The following commentary has been edited for clarity and length, and does not represent the full extent of the panel’s discussion.
 

Rethinking Assumptions about Russia and Putin

Kathryn Stoner

Right now, Putin is the most vulnerable he's ever been in 22 years in power. But I don’t believe he's under so much pressure at this point that he is about to leave office anytime soon. Autocracies do not usually die by popular mobilization, unfortunately. More often they end through an elite coup or turnover. And since the end of WWII, the research has shown that about 75% of the time autocracies are typically replaced by another autocracy, or the perpetuation of the same autocracy, just with a different leader. So, if Putin were replaced, you might get a milder form of autocracy in Russia, but I don't think you are suddenly going to create a liberal democracy.

This means that we in the West, and particularly in the U.S., need to think very hard about our strategies and how we are going to manage our relationships with Putin and his allies. This time last year, the U.S. broadcast that we basically wanted Russia to calm down so we could pivot to China. That’s an invitation to not calm down, and I think it was a mistake to transmit that as policy.

We need to pay attention to what Russia has been doing. They are the second biggest purveyor of weapons globally after the United States. They will sell to anyone. They’ve been forgiving loans throughout Sub Saharan Africa from the Soviet period and using that as a way of bargaining for access to natural resources. They’re marketing oil, selling infrastructure, and building railroads. Wherever there is a vacuum, someone will fill it, and that includes Russia every bit as much as China. We need to realize that we are in competition with both Russia and China, and develop our policies and outreach accordingly.

Confronting Autocracy at Home and Abroad

Anna Grzymala-Busse

Why is Putin in Ukraine? Because the fact that there is a democratic country right next door to Russia is an affront to him. Putin doesn’t care that much about NATO. The fact that nothing happened when Sweden joined is some evidence of this. That’s something to keep in mind as people are debating NATO and Ukraine and Ukraine’s possible future as a member.

NATO membership and EU membership are both wonderful things. But more fundamental that that, this war has to be won first. That’s why I think it’s necessary in the next six months to speed up the support for Ukraine by ensuring there’s a steady stream of armaments, training personnel, and providing other military support.

There’s been incredible unity on Ukraine over the last seven months across the EU, NATO, and amongst our allies. But our recent history with President Trump reminds us how fragile these international commitments can be. In foreign policy, it used to be understood that America stands for liberal democracy. But we had a president of the United States who was more than happy to sidle up to some of the worst autocrats in the world. That’s why we can’t afford to leave rising populism around the world unaddressed and fail to engage with voters. When we do that, we allow far right parties to grab those votes and go unopposed. Whatever happens domestically impacts what happens internationally.

The Consequences of Nuclear Sabre-Rattling

Scott Sagan

We have to very clear-eyed when we’re talking about the threat, however improbable, of the use of a nuclear weapon. When it comes to the deployment of a tactical nuclear weapon, its kinetic effects depend on both the size of the weapon, the yield, and the target. Tactical weapons range in yield from very low — 5-10% of what was in the Hiroshima bomb — to as large as what was used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If that kind of weapon was used on an urban target, it would produce widescale effects. In a battlefield or rural area, it would have a relatively small impact.

But in the bigger picture, what any use of a weapon like this does is break a 70+ year tradition of non-use. Those seventy years have been dicey and fragile, but they have held so far. A tradition that is broken creates a precedent, and once there’s a precedent, it makes it much easier for someone to transgress the tradition again. So even if a decision was made to use a tactical weapon with little kinetic importance for strategic effect, I think we still need to be worried about it.

Personalistic dictators surround themselves with yes men. They make lonely decisions by themselves, often filled with vengeance and delusion because no one can tell them otherwise. They don't have the checks and balances. But I want to make one point about a potential coup or overthrow. Putin has done a lot to protect himself against that. But improbable events happen all the time, especially when leaders make really, really bad decisions. That’s not something we should be calling for as official U.S. policy, but it should be our hope.

Cycles of Conflict, Climate Change, and Food Insecurity

Marshall Burke

The estimates right now project that there are 350 million people around the world facing acute food insecurity. That means 350 million people who literally don’t have enough to eat. That’s roughly double what it was pre-COVID. The factors driving that are things like supply chain disruptions from the pandemic and climate shocks, but also because of ongoing conflict happening around the world, Ukraine included.

There was an early concern that the war in Ukraine would be a huge threat to global food security. That largely has not been the case so far, at least directly. Opening the grain corridors through the Black Sea has been crucial to this, and it’s critical that we keep those open and keep the wheat flowing out. Research shows that unrest increases when food prices spike, so it’s important for security everywhere to keep wheat prices down.

