A New Reality

In his opening remarks, McFaul asked the panelists to share their mood as they enter the second year of the war. Ustinova said that just prior to the panel event, they’d been informed of an impending Russian attack.

“There is a very high probability that today, Kyiv and other cities will be shelled pretty heavily,” she said, adding that despite the threat, they weren’t going anywhere and that the parliament was still in session.

“That’s the mood of Ukrainians,” she said. “We know we can be hit any day, we can die any day, but this is the reality we have to live in.”

Honcharuk said he’d heard the opinion that authoritarian regimes are better suited for war because they are more mobile and less distracted by politics, thus creating the impression that democracies are indecisive. But, he said, Ukraine’s war effort demonstrates the opposite.

“I feel proud that Ukraine now denied this and showed the power of democracy,” he said.

When an audience member asked how the war has impacted political life in Ukraine, Honcharuk said there are challenges. For example, there are some conflicts between the central and local governments, but they don’t appear to be systemic problems. He said the parliament is still working and all Ukrainian political parties are “more or less united.” He also noted that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has “huge support” from the Ukrainian people.

Aid and Allies

Since the start of the war, the United States has spent tens of billions of dollars on aid to Ukraine, including artillery, tanks, and rocket launchers. The support has not only helped Ukraine stave off defeat, but enabled their success in many battles against Putin’s army.

In a recent interview with Stanford News, Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and an affiliate at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), said that Ukraine’s military had considerable success in the last four months of 2022, pushing Russian forces out of the Kharkiv region and back across the Dnipro River in Kherson.

On Friday, the panelists expressed gratitude for the support of the United States and other western allies in aiding their victories on the battlefield.

“Thank you,” Matviichuk said. “Ukraine and Ukrainians will always remember how American people support us in [these] dramatic times.”

Honcharuk agreed and said he viewed the U.S. as a partner in the war. “I want American people to understand that now we are together – Ukraine on the frontline, you on the back,” he said.

The panelists also urged for continued cooperation from Western allies.

“The prescription for war is three [items],” Leshchenko said. “First is weapons, second is sanctions [on Russia], third is financial support.”
 

Looking Ahead

The group expressed hope that this year Ukraine will see a victorious end to the war. Leshchenko added that he would like to someday see Ukraine join the North American Treaty Organization (NATO) because it could make significant contributions to the alliance.

“I think the Ukrainian army [is] going to be the best army in Europe,” he said. “It would be a privilege for NATO to have the Ukrainian army’s support because it will defend Europe much better than Europe has [been] able to do with its own army.”

Ustinova said a common misunderstanding about the war is that it started last year with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the conflict, she said, dates back to 2014 when Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula, and she explained how Ukrainians define success.

“Our victory is the total liberalization of each kilometer of the captured territories since 2014. Not since 2022,” she said.

She added that what’s most important to understand about the war is that it has broad implications, including for the West.

“We all have to realize, this is not a Ukrainian war,” she said. “If the West loses in Ukraine, it will be a total collapse for the rest of the world.”

The frontline of this war runs well beyond Ukraine’s devastated battlefields. It runs through Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. It is raging between humanity’s best and worst instincts. Between the free world and the suppressed. It is an all-encompassing war between autocracy and democracy.

Many ask why, compared to Europe, most Asian countries tend to have a neutral position on Ukraine. The answer is simple. All they can do is watch with a heavy heart. They closely follow each breaking news bulletin to learn who has the upper hand at that moment. Sadly, the continent of Asia is also full of self-proclaimed rulers. In most cases, their governments lack legitimate representation.

Ukrainians are fighting for that very principle—not only for their country, but for our right to be free. Their fight is global. As a result, our support should be global and completely unconditional. Ukraine’s victory will give encouragement to all freedom-loving people on this planet. Autocrats everywhere will be knocked on the defensive. If Russia prevails, dictators will march in full swing.

The Kremlin propaganda machine is in full steam, blaming the other side as the ones committed to eliminating Russians. But, to my knowledge, no one wants to see Russians killed. No one is depriving Russia but the Kremlin. No one is depleting Russia’s resources and potential but the Kremlin. No one is crippling the Russian armed forces but the Kremlin. No one started a full-out invasion of Ukraine but the Kremlin. No one forced the free world to take drastic actions but the Kremlin. Finally, no one is calling for the inevitable demise of the Kremlin but—by its actions—the Kremlin.

In starting this war of aggression and then purposely brutalizing innocent civilians, the Kremlin leadership is guilty of serious international crimes. It has had no shame in bringing devastation and suffering to the most vulnerable. To the innocent children, elders, and families. And this horror is not solely present in war-torn territories. It is also present in Russia itself.

Putin's so-called "partial" mobilization has brought fear and tears to Russia’s most vulnerable, its ethnic minorities who have been disproportionately drafted and thrown to the frontline. The Buryats, Kalmycks, Tuvans, and other marginalized minorities have been used as cannon fodder. In the remote regions where these ethnic minorities live, communities have almost run out of military-age men. By local accounts, the Kremlin is committing textbook ethnic cleansing under the umbrella of a “special operation.”

