I guess my preliminary take away is that China is running a brilliant foreign policy right now. They have convinced the Russians that they have a str… - Michael McFaul

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I guess my preliminary take away is that China is running a brilliant foreign policy right now. They have convinced the Russians that they have a strategic relationship when in fact the most important bilateral relationship for them is with us, and that’s smart; that’s good diplomacy. I don’t know what will happen in the long run, but I think that’s a great position to be in. They fully understand that the management and deepening of their relationship with US is way more important than any other bilateral relationship, including with Russia. Just because trade levels, for economic and security reasons, the bilateral relationship is the most important for them. Russia is peripheral in that respect. Having said that, maintaining good relations with many countries is in the Chinese interest, and that’s what they’re doing.

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About Michael McFaul

Michael Anthony McFaul (born October 1, 1963) is an American academic and diplomat who served as the United States Ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014. McFaul is currently the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor in International Studies in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University, where he is the Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

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Birth Name: Michael Anthony McFaul
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Additional quotes by Michael McFaul

Correlation is not causation, as we like to say here at Stanford, and the fact that I arrived in the middle of that had to do with our long confirmation process in America. Nothing to do with Russian politics. But in Russia, that was not the way it was portrayed. In Russia, it was portrayed that I was sent deliberately by President Obama to lead the revolution. And given my background as an academic, I've written about the political transitions and democratization, that was a very easy story.

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If both China and Russia were liberal democracies, I don’t think we would be having conversations about great power competition. So I believe that regime type does matter, and the ideological dimension that comes with that regime type also plays a role in great power competition.

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