Michael McFaul: Mr Lukashenka And Mr Putin Are Completely Aligned In What They're Doing

There is a fight between good and evil in Ukraine.

Will Putin unleash a nuclear war? How did Russian society become capable of the Bucha crimes? Will the West betray the Belarusians in exchange for Ukrainian grain export? The Charter97.org website talked about this with Michael McFaul, Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), ex-adviser to the President of the United States on national security issues, and former U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation.

— You've met Vladimir Putin multiple times and have spent quite some time with him. Now, watching today's Putin, does he seem capable of pushing a "nuclear button"?

— That's a very hard question, and I don't want to claim I know the answer. I have known Putin for a long time. I also note, by the way, that I honored to have hosted both Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and President Zelensky here at Stanford. I've never hosted Putin here.

Let me say a couple of things about what I think I know and what I don't know. First, at the beginning of Putin's invasion of Ukraine, he made some threatening re-marks about warning the West not to get involved in this war or he might be pres-sured to use nuclear weapons — that was very scary. I remember those comments. I would say today I'm less worried about a strategic nuclear attack from Putin than I was from before.

Number one, let's just be clear, I helped to negotiate the New START treaty when I was in the government. I'm very well aware of Russia's nuclear forces and America's nuclear forces. And I know that there is no victor in a strategic nuclear exchange. Everybody loses, it's called "mutual assured destruction". They have 1,555 nuclear weapons — we have the same. I believe that Putin is rational enough to not want to see the destruction of himself and his country.

Number two, I think, he signaled that: it turned out that their weapons did not go on some high alert. That was just a bluster.

Subsequently, he's had some of his advisors speak on the record about the conditions under which Russia would use nuclear weapons: it's always been to defend Russia from an existential threat, from a threat to Russia directly. And the good news for Russia, Europe and the World is there is no such threat to Russia. No country is attacking Russia nor planning to attack Russia, let alone to attack Russia in a way that is existential threat to the country. Dmitry Medvedev explained that, Mr Peskov explained that. So, I think that's a very low probability of that.

With respect to the use of a tactical nuclear weapon inside Ukraine — I'm more worried about that. And I'm worried about that in a condition in which Russia might be losing the war and Putin would try to use this weapon to change the balance of forces on the ground. I'm worried about that, but I don't think it's a high probability event. I think it's a low probability event for several reasons.

One, right now as we speak, maybe this will change, but the Russian forces are not being pushed out of Ukraine. If anything, they're making some small incremental gains. So why would he need to escalate?

Number two, I think the cost to Putin of using a nuclear weapon in terms of his in-ternational reputation would be enormous. There are many countries, China, India, countries in the middle East, Africa, that have been sitting on the sidelines — they would not sit on the sidelines if he used a nuclear weapon. That breaks a major ta-boo in the international system that, I think, would be very damaging for Putin and for Russia.

And number three, there's an assumption by some analysts that, that the use of a tactical nuclear weapon would immediately compel President Zelensky and Ukrain-ian government to capitulate and to quit fighting. That's based on the analogy of the only time we've seen the use of nuclear weapons, which was by my country in 1945 against Japan. But I think there's a lot of things not true between that analogy and today. The Japanese army had been fighting for many-many years before 1945. They were completely exhausted. They knew that they were going to lose the war. So, the will to fight by their government was already gone. It was a matter of time. That's not true on the Ukrainian side, Ukraine feels like their war is just, and the World supports their side of this war. That's very different than on the Japanese side.

So, I think it's a risky to assume that Zelensky would just take a nuclear attack on his country and say, "Okay. We're done fighting." I actually think it could lead to the opposite: of an escalation by the Ukrainians to try to take the war to Russia. So, I don't know that, but the knee-jerk assumption that the use of a nuclear weapon produces automatically the end of this war, I think, is incorrect.

— How did Russian society, with its rather strong intellectual elites and centuries-old culture, become capable of the crimes that we saw in Bucha?

I don't have a great answer to this very sobering observation. I would even go back further — I lived in Russia in the nineties. Even going back further, I think, it's very hard for me to understand. It's caused me to rethink some of my assumptions about Russian society — I want to say that very candidly.

