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We are delighted to feature Francis Fukuyama in the pages of Persuasion once again. But some of you may not know that he writes a regular column, “Frankly Fukuyama,” which recently became part of the Persuasion family.
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Even though anyone with eyes could see this coming, Donald Trump’s recent moves with regard to Ukraine and Russia come as a huge blow. We are in the midst of a global fight between Western liberal democracy and authoritarian government, and in this fight, the United States has just switched sides and signed up with the authoritarian camp.
What Trump has said over the past few days about Ukraine and Russia defies belief. He has accused Ukraine of having started the war by not preemptively surrendering to Russian territorial demands; he has said that Ukraine is not a democracy; and he has said that Ukrainians were wrong to resist Russian aggression. These ideas are likely not ones he thought up himself, but come straight from the mouth of Vladimir Putin, a man Trump has shown great admiration for. Meeting in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, the United States started a direct negotiation with Moscow that excludes both Ukraine and the Europeans, and has surrendered in advance two critical bargaining chips: acceptance of Russian territorial gains to date, and a commitment not to let Ukraine enter NATO. In return, Putin has not made a single concession.
I take this particularly personally since I and my colleagues at Stanford University and other institutions have been working hard since 2013 to support democracy in Ukraine. We have run a number of programs to train mid-career Ukrainian professionals in leadership skills and democratic values. I’ve visited the country many times, and have developed many friendships with a large group of very inspiring Ukrainians.
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Just to make things clear, there is a huge moral question at stake here. Ukraine is a young, fragile, and imperfect liberal democracy, but it is a liberal democracy nonetheless. Russia by contrast is the latest incarnation of the former Soviet Union, an entity whose demise in 1991 Putin regrets and has been trying ever since to reverse. It is a dictatorship in which a single wrong word on social media can land you in jail for years. I remember walking through Kyiv’s Maidan Square a few years ago, marveling at the fact that Ukraine was a genuinely free society in which you could criticize the government, move about freely, and vote for an opposition candidate (which is what Ukrainians did when they elected Zelensky and his Servant of the People Party in 2019). None of this happens in Russia, which has reverted to totalitarian dictatorship.
Any peace agreement “negotiated” by the Trump administration and Russia now will not bring peace. There may be a ceasefire for a while, but the Russians will rearm and reopen the war once they re-equip themselves. They have no reason to honor existing ceasefire lines, but will want to reabsorb the whole of Ukraine at the right time.
Less noticed in the current furor is the policy announced by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to cut the U.S. defense budget by 8% a year for the next five years. This is the opposite of what the United States should be doing. Down the road there will be new Russian threats to every country on its periphery—Georgia, Moldova, the Baltic states, and Poland. The United States does not have to formally pull out of the NATO alliance; Trump has already signaled clearly that he will not honor the Article 5 commitment to mutual defense. America will be weakened both in terms of intention, and in terms of capacity to meet future great power threats.
And don’t let anyone tell you that this is being done in order to focus on security threats in the Far East. At this point, it is inconceivable that Donald Trump will use the United States military to defend Taiwan against China. If China imposes a blockade or prepares for an invasion, Trump will start a negotiation with Xi Jinping, just as he is doing with Putin, that will effectively hand over control of the island. He will then boast that he has avoided war.
The United States since 1945 has supported a liberal world order built around norms like not using military force to change borders, and formal agreements for mutual defense like NATO and the security treaties with Japan and South Korea. This system has been spectacularly successful at promoting peace, prosperity, and democracy. The United States has used its soft power through instruments like the National Endowment for Democracy to support like-minded democracy proponents to resist authoritarian power from countries like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
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The United States under Donald Trump is not retreating into isolationism. It is actively joining the authoritarian camp, supporting right-wing authoritarians around the world from Vladimir Putin to Viktor Orbán to Nayib Bukele to Narendra Modi. The National Endowment for Democracy may well be reborn as the National Endowment for Dictatorship. How can we tell Russia and China not to continue their conquests when we are busy trying to absorb Panama and Greenland? These foreign policy moves are completely consistent with the Trump administration’s assault on the rule of law domestically, its strengthening of executive power and its weakening of checks and balances at every point.
Don’t tell me that the American people voted for such a world or such a country last November. They weren’t paying attention, and should be prepared to see their own country and world transformed beyond recognition.
Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University. His latest book is Liberalism and Its Discontents. He is also the author of the “Frankly Fukuyama” column, carried forward from American Purpose, at Persuasion.
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