The "Meet Our Researchers" series showcases the incredible scholars at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). Through engaging interviews conducted by our undergraduate research assistants, we explore the journeys, passions, and insights of CDDRL’s faculty and researchers.

What role do middle or “auxiliary” powers — like India, Brazil, or Turkey — play in this evolving landscape of great power competition?

This is one of the biggest differences between today and the Cold War. Back then, the system was much more binary. Today, the world is more fragmented. I think of it as a race: the U.S. is ahead, China is closing the gap, and everyone else is running behind. But they’re running. They have agency. They’re not just sitting on the sidelines.

Countries like India, South Africa, Turkey, and Brazil are swing states. They’re not going to line up neatly with Washington or Beijing. BRICS is a perfect example — democracies and autocracies working in the same grouping. The U.S. has to get used to living with that uncertainty. We need to engage, not withdraw.

And at the same time, while the U.S. seems to be retreating from some of its instruments of influence, China appears to be expanding. What worries you about this divergence?

It’s striking. We’re cutting back on USAID, pulling out of multilateral institutions, shutting down things like Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe, and cutting back on diplomats. Meanwhile, the Chinese are expanding their presence, their multilateral influence, their media footprint, and their diplomacy.

If the autocrats are organized, the democrats have to be organized too. We can’t just step back and assume things will turn out fine. That’s not how competition works.
 

During the Cold War, despite intense rivalry, the U.S. and USSR cooperated on nuclear nonproliferation and arms control. How do you see cooperation taking shape in today’s U.S.–China rivalry?

That’s a really important point. Cooperation in the Cold War wasn’t just about deterring the Soviets — it was also about working with them when we had overlapping interests. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968 was a monumental achievement. It was signed at the height of the Vietnam War, while we were literally fighting proxy conflicts, and yet we found common ground on nuclear weapons.

I think something similar can and should happen now. Even if we’re competing with China, and even with Russia, there are areas where cooperation is in everyone’s interest: nuclear arms control, nonproliferation of dangerous technologies like AI and bioweapons, and climate change. These are existential issues. We cooperated with our adversaries in the past; we should be able to do it again.

One of the big debates in international relations is about the role of ideology. How much does ideology matter in this current geopolitical context?

It matters a lot. My book isn’t called Great Powers — it’s called Autocrats vs. Democrats for a reason. I believe ideas and regime type shape international politics.

Putinism and Xi Jinping Thought are exported differently. Putinism — illiberal nationalism — has ideological allies in Europe and here in the U.S. Xi’s model is more economically attractive to parts of the Global South. Power matters, of course, but it’s not the only thing.

You can see this clearly if you compare Obama and Trump. There was no big structural power shift between 2016 and 2017, but their worldviews were radically different. That’s evidence that ideas and individuals matter a great deal in shaping foreign policy.
 

You’ve warned about the dangers of U.S. retrenchment. Are there historical moments that you see as parallels to today?

I worry about a repeat of the 1930s. When Italy invaded Ethiopia, Americans said, “Where’s Ethiopia?” When Japan invaded China, they said, “Why do we care?” Then came 1939. Stalin and Hitler invaded Poland, and we still said, “That’s not our problem.” Eventually, it became our problem.

If we disengage now, we may find ourselves facing similar consequences. That’s part of why I wrote this book — to push back against the idea that retrenchment is safe. It’s not.

To close, what advice would you give to students who want to build careers like yours? And, could you recommend a book or two for young people entering this field?

Be more intentional than I was. Focus on what you want to do, not just what you want to be. Develop your ideas first, then go into government or academia to act on them. Don’t go into public service just for a title. I saw too many people in government who were there just to “be” something, without a clear agenda. The “to do” should come first; the “to be” comes later.

As for books, my own book, Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder, is coming out soon — you can pre-order it. But the two books that shaped me the most when I was young are Crane Brinton’s The Anatomy of Revolution and Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe Schmitter’s Transitions from Authoritarian Rule.

The second installment discusses the administration’s efforts to cut off funding to democracy-promoting organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and USAID, despite congressional approval, which violates the law and undermines democracy. Fukuyama and Diamond highlight how, historically, authoritarian regimes erode the rule of law while claiming democratic legitimacy. They warn that the U.S. is heading toward a constitutional crisis, as Trump's disregard for judicial authority could set a dangerous precedent. Finally, they urge vigilance and legal challenges to uphold liberal democratic principles and institutional checks and balances.

