COVID-19 presents us with both our worst public health crisis in a century and the greatest challenge to our democracy since World War II. Here is a national strategy to address both challenges, writes Larry Diamond. Read here. 

The authors of “The End of History” and “Reading Lolita in Tehran” discuss coronavirus, Iran, James Baldwin, campus culture, and why imagination and literature are essential to combatting authoritarianism. Read here. 

On Feb. 12, White House National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien announced that the U.S. government has “evidence that Huawei has the capability secretly to access sensitive and personal information in systems it maintains and sells around the world.” This represents the latest attempt by the Trump administration to support an argument that allied governments—and the businesses they oversee—should purge certain telecommunications networks of Huawei equipment. The position reflects the preferred approach in the United States, which is to issue outright bans against select companies (including Huawei) that meet an as-yet-unknown threshold of risk to national security.

Read the rest at Lawfare Blog

Five Stanford scholars will be among 38 fellows in residence at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) during the 2020-21 academic year.

The five fellows are MICHAEL BERNSTEIN, associate professor of computer science, ANNA GRZYMALA-BUSSE, professor of political science, SAUMITRA JHA, associate professor of political economy, GREG WALTON, associate professor of psychology, and ROBB WILLER, professor of sociology; formerly a CASBS fellow in 2012-13. Walton served as a consulting scholar at CASBS during the 2014-15 academic year.

In the most sweeping reshuffle of his government since he took office last May, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fired his Cabinet and appointed a new prime minister earlier this month. The announcement comes at a tricky time, as the government is considering several reform measures that are seen as important to winning much-needed investor confidence. In an email interview with WPR, Steven Pifer, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, discusses the factors behind Zelensky’s move and why the new Cabinet will need to work hard to prove it can bring about real change in Ukraine.

World Politics Review: Why has Zelensky chosen to reshuffle his government at this time?

Steven Pifer: Some analysts suggest Zelensky made the personnel change due to concern over his declining popularity. Elected with 73 percent of the vote last April, his approval rating has fallen to just under 50 percent—still high by Ukrainian standards. Overall, the new Cabinet ministers lack the reformist credentials of their predecessors, and the new prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, is a relative unknown. The change has given rise to concern that the country’s oligarchs, who continue to exercise outsized political influence, are reasserting their position after Zelensky’s initial pledges to rein them in.

That, combined with the inexplicable timing of the reshuffle, has rattled Ukrainian reformers and Western investors. Zelensky took office last year amid high hopes that his presidency could make a dramatic breakthrough and put Ukraine on a path of economic growth and reduced corruption. When I visited Kyiv in late October, Ukrainians I spoke with were cautiously optimistic about what Zelensky and his government could achieve. The Cabinet reshuffle moves the needle sharply in the direction of caution. Indeed, some analysts fear the president is not committed to real change, and that he will simply muddle through as president without making the breakthrough that Ukraine needs. He will have to work hard now to quash those concerns and meet the expectations of Ukrainian voters.

Read the rest at World Politics Review

March 18 marks the sixth anniversary of Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea.  Attention now focuses on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in Donbas, a conflict that has taken some 14,000 lives, but Moscow’s seizure of Crimea—the biggest land-grab in Europe since World War II—has arguably done as much or more damage to Europe’s post-Cold War security order.

Ukraine lacks the leverage to restore sovereignty over Crimea, at least for the foreseeable future.  But that does not mean the West should accept it.  Doing so might only encourage the Kremlin to believe that taking the territory of other countries is an action that it can get away with.

Crimea’s Illegal Annexation

Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution ended in late February 2014, when President Victor Yanukovych fled Kyiv—later to turn up in Russia—and the Rada (Ukraine’s parliament) appointed an acting president and acting prime minister to take charge.  They made clear their intention to draw Ukraine closer to Europe by signing an association agreement with the European Union.

Almost immediately thereafter, armed men began occupying key facilities and checkpoints on the Crimean peninsula.  Clearly professional soldiers by the way they handled themselves and their weapons, they wore Russian combat fatigues but with no identifying insignia.  Ukrainians called them “little green men.”  President Vladimir Putin at first flatly denied these were Russian soldiers, only to later admit that they were and award commendations to their commanders.

The sizeable Ukrainian military presence in Crimea stayed in garrison.  If shooting began, Kyiv wanted the world to see the Russians fire first.  Ukraine’s Western partners urged Kyiv not to take precipitate action.  Since many enlisted personnel in the Ukrainian ranks came from Crimea, Ukrainian commanders probably had less than full confidence in the reliability of their troops.