Under Putin's long-lasting shadow, Russia’s development has been hurled back a generation, and its politics has been frozen to the core. Yet, even in this deep freeze, there are some palpable cracks. The war in Ukraine is no longer just one man's conflict. It is inflicting pain to the countless lives his dark shadow touches. Everyone’s heart breaks when innocent families dig graves for their loved ones.

The outspoken and brightest in Russia are mostly silenced. In any nation, free-minded people are fundamental to offering different views and better solutions. But, unfortunately, this very part of society in Russia has fled in large numbers. The remaining brave people in Russia are still fighting against corruption and the deeply intimidating war while facing torture and jail. Therefore, the world is not against the Russian people but against the Kremlin's kleptocracy and atrocities.

For many, it is no surprise that the regime in Kremlin has long since relied on brainwashing and the use of criminal agents. Even their incarcerated recruits lack simple screening. The more ruthless and vicious against Ukrainians they are, the more they are welcomed. They are escapees of long-term sentences. They have been mostly rejected by their loved ones. Their mission is to kill.

Ukrainian soldiers who are fighting at the frontline describe the Wagner mercenaries as "zombie waves." The Russian supply of such waves seems unlimited. To defeat these horrendous Kremlin tactics, Ukraine desperately needs more advanced weaponry.

The Wagner Group is becoming trapped by their continued crimes for the Russian regime. The Wagner crack is widening. More countries have now deemed them an international criminal organization, a terrorist group. Justice-seeking communities worldwide scream for accountability for what they have done and continue doing against Ukrainians.

There are some in Russia disappointed with other countries, including Mongolia's stance on the war against Ukraine. Due to its geography, squeezed between China and Russia, the Government of Mongolia is forced to perform a balancing act. However, public opinion in Mongolia resolutely condemns the brutal attack against this sovereign nation.

In this regard, I would like to bring a historical record to your attention. When Adolf Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, the people of Mongolia united against this fascist invader. They showed solidarity with the Soviet people and spared nothing. If nomadic herders had over 100 horses, they sent more than half of their livestock to the Soviet Union. A quarter of all the horses on the Soviet frontline during World War II came from Mongolia.

In the days following the war's end, it was not rare to see a skinny but sturdy Mongol horse standing together with victorious allied forces in the ruins of Berlin. Horses were logistical lifelines, moving heavy equipment and weaponry through mud and rough terrain, including mined ones. In challenging circumstances, Mongolian horses were the only means of a ride and sometimes a much-needed source of nourishment. The number of horse supplies from Mongolian herders to the Soviets reached more than half a million.

Also, in late 1941, the Soviets began a counter-offensive against German forces on the outskirts of Moscow. During those unusually harsh winter months, most of the Red Army soldiers and officers wore warm winter uniforms made from cattle stocks in Mongolia. In addition, with financial support from Mongolia, the Soviets produced columns of tanks and fleets of fighter aircraft. The Government of Mongolia donated its gold and hard currency reserves to the Soviet Union for four years in a row. And Mongolian lamb and meat donations to the front line outperformed those provided by the Lend-Lease Act.

When Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, Mongols stood with their northern neighbor as best as we could. When Putin's Russia attacked Ukraine, from day one, the people of Mongolia stood against the brutal invasion. My point here is: The West should do what the Mongols did, and act like the Mongols acted. In support of Ukraine’s right to exist, the democracies should show solidarity and spare no form of assistance.

I have wondered why most of the decisions by the West to offer support to Ukraine are always one step behind Russian aggression. President Zelensky, from the first days of the war, asked "not for a ride" but for "more weapons." War-torn Ukraine is still begging for fighter jets and longer-range missiles.

Ukrainians are paying the ultimate price for our freedom. They are suffering, shedding blood, and sacrificing everything precious to them, not just to defend their sovereignty and democracy but to restore the damaged world order.

President Biden and Chancellor Scholz might have time to wait. But a wounded Ukraine has no time to wait at all. Those who snatched Ukrainian territories, cities, and villages are not waiting. The killers, rapists, and looters are not wasting their time. The Wagner Group is not waiting. Finally, Putin is not waiting.

No country facing aggression and destruction on this scale can be asked to wait. Ukraine needs WINGS and missiles to delete, deplete, and defeat Russia’s death squads. Putin will only stop fighting when he exhausts all his murderous arsenals. The only path to peace is through Ukraine's victory.

Victory means more than expelling Russian aggression, more even than liberating all occupied Ukrainian territory. Victory requires the rebuilding of Ukraine after conflict, and total recovery from Putin's war. If Ukraine fails to achieve that, freedom and the free world will face continuous intimidation and aggression from dictatorships.

Ukraine is not just fighting for its freedom, but for freedom everywhere.

Slava Heroyam!

