It’s a unhealthy time to argue that the USA ought to do extra to advertise democracy all over the world, and Michael McFaul is aware of it. “Some will dismiss my worldview and coverage suggestions as old style and old-fashioned,” he acknowledges in his new ebook, Autocrats vs. Democrats. “I’m okay with that.”
McFaul served on the highest ranges of the U.S. authorities, however he’s at coronary heart a scholar, educator, and activist. The result’s a ebook that’s bold, accessible, and incisive in its arguments. However with regards to his suggestions, even those that share McFaul’s enduring religion in democracy could conclude he has written a playbook for a world passed by.
McFaul has pushed for democratization since his pupil days, when he advocated in opposition to apartheid in South Africa and supported Russia’s post-Chilly Struggle transition. He comes by his convictions actually, figuring out how hundreds of thousands of individuals’s lives can change when issues go nicely. And for therefore a few years, they did. McFaul’s ebook is imbued with the spirit of the post-Chilly Struggle period, with visions of a world based mostly on cooperation slightly than battle.
Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New International Dysfunction, Michael McFaul, Mariner Books, 544 pp., $28, October 2025
Within the final twenty years, that imaginative and prescient unraveled, and McFaul had a front-row seat. In his earlier ebook, From Chilly Struggle to Sizzling Peace, McFaul particulars how his efforts for democratic change, from Russia to the Center East, confirmed early promise, stalled, after which have been rolled again. Since he left authorities, Russia twice invaded Ukraine, China ramped up stress on Taiwan, and the worldwide democratic recession deepened to incorporate the USA itself.
To make sense of those developments, McFaul has written a ebook that’s directly a historical past, web evaluation, and sermon. He explains how we arrived at such a fraught second, accounts for the way U.S. capabilities measure as much as these of China and Russia, and pleads with Individuals not to surrender on democracy promotion. The unwelcome ghost hovering over McFaul as he makes his case is Donald Trump, whom voters returned to workplace after this 544-page manuscript was largely accomplished.
McFaul has up to date key sections of the ebook to account for Trump’s second time period. However at a deeper degree, he nonetheless appears to be contending with the truth that, in his contest of autocrats and democrats, the chief of the democratic crew is switching jerseys. What does McFaul suppose it says about democracy itself that the world’s oldest and most affluent democratic authorities elected Trump twice? Does he worry that the ensuing injury adjustments the international coverage playbook for future presidents who inherit the results?
To McFaul, these developments mirror the pure ebb and circulation of political thought. “[I]deas about democracy and liberalism have pale in reputation many occasions, however finally got here again into vogue,” he writes, anticipating that there could also be a “window of alternative” for his concepts sooner or later. The ensuing prescription for wavering democrats is simple: double down.
McFaul affords that prescription not solely to his fellow students however to the broader public for whom he insists he wrote the ebook. The writing is conversational, even breezy, and he inserts himself into the narrative to liven it up with out being overbearing. Historians could quibble with the best way he compresses 200 years of U.S.-Russia and U.S.-China relations into two chapters. However for readers making sense of the worldwide map in a world that appears to have gone mad, it is a worthwhile service.
U.S. President Donald Trump (proper) greets Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, on Aug. 15. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP through Getty Photographs
McFaul’s evaluation begins to wobble when he argues Individuals are underrating Russia’s energy and overrating China. McFaul is nothing if not thorough, fastidiously counting the variety of nuclear warheads, planes, ships, and submarines every nation has, in addition to their GDP, development charges, commerce balances, and technological breakthroughs. However his learn of how Washington assesses these nations is open to debate.
On Russia, it’s actually truthful to say that Barack Obama underrated the nation when he mocked Mitt Romney for calling it the USA’ primary geopolitical foe, suggesting the Nineteen Eighties have been “calling to ask for his or her international coverage again.” However the concept the USA is underrating Russia now makes much less sense. Actually, the Biden administration confronted sustained criticism for placing limits on weapons transfers in order to handle the chance of Russian escalation. As for Trump, he rolled out an precise purple carpet for Putin in Alaska and known as Russia a “highly effective nation,” chiding Ukraine for not reflecting this truth: “You don’t tackle a nation that’s 10 occasions your measurement.”
Certainly, Russia is a disruptive power in world politics, however that is much less a mirrored image of distinctive capabilities than of the convenience of fomenting chaos in an interconnected world. As former Speaker of the Home Sam Rayburn mentioned, “Any jackass can kick down a barn, however it takes a very good carpenter to construct one.”
Which brings us to the nation that is aware of tips on how to construct—if not barns, then bridges, dams, ships, batteries, electrical autos, photo voltaic panels, and drones: China. McFaul notes that China’s scale masks actual weaknesses: inhabitants decline, an untested army, and financial insurance policies which might be unpopular overseas and have stunted development at house. Consciousness of those developments is a vital corrective to the concept China, to borrow a phrase from each Biden and Trump, is about to “eat our lunch.”
But McFaul undersells simply how worthwhile China’s manufacturing edge can be within the occasion of a battle. The Ukraine struggle highlighted the necessity to innovate on the battlefield but in addition affirmed the enduring worth of typical army capabilities. A struggle with China, Noah Smith has argued, would inevitably come all the way down to “who can produce extra munitions and get them to the battlefield in time.” McFaul sounds the suitable notes on diversifying provide chains and growing the protection price range, however the suite of insurance policies he recommends, wrapped up in a body that implies China’s army energy is overstated, belies the singular urgency of rebuilding the USA’ protection industrial base.
