“They’re Not Like Us”: Michael McFaul On Autocrats Vs. Democrats And The Fight For The Twenty-First Century

Drawing on decades of scholarship and firsthand experience inside the Kremlin, McFaul traces Russia’s post–Cold War slide back into autocracy; challenges the claim that NATO expansion caused the rupture with Moscow; and argues that the true threat to authoritarian regimes is democratic example rather than Western military power. Michael A. McFaul is the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution as well as a professor of political science and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Robinson spent six years in the White House, serving from 1982 to 1983 as chief speechwriter to Vice President George H. W. Bush and from 1983 to 1988 as special assistant and speechwriter to President Ronald Reagan.

Author: March 2, 2026

---