His concerns over military enterprise were not limited to Russia. Turning a critical eye towards home, McFaul also stressed the importance of fixing acquisition and development challenges in the United States’ industrial base. Reliable, scalable access to military resources is not only crucial to the defense of America and its allies, McFaul reminded the panel, but it has direct impacts on how effective deterrence strategies will be elsewhere. Without such guarantees, the United States will lack credibility, whether in Ukraine and the active conflict there or in Taiwan and the challenges it faces from China.

For McFaul, the odds-defying performance of the Ukrainian military thus far also highlights the complimentary need to quantify the human side of defense and the impact it can have on strategic outcomes.

“How do you measure will to fight? We need to understand that better if we want to be better at our assessments in the future,” he urged.
 

Keeping a Clear Eye on Nuclear Threats
 

Early in the war, Putin and other Kremlin spokespeople made headlines with less-than-veiled allusions to the possibility of using nuclear weapons in their campaign against Ukraine. While that nuclear sabre-rattling has cooled in recent months, Scott Sagan says the United States and its allies need to remain very clear-eyed to the dangers posed by raising even the specter of nuclear use.

“I don’t think it’s out of the question yet,” said Sagan. He went on to explain, “I don’t think Vladimir Putin has decided yet whether he would use nuclear weapons or not. Part of these threats are about trying to deter us from intervening and to scare and divide the West. But it’s also about Putin getting a gauge of what we’re thinking and how we might respond if he did.”

Sagan, an internationally recognized expert on nuclear security and nuclear policy, said that even with the assurances that high-level U.S. officials such as Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin have communicated to their Russian counterparts, the unacceptable nature of any kind of nuclear use in war needs to be emphasized. 

“We need to underline the illegality of this. We need to remind them that we have a long history of going after war criminals. We need to make it clear that if they think they will not suffer catastrophic personal consequences, they should think again,” said Sagan.

Beyond individual actors, the threat of nuclear weapons directly challenges the regime of non-proliferation currently in place around the world. By Sagan’s assessment, the endurance of non-proliferation rests on how the West would respond to the use of a nuclear weapon in Ukraine. In the scenario where nuclear use leads to the Russian military intervening against Putin, or the West escalating to bring about a definite Russian defeat, Sagan believes non-proliferation would continue largely intact.

If, however, nuclear use leads to the collapse of the Ukrainian government and causes the West to back away, the domino effect could topple the commitment to non-proliferation the world over. Sagan points to the recent uptick in dialogue about nuclear programs in South Korea, Japan, and Iran as early indicators of what a more devastating event could trigger.

“What’s at stake here is not just the future of Ukraine and the future of democracy, and the future of American credibility; it’s also, potentially, the future of what kind of nuclear world we live in,” he cautioned.

Grappling with a Deluge of Data
 

Amy Zegart offered similar cautions when asked about cyber capabilities and intelligence. Analysts have been quick to comment on the seemingly underwhelming cyber front in the war against Ukraine, particularly when compared with Russia’s estimated cyber capabilities and prior campaigns into cyber interference. Zegart flipped the scenario to pose a different perspective.

“The lesson may not be that Putin is not ten feet tall. I think the right question to ask is, ‘Could he have been?’” she told the CIOs.

Rather than view the events in Ukraine as a win for Western cyber defense, Zegart believes it will be much more constructive to unpack how the current war was almost a near miss.

“What are the factors that tilted in our favor? What if those aren’t there next time? Is a near miss a signal that things are working well? Or is the near miss a sign that things are prone to catastrophic failure?” she posed to the delegates.

Zegart has studied and written extensively about how emerging technologies are rapidly and dramatically changing the landscapes of cyber and intelligence gathering, an analysis she summarizes as the “Five Mores”: more threats, more speed, more data, more customers, and more competitors. While not exclusive to the events unfolding in Ukraine, each of these areas has been highlighted and accelerated by the conflict, says Zegart. In a world where information is coming faster and from more directions than ever before, understanding those points of potential failure and building resiliency and protocols into the process becomes absolutely crucial for security and defense, whether in Russia and Ukraine or with adversarial relationships elsewhere.

Understanding Parallels Between Moscow and Beijing
 

While the current conflict in Ukraine was the immediate topic of the panel, the implications of what is happening now in Eastern Europe have clear correlations to how events unfold between China and Taiwan in coming years. Beyond Ukraine, the question many of the officers had was: What is Xi Jinping learning from all of this?

As both Scott Sagan and Michael McFaul were quick to point out, Xi, like Putin, is a very difficult target to read, and making any assessment of his thinking is exceptionally difficult.

Echoing the sentiment, Amy Zegart explained, “When I go down the list, I can make an argument for polar opposite learnings on every dimension. That’s what concerns me the most. I don't know which of those Xi Jinping is learning.”

Turning the question around, Zegart offered an alternative. “Maybe the question we need to be asking is, ‘How can autocrats prevent self-deception? How can we help our adversaries stop deceiving themselves?” As Scott Sagan noted, autocratic systems built around an authoritarian leader like Putin are highly incentivized towards yes-man politics rather than criticism and constructive critiques about how to identify problems and achieve results. Putin’s miscalculations in Ukraine and the apparent gaps in his intelligence briefings are evidence of this.

