaisdell
The Christian Science Monitor. (May 9, 2018): Arts and Entertainment:
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 The Christian Science Publishing Society
http://www.csmonitor.com/About/The-Monitor-difference
Full Text:
Byline: Bob Blaisdell
Michael McFaul served on President Obama's first campaign in 2008 as an adviser and then as a member of his National Security Council. He was so well acquainted with Russia and its people that he personally knew many of the good and bad characters in Vladimir Putin's and Dmitry Medvedev's governments.
In this combination memoir and record-straightening history, McFaul describes his lifelong fascination with Russian culture and governance, from his summer studying as an undergraduate in Leningrad to his research on USSR-inspired revolutions to his activism for democracy in the newly de-Sovietized Russia in the early 1990s. As an expert on democratic reform, he knew and anticipated its long and treacherous course in post-authoritarian Russia.
From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin's Russia will have variously engaged audiences, which McFaul himself acknowledges: "By design this book is a mix of abstract analysis, historical narrative, and personal anecdote.... Therefore, I give all readers license to skip those passages not of interest to them, which I trust can be done without losing the arc of the story."
I don't recommend skipping anything, however.
President Obama, McFaul makes clear, had a good working relationship with then-President Medvedev, and lest we forget, relations between the countries became almost amiable: "Obama's decision to praise Medvedev personally was his call - I did not write that line into the talking points. But those words reflected Obama's belief that Medvedev represented a break with the past: someone with whom he could engage as a like-minded leader. I agreed with the president's analysis. But expressing too much love for Medvedev was going to create problems for us with Putin, and probably for Medvedev himself. Managing this delicate balance would remain a central challenge of the Reset for the next four years."
"Reset" was the one-word slogan that McFaul and Obama agreed on for America's recalibration of relations with Russia. It was working to both countries' benefit until Putin snatched back the presidency from the placeholder Medvedev at about the same time in 2012 that Obama tapped McFaul for the Russian ambassadorship.
President Putin began attacking and dismantling those win-win deals between Obama and Medvedev, and instituted anti-immigrant and anti-LBGTQ policies <
Putin despised McFaul, whom he had long suspected of being a CIA agent, and seems to have directed the media to slander the new ambassador.
McFaul says he "felt betrayed personally by being portrayed as an enemy of Russia. I loved Russia. I was not a Russophobe or a Cold Warrior. Well before my arrival in Moscow as ambassador, I had lived several years in the country. I was the architect of the Reset.... How could they turn on us - on me - so sharply and quickly?"
Ambassador McFaul and his family were harassed every day by Russian intelligence; in Moscow, agents even shadowed McFaul's young sons on their way to school and while they played soccer. McFaul responded by being even more open about his and the embassy's work: "I also tried to distinguish between our government's disdain for authoritarian policies pursued by the Kremlin and my respect for the Russian people, culture, and history. The Kremlin hated that. As one person close to the Kremlin revealed to me, my obvious love for Russia drove the Putin government nuts. I would have been a much easier target if they could have portrayed me as a Cold War Russophobe."
Careful about providing evidence for his hard-earned opinions, the Stanford University professor is always clear and successfully assesses the level of complexity we lay-readers need to understand academic theories about revolutions and economics. It only dawned on me after a few hundred slow and steady pages that if the book were more compelling and had more headlong momentum, it would be less persuasive and convincing.
McFaul admires President Obama and seems frank in his occasional criticisms and second-guessing of him. McFaul was never a politician, but it was politics that he found himself having to learn on the job: "In conversations with the president on our ratification strategy, I could tell Obama was skeptical. Our approach was too rational. It left out the politics."
Unusually for a public figure, McFaul <
He is patient and remarkably shrill-less in addressing unfair or false accusations against him and the administration: "Putin is mostly wrong, but maybe a little bit right in blaming us for promoting democracy and human rights in Russia." Despite Putin's sharp authoritarian turns, McFaul was and remains ever hopeful for the country's eventual democratic development.
