Michael A. McFaul - President Ronald Reagan helped to accelerate the collapse of Soviet communism and thereby end the Cold War. But his greatest contribution to the end of communism was not increased American military spending or his Strategic Defense Initiative. Rather, it was Reagan's steadfast commitment to promoting ideas about freedom and democracy that contributed most importantly to the anti-communist revolutions first in Eastern Europe in 1989 and then in the Soviet Union in 1991.

Michael A. McFaul - President George W. Bush has demonstrated impressive flexibility in reshaping his approach to foreign policy to deal with the new international challenges brought to the fore by the terrorist attacks.

Michael A. McFaul - Russian-U.S. relations offer one bright counterpoint to the otherwise gloomy and complex set of issues facing makers of American foreign policy after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Russian president Vladimir Putin was one of the first foreign leaders to speak directly to President Bush, expressing his condolences and offering his support for the American response. He followed these rhetorical pledges with concrete policies, including military and humanitarian support to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and Russian acquiescence to American troops in Central Asia. Bush and his foreign policy team responded positively to Putin's new Western leanings by calling on Chechen separatist leaders to renounce their ties to Osama bin Laden.

Michael A. McFaul - Since becoming Russia's President in 2000, Vladimir Putin has simultaneously pushed forward a positive agenda of economic reform and a negative agenda of political repression. It's a sad story of one step forward, two steps back, and if it continues it will threaten the existence of a free Russian society.

Did the U.S. government fund the Yushchenko campaign directly? Not to the knowledge of Michael A. McFaul. Both the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute conducted training programs for Ukrainian political parties, some of which later joined the Yushchenko coalition. But in the years leading up to the 2004 votes, American ambassadors in Ukraine insisted that no U.S. government money could be provided to any candidate. Private sources of external funding and expertise aided the Yushchenko campaign. Likewise, U.S. and Russian public relations consultants worked with the Yushchenko campaign, just as U.S. and Russian public relations people were brought in to help his opponent, Viktor Yanukovych. In future elections Ukrainian officials might enforce more controls on foreign resources. But this kind of private, for-profit campaign advice occurs everywhere now, and Americans no longer control the market.

Public opinion polls suggest that Aliyev's party would probably win a majority of seats in a free and fair election, but the young leader lacks the confidence to allow fair balloting. Officials who rigged the last election have not been replaced, and the government has refused to follow the Iraqi example of marking voters' fingers with ink to prevent multiple trips to the polls. Aliyev's party changed the electoral law to make it more difficult to uncover false balloting through the usual means of parallel-vote tabulation or exit polls. To date, Aliyev has not allowed the National Democratic Institute -- an American nongovernmental organization recognized around the world as a premier election-monitoring organization -- to observe the vote count.

In an op-ed that appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Michael A. McFaul and Abbas Milani consider whether the prospects for democratic reform in Iran doomed in light of the recent electoral coup.

Bombing Iran will exacerbate, not resolve problems, Michael A. McFaul, Larry Diamond and Abbas Milani demonstrate in a new landmark article. "Rather than throw the reactionaries in Tehran a political lifeline in the form of war, the United States should pursue a more subtle approach: contain Iranian agents in the region, but offer to negotiate unconditionally with Iran on all the outstanding issues. Comprehensive negotiations could offer powerful inducements, such as a lifting of the economic embargo and a significant influx of foreign investment and thus create the jobs necessary to persuade Iran to halt nuclear enrichment. If the hard-liners reject the offer, then they would have to contend with an angry Iranian public. Such internal strife would be far preferable to an Islamic Republic united against the attacking forces of the 'Great Satan.'"