Things moved quickly.  By early March, Russian troops had secured the entire peninsula.  On March 6, the Crimean Supreme Council voted to ask to accede to Russia.  The council scheduled a referendum for March 16, which offered two choices:  join Russia or return to Crimea’s 1992 constitution, which gave the peninsula significant autonomy.  Those who favored Crimea remaining part of Ukraine under the current constitution had no box to check.

The conduct of the referendum proved chaotic and took place absent any credible international observers.  Local authorities reported a turnout of 83 percent, with 96.7 percent voting to join Russia.  The numbers seemed implausible, given that ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars accounted for almost 40 percent of the peninsula’s population.  (Two months later, a leaked report from the Russian president’s Human Rights Council put turnout at only 30 percent, with about half of those voting to join Russia.)

On March 18, Crimean and Russian officials signed the Treaty of Accession of the Republic of Crimea to Russia.  Putin ratified the treaty three days later.

Russian Claims

Moscow maintains a historical claim to Crimea.  The Russians colonized Crimea during the reign of Catherine the Great, and they founded Sevastopol—the peninsula’s main port and largest city—to be the homeport for the Russian Black Sea Fleet.  Following the establishment of the Soviet Union, Crimea was a part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic until 1954, when it was transferred administratively to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

It is also true that Crimea in 2014 had an ethnic Russian majority of about 60 percent—the only part of Ukraine where ethnic Russians constituted the majority.  But it is equally true that, when the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, the resulting independent states recognized one another in their then-existing borders.  Russia’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine violated, among other agreements, the UN Charter, the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, the 1994 Budapest Memorandum of Security Assurances for Ukraine and the 1997 Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership between Ukraine and Russia.

Moscow expressed concern about the fate of ethnic Russians in Crimea, but no evidence showed any threat to them.  The Russian government justified the referendum and annexation as an act of self-determination, though it appears that well less than half of the Crimean population actually voted to join Russia.  In any case, the Kremlin applies the principle of self-determination selectively; Moscow responded to the desire of Chechens for independence from Russia after the Soviet collapse with two bloody conflicts.

It appears that domestic politics provided one motive behind Putin’s decision to seize Crimea.  He returned to the presidency in 2012 with an economic situation much weaker than during his first two terms as president (2000-2008).  Instead of being able to cite economic growth and rising living standards, he based much of his reelection appeal on Russian nationalism.  Seizing Crimea in a quick and relatively bloodless operation proved very popular with the Russian public.  Putin’s approval rating climbed accordingly.

Crimea Today and Looking Forward

Crimea has undergone significant changes over the past six years.  A large number of ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars—some put the total at 140,000—have left the peninsula since 2014.  Crimean Tatars complain of intimidation and oppression as one reason for moving.  During the same period, some 250,000 people have moved from Russia to Crimea (Crimean Tatar leaders claim the influx is much larger).  The inflow has included troops and sailors, as the Kremlin has bolstered the Russian military presence on the peninsula, deploying new submarines, surface combatants and combat aircraft among other things.

The economic picture is mixed.  Trying to create a success story, Moscow has poured in more than $10 billion in direct subsidies as well as funding major construction and infrastructure projects, such as the highway and railroad bridges that now cross the Kerch Strait to link Crimea directly to Russia.  On the other hand, small business has suffered, particularly with the decline in tourism, which once accounted for about one quarter of Crimea’s economy.  Crimea also remains subject to a variety of Western economic and other sanctions.  It is probably fair to say that the reality of the economic situation today falls short of what many in Crimea expected, or hoped for, with Russia’s annexation.

The ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict in Donbas has pushed Crimea to the back pages, with Kyiv understandably focusing on trying to end that fighting, which claims the lives of Ukrainian soldiers on almost a weekly basis.  Still, while Donbas has meant far more dead than Crimea, Crimea’s seizure arguably has done as much, if not more, damage to the European security order.  A key premise of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act and subsequent documents was that state borders should be inviolable and not changed by force; Russia’s actions in 2014 shredded that principle.  That has caused unease among Russia’s other neighbors.

The Ukrainian government maintains that it will get Crimea back.  Analytically, it is difficult to see how Kyiv can muster the political, diplomatic, economic and military leverage needed to do so.  Perhaps the one possibility would be if Ukraine were to achieve dramatic success in growing its economy, both in absolute terms and relative to the Russian economy, to the point where Crimeans calculated that their living standards would be better off as part of Ukraine.  Moscow would likely fiercely resist that—just ask the Chechens—and, in any case, Ukraine’s economy has a long way to go.

Even if Crimea’s return appears implausible in the near term, the United States and Europe should continue to support Kyiv’s position, maintain Crimea-related sanctions on Russia, and hold to the policy of non-recognition of Crimea’s annexation.  Moscow should pay some price for its use of military force to seize the peninsula.  That’s the right thing to do for Ukraine, for the European security order, and for dissuading the Kremlin from trying land grabs elsewhere.