In regimes prone to self-deception, the answer to Zegart’s question may lie in data and analysis. If autocratic leaders are unable to rely on information from within their own system, outside actors should work to fill in those gaps and communicate an accurate cost-benefit analysis, she suggests.

Looking toward China, Michael McFaul agrees that this type of communication and analysis needs to be a key part of the U.S. deterrence strategy.

“I think it would be a very worthy enterprise for a government organization or a think tank to spell out in detail the economic consequences of an attempted invasion of Taiwan. We want Xi Jinping to know that,” he advised.

Learning from Today and Planning for Tomorrow
 

Whether in Ukraine, China, or in other challenging policy areas, McFaul also emphasized the need for longevity and commitment.  “This is year one of the war,” he reminded the delegation. ”We can feel really good about what we’ve done today, but if in Year 4 we’ve lost the war, nobody is going to remember that.”

McFaul highlighted not only the urgency of the current situation, but also the importance of dialogue and partnerships between academia and policymakers. While political appointments and assignments in government may shift from term to term or from one administration to another, experts at academic organizations like the Freeman Spogli Institute and the Gordian Knot Center can provide the continuity and deep bench of expertise needed to make, adapt, and sustain challenging policy decisions in the long-term.

In his concluding remarks, McFaul reminded the visiting delegates of one of the institute’s foundational principles. “Our mission statement here at FSI is to translate research into policy outcomes. We want people based in D.C. to understand how many resources and people we have for them to call on,” he said.

Wrapping up the discussion, Joe Felter, the director of the Gordian Knot Center, likewise emphasized the importance of this connection. Speaking to the CIOs he said, ”This panel clearly shows that academia does more than just admire problems. Stanford is in this fight, and we’re putting our best forward to provide solutions.”

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Military Miscalculations, Economic Dislocations

McFaul opened the first session by reviewing some of the lessons from the war in Ukraine. The international community underestimated the Ukrainian military, he said. Putin, however, miscalculated the response of the United States and NATO, on the military side, and the scope of the sanctions the global community of democratic states, including Japan, would be willing to impose on Russia, on the economic side. 

It turned out, noted McFaul, that it was possible to reduce drastically Russian oil and gas coming into Europe, and Russia today has significantly fewer resources to fight Ukraine than it had anticipated. “I think it is very important to look at just how much economic dislocation happened with Russia, a country that was not integrated into the global economic world in the same way that China is,” McFaul said. He pointed out that the international community might also be underestimating the political pressure and dislocation that will erupt if, unprovoked, China invades Taiwan. “It will have very deep economic consequences for the Chinese economy,” said McFaul.

It is important to remember that the international community did not make credible commitments to deterring Russia before 2022, McFaul noted. In the case of China, he emphasized the imperative of considering concrete ways to enhance deterrence against a Chinese invasion of Taiwan before military action begins. 

Rethinking Defense and Deterrence

China, however, is not easily deterrable, as Mastro explained in her following remarks. President Xi has been clear from early on that enhancing China’s role on the international stage would be a key part of the Chinese Communist Party’s agenda. Taiwan is a top priority issue in the Chinese Communist Party’s long-term thinking, said Mastro. She reminded the audience that at the recent CCP Congress, President Xi reaffirmed that China will not rule out using force to bring Taiwan under its control. He also elevated Party members with extensive expertise in the joint operational domain and with Taiwan contingencies to the Central Military Commission, the Chinese top decision-making body for military affairs.

How, then should the United States and its allies approach the question of deterring China? Mastro emphasized three conditions that U.S and Japanese defense policy must meet.

First, whatever the United States and Japan do in the defense realm must have an operational impact. For example, U.S. carriers will do nothing to prevent China from taking Taiwan in a wartime scenario, Mastro argued. “And along those lines, from the Japanese point of view, enhancing defense of the Senkaku Islands does nothing to deter China from taking Taiwan unless Japanese operations are going to be involved directly in stopping a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.”

The second condition is that China has to know about any defense changes the U.S. and its allies are making. For instance, if, in peacetime, there is no indication that the Japanese military is engaging in Taiwan Strait transits with the United States and the Chinese do not know about such activities, then they do not enhance deterrence.

Third, deterrence must happen before a war starts. It may seem an obvious point, but if the prevalent view is that, for example, the Japanese public will support the United States once a conflict over Taiwan erupts, then this approach does not deter China. “We have to let the Chinese know now that there is such support,” Mastro stated.

One issue China is concerned about, Mastro noted, is widening a Taiwan contingency. “China only wins Taiwan if the war is short, geographically limited to Taiwan, and only involves the United States, potentially in Taiwan,” she explained. “So I am convinced that if Japan were to commit to fighting with the United States in this contingency, that would be enough to deter China.”

