3 Takeaways - What Putin Really Wants — with Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul (#272)

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

When Vladimir Putin first rose to power, few expected him to become the world’s most confrontational autocrat. Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, who has studied and worked with Putin for decades, explains what changed — and why. From paranoia about democracy to the drive to rebuild Russia’s sphere of influence, McFaul shows how personal power and national destiny became one and the same. His insights reveal not just who Putin is, but what he wants next.

Russia's war in Ukraine has reshaped global politics. Few people understand Vladimir Putin's motives and mindset better than my guest today, who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia. How does Vladimir Putin see the world and what drives his decisions? Hi, everyone. I'm Lynn Toman, and this is three takeaways. On three takeaways, I talk with some of the world's best thinkers, business leaders, writers, politicians, newsmakers, and scientists. Each episode ends with three key takeaways to help us understand the world and maybe even

ourselves a little better. Today I'm excited to be back with Mike McFall. Mike served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia and was a key architect of U.S. Russia policy during the Obama administration. He's a Stanford University professor, director of the Freeman Spogley Institute for International Studies, and a leading scholar on democracy,

autocracy, and foreign policy. He's also the author of two books, Autocrats versus Democrats and from Cold War to Hot Peace. Welcome, Mike, and thanks so much for joining three takeaways again today. Glad to be back. It is my pleasure.

Mike, you've studied Vladimir Putin for decades, and you worked directly with him as U.S. ambassador to Russia. How has he changed over time, both as a leader and as a person? Well, that's a great big question. He's definitely on the autocratic side. He did change. And not everybody agrees with me on that, by the way, in academia, but I do think he changed. I met him actually the first time in 1991. So we go way back.

I've had a long history with him, and I've followed his career forever. And then for five years in the government, I dealt with him directly, both when I worked at the White House and his ambassador to Moscow. And I would say broadly, there were three big ideas, two of which have changed. So in the beginning, when he became the accidental president in Russia in 2000, and he was accidental. It was no groundswell of support. He was hand-chosen by Yelton.

he shared Yeltsin's pro-market views. He shared Yeltsin's pro-Western views. But where he was different, he was always anti-democratic. And from the very beginning, began to roll back democratic institutions in Russia, starting with the media and then later political parties, NGOs, that was always clear. But the pro-market and pro-Western parts changed over time. And I think in particular, it was when there were. were democratic breakthroughs. That's what I would call them in Ukraine, in 2004, the Orange

Revolution. And then in Russia, there was an attempted breakthrough where there was massive mobilization for democratic, free and fair elections in 2011. And then the last one in 2014, again in Ukraine, Putin didn't think that those were Ukrainians and Russians mobilizing. He thought that was us. The United States, the CIA. When I was in the the government, me personally, he accused me of fomenting revolution in his country. And that's when he became less pro-Western. And obviously, after his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, that conflict became even more acute. With respect to markets, I would say he's also changed his views. That initially he was cut taxes, corporate taxes, individual taxes,

believed in the market, getting the state out of the way. Over the last two decades, he's also changed his views on that, whereas bringing the state more in control, more state ownership of big enterprises, maybe that's related to his anti-Western change, but that also is a change in his behavior compared to when he first became president. How do you think he sees the world today? He sees the world as divided between autocrats and Democrats, just like I do. He thinks that there is this decadent, liberal Western order that is, against what he thinks are Russian, conservative Christian values. He thinks of himself as being democratically elected,

but, you know, I don't know of anybody in the outside who agrees with that. But he definitely sees this ideological struggle between liberalism and conservatism. And he thinks we're out to get him. He thinks the West is out to get him to undermine his government, to undermine his regime, to erode what he considers. not me, but what he considers Russian conservative values. And that ideological struggle, I think, is the way he frames international politics, the West versus Russia. And he would then include on his side, China, autocratic China, and it's them versus us. Can you talk more about his conservative

values and how he sees the decadence of the United States and the West? Yeah. And again, I would say this is an evolution in his views. I don't think it was always that way. But over time, as he's gotten older, he's become more religious, he's become more conservative, and sexual orientation issues, he's very conservative. And he thinks that the West is exporting these values to undermine Russian families. Second, he believes in a strong state. And, you know, to call him a czar, that might have been an insult to him 25 years ago. That's not an insult to him anymore. And third, I would say individualism, right?

That is a Western idea. He's against that. He believes in collective ideas. And everybody serves the nation, serves the state. And therefore, our individualism that he associates with Europe and the United States, he rejects. Do you think he believes that Russia can restore a sphere of influence? like the Soviet Union at its peak?