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For me, the by far most interesting parts of "From Cold War to Hot Peace" are McFaul's careful accountings of those three difficult years as ambassador. "I was the U.S. representative to the Russian government and people, but also the de facto mayor of a small village located in the compound at the embassy in Moscow.... My new job demanded that I seek compromises both on missile defense and lunch options."
His epilogue, "Trump and Putin," is rather too careful and hedging, as if his return to academic life has softened him. McFaul is really more bold when he's out of his comfort zone.
Bob Blaisdell reviews books on Russia and Russian literature.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Blaisdell, Bob. "'From Cold War to Hot Peace' offers a US ambassador's up-close view of Russia." Christian Science Monitor, 9 May 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537968553/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8c1c15f8. Accessed 9 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A537968553
How did the end of the Cold War become today's dangerous tensions with Russia?
Archie Brown
Washingtonpost.com. (May 4, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 The Washington Post
Full Text:
Byline: Archie Brown
Cold war can be a substitute for hot war, but it can also be a stepping-stone to armed conflict. There should, therefore, be no nostalgia for our earlier Cold War or complacency about slipping into another. The Cold War that lasted from 1945 to 1989 (beginning with the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe and ending when those countries became non-communist and independent) was a necessary standoff. Communism was an ideology with international aspirations and adherents on every continent. Its anti-imperialist rhetoric (as distinct from its own imperial practices) often made it attractive in parts of the world emerging from colonial rule. Even in European countries where support for communism was confined to a small minority of the population (such as Poland or Hungary), an indigenous communist government could be formed, consisting both of true believers and of careerists. Standing behind them, offering ideological guidance and the promise or threat of military intervention, stood the Soviet Union.
Nothing comparable exists today. To the extent that Russia has an ideology, it is one of Russian nationalism and belief in a strong state. We could call it "Russia First." By definition any such doctrine does not have international appeal. Russia no longer has such a distinctive politico-economic model as the communist system constituted (though with variation over the decades between oligarchical rule and personal dictatorship). The political divide today is very different from that in the first four decades after 1945. To slide into a comparable confrontation now would be to replace a real cold war, following a short interval, by an unnecessary cold war.
For Michael McFaul, in his vigorously argued political memoir, "From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin's Russia," there is a "new ideological struggle ... between Russia and the West, not between communism and capitalism but between democracy and autocracy." As a generalization, that is unconvincing. During the Cold War there were many people in the West who felt that what they were defending was precisely democracy. The tens of millions of people who voted for democratic socialist and social democratic parties in Western Europe would not have responded to a cry to defend capitalism. What stalwart Cold War allies of the United States and opponents of Soviet dictatorship -- such as Prime Minister Clement Attlee and Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, in Britain's first postwar Labour government -- believed they were defending was democracy and freedom.
Likewise, it is hard to agree that the contemporary ideological struggle with Russia is one between democracy and autocracy. Russia has become substantially more authoritarian in the post-Soviet era than it was in the last years of the Soviet Union, but it retains far more freedom and elements of pluralism than were to be found in the pre-perestroika U.S.S.R. Creeping authoritarianism began in the 1990s and has become more marked during the years of Putin's leadership. Yet autocracy does not in itself lead the United States to engage in ideological struggle with a country exhibiting it. Washington has embraced allies more autocratic than Russia, a contemporary example being Egypt under Abdel Fatah al-Sissi.
McFaul is on surer ground when he describes the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States and a coalition of the gullible as a "devastating blow" to U.S.-Russia relations. It played a significant part in bringing the Russian leadership to view the United States, in McFaul's words, as "an imperial hegemon which uses force to achieve its objectives." This, he observes, led Putin to conclude "that Russia had to resist and counterbalance American hegemony and defend state sovereignty." Putin was among the many European leaders who, unlike Tony Blair, realized that an American invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein "would destabilize the country and the surrounding region."
There is no shortage of Russian actions, both domestically and internationally, in recent years that have aroused criticism and sometimes outrage in most democracies. Many examples, great and small, are to be found in McFaul's book. Whether we have in mind the use of administrative methods to prevent the most serious oppositional candidates from contesting Russian elections, cyber-intervention designed to influence votes in America or collaboration with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's ruthless onslaught on tens of thousands of civilians, they have been very fully described in the Western mass media.
