Global Democracy at a Crossroads: 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.

Here on the program, we've been covering Russia's invasion of Ukraine since it first began.

But perhaps to fully understand this conflict on a deeper level, we have to go back in time...

Specifically to 1989 - the year the Berlin wall fell...

Crowds celebrated the dream of a Europe whole, free and at peace, at last.

It was the end of the Cold War and the beginning of what many hoped would be a golden era for liberal democracy...

But unfortunately, for the last several years, the rise of authoritarianism has been sweeping across the world...

And now as Ukrainians defend their country against a Russian invasion, some say, they're fighting for much more than that - the future of liberal democracy and the global world order, as we know it.

Joining me once again is Francis Fukuyama, he 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 back to the program, Dr. Fukuyama.

Great to have you with us again.

Thank you, I'm glad to be back.

Dr. Fukuyama, you know, you hear people in the West say that Ukraine is fighting our battle.

They're fighting for liberalism, and they're fighting for democracy.

How true is that?

Or are Ukrainians just defending their nation?

Well, they're doing both.

But I do think that they are fighting a larger battle on our behalf.

You know, we had mentioned that my center at Stanford started a number of training programs for Ukrainians back in 2014.

And the reason we did this was that we believe that Ukraine was the frontline in a broader struggle between authoritarian government and democracy.

I think that, you know, what's happened in the last decade is the rise of Russia and China, as the two-leading authoritarian, great powers.

And there's also been the rise of populist nationalist movements in democratic countries, including in the United States.

And all of these are connected.

You know, Putin is at the middle, in the middle of a vast web of influence that extends to, you know, Venezuela and Syria, and Nicaragua and Iran, and the like.

And he's supported populace in the West.

You know, Marine Le Pen, Matteo Salvini.

He's a great friend of Donald Trump.

And so all of these threats to democracy, I think, are part of a larger authoritarian movement.

And therefore, what happens in Ukraine is not relevant just to Ukraine, it is relevant to the rest of the world.

Is this conflict, a turning point in history?

Does it definitively mark the end of the post-Cold War era?

I think that it's a cliché to say this, but I think we're at a kind of crossroads where the world could look very different, depending on how things go.

If Russia looks like it's successful, you know, in grabbing part of Ukraine, and succeeding and holding on to it, that's going to be I think, very bad for the democratic world in general.

I think the probability of that happening now is much lower than it was a month ago.

So that's reasonably encouraging.

But it could still happen.

And conversely, if Russia really is defeated fairly decisively, if they have to withdraw from Ukraine, as a result of basically losing to the Ukrainian military,

then I think it will demonstrate that the democratic world can hang together, that people have the will to fight to defend democratic values, and you know, their own sovereignty.

And so, depending on which of these outcomes materializes, the world, you know, is going to look very different, but in two opposite directions.

But we are certainly out of this post-Cold War era and into something, you know, I think that's very different.

Now, after the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, you famously declared that we were going to enter this golden age and era of liberal democracy,

which was sweeping across the world, at least predominantly through the 90s.

However, unfortunately, that golden era of liberal democracy hasn't lasted as long as we had hoped.

What happened?

I said that, if you look at the long-term history of the world, and the progress that it's made, you know, for many years, people believe that the end of that process, the end of history, would be communism.

And my argument was simply that we would never get there.

And that we'd probably end up at something like, you know, liberal democracy tied to a market economy.

And that was really the meaning of "the end of history."

But it's certainly the case that, you know, it's been a very tough period for democracy.

Over the last 15 years, there's been a decline of democracy throughout the world, the rise of authoritarian governments, and the quality of democracy, and a lot of the world's biggest democracies, like the United States, and India, has deteriorated quite substantially.

And so, there's, you know, a lot of challenges.

But I do think that, you know, it's important to take a longer-term perspective and understand that, you know, the emergence of democracy is not something that you can take for granted.

There's no mechanism that will automatically drive us towards democracy unless we make choices and exercise individual agency to make democracy happen.

You have long felt that Ukraine, is at the frontline of a growing global war between authoritarianism and democracy.

Was this one of the reasons why you decided to set up those leadership courses in Ukraine?

Well, that's exactly right.

You know, Ukraine was a troubled democracy, like many democracies.

The electoral institutions work pretty well.

You could get a complete outsider, like Volodymyr Zelenskyy elected, but there's a high degree of corruption.

And so, our students, you know, the people, the Ukrainians we were working with, were younger Ukrainians that really wanted to be European.

They wanted to be more like Germany than like Russia.

And, you know, that was a struggle that they were involved in.

And so, you know, we thought it would be - it was very important to help them in that struggle.

And then, of course, they've met this foreign policy challenge.

Overt foreign policy and security challenge that now has consumed, you know, all of their efforts.