The West also should remember the case of the Baltic states.  For five decades, the United States and other European countries refused to recognize their incorporation into the Soviet Union.  For most of that time, the Baltics regaining independence seemed implausible…until it happened.

* * * * *

“Accommodate a despotic ruler if you have to,” says Stephen Krasner, a Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies in his forthcoming book How to Make Love to a Despot: An Alternative Foreign Policy for the Twenty-first Century  (Liveright, 2020). Krasner suggests that by embracing rational choice institutionalism, the U.S. should be working with the elites the way they are, rather than expecting them to abide by our standards; aiming for not more and not less than “good enough governance.” We talked with Professor Krasner in more detail about his “third approach.”

Q: Your book How to Make Love to A Despot is coming out in April. The main takeaway is that the United States is permanently oscillating between two bad foreign policies and you are suggesting a third way. You say that the United States lives in a delusion that the rest of the world can and should be like us?

Krasner: I think the problem is that the United States has assumed that every other country could be a consolidated democracy. I think the clearest example of that is China. The assumption was that China would get richer, would have a large middle class, and it would become democratic. They'd be just like us. In the 20th century the United States, basically since it entered World War One, and then later through Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. wanted to turn the world into a set of consolidated democracies. That has worked sometimes but most of the time it hasn't worked. What I suggest in the book is what we should aim for is good enough governance that may turn into consolidated democracy at some point in the future, or it may not. It requires luck for that to happen, not just having the right conditions. But at least we wouldn't be inhibiting consolidated democracy from ultimately emerging.

Q: I can't resist but to ask about these examples you mentioned: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, these are all countries where the US has intervened with military force. So, when you say democracy promotion, what do you mean by it? Does this entitle military interventions too?

Krasner: I don't think it entitles a military intervention. Most of our military interventions have failed. I worked in the Bush administration, I think that President George W. Bush definitely believed that if you invaded Iraq and you demonstrated the benefits of democracy, that people would become democratic. And I think the fallacy here is that it was a kind of naturalness that if we intervene, we will be successful. I think the problem with active efforts at democracy promotion is that most of the time having a consolidated democracy means that you'll undermine the position of the traditional elite or the ruling elite. And they were not going to accept that. And they know more about the country than we do. So even things that are very well funded, have very well intentions, very well designed, often fail.

Q: So, do you honestly believe that the tendency of war in Iraq was democracy promotion?

Krasner: I do. I honestly believe that. I was in the administration at the time and I completely believe it. I think that Bush really believed that if we took the sewer cover off in Iraq, that that freedom would spring forth. In fact, that's not what sprang forth. I think that we did believe that it was relatively easy. When you're rationalizing why you're doing things in the rest of the world, why you're intervening in other parts of the world the standard American line would be that we're intervening to promote consolidated democracy, which actually turns out to be extremely difficult.

Q: From all the reasons that you just mentioned, you're suggesting the third course, with an awareness that we can't fix the world the way it is, but we can't ignore it either. So, in which way do you suggest that the United States should interact with the world? And how deep should it go and for how long?

Krasner: I think the problem is that we have entered a world in which in the near future it will be relatively easy to create malicious germs, nuclear weapons, etc. At this point, we kind of assumed that more information was better, and great information would rise to the top. That hasn't necessarily been the case. So, we can't detach ourselves from the rest of the world because even non-state actors with relatively limited capabilities, which is what Al-Qaeda was, are able to use weapons against the thousands or hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans. So, I don't think we can ignore the world. What we can do is to aim for good enough governance. The first thing is that you must be supported by national elites. Even if those national elites are autocratic. I think that way we could provide better security. We can provide some improvement in services, especially in health, which has been a big, big success story since 1945. We also must accept that the idea that we can eliminate corruption is entirely impossible. As you know, patronage is better than stealing a $100 million and moving it outside of the country. But that's the best that we can hope to do.

Q: So, the question is—how do you create this index of what is going to be tolerated and what is not going to be tolerated? What is good enough governance in practice?

Krasner: I don't have a clear answer to that. Good enough governance has to mean that we're trying to create a security environment in other countries, where governments are capable of policing their own territory, which might not always be possible. I don't think we can eliminate, but certainly, try to minimize threats that might arise elsewhere. The problem would be if the government is so repressive that it engenders a large-scale domestic reaction. Now, for the most part, you have to be really, really repressive and really stupid to have that happen, but it does happen sometimes, as it did in Sudan. Ideally, we should try and find government leaders who are inclusive enough that they'll be able to support and maintain the support of backers, necessary to keep them in power. And that's a part I'm uncertain about. I don't have a general rule for that. I think you'd just have to look at a particular situation.