In January, Fukuyama and Diamond also shared their annual review of democracy around the world. Part I focuses on global democracy after the “year of elections,” while Part II examines the state of democracy in the U.S. Both videos can be viewed below.

Kathryn Stoner, the Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), introduced the panelists, and Michael McFaul, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, moderated the discussion.

On the frontlines, outnumbered Ukrainian troops have waged a stiff resistance, while a mass influx of Russian troops, with enormous loss of life, have made incremental but not decisive progress. Hundreds of thousands have died or been injured on both sides. Talks to end the war are underway between the Trump Administration and Russia, with Ukraine and European nations not currently invited to participate.

‘We will cease to exist’

Matviichuk, who was a visiting scholar from 2017-2018 with the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program at CDDRL, noted the conflict has actually been going on for 11 years, since 2014 when Russia invaded and occupied Crimea. Today, she said, there is no safe place in Ukraine where people can hide from Russian rockets. “Just two days ago, Russia sent 263 drones against Kyiv and other peaceful cities in Ukraine.”

Matviichuk described how Russia seeks to ban the Ukrainian language and culture, and how they take Ukrainian children to Russia to put them in Russian education camps. “They told them they are not Ukrainian children, but they are Russian children.”

If the West does not provide Ukraine with security guarantees in a peace plan, then “it means that we will cease to exist. There will be no more of our people,” Matviichuk said.

Oleksandra Ustinova, a member of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's Parliament, said, “If we talk about life in Ukraine now, it's complicated, especially during the last week after the Munich Security Conference,” where Vice President JD Vance delivered a speech that focused on internal politics in Europe.

“People do not understand how we thought the United States was our biggest partner,” she said.
 

At one point, Ustinova noted that she could not hear the conversation in her headphones because sirens were blaring as Russia had just launched an aerial attack on Kyiv.

She said that Russian President Putin and others who seek a Ukrainian election are trying to set a trap because Ukrainian law does not allow an election during martial law, which Ukraine has declared because of the Russian invasion. Plus, it would involve the demobilization of more than 400,000 troops.

“It would be very easy to fake elections, and that’s what the Russians would do,” Ustinova said. “It’s a trap. They're going to find where to put the money into their own candidate.”

Ustinova, who was also a visiting scholar with the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program from 2018-2019, said, “We can see that this is a new reality, not only in the Ukrainian war, but in foreign relations, and hopefully the Europeans can unite. Because if they don't, it will be a disaster for everyone.”

Oleksiy Honcharuk, a former Ukrainian prime minister from 2019-2020 who was the Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow at FSI in 2021, said, “I think that we are still strong. My prediction is that in three or six months, Ukraine can double the damage to Russia on the battlefield from a technological perspective with drones.”

But time is very expensive now, he added, because every single day, every single hour, Ukrainians are paying with the lives of their best people and soldiers.

Honcharuk said Ukrainians are “shocked” about the position of the United States’ recent vote against a United Nations resolution condemning the Russian invasion as well as the Trump Administration’s position on talks with Russia.

“This is exactly the moment when all the people of goodwill should do everything possible to support Ukraine in this very complicated time,” said Honcharuk.

Regarding the UN vote, McFaul said, “I am shocked, I am appalled, I am embarrassed as an American to see those votes today. We are voting with the most horrific dictators in the world.”

‘Not about people’

Matviichuk said, “Putin started this war of aggression, not because he wanted to occupy just more Ukrainian land. Putin started this war of aggression because he wanted to occupy and destroy the whole of Ukraine and even go further. He wants to forcibly restore the Russian Empire — he dreams about his legacy, his logic is historical.”

This ultimately means that Ukraine needs real security guarantees, she said. “President Trump said he started the peace negotiation because he cares about people dying in this war. So, if President Trump cares about people dying in this war, he also has to care about people dying in Russian prisons.”

She explained that she’s spoken with hundreds of people who have survived brutal conditions in Russian captivity. And so, it’s surprising, Matviichuk said, to hear political statements from U.S. officials “about natural minerals and elections, about possible territorial concessions, but not about people.”