What has been given far less attention is a question of fundamental importance: How did we get from the relative amity of the negotiated end of the Cold War to the mutual distrust and dangerous tensions of today? McFaul takes that issue seriously, and his contribution to the debate is significant, based on his experience as a political practitioner as well as an academic analyst. But I find it only partly convincing.
He notes three possible explanations: "the structure of international relations between great powers, our foreign policies, and Russian domestic politics." By the first of these he means "normal balance-of-power politics between great powers." On this interpretation, Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin "did what we told them to do, because they had no other choice." They accepted American hegemony not because they "shared American values or interests, but because these Russian leaders were weak." McFaul is not fully satisfied with that explanation, and it is even more misleading than he indicates. From the mid-1940s to the end of the 1960s, when the United States had clear military superiority over the U.S.S.R., communist regimes proliferated. In contrast, by the mid-1980s, when there was rough military parity between the United States and the Soviet Union, Gorbachev took the initiative in trying to end the Cold War, disregarding the advice of those in Moscow who said he should sit out President Ronald Reagan's second term, since dialogue with him would be pointless.
The achievement of military parity took a much larger share of Soviet resources than it did of the bigger American economy, but it was a price Soviet leaders individually and collectively were willing to pay. There was, moreover, widespread popular acceptance of a "peace through strength" policy. The philosophy of deterrence was influential on both sides of the Cold War divide. During most of these years, the Soviet military-industrial complex had even less difficulty than its American counterpart in convincing the political leadership that its interests coincided with the national interest.
At the outset of his general secretaryship, Gorbachev was virtually alone in the Politburo in believing that the Cold War could easily spill over into a hot war and that ending it, and radically reducing the weaponry on both sides, was in the interests of Soviet citizens and of all humanity. His most radical break with Marxism-Leninism was to embrace, especially explicitly from 1988 onward, the idea that there were universal values and interests that took precedence over those of any class, nation or group.
In the last two years of the Soviet Union's existence, Gorbachev's negotiating hand was weakened as a result of breakaway tendencies within the Soviet state. Their consequences meant that the balance-of-power argument has somewhat more purchase when it is applied to the 1990s. Yeltsin, during his presidency, was in a weaker position vis-a-vis the United States than was Gorbachev in the mid-1980s, and this weakness was partly of his own making. The transformation of the Soviet political system should not be conflated with the end of the Soviet Union, although the former (primarily Gorbachev's achievement) created the preconditions for the latter (in which Yeltsin played a decisive part). Gorbachev's effort to hold together a smaller, loosely federal union by voluntary consent was undone by Yeltsin's demand for Russian independence from a union in which the Russian republic occupied three-quarters of the territory and its people constituted half the population. Most Russians subsequently experienced an emotional sense of loss as well as political and economic dislocation.
McFaul places the most weight on the third of his explanations for what has gone amiss, namely Russian domestic politics and, more specifically, the role of Putin. But these are more closely interlinked with his second explanation, American foreign policy, than he allows. Indeed, one might add the importance of U.S. domestic politics for American foreign policy. How else can one understand the formulation that President Barack Obama, in a speech in Moscow, was "not afraid," as McFaul oddly puts it, "to acknowledge aspects of Russian greatness" and to "praise the essential role that Soviet soldiers played in defeating Hitler"? Other Western leaders have uttered the same obvious truths without being considered bold or having the slightest worry that their words would be ill received back home.
McFaul notes a number of American policies that have been criticized in Russia. They include U.S. help to get Yeltsin reelected as president in 1996; NATO expansion to east-central Europe and then into successor states of the former Soviet Union (decisions opposed at the time by the eminent diplomat-analysts George Kennan and Jack Matlock, who argued that they were likely to lead to a new cold war); the bombing of Serbia; the abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002; the invasion of Iraq in 2003; the persuasion of Russia not to veto intervention to prevent atrocities in Libya in 2011, on the grounds that the action was not aimed at regime change, although the overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi and a civil war followed; the creation of a U.S. missile defense system; and American support for regime change in Russia's neighboring states, leading Putin to believe that Washington was intent on provoking similar upheaval in Russia.
