S1 Ep109: 4/8 Autocrats Versus Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder. Michael McFaul analyzes the Cold War, noting that the Cuban Missile Crisis taught the need for crisis management mechanisms with adversaries. He argues that the US was to
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 21 November 2025
⏱️ 6 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batchel with Michael McFaw, professor at Stanford University, at the Hoover Institution, |
| 0:06.3 | and he's the director of the Freeman Spogley Institute. |
| 0:09.7 | But the book now that I recommend highly to understand how we got into this fix in the third decade is Autocrats v. Democrats, |
| 0:19.0 | competition between the U.S., China, and Russia, the three-body |
| 0:22.5 | problem. |
| 0:23.1 | It makes a great story, but we don't know how it comes out. |
| 0:26.9 | So I want to establish, Michael, that Deng makes that transition into capitalism by the time |
| 0:37.2 | that we're now dealing with, the 21st century, China is getting richer and |
| 0:42.9 | richer and likes it, but it has a lot of details. |
| 0:46.2 | Inside that richer and richer is resentment for at least a century, if not more. |
| 0:51.7 | Yes. |
| 0:52.5 | And that resentment is it, was it, is it something you've experienced? |
| 0:56.5 | Because you've traveled in China before and after she. Was it always there or does she magnify? |
| 1:03.5 | Well, that's a great question. It's called the century of humiliation in Chinese history books. |
| 1:10.7 | And I think we in the West, and most certainly me, even when I began researching this |
| 1:15.1 | book, did not understand the full magnitude of it where we, you know, the Western powers, |
| 1:21.3 | the imperial powers came in and occupied territory and the Japanese really came in, |
| 1:26.5 | obviously during World War II. |
| 1:28.4 | But it was a time of weakness for China. |
| 1:32.3 | And remember, this is a country that's been around for many, many centuries, has dominated |
| 1:37.4 | Asia for many, many centuries. |
| 1:40.1 | But the 19th century and the early 20th century was a time of extreme weakness that resulted in millions of people dying in World War II. |
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