Lack of Global Support

Serhiy Leshchenko, an advisor to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s Chief of Staff, spoke about the recent overtures by the Trump Administration to Russia.

“This is a new reality we are living in now. Frankly, my understanding is that Ukrainians are not very shocked with what's going on because we went through so many shocks within the last three years.”

Acknowledging the lack of an American flag at an allied event this week in Kyiv, Leshchenko said Ukrainians know perfectly well that perception is reality.

“It means that now we have an absolutely different perception. So, it’s obvious that there is no global security infrastructure anymore. It’s obvious that NATO is not an answer anymore,” said Leshchenko, an alumnus of the 2013 cohort of CDDRL’s Fisher Family Summer Fellows Program.

‘Sad occasion’

In her opening remarks, Stoner noted, “We’re here on what is actually a sad occasion, which is that Feb. 24 marks three years since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

She said, “Only about less than 1% of land has changed hands since December 2022, so Ukraine is not losing. Ukraine is at least defending what it has, and it remains in Kursk (Russia).”

McFaul said, “It’s in our national interest that we do not line up with Belarus and Russia and North Korea – that holds negative consequences for our future security and prosperity. I actually think our country cares about values.”

He added that the notion that all America cares about is mineral rights, business deals, and hotels in Gaza is not the America he knows.

McFaul told the panelists, “I've witnessed and observed what you’ve been doing for your country, and we are just extremely fortunate to be connected to all of you, whom I consider to be heroic individuals in the world.”

A full recording of the event can be viewed below, and additional commentary can be found from The Stanford Daily.

Follow the link for a full transcript of "Global Threats Today: The 2024 Edition."

Illiberal Actors Are on the Move  |  Amichai Magen

Around the world, we are seeing a new axis of influence coalescing. Some have called it the "axis of misery" or the "axis of resistance." It is composed of Russia and Iran and North Korea, with a lot of Chinese involvement as well. It is transforming our international system in unbelievable ways. It is united by the desire to dismantle the liberal international order, and we're starting to see the nature and the interconnectivity of this new axis of chaos much more clearly. 

You see North Korean soldiers fighting for Putin in Ukraine. You see Putin helping the Houthis attack international Western shipping in Yemen. We see North Korean tunnel technology turn up in Lebanon with Hezbollah and then with Hamas in Gaza. The interconnectivity is something that we really need to know much more about.

Historically, emperors, kings, dukes, used to spend 50% of their resources on preparing for war or waging war. But in the post-Second World War era, we built a critical norm that we've called the liberal international order. And the miracle of the liberal international order is that we've managed to take global averages of defense spending from about 50% to a global average of about 7%. And the resulting surplus wealth has allowed us to invest in education, health, and scientific discovery.

What is at stake now is the possibility of a return of a norm where states are destroyed and disappear. And we have currently three states in the international system, at the very least — Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan — that are at risk of annihilation. To that end, we must articulate a positive strategic vision for the Middle East that will strive towards a two state solution, that would give the Palestinian people the dignity and the freedom that they deserve alongside a safe and secure Israel, and that will leverage the new spirit of cooperation that exists in the Middle East.

If we allow the norm of the non-disappearance of state to erode and collapse, we will go back to the law of the jungle, where we will have to spend so much more money on the wrong things. That is what is at stake in Ukraine, in the Middle East, and with Taiwan.
 

Challenges to Democracy Come From Within |  Didi Kuo

Many people think that the threat to democracy comes from outside our borders, particularly from countries like Russia and China that are asserting themselves in new and aggressive ways.

But the real threat to democracies that we're seeing across the globe is coming from within. Leaders come to power through democratic means, but then they begin to erode power from within. They attack the electoral system and the process of democratic elections, and they take power from other branches of government and aggregate it to themselves within the office of the executive. 

The good news is there are examples of countries like France, Brazil, and Poland where illiberal leaders have been stopped by pro-democracy coalitions of people who came together. These coalitions don't necessarily agree with each other politically, but they've come together and adapted in order to foreclose on these anti-democratic forces. 

That flexibility and adaptability is the reason democracies succeed. We see this over and over again in the the United States. When our institutions have become out of date, we've changed them. We extended suffrage, first to Black Americans who were formerly enslaved, then to women, then to Native Americans. We eliminating poll taxes and rethought what it means to have a multiracial democracy. We have a long track record of making changes.