Yes, he does. He believes it strongly. He's invested in it. I don't think he's trying to recreate the Soviet Union. I do think he is trying to expand the Russian Empire. He thinks that the Soviet Union collapsed, you know, because of us in the West and because of Gorbachev, and he's trying to restore Russian power and to create what he thinks is the sphere of influence that Russia deserves.

And he thinks of those terms, I would call them kind of 19th century terms, that we should have our sphere, America can have their sphere, China can have their sphere, but every great power deserves its own sphere of influence. Now, I want to be clear, like, I think he's categorically wrong about that. Russia doesn't deserve his sphere of influence, but most certainly that's the way he thinks. So how do you see the balance of his goals? Are they mainly territorial, ideological, or about personal power, or really a mix of all three? All three, that's a good list. And I think first territorial, because he wants to expand the empire,

and then he's literally conquering territory and annexing it. And we haven't had that since World War II, right? So that is something dramatically new and dangerous. Second, it is ideological in that he does see the world, you know, as liberals and illiberals or Democrats and autocrats. And he is threatened by democracy in Ukraine. If Ukrainians are just Russians with accents, he says that in one breath. And then in another breath, he says Russians need a strong hand, a strong autocratic leader.

That's their culture. Well, if Ukrainians are practicing democracy but are supposed to be Russians with accents, that undermines his argument back home for his dictatorship. And that's why I think he's threatened by democratic expansion. to places like Ukraine, not NATO expansion. But then third, it's about personal power, too. I'm glad you added that one because he believes that if he doesn't have this ideological agenda for expansion, that his power within Russia could be undermined.

And in particular, he's threatened by democracy in Ukraine succeeding. That might inspire Russians in Russia to think, well, if they have democracy and freedom in Ukraine, Why can't we as well? After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which, as you know, was signed by the U.S., the U.S., the U.K., and Russia. Was it a mistake in hindsight for Ukraine to give up those weapons? Well, it was most certainly a mistake for us not to live up to our commitments to the Budapest Memorandum. and I think the Ukrainians rightfully expected more from us from that agreement. I understand the idea that having those weapons would help them today in terms of deterrence,

but I think it's actually more complicated than that. I think to use those weapons, to maintain those weapons would have been extremely difficult for Ukraine in the 1990s. They were all centralized in the Soviet system. I still think it was the right bet to try to reach out to Russia and to help consolidate democratic institutions, there are market institutions. We failed. We have to admit that we failed. That was a project that failed. But we should have had a hedge in case it was a failure. And the hedge should have been weapons for Ukraine, not necessarily nuclear weapons,

but had we given Ukraine the weapons that were giving them today, had we give them those weapons in the 1990s, I think that would have been a conventional deterrent that could have prevented the first war in 2014 and 2022. What lessons do you think that other countries like Iran or Taiwan or China might draw from Ukraine's experience? I was just in Taiwan recently and there's no group of people I know that are watching the events in Ukraine closer. You go to government offices in Taipei and you'll see Ukrainian flags.

And that's because they understand that Ukraine's fate impacts their fate. If Ukraine succeeds in stopping Putin and thwarting his effort to take over the whole country, they think that sends a positive sign to Xi Jinping and China about the dangers of invasion of their island. But conversely, if Ukraine loses, and in particular, if we let them lose, if the West doesn't support them in the United States in particular, people in Taiwan are very worried that that would embolden Xi Jinping. And so I think those are the lessons they're learning. More specifically, there's a lot of interest in Taiwan today to learn about the technological advancements that the Ukrainians have had with respect to drones. People in Taiwan that I talk to would love to have those kinds of drones to help defend their island. So I think there's actually some very practical military lessons

to be learned as well. I think Iranians, after Israel attacked and then the United States attacked, learned that Russia may not be such a reliable ally as they were hoping for. Iran is helping Russia. They're sending them drones. They're part of an illiberal international, I call it. The autocrats are united. But when push came to shove, Russia was not prepared to help Iran defend themselves against Israel, the United States. And I published a piece with my colleague here at Stanford, who's a real expert on Iran, Abbas Malani. But what Abbas would tell you in the piece we published together about changing dynamics there is inside Iran. There's a real debate about whether Russia is a very

reliable ally. And most certainly opposition leaders are arguing that they're not. What has been the toll of the war on Russia itself? The numbers are hard to read, but upwards of a million casualties in terms of soldiers, quite a bit of devastation now. the Ukrainians are striking economic targets inside Russia every day. Because of sanctions, the economy is functioning, but it's not as functioning as well as it could be. The isolation that Russia is enduring now, I think will have long-term negative effects for economic growth and integration in the West in the future. And that's a tragedy because Russia was on a different path in the 1990s.

