Putin's obsession with the perception that the US is supporting democratic movements and revolutions is, in McFaul's view, a tragic and primary driver of why he invaded Ukraine.

The Russian regime used McFaul as a 'boogeyman' and portrayed his meetings with pro-democracy activists as evidence of American interference, specifically to help Putin win his 2012 re-election by increasing anti-American sentiment, and it was effective enough that McFaul was later placed on Russian sanctions lists.

Russia's 2008 invasion of Georgia should have been met with sanctions and military aid to Georgia, but the Bush Administration did neither, imposing no sanctions and sending no weapons, which was a major missed opportunity for deterrence.

McFaul's fundamental view of Russian power going back to briefing President Bush in 2001 was that the critical question is not whether Russia is a great power or weak power, but whether Russia is 'inside our tent' (the democratic tent) or outside it.

Despite comprehensive sanctions and Western support, the war in Ukraine continues unabated, which is why McFaul believes significantly more action is needed.

The 1999 apartment bombings (operation against residential flats allegedly by Chechens) were suspected terrorist attacks that allowed Putin to appear as a strong man, though responsibility remains unclear; McFaul does not definitively assert they were false-flag operations but notes speculation about their origins.

McFaul studied Russian at Leningrad University in 1983 and later researched at the Pushkin Institute in Moscow, wrote his Stanford undergraduate thesis on Soviet interventions in Eastern Europe (1956, 1968) and the near-intervention in Poland (1980-81), with a thesis advisor (Alex Dallin) who repeatedly wrote in margins 'how do you know?' challenging assumptions about Soviet intentions.

A bullet was fired into McFaul's office window around 1994, close in time to Zhirinovsky's denunciation of him, though the relationship between the two events and whether they were connected remains unclear.

McFaul is interested in counterfactual history and how small changes could alter major historical outcomes, noting that the best counterfactuals require minimal changes to actual history.

George Shultz came to the Reagan administration in 1982 after a period where there was little interaction with the Soviets, and his strategy was to initiate dialogue with the Soviet Union on shared interests (nuclear weapons, regional security) before Gorbachev came to power, making engagement with the Soviets easier once Gorbachev took office.

Winston Churchill correctly observed that 'democracy's a horrible system of government but except for all the others tried,' and most people around the world agree with Churchill—they would rather elect their leaders than have them chosen by communists, mullahs, colonels, or thugs like Putin.

McFaul had the privilege of talking to small-d democrats (advocates of democratic governance) all over the world—Russians, Belarusians, Venezuelans, Iranians—and they want America to be the beacon of freedom and are yearning for America to return to that role, even though direct communication with people in Russia, Iran, and Venezuela is harder now.

The biggest mistake the US made in the 1990s was not actively rebuilding Russia into the community of states after the Cold War, in contrast to what was done after World War II when the US brought Germany, Italy, and Japan into its alliance system, which was only possible because of the menacing threat from the East (the Soviet Union); instead, the US assumed integration would happen organically without active effort.

NATO expansion is not the primary cause of U.S.-Russia tensions because Putin initially wanted to join NATO (2000), said Ukraine should join NATO without objection, and as recently as 2010 at the Lisbon NATO summit, President Medvedev said 'All of our animosity with NATO is over.' The real threat Putin fears is democratic expansion, not NATO expansion, because democracy in Ukraine demonstrates to Russians that they could have elected leaders rather than autocrats, which undermines Putin's domestic narrative that Russia is a separate civilization fundamentally different from the decadent West.

Public diplomacy—giving big speeches directly to the people of adversary nations to inspire them about democratic values—was a core Cold War success factor; Ronald Reagan's 1988 Moscow State University speech and his Spaso House dinner with Soviet dissidents exemplified the strategy of bypassing communist leadership to speak to ordinary Russians about freedom and democracy.

USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) was created in 1961 by John F. Kennedy not as a 'give-away' program but as a strategic instrument to compete with the Soviet Union's economic assistance program in the Third World during the Cold War, similar to the U.S. decision to go to the moon; it was broken and atrophied over time but should be reformed, not dismantled, because China is investing in similar soft power instruments.

The lack of a reckoning with the KGB and Soviet history in 1991 (unlike Nuremberg trials after WWII) allowed Putin, a KGB officer, to rehabilitate Soviet narratives and blame the West for Russia's difficulties, preventing a clean institutional break from authoritarianism.

Trump administration's strategy toward Putin—listening to his demands and making concessions hoping to end the war—has backfired because Putin interprets concessions as weakness and simply pockets them while demanding more, such as demanding that the U.S. pressure Ukraine to cede Donbas despite Putin's failure to conquer it since 2014; effective diplomacy requires both carrots and sticks, with a greater emphasis on coercive measures.

The Reset policy with Russia under Obama did work for a time and produced several significant achievements: negotiation of a new START treaty that reduced nuclear weapons by 30% (2010), opening a new supply route through Russia to Afghanistan to pursue Osama bin Laden, and securing Russian participation in the first multinational sanctions agreement on Iran (UN Security Council Resolution 1929), but it fell apart after the 2011 protests when Putin blamed the West for fomenting revolution.

Putin is not a transactional dealmaker like Trump and his advisors believe, but rather an ideologue motivated by imperial ideas and the desire to be remembered as a great expansionist leader like Peter the Great and Catherine the Great; he would not sustain a million Russian casualties for modest territorial gains if he were engaged in cost-benefit analysis, which proves his motivation is ideological not rational economic calculation.