Ultimately, the question before the United States and its allies is: “Do we want a happy China that is undeterred or an unhappy China that's deterred,” Mastro concluded. “Those are our only two options.” Deterrence is expensive and requires tradeoffs, but one thing that is costlier than deterrence is a major war, she emphasized.

“Let’s start thinking about how to actually change the environment with the sense of urgency that we need, because my biggest fear is that we're going to find ourselves in a major war with massive cost,” she urged the audience. There will be sacrifices to make, but the alternative, in Mastro's view, is worse.

Opportunities and Perils for Democracy

In the second session of the conference, panelists Larry Diamond and Francis Fukuyama examined the war in Ukraine and the tensions over Taiwan from the lens of democratic decline and its implications for the liberal international order.

Democracy has been in a global recession for most of the last two decades, yet the picture is not as bleak for democracies as it was just two or three years ago, said Diamond. In the United States, reforms at the state level have occurred, election deniers took control of Congress seats by a much smaller margin than predicted before the 2022 midterms, and extreme election deniers in crucial swing states were virtually defeated. Meanwhile, on the international stage, 2022 spotlighted autocrats’ inevitable shortcomings. In Russia, Putin has catastrophically miscalculated the war in Ukraine. In China, Xi has massively mismanaged the COVID pandemic, and the country’s economic growth is severely impaired.

Fukuyama said he was encouraged by the democratic solidarity shown in response to the war in Ukraine, especially in Europe, within NATO, and in Japan. Germany’s and Japan’s decisions to increase their defense budgets have been remarkably reassuring signals of strength among democracies, he noted.

But we sometimes forget that many countries in the Global South and elsewhere do not buy into this narrative, cautioned Fukuyama. Among the big disappointments in this regard is India, he stated, which raises the question of whether the issue at stake is indeed a battle between democracy and authoritarianism.

Indeed, democracies still face intractable challenges, Diamond explained. These include the corrupting influence of dirty money around the world, the trends of de-industrialization and hollowing out of the working class in advanced democracies, and social media, which Diamond sees as the single biggest driver of democratic decline. “I cannot tell you how much damage social media has done to destroy the social fabric of Truth and credibility and polarize society into tribal camps who don't have the same facts,” he said. “We have not found a way to temper that impact and win the battle For Truth.”

Taiwan and Deterrence

When it comes to the question of Taiwan, Diamond says he is worried. “There is going to be a PRC military invasion of Taiwan, probably in this decade, unless it is deterred,” he said. The three most crucial actors in deterring China are Taiwan, the United States, and Japan, he explained. Successful deterrence must involve coordination among all three in multiple arenas — from military cooperation to increased defense capacity and preparedness to impose such heavy costs in response to a Chinese invading force that will change Xi’s calculus.

Diamond observed that democracy is about uncertainty, of which there is now plenty in Taiwan as it looks ahead to a January 2024 contentious presidential election. Diamond’s prediction is that "China will intervene however it thinks it can” in Taiwan’s upcoming presidential election, as Xi would certainly prefer to pick up the island peacefully than by force, he said. “I think it's going to be very important that the people of Taiwan see that they're not alone, that the democracies of the world — not just the United States and Japan but Australia and Europe — are with them; it will increase their will to fight.”

Eleven months after Russia launched a massive invasion of Ukraine, Washington and Europe continue to pursue two basic objectives: help Ukraine win and avoid a direct NATO-Russia clash. 

Unfortunately, in balancing these goals, Western governments are exercising overly excessive caution. They thus far have denied Ukraine weapons, such as Leopard tanks and Army Tactical Combat Missile Systems (ATACMS), that could have dramatic effects on the battlefield. This caution stems from fear that the Kremlin would escalate the conflict.

That fear is misplaced.

Continue reading at thehill.com

This article originally appeared in the Korean daily newspaper Munhwa Ilbo on January 2, 2023. It was translated from Korean by Raymond Ha.

In an exclusive interview for the Munhwa Ilbo, Stanford University professors Gi-Wook Shin and Francis Fukuyama had a conversation on a wide range of topics including the war in Ukraine, U.S.-China competition, and North Korea policy.

The world faces a crisis of political leadership as each country pursues its own interests. Fukuyama stressed the importance of robust international institutions, instead of relying solely on great leaders. He pointed to NATO and the U.S.-Korea alliance as examples of institutions that uphold the liberal international order. In terms of the U.S.-China competition, he said without hesitation that “a democracy like Korea…has to make the decision that it is going to be on the side of democracy.” Fukuyama also noted that in the event of an armed confrontation over Taiwan, Korea would almost certainly be pulled in, given the significant U.S. military presence there. He was skeptical about prospects for progress over North Korea, pointing to the long history of failed negotiations and the lack of viable alternatives. “Not every problem has a solution,” he said.