But yes, I do think that this was really the reason that I was personally involved and why I think it's important that people understand the larger stakes in the struggle.

I mean, I guess to what extent was it your goal or purpose also to help prepare, and educate future leaders to defend liberal democracy?

You know, I actually don't think that that was all that necessary.

The people that we were working with, had already made that choice.

What they need, you know, or other sorts of skills, how to organize, how to work together, you know, how to deal with problems of entrenched corruption.

These are the kinds of real problems that that country was facing.

The other thing that we've been discussing, like, in recent years, is we've seen this wave of authoritarianism and right-wing regimes sweep across the world.

How are the leaders of some of those regimes watching what's going on in Russia?

I mean, do you think the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has strengthened or perhaps diminished the position or the wave of authoritarianism?

Well, a clear defeat of Russia would weaken them.

There's still going to be a problem.

So, Viktor Orban in Hungary appears to have just been reelected.

You know, despite the fact that he was the one European leader that was the most sympathetic to Putin.

It didn't hurt him enough to prevent him from being reelected.

And.. but I think, in general, a lot of populist leaders that have expressed admiration for Putin are not doing well.

And, you know, that applies to Donald Trump.

I think that he may run for president again in 2024.

But his open embrace of Putin, I think, is really not going to sit very well, given the kinds of atrocities that Russia has been committing.

So, I do think that it is going to weaken that type of populism.

On January 6th, last year, in 2021, when the Capitol riots took place in Washington, D.C., how much damage do you think that did to the US's image as this beacon of democratic values and democracy?

Well, it did a tremendous amount of damage.

And I actually think that, you know, that may have been one of the factors contributing to Putin's decision to move on Ukraine because he saw that the United States was polarized.

I mean, we've known that we've been polarized for a long time.

But to the point where you would actually make a violent assault on the Capitol to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after an election is unprecedented, you know, since the American Civil War.

And I think it's probably the single greatest source of American weakness going forward.

And so, I think, you know, until we really recreate a more bipartisan belief in our own democratic institutions, it's going to be hard for the US to exert influence in the world.

What is needed to strengthen the weak point of democracy right now, the weakness that democracy is facing?

You know, the first thing that needs to happen is there needs to be a coherent opposition to these populists.

And in many countries, the opposition has been fragmented, and in a way, you know, they've taken the populist arguments against liberal democracy too seriously.

You know, they tend to think of themselves as citizens of the world.

And that does not sell very well in, you know, in virtually any democracy, because people want to be proud of their own society.

I think you can be proud of your own society and patriotic without that turning into a kind of aggressive and exclusive kind of nationalism.

And I think that, you know, it's ground that, you know, that real liberals have lost to populist conservatives, who then charge that, you know, they're not interested actually in their particular nation.

So then, how optimistic are you about the future of liberal democracy?

What does it look like in 5, 10, 15 years from now?

You know, liberalism is a doctrine that was really invented in the middle of the 17th century.

So, it's been around for 300 years.

And it's been challenged first by religious intolerance.

It really actually grew up out of a reaction to the wars of religion in Europe.

It was then challenged by nationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries.

And I think that, you know, it keeps coming back, because it's really a way of living in a society with diversity, in which you have a diversity of views.

And liberalism encourages a kind of tolerance that, you know, leads to a kind of peaceful coexistence.

And the value of that is appreciated the most, either when you've just been through a big war, like the Europeans were in 1945, or when you've been living under a terrible dictatorship, like Eastern Europe was, up until the fall of the Berlin Wall.

One of the things that may happen as a result of this invasion is a recognition by a younger generation of what the cost of living in a non-liberal society is.

And that's what Russia is today.

You know, Valdimir Putin in 2019, said that liberalism was an "obsolète doctrine," and that his approach to politics represented an alternative.

And I think now, people can clearly see the implications of that alternative.

And that I think, is a very useful lesson for a lot of people.

Yeah, sounds like he might have actually helped the cause of liberalism by his actions.

Well, that's right.

I think in terms of all of his objectives, he's made things worse from his own standpoint.

You know, if there wasn't a Ukrainian nation before, there certainly is right now.

There's nothing like being invaded by your neighbor to make you realize, you know, how valuable your own sovereignty is.

And at this point, the Ukrainians will never ever accept being part of the greater Russia.

And that was really Putin's, you know, foremost objective.

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

Thank you very much for having me.

For the last 70 years, since the end of World War II, our generation has enjoyed global peace and prosperity...

Many of us can't even imagine what life would be like without our basic freedoms and democratic rights...

In fact, we're so used to that peace and stability, that it's easy to take it for granted...

But if we don't defend our liberal democratic values, we may not realize what we've lost, until it's gone.

I'm Del Irani, thanks for your company.

I'll see you next time...