If McFaul’s assessments of Russian and Chinese language capabilities are imperfect, his evaluation of their motivations and habits is great. As historians know, extracting classes from the previous is a dicey enterprise. But his cautious and unvarnished chapters on what the USA acquired proper and mistaken within the Chilly Struggle illuminate the alternatives forward by displaying what’s each related and completely different.
Within the latter class, he notes not solely that the world is extra economically built-in as we speak however that China and Russia are a lot nearer than they have been throughout the Chilly Struggle. Whereas his longtime colleague Condoleezza Rice has mentioned that slightly than looking for to drive a wedge between China and Russia, the USA should “slam them collectively and allow them to take care of their very own inner contradictions,” McFaul affords a sobering case that the China-Russia alliance is actual and may final for some time.
However simply because the 2 nations are each autocratic and coordinating with each other doesn’t imply the USA ought to deal with them alike. McFaul makes a whole lot of suggestions on this ebook, however none is extra important than the excellence he attracts between China and Russia. To McFaul, Russia is a misplaced trigger so long as Putin is on the helm. Whereas McFaul’s judgment is tinged with emotion after having spent a long time working to forestall such an consequence, it’s laborious to disagree with him. The ensuing coverage is troublesome to execute however easy to conceive: to discourage and defend in opposition to Putin’s actions to threaten his neighbors and destabilize world cooperation.
With regards to China, nevertheless, McFaul declines to affix the refrain of voices who counsel the die is forged. Lumping China with Russia is “untimely,” he concludes. “Quietly, persistently, and with low expectations for achievement, American leaders should remind their Chinese language counterparts that China is healthier off as a significant participant within the current world order than it will be as a rogue state like Russia.” Latest speak in U.S. coverage circles of a “reverse Kissinger” is comprehensible: Apart from his nuclear weapons, Putin can’t threaten the USA at wherever close to the size that China can, and Xi Jinping has charted a harmful course. However McFaul is appropriate that for now, if the USA is aiming for a diplomatic breakthrough, the unique Kissinger continues to be the higher guess.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Michael McFaul (proper), then the U.S. ambassador to Russia, communicate in Crimson Sq. in Moscow on Could 7, 2013.Mladen Antonov through Getty Photographs
This all raises the query of what bets the USA ought to make within the first place. To McFaul, it’s time to fly the flag of democracy as soon as once more and fight the “lethal cocktail of autocracy and energy” that threatens U.S. safety.
McFaul is a real believer in what he’s promoting—his use of phrases like “liberal worldwide order” and “the suitable facet of historical past” is frequent and unironic. What’s extra, if he’s positioning himself for future authorities workplace, he doesn’t act prefer it. (The ebook features a strong protection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the uncommon coverage opposed by Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and Ted Cruz.) He insists that energy isn’t the whole lot in world politics; leaders and residents matter too. He ends with a plea for confidence and unity amongst Individuals because the important elements to resume democracy.
It’s a highly effective message. However it’s lacking the one different vital ingredient whose worth policymakers have discovered the laborious means: humility.
Selling democracy was powerful for the USA even when the going was good. Nobody likes to be lectured, notably when, given the realities of great-power politics, the lecturer will inevitably show responsible of hypocrisy. However selling democracy at a second when the USA’ personal democracy is underneath assault by its duly elected head of state is a distinct matter altogether.
McFaul doesn’t ignore the difficulty. Reasonably, he says Trump’s successor can choose up the mantle the place it fell. But when the USA survives as an actual democracy, Trump’s successor won’t ever be capable to assure that she or he won’t in flip get replaced by one other Trump-like determine.
America has now elected Trump twice. For all of Biden’s remonstrations that Trump is “not who we’re,” there isn’t a denying that the MAGA motion is a central thread within the nation’s tapestry. Voters proper now are supremely dissatisfied. They’ve evicted the social gathering within the White Home in three straight elections, which has not occurred in over 100 years. Consequently, it will be a very good time for policymakers within the U.S. to step again and, as soccer coaches prefer to say, management the controllables. In a phrase, it’s time for realism. Not realism within the theoretical sense of believing relative energy determines the whole lot, not realism within the normative sense that self-interest ought to drive coverage, however slightly realism within the sensible sense of being real looking about what may be achieved.
Notably, in his chapter on the teachings of the Chilly Struggle and the risks of overreach, McFaul units out 5 core U.S. international coverage pursuits: Defend the homeland, deter assaults on allies, cease Russian aggression in opposition to Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe, stop struggle over Taiwan, and protect freedom of navigation within the South China Sea. This is a wonderful distillation of the pursuits that matter proper now, and none requires selling democracy. McFaul hyperlinks Russia and China’s aggressive actions to their autocratic character and identifies this as an underlying driver of battle. However that doesn’t make it any simpler to democratize Russia or China. The generational problem of securing McFaul’s 5 core pursuits alone suggests they’re greater than sufficient to occupy policymakers. And they’re what the American individuals—offended, exhausted, and trying to find solutions—would assist proper now.
Within the afterword to his ebook Lenin’s Tomb, David Remnick recounts his go to within the early Nineteen Nineties with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The outstanding Soviet dissident and Nobel Laureate had lived in exile in Vermont for practically twenty years and, with the top of the Chilly Struggle, was making ready to return house. Remnick requested him his hopes for Russia. Solzhenitsyn, Remnick wrote, responded that what he hoped for “was not a brand new empire, not the resuscitation of an excellent energy, however merely the event of a ‘regular nation.’” A traditional nation. It’s a worthy aspiration nowadays for Russia, for China, and—after a decade of upheaval—for the USA.