Gi-Wook Shin, who led the interview, observed that the global decline of democracy appears to have hit a turning point, “although it’s too early to say if there will be a rapid recovery…or a more gradual shift.” As for the state of democracy in the United States, he said, “We will have to wait and see what happens in the 2024 presidential election.” Even though Trump’s political influence may be weaker, he observed, “pro-Trump forces are still part of the system.” In terms of Korea’s foreign policy, Shin emphasized that Seoul “should take [the Taiwan] problem much more seriously.” A crisis in the Taiwan Strait “could become the biggest challenge for the Yoon administration’s foreign policy, not North Korea,” and domestic polarization over China policy is one issue that could threaten to “become extremely controversial.”

The interview was held in-person for one hour at Stanford on December 8, 2022, with a follow-up interview held over the phone on December 27.  

[Gi-Wook Shin] Let’s start by looking back on 2022. How would you summarize this year?

[Francis Fukuyama] I think 2022 was a very good year, where we may have bottomed out in this global move away from democracy and toward authoritarian government. The year really started out in February with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which looked very, very threatening. China was on a roll. It looked like they were beating everybody in terms of COVID policy. Then, by the end of the year, the Russians got completely bogged down. China experienced mass protests, and there were protests also in Iran. In America’s elections on November 8, all the pro-Trump forces failed to make gains and, in fact, lost almost everywhere. I think that maybe we will look back on 2022 as the year when this democratic recession that has been going on for over 15 years finally bottomed out.

[GWS] I agree, although it’s too early to say if there will be a rapid recovery toward democracy or a more gradual shift. In the United States, we will have to wait and see what happens in the 2024 presidential election. Former President Trump may be weaker politically, but pro-Trump forces are still part of the system. As for the Ukraine war, many people thought Russia would win quite easily, but now it looks like they are struggling. It’s a big question, of course, but how do you think the war will be remembered in history?

[FF] I think that it is going to be remembered as one of the biggest strategic mistakes made by a great-power leader in a very long time. I think that the mistake is directly due to the nature of the political system. You remember that Vladimir Putin was sitting at the end of this 25-foot table with his defense minister because he was so afraid of COVID. He was extremely isolated during the whole pandemic, and he had already isolated himself in a political system where he doesn’t face checks and balances. That kind of decision-making system makes you prone to make even bigger mistakes, because you don’t have other people to test your ideas against. He was completely uninformed about the degree to which Ukraine had developed a separate national identity and that the Ukrainian people were willing to fight for it. He didn’t have any idea how incompetent his own army was. If he had been in a more democratic country that required him to share power with other people, I don’t think he could have made that kind of mistake.

[GWS] Putin is struggling, as you said. There are a lot of problems in China, but Xi Jinping secured a third term. Authoritarian leaders elsewhere still hold power. By contrast, I don’t think President Biden has shown powerful leadership at home or globally. I don’t see any strong political leaders in the U.K., France, or Germany either.

[FF] I think that although Xi Jinping may succeed in stabilizing the situation in China with the protests over COVID in the short run, he is in a lot of trouble. He was creating all this social instability with the zero-COVID policy. Now that they’ve started to relax it, I think the number of cases and deaths is going to go up very dramatically, but I don’t think they’ve got much of a choice. I think this has probably damaged the people’s sense of Xi’s authority and legitimacy, and I’m not sure he can recover from that.

The most important thing is the breakdown of the Chinese economic model. For the past decade, the Chinese model has been to pump a huge amount of money into the real estate sector. That model is collapsing. The other big problem is that they don’t have economic growth anymore. Some economists think that they’re actually in a recession, with negative growth. This is like what Japan went through in the 1990s. So much of the Chinese government’s legitimacy has been based on having extremely high growth rates, and that period is over. I don’t see how they get it back, and they certainly won’t by inserting the state into every economic decision and controlling their high-tech sector. Their population is shrinking now. I’m not sure that Xi Jinping, in the longer run, is actually going to look like a very effective leader.

[GWS] But in the short term, say the next three to five years, won’t authoritarian leaders be powerful in comparison? Just as “America First” shows, some say there is a crisis of political leadership among Western democracies, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

[FF] I think that apart from President Zelenskyy in Ukraine, we don’t see any really inspiring leaders in Germany or France or the United States. On the other hand, the nice thing about democracy is that it’s an institutional system for managing change. Biden has turned 80, and Trump himself is in his upper 70s. The leadership in Congress and the Democratic Party are all elderly, but they’re all about to change. In the next election cycle, there is going to be a whole new generation of people that are up-and-coming. I don’t think you need a charismatic leader with great vision, necessarily, to run any of the countries you mentioned.

[GWS] Another question is if the United States can provide global leadership. When Trump was defeated, there was a strong expectation for the Biden administration to restore global order and to do much better than its predecessor. I’m not sure whether that’s happening.

[FF] Again, I think that’s why you want to have international institutions rather than being dependent simply on leaders. This gives an institutional basis for continuity in policy. There are all of these alliance structures, like NATO. People thought that NATO was obsolete and was going to go away. It has actually proved to be very durable. The United States has security ties with Korea and Japan that also are quite old, but they’re still durable. It’s interesting that the authoritarian countries have not been able to create anything comparable to that set of alliances. There is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), but all the Central Asian states don’t want to be part of this China-Russia dominated organization. We can’t just depend on great leadership.