What I’m worried about now is natural gas prices. With high global natural gas prices, that means making fertilizer is also very expensive and prices have increased up to 300% relative to a few years ago. If they stay that high, this is going to be a long-term problem we will have to find a way of reckoning with on top of the other effects from climate change already impacting global crop production and the global economy.

Ukraine After the War

Francis Fukuyama

I've been more optimistic about the prospects for Ukraine taking back territory for more of this war, just because of the vast difference in motivation between the two sides and the supply of modern weapons that Ukraine has been getting. But I don’t know what the conditions on the ground will look like when the decision to negotiate comes. Will Russia still be sitting on occupied territory? Are they kicked out entirely? Or are the frontlines close to where they are now?

As I’ve observed, Ukraine's demands have shifted depending on how they perceive the war going on. There was a point earlier this summer where they hinted that a return to the February 23 borderlines would be acceptable. But now with their recent successes, they're saying they want everything back to the 2014 lines. What actually happens will depend on what the military situation looks like next spring, by my guess.

However the war does end, I think Ukraine actually has a big opportunity ahead of them. Putin has unwittingly become the father of a new Ukrainian nation. The stresses of the war have created a very strong sense of national identity in Ukraine that didn’t exist previously. It’s accurate that Ukraine had significant problems with corruption and defective institutions before, but I think there’s going to be a great push to rout that out. Even things like the Azov steel factory being bombed out of existence is probably a good thing in the long run, because Ukraine was far too dependent on 20^th-century coal, steel, and heavy industry. Now they have an opportunity to make a break from all of that.

There are going to be challenges, obviously. We’ll have to watch very carefully what Zelenskyy chooses to do with the commanding position he has at the moment, and whether the government will be able to release power back to the people and restore its institutions. But Europe and the West and our allies are going to have a really big role in the reconstruction of Ukraine, and that should be regarded by everyone as a tremendous opportunity.

Victory in Ukraine, Victory for Democracy

Michael McFaul

Nobody likes a loser, and right now, Putin is losing strategically, tactically, and morally. Now, he doesn’t really care about what Biden or NATO or the West think about him. But he does care about what the autocrats think about him, especially Xi Jinping. And with reports coming out of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that Xi has “concerns” about what’s happening in Ukraine, Putin is feeling that pressure. I think that's why he has decided he needs to double down, not to negotiate, but to try and “win” in some way as defined by him.

In my view, that’s what’s behind the seizure of these four regions. If he feels like he can unequivocally claim them as part of Russia, then maybe he will sue for peace. And that’s exactly what President Zelenskyy fears. Why? Because that’s exactly what happened in 2014. Putin took Crimea, then turned around to the countries of the world and said, “Aren’t we all tired of war? Can’t we just have peace? I’m ready to end the war, as long as you recognize the new borders.” And, let’s be honest, we did.

We keep hearing politicians say we should put pressure for peace negotiations. I challenge any of them to explain their strategy for getting Putin to talk about peace. There is no doubt in my mind that President Zelenskyy would sit down tomorrow to negotiate if there was a real prospect for peace negotiations. But there's also no doubt in my mind right now that Putin has zero interest in peace talks.

Like Dr. Fukuyama, I don’t know how this war will end. But there's nobody inside or outside of Russia that thinks it’s going well. I personally know a lot of people that believe in democracy in Russia. They believe in democracy just as much as you or I. I’ve no doubt of their convictions. But they’re in jail, or in exile today.

If we want to help Russia in the post-Putin world, we have to think about democracy. There’s not a lot we can do to directly help democracy in Russia right now. But we should be doing everything to help democracy in Ukraine.  It didn’t happen in 1991. It didn’t happen in 2004. It didn’t happen in 2014. They had those breakthroughs and those revolutionary moments, but we as the democratic world collectively didn’t get it right. This is our moment to get it right, both as a way of helping Ukraine secure its future, and to give inspiration to “small-d” democrats fighting for rights across the world.

While China now innovates in many of these technologies, it also continues to acquire Western intellectual property through a coordinated assault that represents what former NSA Director General Keith Alexander calls “the greatest transfer of wealth in human history.” And every technological innovation that China can possibly militarize it does, through a strategy of “civil-military fusion.” With this accumulated power, Beijing plans to force Asia’s most vibrant liberal democracy, Taiwan, to “reunify with the motherland.” It also seeks to establish unilateral Chinese control over the resources and sea lanes of the South China Sea, and then gradually to push the United States out of Asia.

