McFaul's November 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 November 2023! As always, I welcome your feedback!

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In November, San Francisco hosted the 2023 APEC Summit, welcoming over two dozen heads of state and heads of government, hundreds of ministers, and thousands of diplomatic staff, all without a hitch. I too attended a few sideline events of the summit and shared my reflections on Substack, which you can read here. In my obviously biased opinion, the APEC Summit was a huge success, not just for Biden, the U.S., and California, but also for Stanford!

In conjunction with APEC, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Hoover Institution jointly hosted a historic summit discussion with Prime Minister Kishida Fumio of Japan and President Yoon Suk Yeol of the Republic of Korea. Convening this kind of event would have been almost unthinkable just over a year ago, given the historic animosity between these two countries. But Yoon and Kishida engaged in an amicable conversation with Secretary Condoleezza Rice and discussed clean energy, quantum technology, and startup innovation. Read our report here and watch the event here.

Photo by Rod Searcey | President Yoon and Prime Minister Kishida display their new Stanford baseball caps

That same week, President Joko Widodo of Indonesia also visited Stanford and spoke at the Doerr School of Sustainability. He encouraged cooperation in advancing international sustainability and more. Read about it here.

Given recent Congressional debates on continuing U.S. aid to Ukraine, The Washington Post published an op-ed, discerning whether we should use seized assets of the Central Bank of Russia to pay for the war in Ukraine. I vote yes; others disagree. Read both viewpoints here. If you want a deeper dive, you can also read the latest paper from the International Working Group on Russian Sanctions on why and how the West should seize Russia’s sovereign assets to help rebuild Ukraine. This group, which I continue to coordinate with Andriy Yermak, is always looking for more ways to hinder Russia’s ability to wage its war in Ukraine. If you have any ideas, please reach out and share!

Regardless of what the Biden Administration decides, the case for the U.S. continuing to support Ukraine is crystal clear, as I wrote in Foreign Policy. I also continued to make the case for why the U.S. should provide new assistance to Ukraine on other media outlets, including MSNBC, which you can watch here.

In my 10-minute micro-lecture at Stanford Reunion, I explain why we – Americans and all small d democrats – should care about Ukraine, which you can watch here. Moreover, it is important to recognize that the wars in Ukraine and Israel are intertwined. On Substack, I wrote about the strategic significance of a single vote on aid to Israel and Ukraine. Read it here.
 
In November, on MSNBC, I discussed how Putin’s war rhetoric got smacked down by Western nations at the G20 Summit. I also joined Alexandr Plushev for an interview (in Russian!) via YouTube to discuss the current state of U.S. domestic affairs and what can change regarding aid to Ukraine should Trump win in the next presidential election.
 
Before the end of the year, I hope to hold another hour-long Ask Me Anything session over Zoom for my Substack readers (paid feature). Stay tuned for details.

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. And if you don’t already, follow me on Twitter at @McFaul. And join me on Substack at McFaul’s World!

Keep in touch,
Mike