In some cases, the Kremlin concern was out of proportion with the reality. The limited U.S. missile defense system is not related to a hypothetical military conflict with Russia and would be helpless against a Russian strategic nuclear attack; the overthrow of governments in, for example, Georgia and Ukraine was an essentially indigenous development; and the Arab Spring revolutions were entirely so, although Moscow chose to see the hand of the CIA. In reality, those uprisings came as a surprise to Washington, and the American government was reactive rather than proactive.
Yet perceptions have political consequences. McFaul's list of real and perceived Russian grievances adds up to a great deal. He underplays their collective significance in a question-begging way when he writes: "They were all manageable hiccups, bumps in the road of cooperation, had both sides desired to maintain the Reset's momentum. But in 2012, one side did not." Even the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, when she was offering Reagan advice on what he should say to Gorbachev at their first summit meeting in Geneva in 1985, wrote that he should tell the Soviet leader, "We know that you are entitled as we are to feel secure" and the United States accepts "that the world cannot be safe for one of us unless it is safe for both of us."
The United States and Russia remain the two countries that have the military means utterly to destroy each other, incinerating or radioactively contaminating their populations. Long ago Reagan and Gorbachev agreed that a nuclear war between these powers could not be won and must never be fought. Earlier, however, in times of high tension, a war that neither side wanted could have broken out as a result of accident, miscalculation or technical malfunction. On occasion only the prudence and sober judgment of a few individuals saved the world from that catastrophe. This remains reason enough for prioritizing the U.S.-Russian relationship, for paying attention to perceptions on both sides as well as to their concrete behavior, and for not stumbling, blindly or fatalistically, into a second cold war -- or worse.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Brown, Archie. "How did the end of the Cold War become today's dangerous tensions with Russia?" Washingtonpost.com, 4 May 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537387425/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=32cf9ee8. Accessed 9 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A537387425
Between Dictatorship A and Democracy
Able Greenspan
Reviewer's Bookwatch. (June 2005):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2005 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
Between Dictatorship A and Democracy
Michael McFaul, Nikolai Petrov, and Andrei Ryabov
Carnegie Endowment Publications
1779 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington DC 20036
0870032062 $24.95 www.ceip.org
Three expert scholars and associate professors combine their knowledge of modern-day Russian politics in Between Dictatorship And Democracy: Russian Post-Communist Political Reform, a close scrutiny of the democratic reforms that have been launched to change Russia's political workings in the past two decades. From a comprehensive evaluation of how Vladimir Putin's ascension has changed the course of the nation, to extensive charts and references packed with hard data, to diagrams and detailed walkthroughs of the transformations Russian government has undergone, Between Dictatorship and Democracy offers <> of Russia's turbulent recent past, their changing present, and the possibilities of the future. Highly recommended for academic and political studies collections.
Greenspan, Able
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Greenspan, Able. "Between Dictatorship A and Democracy." Reviewer's Bookwatch, June 2005. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A133280068/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=9ffd0f60. Accessed 9 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A133280068
On Democracy in Russia: It's Not a Pretty Picture
Richard Pipes
The New York Times. (June 3, 2004): L, Arts and Entertainment: pE8.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2004 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com
Full Text:
BETWEEN DICTATORSHIP AND DEMOCRACY
Russian Post-Communist Political Reform
By Michael McFaul, Nikolai Petrov and Andrei Ryabov
364 pages. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. $50, hardback; $24.95, paperback.
Even though post-Communist Russia is no longer a superpower, its fate remains of great concern to the rest of the world if only because its location in the heartland of the global land mass directly affects three major regions: Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. ''Between Dictatorship and Democracy,'' sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, addresses the question of <
The book is a collaborative effort, and its three principal authors are connected with the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow office.