Russia’s aggression must be understood in this broader context of authoritarian coordination and ambition, challenging the values and norms of the liberal international order, compromising the societal (and where possible, governmental) institutions of rival political systems, and portraying Western democracies — and therefore, really, democracy itself — as weak, decadent, ineffectual, and irresolute. In this telling, the democracies of Europe, Asia, and North America — especially the United States — are too commercially driven, too culturally fractured, too riven by internal and alliance divisions, too weak and effeminate, to put up much of a fight.

At the same time, China, Russia, and other autocracies have been denouncing the geopolitical arrogance of the world’s democracies and confidently declaring an end to the era in which democracies could “intervene in the internal affairs of other countries” by raising uncomfortable questions about human rights. 

On the eve of the Beijing Winter Olympics on February 4, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping issued a joint statement denouncing Western alliances and declaring that there were no limits to the strategic partnership between their two countries. Many analysts believe Putin told Xi then that he was about to invade Ukraine and that Xi probably said, okay, just wait till the Olympics are over and make it quick. 

Four days after Xi’s closing Olympics fireworks display, Putin launched his own fireworks by invading Ukraine. It has been anything but successful or quick. Xi cannot possibly be pleased by the bloody mess that Putin has made of this, which helps to explain why China twice abstained in crucial UN votes condemning the Russian invasion, rather than join the short list of countries that stood squarely with Russia in voting no: Belarus, Eritrea, Syria, and North Korea. Xi must think that Putin’s shockingly inept and wantonly cruel invasion is giving authoritarianism a bad name.

It is also costing China a lot of money in global trade at a time when China’s economic growth rate has slowed dramatically. And it’s undermining the narrative China was trying to push that the autocracies know what they are doing and represent the wave of the future. Moreover, this is coming at a moment when one of China’s two most important cities, Shanghai, is gripped by panic and a substantial lockdown over the Covid-19 virus, which Xi’s regime has no other means to control except lockdown, because it has refused to admit that the vaccines it developed are largely ineffective against the current strains of Covid, and instead import the vaccines that work.

All of this explains why this moment could represent a possible hinge in history as significant as the 1989-91 period that ended the Cold War. 2021 marked the fifteenth consecutive year of a deepening democratic recession. In both the older democracies of the West and the newer ones of the global South and East, the reputation of democracy has taken a beating. A narrative has been gathering that democracies are corrupt and worn out, lacking in energy, purpose, capacity, and self-confidence. And this has been fed by real-world developments, including the reckless and incompetent US invasion of Iraq, the 2008 financial crisis, steadily rising levels of economic inequality, widespread job losses, economic insecurity and status anxiety due to globalization and technological change, and the challenges of managing cultural diversity amid expanding immigration. These factors have fed or at least facilitated the rise of populist challengers to liberal democracy and the decay of democratic norms and institutions across many democracies — rich, poor, and middle-income. 

The Germans have a word for these trends in the global narrative:  “zeitgeist” — the spirit of the times, or the dominant mood and beliefs of a historical era. In the roughly 75 years since WWII, we have seen five historical periods, each with their own dominant mood. From the mid-1940s to the early 60s, the mood had a strong pro-democracy flavor that went with decolonization. It gave way in the mid-1960s to post-colonial military and executive coups, the polarization and waste of the Vietnam War, and a swing back to realism, with its readiness to embrace dictatorships that took “our side” in the Cold War. Then, third, came a swing back to democracy in southern Europe, Latin America, and East Asia, and a new wave of democracy, from the mid-1970s to around 1990. That period of expanding democracy was then supercharged by a decisively pro-democratic zeitgeist from 1990 to 2005, the so-called unipolar moment in which one liberal democracy, the U.S., predominated. That period ended in the Iraq debacle, and for the last 15 years, we have been in the tightening grip of a democratic recession and a nascent authoritarian zeitgeist. 

Could Russia’s criminal, blundering invasion of Ukraine launch a new wave of democratic progress and a liberal and anti-authoritarian zeitgeist? It could, but it will require the following things.

First, Russia must fail in its bid to conquer and extinguish Ukraine. The United States and NATO must do everything possible, and much more than we are doing now, to arm and assist Ukraine militarily, and to punish Russia financially and economically.

Second, we must wage a more effective and comprehensive battle of information and ideas to expose Russia’s mendacity and criminality and to document its war crimes, not only before the court of public opinion, but in ways that reach individual Russians directly and creatively. We need an intense campaign of technological innovation to circumvent authoritarian censorship and empower Russian, Chinese, and other sources that are trying to report the truth about what is happening and to promote critical thinking and the values of the open society. In general, we need to promote democratic narratives and values much more imaginatively and resourcefully. The message of the Russian debacle in Ukraine is an old one and should not be difficult to tell: autocracies are corrupt and prone to massive policy failures precisely because they suppress scrutiny, independent information, and policy debate. Democracies may not be the swiftest decision makers, but they are over time the most reliable and resilient performers.

