Foreign policy realists argue the Russian invasion of Ukraine, although an inexcusable breach of international law and a humanitarian catastrophe, does not amount to a vital U.S. national security interest.
In this worldview, the U.S. should sanction Russia but must avoid being pulled into a larger war where liberal democracy is perceived to be under attack from a supposed global system of rising autocrats. Realists also may contend the West must not dismiss legitimate Russian security interests, such as the expansion of NATO into parts of the former Soviet Union.
In this episode of History As It Happens, Stanford political scientist Francis Fukuyama contends the realists have been proven wrong. What happens in Ukraine is critical to the health of the liberal world order at a time when authoritarianism is on the march.
“It is an important country to the United States because the issue right now in Ukraine is not simply limited to Ukraine. Putin has made it very clear that he wants to overturn the entire European order, the Europe ‘whole and free’ that the United States hoped to build at the end of the Cold War,” said Mr. Fukuyama, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations who argues, in an essay in Foreign Affairs, in favor of a revived liberal nationalism to confront authoritarianism.
“That democratic order is important for our security at home. We want to live in a world that has more democracies than fewer.”
Listen to Mr. Fukuyama discuss the “democratic recession” and what has surprised him about the post-Cold War order, by downloading this episode of History As It Happens.
