Predicting the End of the Ukraine Crisis and Beyond: Francis Fukuyama / Senior Fellow, Stanford University

Hello and welcome to DEEPER LOOK from New York.

I'm Del Irani, it's great to have your company.

Is it possible to predict how the conflict in Ukraine will end?

Some say the duration and outcome of this fighting cannot be predicted.

While others are willing to make some pretty bold forecasts, and today's guest has done just that.

On March 10th, during the early stages of the Russian aggression, an article was published online.

The title was "Preparing for Defeat," and in it, the author made 12 prophesies - statements like: --Russia is heading for an outright defeat in Ukraine.

--The collapse of Russian troop positions could be sudden and catastrophic.

These statements, as you can imagine, garnered a lot of attention around the world...

and the author of that article joins me now.

Dr. Francis Fukuyama is a senior fellow at Stanford University.

He's been referred to as one of the world's best-known thinkers, having written extensively on international politics, including being the author of the world-renowned book, "The End of History and the Last Man."

Welcome to the program, Dr. Fukuyama, great to have you with us.

Thank you very much for having me.

So, before we deep dive into the contents of your article, I want to ask you, I mean, you wrote this article barely two weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

What made you so confident as to how this conflict might end?

Well, I actually started my career as an analyst of the Soviet - the former Soviet Union - military.

And, you know, I've been following.

This as a war that's been covered more closely, in greater granular detail than any other war in history.

Every day, you get, you know, photographs, videos, you know, from the different battlefields of the war.

And it struck me that there are a lot of weaknesses in the Russian position.

They had very insecure lines of supply, it looked like the morale of their troops was extremely low.

They made huge strategic mistakes in the planning of the original operation, and then in its execution.

And the Ukrainians were doing much, much better than anyone, including myself, expected prior to the war.

So, when you put all of that together, it struck me that people were being excessively pessimistic or perhaps cautious in saying that, well, of course, ultimately, the Russians are going to grind down the Ukrainians and they're going to win.

Well, it just seemed to me that that was not the case.

The moral factor in all wars is extremely important.

And there the Ukrainians really have a big advantage.

You and your colleagues at Stanford University set up some leadership courses in Ukraine, shortly after the annexation of Crimea.

I understand you still have a lot of students, graduate students and alumni, who are over there.

How are the people you know in Ukraine on the ground doing?

Hopefully, they're all safe?

Yes, we've had several leadership programs for mid-career Ukrainians, and we probably have maybe 150 graduates of those programs in Ukraine.

Many of the women had managed to get out and are in Europe right now, along with their children.

Some of them have moved to Lviv and other parts of western Ukraine.

The men are not allowed to leave.

And, you know, a number of our students have actually volunteered for the territorial militia.

The other thing though, I have to say, is that it's amazing in a way how normal things are, at least in Kyiv.

You know, I just had a meeting last week with business leaders in Ukraine, and there were probably I don't know, three or four dozen of them on a ZOOM call, you know, as if there wasn't a war going on.

It's quite impressive the way the Ukrainians have been able to get their message out and to communicate with people on the outside.

So, it's a very mixed picture.

Obviously, they're under tremendous, you know, personal pressure.

Not a single one can continue what they're doing, you know, prior to the war.

They've all been disrupted.

And, you know, they're doing a heroic job as a result.

We are several weeks into this conflict.

And I want to go back to what you said, what you had written in this article, where you stated, and I quote, "Russia is heading for an outright defeat in Ukraine."

Do you still believe that?

Well, they've already been defeated in the north.

I mean, they wanted to take Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine in 48 hours.

They not only failed at that, but they took such heavy losses, you know, they've lost a fifth to a quarter of the troops that they had massed on the borders of Ukraine prior to the invasion.

And they've basically been defeated.

The war is not over because the Russians have been making very slow gains in the south and the east.

And that's where the attention is going to turn.

But, you know, this has been quite a humiliation.

You know, there's a statistic that the Russians have already lost more tanks than Britain has in its entire inventory, just in the first month of the war.

So, it's a big setback for them.

And I expect that the war in the east and the south is also going to go in Ukraine's favor, once everybody starts concentrating on those theatres.

And, you know, you did mention in that article, you said, you predicted the collapse of the Russian military would be "sudden and catastrophic."

We're not there yet. This war is going on.

I said, it's possible.

And I think that it still could happen.

The thing about Russia, you know, people believe that it's a huge country, and it's got a huge military.

But Putin has actually committed the vast majority of his entire army.

He's pulling troops out of the Far East, out of Kaliningrad, you know, in the Baltics, out of the Arctic, because he simply does not have enough men to replace the losses that he suffered up to this point.

And so, I do think that, you know, the strains on that system are extremely great.

And I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, you have further defeats and other theaters in Ukraine.

He's basically tried to conquer the largest country in Europe by geography with a force that was, you know, a fraction of what it needed to be if you really wanted to do that.

And that, you know, is his starting mistake.

There have been ceasefire and peace talks taking place between Russia and Ukraine, even amid the latest news of these, you know, war crimes.

But you said, and I quote, "there is no conceivable compromise that would be acceptable to both Russia and Ukraine."