Third, we must ensure that we perform more effectively as democracies, and with greater coordination among democracies, to meet the challenges of developing and harnessing new technologies, creating new jobs, and reducing social and economic inequalities.

Fourth, to win the technological race, for example in semiconductors, artificial intelligence, biomedicine, and many other fields of science, engineering, and production, we must open our doors more widely to the best talent from all over, including China. We URGENTLY need immigration reform to facilitate this. As our late colleague George Shultz said:  Admit the best talent from all over the world to our graduate programs in science and engineering, and then staple green cards to their diplomas.

Finally, we have to reform and defend our democracy in the United States so that it can function effectively to address our major domestic and international challenges, and so that American democracy can once again be seen as a model worth emulating. We cannot do this without reforming the current electoral system of "first-past-the-post" voting and low-turnout party primaries, which has become a kind of death spiral of political polarization, distrust, and defection from democratic norms.

I believe we entered a new historical era on Feb 24. What the Ukrainian people have suffered already in these seven weeks has been horrific, and it will get worse. But the courage and tenacity of their struggle should renew our commitment not only to them but also to ourselves—that freedom is worth fighting for, and that democracy, with all its faults, remains the best form of government.

The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) is pleased to announce that Amichai Magen has been selected as the inaugural Visiting Fellow in Israel Studies. Dr. Magen is currently the head of the MA program in Diplomacy and Conflict Studies, and director of the Program on Democratic Resilience & Development at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy at Reichman University, in Herzliya, Israel.

As a Visiting Fellow in Israel Studies, Dr. Magen will teach courses on Israeli politics, society, and policy, and also on his recent research regarding liberal orders, governance in areas of limited statehood, and political violence. In addition, he will help guide FSI programming related to Israel, advise and engage Stanford students and faculty.

An alumnus of Stanford Law School, where he obtained his JSD in 2008, he has also been a pre-doctoral scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

“I’ve had the pleasure of publishing a book with Amichai before, and can attest that he’s a first-rate scholar and academic,” said FSI Director Michael McFaul. “I recall a conversation between us when Amichai was a pre-doctoral fellow at CDDRL, and I told him that once you arrive at Stanford you spend the rest of your life trying to make it back here. I’m delighted that time will come soon.”

The son of refugees from Nazi Germany and Soviet-occupied Latvia, Dr. Magen's scholarship addresses the constitutive elements, vulnerabilities, and evolution of modern liberal political and legal orders – notably statehood, democracy, the rule of law, and regionalism – as well as Israel's place in such orders.

Dr. Magen’s current research examines limited statehood, governance failures, and political violence in the international system, and his book on the subject is forthcoming from Stanford University Press. During his time at Stanford, Dr. Magen will be based at FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

“I am thrilled that CDDRL will have the opportunity to host and welcome back Dr. Amichai Magen,” said Kathryn Stoner, the Mosbacher Director of Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. “He was an outstanding contributor to the Center in its earliest days, and I know that he will be an outstanding inaugural Israel Fellow. I look forward to working with him again.”

In addition to his academic duties, Dr. Magen has also served on the executive committee of the World Jewish Congress, and is a board member of the International Coalition for Democratic Renewal, the Israel Council on Foreign Relations, and the Israeli Association for the Study of European Integration. He regularly briefs diplomats, journalists, and academics from around the world on Israeli political, constitutional, and geopolitical affairs.

“I am delighted to return to Stanford and engage with the many talented faculty and students on this unique campus,” said Dr. Magen. “FSI was my intellectual home as a graduate student at Stanford, and a model academic community that has shaped my subsequent career as a researcher and teacher. This is a real homecoming moment for me, and I am deeply grateful to be granted the opportunity to be a part of this wonderful community once again.”

The Visiting Fellow in Israel Studies program was launched in September 2021 with the generous support of Stanford alumni and donors. The search committee was led by Larry Diamond, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at FSI, and included other senior fellows from throughout the institute.

“In developing and anchoring the program over the next three years, Amichai Magen will bring a brilliant scholarly mind, a great love of teaching, and broad expertise on Israeli politics, society, public policy, and regional relations,” said Diamond. “In addition, he will contribute greatly to the research work of CDDRL with his expertise on governance crises, limited statehood, and challenges to the liberal international order.”

In addition to Dr. Magen, the Visiting Fellow in Israel Studies program plans to bring a second Israeli visiting fellow to teach and conduct research during the next academic year. Media inquiries about the program can be directed to Ari Chasnoff, FSI’s associate director for communications.