Clearer Than Truth

Ambassador Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia and author of Autocrats Versus Democrats, joins Clearer Than Truth to examine how Vladimir Putin transformed Russia’s relationship with the West and why the war in Ukraine remains so difficult to end. McFaul argues that Putin’s greatest fear is not NATO expansion but the spread of democracy, which threatens the legitimacy of his autocratic rule. He reflects on the achievements and failures of the Obama administration’s Russia reset, contrasts Putin’s leadership with Mikhail Gorbachev’s approach to Eastern Europe, and discusses the uncertain prospects for political change inside Russia. The conversation also explores Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament and security guarantees, the risks of leaving Ukraine outside NATO, China and India’s limited roles in seeking peace, and why McFaul believes stronger military support for Ukraine and tougher sanctions offer a better path toward a negotiated settlement than appeasing Putin.

00:00 Michael McFaul on Russia and Putin
01:13 Why Putin Fears Democratic Expansion
02:07 What the Russia Reset Was Really About
03:45 What U.S.–Russia Cooperation Achieved
05:01 Why Dual-Track Diplomacy Failed
06:37 Could Russia Have Taken a Different Path?
08:22 How Putin Became More Paranoid and Imperial
09:36 Gorbachev, Eastern Europe, and Nuclear Secrets
11:23 Why Individual Leaders Shape History
12:35 Gorbachev vs. Putin on Democratic Movements
14:02 Why Arms Control Requires Verification
15:12 Could Putin Lose the Support of His Elites?
16:06 How Putin Tightened His Grip on Russia
18:19 Why Revolutions Seem Impossible—Until They Happen
19:15 Ukraine’s Independence and the Nuclear Question
20:27 Putin’s Early Political Years
22:16 The Budapest Memorandum and Ukraine’s Security
23:24 Should Ukraine Join NATO?
24:59 Why China and India Aren’t Helping End the War
26:27 Russia’s War as an Imperial Project
27:19 Why Appeasing Putin Won’t Work
29:06 What Putin Really Wants From Ukraine
30:37 Why Putin Wants the Donbas
31:56 Is Russia Trying to Break Ukraine’s Will?
32:20 The People Who Turned to Putin
34:33 How Propaganda Becomes a Business
35:28 The Dinner That Revealed Putin’s Worldview
37:07 Why Putin Thinks Everyone Can Be Bought
37:35 Michael McFaul’s Latest Book and Writing
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Julius Krein, founder and editor of American Affairs, joins Clearer Than Truth to examine why the United States has struggled to rebuild its industrial base even as the case for reindustrialization has entered the mainstream. Krein argues that tariffs alone cannot restore American productive capacity: the country needs strategic investment, skilled workers, coordinated supply chains, permitting reform, and institutions that can help critical industries become commercially viable. He explains why the goal should not be to centrally plan the entire economy, but to open opportunities for private investment in sectors weakened by decades of underinvestment. The conversation explores the political costs and potential benefits of rebuilding manufacturing, whether a more productive economy could narrow class divides, and how the United States might redirect its financial resources to compete with China. Krein’s broader message is that America has made progress in recognizing the problem, but the real test is whether it can overcome institutional bottlenecks and deliver tangible results before political support fades.