So, what do you make of these ceasefire peace talks?

Are they just a waste of time?

Are they just a distraction from what's actually taking place on the ground?

Well, I think they could have a short-term function because, for example, the Ukrainians really want to get their people out of Mariupol.

There's still a big civilian population left there and in other Ukrainian cities.

So, if you had a ceasefire, that might be possible.

But I don't think there's any solution to the war itself possible right now.

Both sides have lost so many people that, you know, any solution that you could imagine, you know, wouldn't be acceptable to one side or the other.

In the Ukrainian case, anything short of a Russian withdrawal, to at least the lines that they occupied on February 24th, I don't think any Ukrainian government could accept.

And probably, frankly, they need to withdraw from the Donbass altogether, if there's going to be a permanent settlement.

Putin, on the other hand, couldn't possibly accept something like that because he's launched this extremely costly war, it's destroyed a good part of his own military.

And if he doesn't get anything out of it, he's going to look pretty foolish, you know, as well.

So that's why I just don't think you're going to get anything like a long-term settlement until one side or the other does a lot better militarily.

How much worse do you think things will get before hopefully, this conflict comes to an end?

Well, I think that they've done terrible, terrible things up till now.

You know, they're just indiscriminately bombing civilian areas of many major Ukrainian cities.

They've turned Mariupol into a waste, a total wasteland, just like they did to Grozny during the Chechen war, or to Aleppo in Syria.

And, you know, they appear to have committed quite a few atrocities when they were withdrawing from those towns north of Kyiv.

So, I do think that the war crime charges is something that is very real.

And I think one thing people have to worry about right now, is what's going on in the occupied areas of Ukraine in the East and in the South.

There are lots of reports that the Russians have deported, you know, thousands of Ukrainians, sent them to Russia, and then are sending them on to camps, you know, in other distant parts of Russia.

We just don't know enough about what's going on in that respect.

But I think many of the same atrocities, just shooting unarmed civilians, is probably happening as we speak.

Just, it's just happening in parts of Ukraine that we don't have access to right now.

Given that, you know, Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, was annexed by Russia back in 2014, could there have been any way for all of us, as a global community, and perhaps, for Ukrainians as well, to be better prepared for this conflict?

I mean, was it just a matter of time before President Putin in Russia would make a go for Ukraine?

Well, I think that was his plan all along.

He's stated that pretty explicitly.

You know, he wrote a long article last year, and then he gave a big speech on the eve of the invasion.

And he said things, you know, previously, where he basically wants to undo the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

He thinks of it as one of the great tragedies of the 21st century.

So, I think that intention has been there for a long time.

I think the Western debate has been a little bit confused because all along, there's been this narrative that it was NATO expansion that was driving Russia to behave the way it was.

You know, there's no question that they resented NATO expansion, a great deal.

But I think they would have wanted, or at least Putin would have wanted, to undo the European settlement of 1991, regardless of whether NATO had expanded or not.

And if we had not taken in the Baltic States and, Poland and, Romania and, the Czech Republic, and all those countries, those would be threatened right now.

You know, Putin would regard them as part of his natural sphere of influence, just the way he regards Ukraine, and we would be in an even greater crisis involving, you know, those Eastern European countries.

So, I think that we simply didn't want to recognize this.

We wanted to think that Russia had narrower intentions.

And we didn't take, you know, adequate steps early on to, you know, recognize the real nature of the threat.

From looking at your examples of the past, in your opinion, what should the West do, and perhaps not do, in order to help end this conflict?

Well, I do think we need to keep up and extend the nature of the military assistance.

If the Russians escalate, for example, if they escalate to the use of chemical and biological weapons, then I think it would be appropriate for NATO to step in, in a more direct fashion, into the war to, you know, help defend the territory of Ukraine.

I do think that the burden should be on the Russians to escalate first.

The one thing that I'm really quite concerned about is something that people aren't paying adequate attention to.

Even if the Ukrainians really do well and push the Russians out of Donbass, they've got a huge economic challenge ahead of rebuilding the economy.

They've lost hundreds of billions of dollars in forgone GDP as a result of this war.

The physical infrastructure of the country has been wrecked by the Russians.

And they're going to have to rebuild that.

And there's also going to have to be a reopening of their economy and, un-blockading of all of their ports, so that they can actually, you know, earn money to, you know, to rebuild their cities.

And, you know, I think it's not too early to focus on how we can help them to do this.

You know, my Ukrainian friends never talk conditionally about Ukrainian victory.

They always say, when we win, you know, we're going to do such and such.

You know, I think they themselves are very confident that this will happen.

Dr. Fukuyama, thank you so much for joining us on the program.

Thank you very much for having me.

We know the West has unilaterally condemned Russia, but what about the rest of the world?

Many countries have abstained from criticizing Moscow.

So, if this crisis cannot deliver universal, global condemnation - then, what will?

And what does this mean for the future of liberal democracy and the world order, as we know it?

Join us next time as we continue our conversation with Dr. Fukuyama and, I'll put those questions to him.

I'm Del Irani. Thanks for your company, I'll see you then.