The verdict of the 12 chapters, which deal with every aspect of Russia's contemporary politics, is ambivalent. Time and again we read such terms as ''twilight zone,'' ''in transition,'' ''in flux.'' Compared with the Soviet era, the progress so far is rightly judged as impressive; in terms of the expectations raised by the democratic enthusiasm of the early 1990's, however, it is deemed disappointing.
The authors try to stress the positive, yet they cannot quite suppress the sense that although today's Russia is no longer a dictatorship, it is ''moving in an autocratic direction.'' This <
The authors survey the electoral procedures and conclude that elections ''are likely to perform a quasi-democratic function,'' with incumbents continuing to enjoy ''unfair advantages in the campaign period.'' Political parties are weak and except in elections to the lower house of Parliament ''play a marginal role.'' Russians shy away from participation in nongovernmental organizations with the result that civil society remains underdeveloped. As for the communications field:
''During the last 15 years the mass media have undergone a series of challenging metamorphoses, changing from their role as spokespeople for democratic change under perestroika to tools in internal power struggles among the political and business elite in the latter part of the 1990's. Currently the media have for the most part reverted to one of the roles they played under the Soviet Communist regime: the government's propaganda apparatus.''
Legal institutions fare no better: law is poorly enforced because the yearning for order prevails over legality and freedom, with ''order'' being understood by both government and society ''as a component of a hierarchical and not of a democratic system.''
One of the most interesting chapters deals with Russian attitudes toward democracy. In theory Russians like democratic values, but in practice they ''have a high degree of tolerance for blatantly undemocratic phenomena, such as administrative lawlessness'' and ''unpunished violations of human rights.'' The authors of that chapter, Vladimir Petukhov and Andrei Ryabov, attribute this inconsistency to a superficial conception of democracy. Referring to the time in the early 1990's when democratic ideals had mass support, they explain it this way:
''Evidence of a better standard of living in the West convinced the Russian public that Western political systems were more efficient than their own Communist model'' and ''the decisive factor for this switch in attitudes among the majority of the public was the West's palpable economic advantage, not its political organization.''
The switch was short-lived. When democracy promptly failed to bring prosperity, disenchantment set in, and today no more than 10 percent of the people continue to favor democracy.
The discussion throughout is well informed and judicious. If the conclusions are not more clear cut, it is because the situation of contemporary Russia itself is contradictory and inconclusive.
The book has two shortcomings. One is inattention to economic factors. The market economy, after all, is a natural concomitant of democracy. Where the bulk of the wealth is in the hands of citizens, government is dependent on the citizens for revenues and thus intrinsically limited. Although property rights are far from assured in today's Russia, the bulk of the nation's productive wealth has shifted from the state into private hands, freeing the population from dependence on the government. Had the authors devoted attention to this fact, their analyses would have been somewhat more optimistic.
The second and more serious flaw is lack of historical depth. Russia, after all, did not come into existence in 1991 or even 1917. Its political institutions and culture date back centuries, and if Russians mistrust democracy and the independent press, or if they set higher value on order than on freedom, the reason lies in experiences dating back to czarist days. The authors ignore this background. Their fault is common to American political science, which explains behavior by what is happening rather than by what has happened and tends to treat history as irrelevant.
Bewildered by a world in which they have been unable so far to find a secure place for themselves and perplexed by the uncertainties of freedom, Russians are instinctively withdrawing into the familiar universe of autocratic rule. Since experience has taught them they can have no influence on affairs of government no matter what the regime, they are willing to let their rulers do as they please so long as they allow them to pursue their private interests. They are profoundly apolitical because they can see little that government can do for them or they for the government.
The specialist on Russian law, Stephen Holmes, is cited in this book this way: ''Russian society can be likened to an hourglass that does not work. Those at the top neither exploit nor oppress those at the bottom. They don't even govern them; they simply ignore them.'' This could have been said of Muscovite Russia five centuries ago. It helps explain why Russians have been and continue to be so indifferent to what we in the West consider indispensable: political engagement and civil rights.
By RICHARD PIPES
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Pipes, Richard. "On Democracy in Russia: It's Not a Pretty Picture." New York Times, 3 June 2004, p. E8. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A117611461/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=6d6bdfe4. Accessed 9 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A117611461