they were integrating in the West and they were coming out of this depression and had they kept on that trajectory, I think Russia could be one of the most important countries in Europe today. But under Putin, they chose this more confrontational path. And now they're isolated again. And I think that'll just set Russia back for a long time to come. Authoritarian regimes often look stable until suddenly they're not. How secure do you think Putin's position is, and what would it take to see a change in regime? Well, because of what you just said, we in academia, and I would say in the intelligence community as well, having worked there for five years, we're not very good at predicting

those kinds of outcomes, right? What I would say is this is a very deep authoritarian, some might even say totalitarian regime today. I think Putin's Russia is more autocratic than the late Soviet period, that's a very tough autocratic regime that makes it very dangerous to try to protest against, let alone overthrow. And I think we shouldn't trivialize how dangerous it is to express your dissatisfaction with Putin. But this regime is also very tied to him personally. It's a very personalistic regime that I don't think has any leaders in the wings that can take over for Putin and to keep this thing going. And so when that moment comes, I think it'll be a pretty tumultuous period, not unlike it was after Stalin, when there were several years, it wasn't clear

who's going to take over. Same thing after Brezhnev, tumultuous period. And both of those tumultuous periods, after Stalin, we eventually got Khrushchev, who is more liberal and open. We eventually, after Brezhnev got Gorbachev, who is more liberal and open. So it's not inconceivable to me that that might be the kind of leader you get after Putin. Having said all that, back to the unpredictability, I would also just underscore that sometimes things go really fast. One of the times that Russia was involved in a major war in Europe during World War I. That war was a big stalemate for a long time, just like the one in Ukraine is. And then suddenly, soldiers just started leaving. And within weeks and months, the Tsarist regime collapsed. I don't think that'll

happen. But I know that there are Russian opposition leaders that think it could happen that way. And I just say that just to underscore how unpredictable these kinds of regimes are. How do you think that this war has influenced China's thinking about Taiwan? I was just in China a few months ago as well, talking to not government people, because they're not very useful to talk to for somebody like me. They don't tell me anything. But you know, talking to academics, including generals and people looking at it, I think it's underscoring how hard it is to use military force and the costs that come with it. And by the way, you know, lots of great powers, including the United States, have learned that lesson in a bitter

way. And I get the sense that it's make them more cautious about how confident they should be should they launch a full-scale invasion of Taiwan? Mike, what are the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with? First takeaway, tragically in the 21st century, we did not consolidate democracy all over the world, and we have entered a new era of great power competition between autocrats and Democrats, with China and Russia leading the autocratic field.

Second, takeaway, Having finished this book before our last election, I thought we were clearly on the side of democracies here in the United States. Today, reluctantly, there's a question mark to that because President Trump does not always support democracy abroad. In fact, he's shut down many of our instruments for supporting Democrats in other countries. And here at home, we are having fights over our democratic institutions. and that bothers me. That's not a partisan statement. Big D Democrats and big R Republicans should respect the Democratic rules of the game and then use those Democratic rules of the game to have our discussions over what the tax policy should be or what health care

policies should be. And I hope we get back on track on that, that we leave our Democratic institutions in place. But right now, there are some that want to challenge those Democratic rules. The third takeaway is when I line up the balance of power, the balance of economic prosperity between autocrats and Democrats and the ideas democracy versus autocracy, I would much rather be on the side of the Democrats versus the autocrats because we have more collective military power. We have more collective economic prosperity. And democracy ideas are better than autocratic ideas, and that's just not my opinion. Most of the world agrees with me. So in this competition, I'm cautiously optimistic that democracy, as it prevailed in the 20th century,

will prevail again in the 21st century. Thank you, Mike. This has been great. I've very much enjoyed your new book, Autocrats versus Democrats. Glad to be back. If you're enjoying the podcast, and I really hope you are, Please review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps get the word out. If you're interested, you can also sign up for the Three Takeaways newsletter at three takeaways.com, where you can also listen to previous episodes. You can also follow us on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and Facebook.

I'm Lynn Toman, and this is Three Takeaways. Thanks for listening. Thank you.