Ex-ambassador to Russia plans to speak in Santa Fe
Michael McFaul was just a high school kid on the debate team in Bozeman, Mont., in the early 1980s when he became interested in Russia.
“We ran a case in a debate about trade with the Soviet Union,” McFaul said in an interview last week. When he went to college at Stanford University — where he now works as a political science professor — a he took a Russian language course as well as a political science class in foreign relations.
“That’s when my interest and education about that part of the world and our relationship with that part of the world began,” he said.
That interest eventually led McFaul to become a top Russia policy adviser and Russian ambassador in President Barack Obama’s administration.
“I was not exposed to any Russian culture or history growing up in Montana,” McFaul said. “I don’t have any Russian roots, ethnically. I was more interested in the geopolitics piece. But later, I did develop an interest in [Russian] art and history and culture, and, as ambassador, got to participate in a lot of cultural things. That’s one of the best parts of the job.”
McFaul will be in Santa Fe this week to share some of his knowledge about Russia. He’s the keynote speaker for the Council on International Relations’ annual gala Thursday at La Fonda on the Plaza.
This year, McFaul published a memoir called From Cold War to Hot Peace, which deals not only with his time as ambassador but also his long involvement with Russia following the collapse of communism.
McFaul’s name was in the news in July following President Donald Trump’s controversial summit in Helsinki with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In a proposal McFaul calls “shocking,” Putin suggested he would allow American officials to interview 12 Russians indicted on charges of interference in the 2016 election in exchange for our government allowing Russian officials to interview 11 Americans.
One of those Americans was McFaul, who’d served as ambassador from 2012-14.
“I was in Helsinki actually for the summit,” he said, explaining he was at the event with NBC News as part of the network’s coverage. “I said at the time on TV that I think the president just doesn’t understand what the offer is here and what Putin has in mind.”
The next day, he said, Russian officials made it clear they didn’t just want to talk to McFaul and the other 10 Americans on the list.
“They considered us potential criminals,” he said. “That made things a little more serious. And it was only late in the week that finally the [U.S.] government said ‘We’re not going to participate in this swap.’ ”
The decision followed a 98-0 vote in the Senate in favor of a resolution condemning the proposal. Even though the U.S. backed out of the deal, McFaul still has concerns that being a criminal suspect in Russia’s eyes could make overseas travel dangerous because Russia could have Interpol detain him and extradite him to Russia to face charges.
“I take that very seriously because Russia does violate the Interpol system for political reasons,” he said.
McFaul has been abroad twice since Putin proposed the swap.
“I was in Ukraine last month and I didn’t have any troubles, at least so far. But there’s certain countries I won’t travel to now as a result of this,” he said. “I was supposed to be in Belarus this month for a conference.” He and his lawyers decided that was too risky.
McFaul hasn’t been to Russia in more than four years. After he stepped down as ambassador in 2014, the Putin government put him on a “sanction list.” This list of Americans who were not permitted in the country was in retaliation for the U.S. sanctioning several Russians over the Russian annexation of Crimea and intervention in Ukraine.
Though he’s hardly beloved by the Russian government, McFaul did help inspire a Russian television drama called Sleepers ,a knockoff of the successful FX drama The Americans, which features a pair of Soviet spies disguised as American citizens. Sleepers, about U.S. agents in Moscow, debuted about a year ago.
“The chief villain [in Sleepers] is the U.S. ambassador,” McFaul said. “He’s got blond hair and his first name is Mike. So they weren’t being too subtle in trying to portray me as the guy trying to overthrow the Russian regime. … That plays to a longer story they’ve developed about me as being this revolutionary.”
Asked how it felt to be the inspiration of a character in a television series, McFaul said, “Well, I wish he’d have been a little handsomer. But I guess I’m honored in some way.”
McFaul also was part of the White House team in 2010 that negotiated a spy swap with Russia that inspired The Americans, he said.
Ten Russian “sleeper” agents arrested after operating in the U.S. for years were exchanged for four spies held in Moscow.
One of the four spies Russia released in the 2010 swap was Sergei Skripal, a former Russian army colonel convicted of passing to British intelligence the identities of Russian agents working undercover in Europe.
Skripal, who remained in Britain after his release, and his 33-year-old daughter were poisoned in March in Salisbury, England. Both survived after weeks of hospitalization. Russian military intelligence is suspected in the murder attempts, but the Russian government has denied involvement.
When traveling to places such as Ukraine, McFaul said, he sometimes worries about attacks like this.
“And they most certainly cross my family’s minds,” he said.
Asked whether last week’s mail bombs — sent to politicians and news organizations that have been critical of Trump — concerned him personally, McFaul said, “Yes, I get quite a few threats. … every now and then people will call me or write emails and make threatening remarks, and occasionally it gets kind of serious.”
He said he recently got one threat that was serious enough to call police.
The former ambassador said he’s not optimistic about the U.S. and Russia turning their rocky relationship around.
“I should say on that front, that the Trump administration actually is pretty good. I think they’ve done some important things, and there’s a lot of continuity with Obama policy, in fact.
“The president himself, however, doesn’t seem to agree with that policy,” McFaul added, “and he seems to always want to butter up and languish praise onto Putin. … The way Trump does it, he kind of checks out values at the door, and he thinks somehow that being nice and praising these leaders will lead to outcomes that are good for the United States.”
If that tactic worked, McFaul said, he’d endorse it.
“But so far with Russia, we haven’t gotten anything out of that approach.”
What would he advise an American president to do?
“I thinking pushing back helps,” he said. “Sometimes when you push back, you can get cooperation. We did that in the Cold War.
“I think, tragically, that’s the best way to deal with Putin today. I wish it were otherwise, but I don’t see a better course moving forward.”