[GWS] To add on to that, I think Korea should proactively participate in upholding and creating an international order that facilitates a resurgence of democracy. Korea has not really played this role before, but with the 10th largest economy in the world, it is now in a position to play a positive role.

[FF] There is a set of values that underpin America’s alliances, both in Asia and Europe. Throughout the whole Cold War, the Soviet Union never actually invaded a Western democracy, but that’s what Russia did. NATO has suddenly become very relevant once more. I think that both in Korea and Japan, there is also recognition of a comparable challenge from an authoritarian China. Unless all democracies work together and show solidarity with one another, they could be picked off by these two authoritarian powers.

[GWS] There is a lot of debate about whether China is going to invade Taiwan or not. I have a two-part question. First, could the situation in Ukraine reduce the possibility of China invading Taiwan? Second, if China still invades nevertheless, what should Korea do? This is a difficult question for Korea. It cannot say no to the United States as a military ally, but at the same time, it cannot antagonize China. I think this is the most difficult question for Korea at the moment.

[FF] This is a difficult question for the United States because it’s not clear that Congress or the American people actually want to go to war with China in order to save Taiwan. I think if you ask them a polling question stated like that, probably a majority would say, “No, we’re not going to send our troops to die.” But I think it’s likely that the United States will get dragged into such a conflict one way or the other. Among other things, the Chinese would probably have to preempt some of the American forces that are in the theater. American military personnel will get killed as the Chinese attack unfolds, and I think there will be a lot of political pressure to help Taiwan.

[GWS] How much can the United States be involved? Some in Korea are skeptical that Washington will step in.

[FF] This is really the problem. During the Cold War, we had a good idea of what a war would like look like if it actually happened. The military planning was very concretely designed against certain types of escalation. With China, we don’t have a clear set of expectations for what escalation would look like. It could just start with a Chinese invasion. It could start with a blockade. It could start with something in the South China Sea. It could actually start on the Korean Peninsula, with North Korea doing something. If it happens, it’s going to be much more devastating than the war in Ukraine. So much of global production comes out of Asia, and there’s a strong incentive not to let things get out of hand. Whether we have the wisdom to do that is not clear. I also think that people’s expectations and opinions will change once the conflict begins. The moment people see cities being bombed, they will change their minds.

[GWS] I also think that a conflict over Taiwan would affect the American people more directly than what is happening in Ukraine. What’s your view on how seriously Korea should be taking this possibility?

[FF] It is likely enough that it is absolutely important for everyone to take it seriously and plan against it. What you want to do is deter China from taking any military action against Taiwan. They’re not going to be deterred unless they see that there’s a response on the other side that is going to raise the cost for them. That’s not going to happen unless people take the scenarios seriously and start thinking about concrete ways that they could help Taiwan or stymie any kind of Chinese attack. I think it is very important for Korea to think this through and think about ways they could support Taiwan and be part of a larger alliance that can push back against China.

[GWS] I keep telling my friends and colleagues in Korea that they should take this problem much more seriously. Taiwan could become the biggest challenge for the Yoon administration’s foreign policy, not North Korea. China policy has become an extremely divisive partisan issue in South Korea, and it could tear the country apart. What advice would you have for President Yoon?

[FF] There’s two things. First is the rhetorical position. Korea should make its position clear in advance that it would oppose Chinese military action and would support the United States, for example. Korea is going to get dragged into this because so much U.S. military equipment is in Korea, and that is going to be moved in closer to the theater. I think making that position clear in advance is important.

The other thing that’s been very clear from the Ukraine war is that democracies are not prepared for an extended conflict. Everybody is running out of ammunition in Europe and the United States is running low on certain types of ammunition. The Ukrainians have used so much of it just in the 10 months they have been fighting. I think that any high-intensity conflict in East Asia is also going to be very costly in terms of supplies. South Korea is in a better position than other countries because it has been preparing for a North Korean attack for decades. Everybody needs to be prepared for an extended conflict. It may not be over in 48 hours.

[GWS] Koreans are quite nervously watching the ongoing escalation of tensions between the United States and China. In the past, the paradigm was “United States for security, China for the economy” (an-mi-gyeong-joong). Now, security and the economy are linked together. The Yoon government is promoting the strengthening of the alliance with the United States, but South Korea faces the fundamental problem of how to position itself as U.S.-China tensions escalate. Do you have any wisdom for Korea?

[FF] I don’t know if it’s wisdom, but I think Korea needs to take a clearer position. Under the previous government, there was a belief that Korea could somehow be halfway between China and the United States. That’s just not a tenable position. The tension between the United States and China has really been driven by China ever since 2013, when Xi Jinping took power. China has become a much more severe dictatorship internally, and it has become much more aggressive externally. You see the influence of the Belt and Road Initiative and the militarization of the South China Sea. In the last 10 or 15 years, China has been picking fights with India, Japan, Korea, and all of Southeast Asia over territorial issues. They built the size of their military much more rapidly than any other great power in that period of time. As a result, the United States and other countries have simply reacted to this. I think that a democracy like Korea cannot pretend that it is somehow in between the United States and China. It has to make the decision that it is going to be on the side of democracy.