00:00 Julius Krein on Rebuilding American Industry
01:01 Has Industrial Policy Finally Gone Mainstream?
02:08 Why Rebuilding Industry Could Take Decades
03:24 From Fringe Idea to National Priority
04:07 The Problem With Tariff-First Economics
05:04 Why Tariffs Alone Won’t Rebuild Manufacturing
06:22 The Real Costs of Trade Policy
07:35 What a Real Reindustrialization Strategy Requires
08:30 Why Critical Industries Lost Their Investment
09:31 The Missing Pieces: Workers, Buyers, and Permits
10:00 Why America Struggles to Coordinate Economic Policy
11:00 Why Supply Chains Are Harder to Map Than They Look
12:16 What Happens When Everything Becomes Strategic?
12:48 Why America Needs More Than Free Markets
13:54 The Industries America Can Rebuild First
14:57 Industrial Policy Without Central Planning
15:31 Who Pays for Reindustrialization?
16:49 The Political Trade-Offs of Rebuilding Industry
18:08 The Long-Term Cost of Deindustrialization
18:57 Will Working-Class Americans Actually Benefit?
20:21 Can Manufacturing Narrow the Class Divide?
21:48 Building an Economy That Works Across Classes
22:16 What Does American Economic Nationalism Mean?
23:03 Why Different Political Camps Support Industrial Policy
24:14 Why Practical Needs Can Matter More Than Ideology
25:10 Is Pragmatism Driving American Industrial Policy?
26:34 Can America Compete With China’s Economic Model?
27:13 Why American Finance Could Help Rebuild Industry
28:28 China’s Manufacturing Strength—and Its Limits
28:55 What the U.S. Must Prove to China
30:19 Can America Fund Long-Term Industrial Growth?
31:07 How Realistic Is American Reindustrialization?
32:08 The Bottlenecks Still Holding America Back
32:59 The Race to Deliver Results
33:46 Why American Affairs Matters
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Historian Barbara Keys joins Clearer Than Truth to examine the making, breaking, and remaking of Henry Kissinger’s legacy. Drawing on her book Super K: The Making, Breaking, and Remaking of Henry Kissinger’s Legacy, Keys explores how Kissinger cultivated journalists, managed his public image, used personal relationships and behind-the-scenes pressure to influence coverage, and maintained extraordinary influence for decades after leaving office. She examines the gap between his private policy positions and public presentation, his support for repressive anti-communist governments, and the role of the human rights movement in reshaping how his record is judged. The conversation also considers Kissinger’s diplomatic relationships across political divides and the media’s role in sustaining his reputation, raising a broader question about how power, access, and storytelling shape the way history remembers political leaders.

00:00 Barbara Keys on Henry Kissinger’s Legacy
00:53 Why Reexamine Kissinger Now?
01:47 Why Criticism Bothered Kissinger
03:08 How Powerful Figures Edit Their Own Histories
04:00 When Kissinger Could Influence the Media
04:50 The Myth of the Grand Strategist
06:28 How Kissinger Entered Nixon’s Circle
07:29 How Kissinger Won Over Journalists
08:30 Charm, Threats, and Media Pressure
09:48 When Kissinger Demanded Special Treatment
10:51 Kissinger’s Private Views on Ukraine
12:56 How Kissinger Changed His Public Positions
14:41 The Power of Strategic Ambiguity
15:59 Kissinger’s Private Position on Cambodia
17:13 How Kissinger Leaked Secrets to the Press
18:07 The Lost Art of International Diplomacy?
19:36 How Kissinger Built Global Relationships
20:57 How Kissinger Stayed Influential for 46 Years
21:27 The Memoirs That Shaped His Reputation
22:20 Kissinger’s Celebrity Persona
23:47 Why Kissinger Opposed Human Rights in Foreign Policy
24:52 How the Human Rights Movement Challenged His Legacy
26:32 Why Kissinger Won the Nobel Peace Prize
27:25 Kissinger’s Late-Life Fascination With AI
28:51 How Kissinger Wanted History to Remember Him
29:43 Why His Reputation Changed After the Cold War
30:45 Will Kissinger’s Legacy Change Again?
31:52 What Future Biographies May Reveal
33:50 The Most Dangerous Lesson of the Kissinger Myth
34:16 How the Media Helped Build Kissinger’s Reputation
35:24 What Kissinger’s Legacy Teaches Us About Media Influence
35:51 Where to Find Barbara Keys’s Work
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Vali Nasr joins Clearer Than Truth to explain why Americans often misunderstand the forces shaping the Middle East. Nasr argues that the region cannot be understood simply through religion, terrorism, or ancient sectarian divisions; instead, geopolitics, competition for power, contested borders, resources, and outside intervention are central to understanding its conflicts. He examines the evolution of terrorism, explaining why it has never been exclusively a product of poverty or religious extremism, before turning to Iran’s grand strategy and the legacy of Ayatollah Khamenei’s resistance to American influence. Nasr also assesses the failures and constraints of U.S. policy toward Iran, the consequences of a potential Iranian nuclear capability, and the possibility of a broader nuclear race across the Middle East. He closes with a warning that the current war may fundamentally reshape the regional order—and that the United States needs to prepare for a Middle East that may look very different when the fighting ends.

