Quotes from Michael McFaul

Russians don't want to fight ISIS in Syria. They want to leave that to us. Aside from that, I don't know what are the objectives that Mr. Trump seeks in having a good relationship with Mr. Putin.

Having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. Only stupid people or fools would think it was bad.

Minister Lavrov, he said, well, you know, we don't like it when you have so many NGOs coming to Russia. And I said, well, send Russian NGOs to the United States. [Laughter.] We'll be happy to have them. And I really mean that. I think the more exchange and the more . . . cross-fertilization the better.

I also believed that the Snowden affair marked the end of one of the most confrontational periods in U.S.-Russian history. I thought then that we had hit the bottom and therefore there was nowhere to go but up, though it would take years to climb out of the hole we were in. I was wrong. Things could, and did, get worse.

Soon thereafter, Tom asked me to write up dozens of one- to two-page case studies of transitions from authoritarian rule over the last fifty years,

As we were landing, the plane's medical staff offered us some kind of stimulant to help keep us awake for the day, while also warning us not to take the drug if we planned on competing in a marathon anytime soon. I had no big races on my agenda, so I took the drug, and was amazed at how well it worked. I also marveled at the fact that I could get this drug on Air Force One, but probably not from my doctor back home.

Arms control [that is, the Cold War treaties regulating U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals] did not end the Cold War. Rather, it was the collapse of communism and the emergence of democracy within the Soviet Union and then Russia that suspended the international rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. If a new nationalist dictatorship eventually consolidates in Russia, we will go back to spending trillions on defense to deter a rogue state with thousands of nuclear weapons.

Biden's national security advisor, Tony Blinken, didn't like that format; he felt it disadvantaged Biden, as Medvedev had primary responsibility in his government for foreign policy and all things American, while Biden was not our point person for Russia. Obama was.

Putin, it seemed, didn't see how intervention in Libya could produce a good outcome for Russia; instead, he viewed Russia's abstention as Medvedev caving in to American influence. In the name of advancing the Reset, Medvedev had just violated a central principle of Russian (and Soviet) foreign policy: resisting American military interventions

Everything in government seems to take longer than it should. My vetting process dragged on. Making sure the subsidies embedded in my Stanford mortgage did not violate conflict-of-interest rules took several weeks to resolve. Even though I already had a top secret security clearance, I had to get a new one to become ambassador. That

Sometime between the Obama-Medvedev summit in Prague in 2010 and Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2014, public opinion in both countries also flipped: solid majorities in both Russia and the United States now perceived each other as enemies.

A new ideological struggle has emerged between Russia and the West, not between communism and capitalism but between democracy and autocracy.

In the winter of 1985 I learned from Russian friends a perfect saying to describe the system: "We pretend to work, they pretend to pay.

Individuals matter. Leadership matters. A different American president might have adopted a more cautious approach to engagement with this communist leader. Reagan, however, dared to be bold.

Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak hosted me at his residence for a particularly warm, elaborate, and meaningful dinner. He invited all of my friends in the U.S. government, as well as a few of my important informal outside advisors who had participated in developing the ideas of the Reset. Three years earlier, Kislyak and I had started our relationship with our fists up. But over the years, he had grown on me. We were very different people in so many ways, and yet I felt like we clicked. He

Four months later, Yeltsin met with the leaders of Belarus and Ukraine to sign the Belovezhskaya Accord, which peacefully dissolved the Soviet Union.

History shows that democracies rarely go to war with each other.6 So a democratic Russia would no longer be an enemy of the United States. A

United fronts against something are always easier to maintain than coalitions for something.

As I wrote in 1995, "America's greatest national security nightmare would be the emergence of an authoritarian, imperialist Russian regime supported by a thriving market economy."13 A decade later, that's exactly what happened.

By the end of his second term in 2008, Putin had redefined Russia's role in the world, largely, but not completely, in opposition to the United States and the West.

Violating Pakistani sovereignty in the hunt for terrorists, we predicted, would create tensions in our relationship with the Pakistani government,

And then Donald Trump won.

A Russian television series called Sleepers, in which the United States is plotting to overthrow the Russian government, began airing in the fall of 2017. In the show, the U.S. ambassador is blond; his name is Michael. They haven't forgotten about me yet!)

The result of all these unrealized schemes, however, was that Obama and Putin did not speak again for the next three years, until Putin became president again. No matter what the Russian constitution said, that lack of contact was not good for U.S.-Russian relations.