Q: You must agree that there are many regions of the world where many countries are actually relying heavily on the help from the outside and count on active engagement with the U.S.?

Krasner: Yes. So, let me say something which I have to say I'm not certain about. I think acting because we assume that there are some things that are morally intolerable to people who lead the revolution is in general a mistake. Most of the time, if the government is able to keep a relatively stable situation and people are able to satisfy the material resources, I don't think they're likely to revolt. Now, if you look at the bigger revolts we've had, I mean, for instance, the revolt in Russia that led to the Soviet Union, the Romanovs were pretty inefficient and pretty ineffective. They were able to carry on a war for three years until the regime finally collapsed. But it took a lot of fairly bad policies to make that happen. So, what I'm arguing is that in general, I think that we assume that you can't have lasting peace unless you have a peace that's morally sustainable. I am, I should say assuming, because I haven't really done the empirical work in this, but assuming that people are willing to tolerate a lot of things that they consider immoral provided that the government provides them with some basic level of services including security.

Q: When you rely on local elites, as you say in your book, and they always serve their own interests, what would be the foreign policy mechanisms to limit how far that can go? Since the ramifications could be serious and lead the countries deeper into corruption and partocracy.

Krasner: I think that there is no formula for that. We've engaged, we've spent a lot of money directly on democracy promotion. Often the money is basically undermined. Azerbaijan, in the last election, had 50 election observers. 49 said the elections were okay. Only one, which was in the European Union, said the elections were corrupt. If you looked at CICIG in Guatemala, here was an organization that was set up by an agreement between the Guatemalan government and the secretary-general of the United Nations. What are the results? CICIG was disbanded within the last year and the effort to create something like CICIG in Honduras basically failed. In some cases, domestic leaders may misunderstand how threatening some of these organizations are and you have to assume that they know more about their country than we do. And they're not going to accept things which would result in their losing power, possibly being killed, possibly being exiled.

Q: In your book, you’re criticizing modernization theory saying that it just assumes that democracy and welfare can be attained relatively easily. You are also not so sure that putting an effort into building institutional capacity in those countries is enough. Still, in many cases, education on building institutional capacity dramatically helped in reforms.

Krasner: It may work, and it may not. I'm not saying I'm opposed to doing these things, but we shouldn't assume that they're going to easily lead to a consolidated democracy in the end. Hobbes, Samuel Huntington, they both say that you need institutional capacity, but the problem is what is going to prevent leaders who have lots of institutional capacity from acting in ways that serve their own interests, opposed to interests of a population? You're not going to be able to build institutions if they threaten the local political elite. If you look historically only for a relatively short period of time, generously the last couple of hundred years, have you had consolidated democracies in which the political elite could lose power as a result of decisions that were taken by the electorate and most of the world. It's pretty unusual. It’s happened in North America, Western Europe, and East Asia. It hasn't happened in other parts of the world. We shouldn't assume then it's kind of the natural order of things. If you look at recent developments in the United States, it is important that rulers have a set of norms in which they value the foundational values of the country. But if you get a ruler who isn't very interested in those norms, you can have a lot of bad things happen.

Q: The theory that you suggest and call rational choice institutionalism relies on the elites and it stresses that elites will be willing to tie their own hands and adopt policies that benefit the population as a whole only under certain conditions. But when we take a step back and we do look at consolidated democracies, we see that many of the values in those societies are actually the foundation for the policies in those countries. And these values were nurtured over time.

Krasner: I agree with that. In consolidated democracies people have the elite, the political leaders adopted a set of values. It's true in most of the United States, it's true in the American military, it's true in parts of Western Europe in which people do actually cherish these values. But I think often they came later, and they weren't necessarily there in the beginning. I also think religion is one set of values that really matters to people. You have these Evangelical Christians in the United States who, you know, they see Trump, I think they see Trump as being a sinful individual, but they see him as the best bet to defend values that they endorse. Many people in the rest of the United States, they're looking around and seeing a world in which their material wellbeing has just deteriorated for 30 or 40 or 50 years, whether there’s Democrats or Republicans in office, they don't have any belief in anything anymore. Also, if you look at race relations in the United States, they are very troubled. They have been troubled for 300 years.

Q: So, does this mean that your overall understanding of the world today is that it's so bad that the United States should focus on self-preservation and just look at how to protect our safety?

Krasner: So, I think we should do two things. First of all, I think we should be concerned with how well our own society is functioning. In this sense, I think Donald Trump isn't so, isn't to the extent that he's tapping into that, is not wrong. I think there are always things that we can do internationally, but we shouldn't expect that if we do these things, we're going to have great outcomes. We may make things a little better. There are things that we can do at the international level, but not expect that everyone's going to be just like us.