00:00 Vali Nasr on the Middle East
00:58 What America Gets Wrong About the Middle East
02:42 Why Sectarianism Doesn't Explain Everything
04:28 How Americans Misunderstand the Region
05:29 The Borders That Created Modern Conflict
07:12 Why Israel-Palestine Is More Recent Than You Think
08:23 What Americans Get Wrong About Terrorism
09:14 The End of the War on Terror
10:59 Terrorism Before Al-Qaeda
12:28 The Strategy Behind Terrorist Violence
13:46 Why Wealthy People Join Terrorist Groups
16:04 Why So Many Terrorists Studied Science
17:57 Iran's Grand Strategy
20:05 Where Iran's Strategy Has Failed
21:23 Why Iran Keeps Resisting the U.S.
22:19 Iran's Forever War With America
23:12 What Obama Got Right—and Wrong—About Iran
25:18 The Limits of American Influence
27:11 Why Obama Chose the Nuclear Deal
28:35 Obama Was More Realist Than Idealist
29:45 What If Iran Gets a Nuclear Bomb?
31:11 India, Pakistan and the Nuclear Lesson
33:14 Why Iran Might Want Nuclear Deterrence
34:21 Could Iran Trigger a Middle East Nuclear Race?
36:01 How Nuclear Iran Changes the Region
37:18 The Risk of a Wider Nuclear Order
37:46 The Middle East May Never Go Back
38:36 Could This War Get Much Worse?
39:26 How the Middle East Could Reshape the West
40:28 What Comes After the War?
41:40 What America Can Learn From History
42:34 Closing
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James M. Lindsay joins Clearer Than Truth for a wide-ranging conversation about the future of American power and the international system the United States helped build. Lindsay is a longtime scholar of U.S. foreign policy and the policymaking process at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he previously served as senior vice president and director of studies and where he hosts The President's Inbox.
For roughly eight decades, American foreign policy has operated around an assumption that U.S. security and prosperity depend on an active role in the world. Lindsay argues that consensus is now under enormous strain, but says the story did not begin with Donald Trump. The American-led system has evolved through several distinct eras, from the bipolar Cold War order to the post-Cold War “unipolar moment,” before the return of great-power competition forced Washington to confront a more complicated geopolitical environment.
The conversation then turns inward, examining the changing balance between Congress and the presidency. Lindsay explains why the modern “imperial presidency” predates 9/11, how Congress gradually gave presidents greater discretion in foreign policy, and why that authority has proven difficult to reclaim. He also discusses the limits of courts as a check on presidential power and the enduring political difficulty of constraining a president once military action has begun.
Lindsay also examines the emerging cooperation among China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, cautioning against treating them as a formal alliance while acknowledging the growing incentives for bilateral cooperation among them. The discussion ultimately returns to the larger question: what comes after American primacy? Lindsay argues that the American-led order is coming to an end, but says historians will debate for years how much of that decline was structural and how much resulted from America's own decisions.

00:00 James M. Lindsay on the Future of American Power
01:04 What Broke America's Foreign-Policy Consensus?
01:54 From the Cold War to the Unipolar Moment
02:58 The Return of Geopolitics
03:28 Why Congress Lost Influence Over Foreign Policy
04:56 The Rise of the Imperial Presidency
05:46 What Congress Learned From the 1930s
07:44 Why Presidents Were Given So Much Discretion
08:06 How Presidents Expanded Their Authority
09:14 Why Courts Rarely Check Presidential Power
10:11 The Courts, Trump & National Security
12:30 When Expansive Presidential Power Serves a Purpose
13:55 How Far Can the President Go Militarily?
15:21 Congress and the Authorization of War
16:22 Why Congress Struggles to Rein In Presidents
18:12 Is There Really an Axis of Autocracies?
19:20 Why China, Russia, Iran & North Korea Cooperate
21:01 Why You Should Watch What Countries Do
22:03 Why Military Power Doesn't Equal Victory
23:07 Can Economic Pressure Bring Down Iran?
24:45 Can Leaders Become Too Detached From Their People?
25:51 Why Iran Hasn't Become Another Vietnam
26:21 How War Hits Americans at Home
28:56 What Vietnam Teaches Us About Public Trust
29:49 Can America Split the Axis of Autocracies?
31:03 Why the Nixon-Kissinger Strategy May Not Work Today
32:13 Why Regime Change Is So Hard to Predict
33:24 Was American Bipartisanship Ever Real?
34:03 Washington, Jefferson & America's First Foreign-Policy Fight
36:20 What Institutions Like CFR Actually Do
37:30 From Diagnosis to Policy to Implementation
38:25 The American-Led Order Is Ending
39:35 Was America's Decline Inevitable?
40:10 The Mistakes That Weakened American Leadership
41:54 Did America Fall Behind China?
42:21 How U.S. Policy May Have Accelerated Decline
43:21 What Happens to American Leadership Now?
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