A couple of things I would suggest for explanations. First of all, I do not believe that countries are fixed with certain cultures and historical trends and some genetic code that causes them to be imperialist — I do not believe that. What I do believe is that certain political leaders can manipulate and appropriate imperial history to serve their objectives. So, that's to me what Vladimir Putin is doing in this barbaric, horrible invasion that he has launched against Ukraine.

There's no doubt on my mind that Putin was an accidental president when he came to power in 2000. There was not some giant social demand for Putin or putinism. He was a complete nobody. Nobody even knew who he was when he became prime minister — Yeltsin picked him; the Russian people ratified Yeltsin's pick. And it was only later that the mythology was developed about Putin's connection to the people.

I know that period of history well. The heir to Yeltsin, by the way, was somebody else, whose name was Boris Nemtsov. Because of the financial crash in 1998, the Russian government got pushed out and so did Nemtsov, but had Nemtsov become president in 2000, there's no way that this history would've happened, in my view.

So, I think that's important to understand that leaders matter and the way they use history matters and Russian society can be guided by that. I think, that's the expla-nation for Bucha.

But the second problem with Bucha is that most Russians don't know about Bucha. They live in an information vacuum. They live in a bubble that Putin has created for them. That's not all Russians, of course, and I know, many Russians that don't live in that bubble. But those who do, they don't know the facts. They're being told bla-tant lies about what's happening in Ukraine and about who governs Ukraine. And that gives Putin the ability to portray to those who support him these distorted ways of thinking about Bucha and, I would say, thinking about the war Ukraine as a whole.

— You are working together with the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine in the group on sanctions against the Putin and Lukashenka regimes. There is information that UN Secretary-General António Guterres pushes a deal in which the West drops the embargo on Belarus fertilizer exports and in exchange Russia lifts the blockage of Ukrainian grain export. Is the West ready to sacrifice Belarus as a pawn in the big game again?

— I've only read about those reports in the press. I don't know them to be true. It seems like a bit of a strange deal to me: lifting sanctions against Belarus in return for allowing that food to go out. I would hope the United Nations and Mr. Guterres would just focus on the international crime that Putin is implementing right now, starving the World for no reason.

I'm very struck by how the United Nations and the countries of the United nations aren't more active. Maybe, you could have different opinions on the war. Although, I don't think so — to me, the war is crystal clear: it's an invading power against a country that did nothing to provoke it, it's a dictatorship invading a democracy, it's a one country trying to recolonize another country. What could be more clearer black and white than that, from my point of view? But even if you don't accept that, to create food shortages around the World as part of your military strategy vis-a-vis Ukraine is unjust and against the norms of the international system.

I would like the UN to be more active to try to break that blockade, just because it's illegal. There should be more public international public pressure, in my view, to break that blockade.

— What will be the result of Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians struggle for freedom?

— I think the fight that the Ukrainians are fighting is the same fight that Belarusians are fighting in their own country — it's just a different means. The last two dictators of Europe — it is not just Mr Lukashenka — Mr Lukashenka and Mr Putin are completely aligned in what they're doing. I think, the people of Belarus, the people of Ukraine and people in Russia that think like them need to understand that their fight is a common one.

I do not want to pretend sitting in California in the comforts that I have, that I should tell people in Belarus or Ukraine or Russia, what to do — that would be, from my point of view, unethical. But I do think when there is a fight between good and evil — to me, that's a fight inside Belarus, that's a fight inside Ukraine, that's a fight inside Russia — that people have to take a stand. It doesn't mean everybody has to be arrested, doesn't mean that people have to pick up weapons, but every-body has to know what side of the fence they're on and then in their own minds figure out whatever small acts of civic resistance they can do to signal morally that they are against dictatorship, that they are against colonialism, they're against annexation.

One thing I've never understood about the debate inside Belarus, including with Mr Lukashenka himself. I've read very clearly what Mr Putin says about the one nation, all Slavic people, how there's no difference between Ukrainians and Russians. Ukrainians are just Russians with accents. Well, that applies to Belarusians too. If you listen closely to Putin, he thinks there's no more legitimacy to the country of Belarus than there is to the country of Ukraine — if you listen closely and you listen to his history lessons. So, I would think that that those that disagree might want to do more to protect the sovereignty and independence of Belarus.

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