Today in 2024, some of our democratic institutions are antiquated and don't reflect our contemporary values. This is a moment where we should lean into that flexible strength of democracy and think about institutional reforms that will both strengthen our system against illiberal creep and help us better achieve the ideals that we aspiring to as a people.
 

Ukraine Is Not Fated to Lose |  Steven Pifer

There's a narrative that's taking place that Russia is winning the war, Ukraine is losing, and it's only a matter of time. And it is true that Russia has captured a bit more territory than they occupied at the start of the year. But they've only achieved that at enormous cost.

As of September, the Pentagon says Russia had lost 600,000 dead and wounded soldiers. To put that in context, in February of 2022 when this major invasion began, the total Russian military — not just the army, but the total Russian military — was 1.1 million people. And the British Ministry of Defense earlier this week assessed that Russia now is losing 1,200 soldiers killed or severely wounded per day. You have to ask how long that's sustainable.

When I talk to Ukrainians, they still regard this war as existential. They're very determined to win, and we need to do a better job of supporting that. A stable and secure Europe is vital to America's national security interests, and you're not going to have a stable and secure Europe unless there's a stable and secure Ukraine. So we need to both provide them the weapons they need and relieve some of the restrictions we currently have and allow the Ukrainians to use those weapons to strike military targets in Russia.

Because we have to ask ourselves: what does an emboldened Vladimir Putin do if he wins in Ukraine? I don't think his ambitions end with Ukraine, perhaps not even with the post-Soviet space. There's going to be a much darker Russian threat hovering over Europe if Putin wins. So let's not count the Ukrainians out.
 

China Isn't Going Away Anytime Soon  |  Oriana Skylar Mastro

There is a lot of discussion right now about the fact that the economy in China is slowing down and its demography is undergoing significant changes. What I'm here to tell you is that the challenge of China is not over, and is not going to be over any time soon. China has built power in a different way than the United States, and we have to reassess how we understand that power if we want to effectively deter, blunt, and block them from acting out in ways that threaten our partners and allies.

Since the 1990s, China has developed a significant amount of political, economic, and military power. They've gone from having an economy smaller than France’s  to the second largest in the world. They've gone from not being involved in international institutions to a great degree, not even having diplomatic relations with major countries like South Korea, to now having stronger and greater diplomatic networks, especially in Asia, than the United States.

What we really need to understand is that the U.S.-China competition is not about the United States or about China; it's about the rest of the world, and how the rest of the world sees us and how China interacts with us. The balance of power is shifting, and we have to be a lot smarter and a lot faster if we want to make sure it shifts in favor of our interests.

The United States hasn't had a comprehensive strategy towards the developing world in a long time. And we are running out of time to get that balance right in Asia. We don't have the right stuff. We don't have it in the right numbers, and it's not in the right place. Some of this is about deterring war over Taiwan, but it's also about generally maintaining peace and stability in Asia.
 

We're Doing Better (But Not Enough) on Climate Change |  Marshall Burke

Many people don't recognize how much progress we're actually making on climate issues. Emissions have fallen by 20% since 2005. We're actually speeding up the amount of substantial progress being made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and dealing with the core climate change problem, which is the human emission of greenhouse gasses.

In the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act and the subsequent implementation of various rules the Biden administration has championed has given a huge boost in transitioning our economy to greener energy technologies, transportation technologies, and other kinds of infrastructure. We're moving a lot of cash to get that done, and the president is trying to get as much of it out the door as he can before his term ends.

Globally, the progress has been less rapid. Emissions are roughly flat. But overall, we're still making progress. I co-teach an undergraduate class on climate change, and we've had to update our slides on how much warming we're expecting over the next century. We thought it was going to be four degrees Celsius. Now we think it's going to be something between two and three degrees Celsius.

But the flip side of that is that we're still going to get warming of two to three degrees Celsius. We're already experiencing warming of about a degree Celsius, which is about two degrees Fahrenheit, and it's projected that we're going to get another three to five degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. That is a lot of warming, and we are not prepared to deal with it. We need to do much more on mitigation and much more on adaptation if we're going to meet the realities of living in a changing climate.

So we've had progress on the one hand, but there's still a lot of work left to do in the coming decades.
 

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