McFaul's January 2023 Newsletter
My most recent projects and publications
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Since I left the government in 2014, I have been writing a monthly newsletter sharing my activities and publications. Here is the one I wrote for January 2023! As always, I welcome your feedback!
In anticipation of the first anniversary of Putin's invasion of Ukraine coming up on February 24, 2023, I wrote a series of articles to offer my reflections on 2022 and ideas for how to move forward. I suggest you read them in this sequence: (1) Ukraine's Successes in the War (2) Putin Knows He Is Losing (3) American and Western Successes in Helping Ukraine, and (4) What the West Needs to Do in 2023 to Get a Breakthrough in Ukraine.
Beyond writing articles (and trying to finish my book; see Table of Contents here), I continue to be active on Substack, Twitter, and NBC. Earlier this month, I held my first “Ask Me Anything” session on Substack, just like I used to do on Twitter back in my ambassador days. Thank you to everyone who participated! I loved talking and learning from you. Stay tuned for more!
On NBC this month, I advocated that the West implements a big bang approach against Russia with weapons, sanctions, and more, and designates Russia as a State of Sponsored Terrorism. Here you can also learn my view on why the West must keep a united front on military aid for Ukraine and what is next for Ukraine following recent tank announcements.
Moreover, I continue to coordinate the International Working Group on Russian Sanctions and remain in close contact with my Ukrainian collogues, some of who will join us at Stanford on February 24 to commemorate this important date.
Here at FSI, we are hosting four fantastic high-profile Ukrainian leaders for a panel discussion via Zoom at 12 pm PST. Details will be posted soon here. And we are organizing a free screening of "Freedom on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom" by Oscar and Emmy-nominated director Evgeny Afineevsky. Register here!
Though ending Putin’s barbaric war in Ukraine has been the focus of my work, I continue to participate in discussions surrounding Taiwan and Iran. In early January, I was supposed to join the Stanford delegation on a trip to Japan to speak at the Yomiuri International Forum on Taiwan and Ukraine’s Challenging of Authoritarianism. I got COVID and couldn’t join in-person, but I delivered my remarks over Zoom. On our World Class podcast, I hosted my friend and colleague, Abbas Milani, to discuss how democratic Iran could transform both its domestic politics and the global geopolitical landscape. Abbas is always worth listening to! Check it out.
To stay updated on events, opportunities, and policy recommendations by scholars at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, please sign up for FSI email blasts and follow us on LinkedIn. As always, feel free to share your comments on the content below and any suggestions for improving this newsletter. To sign up for the newsletter, please click here. I hope you join us here at FSI and Stanford for the amazing events on February 24.
Sincerely,
Mike
Here's a topic I'd like to see you explore, though I understand it may be beyond the scope of your interests.
I'd like to see public discussion shift some focus away from the day to day details of this war, or any war, and towards more attention to a larger picture. The war in Ukraine, tension over Taiwan, and pretty much every other conflict zone on the planet are really symptoms of an underlying disease.
Violent men.
I realize that focusing on the real source of all these conflicts, violent men, will be considered too ambitious by most readers and commentators. That's a very reasonable and understandable position, but...
If we don't deal with the real cause of all these conflicts, isn't it pretty close to certain that sooner or later one of these conflicts will spin out of control in to nuclear exchanges? How credible is it that we can keep the nuclear arsenals and they will never be used? To me, not credible at all.
So, one can argue for nuclear disarmament. Great, let's do that. But what would even this big of a success really accomplish? Wouldn't violent men then simply turn their attention to other means of projecting power, and isn't the knowledge explosion going to provide them with ever more powerful tools for doing that?
I know the world is nowhere near ready for this discussion. But without it, it seems to me that we are just distracting ourselves with details while we await the coming catastrophe.
Violent men.
How do we get rid of them??