- US
- History
- US Foreign Policy
- International Affairs
- Congress
- The Presidency
- China
- Russia
- Confronting and Competing with China
- Determining America's Role in the World
Former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul returns to Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson to discuss his new book, Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder. McFaul explains why Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and today’s autocratic leaders fundamentally do not think like we do—and why that misunderstanding has shaped some of America’s most consequential foreign-policy mistakes. Drawing on decades of scholarship and firsthand experience inside the Kremlin, McFaul traces Russia’s post–Cold War slide back into autocracy; challenges the claim that NATO expansion caused the rupture with Moscow; and argues that the true threat to authoritarian regimes is democratic example rather than Western military power. He examines the war in Ukraine, its implications for Taiwan, the limits of transactional diplomacy with ideologues like Putin, and the enduring lessons of Cold War statecraft. He also reflects on his unlikely journey from Butte, Montana, to Spaso House —the Moscow home of the U.S. ambassador to Russia— and why he remains convinced that democracy, however fragile, is still the West’s greatest strategic advantage.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Michael A. McFaul is the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution as well as a professor of political science and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He also currently works as an international affairs analyst for MSNOW. 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. An expert in US foreign policy, Russian politics, and democratization, he has authored several books, including most recently, Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, and the New Global Disorder. (Harper Collins, 2025)
Peter M. Robinson is the Murdoch Distinguished Policy Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he writes about business and politics and hosts Hoover's video series program Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson. Robinson spent six years in the White House, serving from 1982 to 1983 as chief speechwriter to Vice President George H. W. Bush and from 1983 to 1988 as special assistant and speechwriter to President Ronald Reagan. He wrote the historic Berlin Wall address in which President Reagan called on General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!”