[GWS] I agree that an-mi-gyeong-joong is now obsolete, but I think that South Korea must be more sophisticated in its response. As they say, the devil is in the details. On the economy, Seoul can actively work with Washington on areas closely related to security, but it can still partner with Beijing on sectors that are not. There can be a fine-tuned policy.

I now want to ask about North Korea and U.S. policy. I have been saying that the Biden administration policy is one of “strategic neglect,” not the “strategic patience” of the Obama administration. Kim Jong-un keeps testing missiles and provoking, and South Koreans are puzzled by the lack of response from Washington. Why is that? Is it because all the attention is on Ukraine and China?

[FF] Not every problem has a solution, and I don’t think this problem has a solution. You could use diplomacy. You could use military force. You could use deterrence. There are a limited number of possible approaches, and I think none of them are going to work. There has been a long history of negotiation. That has not worked. I think confrontation is not going to work. I think preemption is certainly not going to work. I just don’t think there’s a good solution, so we’ve ended up with trying to ignore the problem by default. Part of the reason North Korea is launching all of these missiles is that they want people to pay attention to them. Ignoring the problem is not much of a solution either, but it’s not as if there is a better solution.

[GWS] I agree with you that for many people in government, North Korea has been a hot potato. You don’t want to touch it because there is no clear solution, and it won’t help your career. But if we just ignore the problem, then five years later it’s going to be worse. What kind of North Korea are we going to face in five or ten years?

[FF] Everybody has been hoping that something would happen internally. It’s fine to think that, but it’s also not taking place. That said, Kim Jong-un is obese and unhealthy. Who knows what might happen?

[GWS] Let’s now turn to domestic politics here in the United States. I think many Americans were relieved by what happened in the midterm elections last month. Trump’s influence was much more limited than what people thought. But he’s still there, and he’s likely to run again. I think he is still a strong candidate for the Republicans.

[FF] He declared his candidacy, but I think that he is declining very rapidly in influence. We have had four elections now where he was playing a major role in the Republican Party. In three of those elections, he really hurt his own party. He can stir up a third of the electorate that loves him, but it’s never enough to win an election, especially in a swing state. I think he’s gotten crazier in recent months. He is doing so many self-destructive things, having dinner with neo-Nazis and repeating all these conspiracy theories. These are things that no rational candidate would do. The Republicans are going to want somebody that can actually beat the Democrats, and I don’t think it’s going to be him.

[GWS] You don’t expect a rematch between Biden and Trump in 2024?

[FF] This gets into a technical issue, but the Republican primaries are mostly winner-take-all primaries. Any candidate that can get 30% of the vote is likely to be nominated. If you have a Republican field that has several people competing, they may split the alternative vote and Trump may end up winning. I think he still has a good chance of being the Republican nominee. If you’re a Democrat, that’s not the worst thing in the world. It is probably easier to run against Trump than a more normal Republican candidate.

[GWS] Two years is still a long time in politics. You said that Trump is likely to be nominated. Would Biden also run again?

[FF] I think that Biden is going to run again. Part of the problem is in the Democratic Party. It’s not clear who the successor would be. There are a lot of potential new-generation politicians, but I don’t think any of them has enough presence and attention that they can clearly take over the mantle to run as the Democratic candidate. If there is a rematch, I think Biden will win.

[GWS] Now to South Korea. Last June, I did some interviews advocating a parliamentary system, and they received good attention. There is still a lot of hesitancy among Koreans, though. I think there are a few reasons. The first is that we need a strong presidential system to deal with North Korea. There’s no stability if the prime minister keeps changing. Second is that it may drive politicians closer to big business (chaebol) because there’s less direct accountability. What would you suggest for South Korea in terms of institutional reform?

[FF] There are several possibilities even short of a parliamentary system. You can coordinate the presidential and parliamentary terms. It’s still the case that the president has a five-year term, but the legislature is on an even-year term. If you want to have strong government, you need a president that has majority support in the legislature. If they get elected simultaneously on a regular basis, you’re more likely to see strong leadership emerge. In a presidential system, the legislature itself is a check against the president. If you don’t have a strong majority in the legislature, you can’t do anything.

[GWS] That is what is happening right now in Korea.

[FF] In a parliamentary system like the British one, if you have a majority in parliament, you can do what you want. I think the presumption that somehow a presidential system is inevitably stronger than a parliamentary system is not historically correct.

[GWS] Is a parliamentary system maybe one solution to political polarization?

[FF] Sometimes a parliamentary system will have that effect, but the kind of plurality voting system that we have in the United States and in Britain tends to promote polarization. To the extent that you make it possible for third parties to run, that’s probably a better system. If you have more parties and it becomes harder to get a majority in the legislature, that forces coalitions and some degree of power sharing.