I encourage you to read Francis Fukuyama’s harsh castigation of Trump’s having betrayed Ukraine at Persuasion. Here’s a sample:
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’ll try to summarize Dr. Fukuyama’s view:
- Ukraine is “a young, fragile, and imperfect liberal democracy”
- Russia is a “totalitarian dictatorship”
- The United States under Donald Trump’s leadership is “joining the authoritarian camp”
My view is somewhat different:
- Just about anything we think we know about what is going on in Ukraine is propaganda—either anti-Russian, pro-Russian, anti-Ukrainian, or pro-Ukrainian propaganda
- Russia is not a liberal democracy. It is an authoritarian oligarchy. Liberal democracies do not imprison people for expressing view (in print or online) contrary to the official one
- Ukraine is not a liberal democracy. See above. In Ukraine they’ve called such prosecutions “promoting Russian propaganda”.
- I do not know what President Trump is trying to do. I presume he’s trying to get the best possible deal but I have no insight into how he assesses that. That’s how I interpret the Ukrainian minerals stuff.
The question I would ask Dr. Fukuyama is whether he can cite an example of a “young, fragile, and imperfect liberal democracy” that become more liberal and more democratic as it matured? It certainly doesn’t describe the U. S. experience. I can think of dozens of examples of “young, fragile, and imperfect liberal democracies” that became dictatorships as they matured.
More on this subject in my next post.
We supported a lot of dictatorships that eventually morphed into Democracies – South Korea, Taiwan, Greece, Portugal are the examples that spring to mind, but there are probably others. All of those were less Democratic than Ukraine is now. And the US history of freedom of speech during WW2 isn’t so different from Ukraine – existential conflicts tend to do that.
I agree with Fukuyama that Trump is wrong to throw Ukraine – rhetorically for now – under the bus. But I’m not yet taking his comments at face value – he has a long history of stirring up shit and causing chaos to create a “deal.”
Yes, dictatorships sometimes become democracies. But per Fukuyama Ukraine is ALREADY a democracy and not a dictatorship. The question is about nascent democracies becoming more democratic. I don’t believe that happens.
If he had said “yes, Ukraine is a dictatorship but with our support it could become a liberal democracy” I might have agreed with it but that’s not what he said.
I agree with your second paragraph completely.
Ukraine isn’t a dictatorship either. Prior to the war, it was much closer to “imperfect liberal democracy” than it was to dictatorship. Trump’s comments are just stupid.
The future remains to be seen. Existential wars on this scale tend to be ruinous and disruptive. The future of Ukraine’s political institutions is still very much in doubt.
I don’t think that Ukraine is a dictatorship, either. As I implied in the body of the post I think that Ukraine is more similar to Russia than dissimilar. I think it’s an authoritarian oligarchy.
Have been reading a bit on South Korea recently. They didnt go straight from a dictatorship to a liberal democracy. They went through a fragile stage. Suspect Taiwan and Portugal did also.
Not really sure how you make conclusions about Ukraine. They went from authoritarian to still dominated by Russia but aiming towards democracy and then got invaded. They had elections which the US monitored, noting that it was the pro-Russian side which created some irregularities. As Andy noted before the war Zelensky/Ukraine was not acting as an authoritarian regime but a liberal democracy with lots of corruption, much of that from Russian influence.
Steve
I think the direction of travel is that countries can transition to democracies once they’ve hit a certain gdp per capita, which used to be $6,000, but I don’t know if that needs to be updated. The oil curse makes it harder for countries with large natural resource advantages. Dictatorships can advance beneficial economic policies, but they tend not to relinquish power and foster inter-communal grievances.
Most of the Eastern bloc countries have seen their economies expand since the Fall of the Iron Curtain, though not in a straight-line and not without stress, and become liberal democracies. I don’t see any reason not to believe that Ukraine would not follow it’s neighbors in Poland, Slovakia and Romania which are now liberal democracies. The war has hurt the economy and made both Ukraine and Russia less liberal.
Dave Schuler: Just about anything we think we know about what is going on in Ukraine is propaganda
While there is certainly a surfeit of propaganda, that doesn’t mean objective information can’t be gleaned. Start with the fact that Russia invaded Ukraine, breaking the most important international norm established since WWII.
Dave Schuler: In Ukraine they’ve called such prosecutions “promoting Russian propaganda”.
Well, duh. Propagating Nazi propaganda was illegal in the United States and other countries during WWII. Propagandists could be criminally charged; for instance, Mildred Gillars became the first woman in history to be convicted of treason in the United States.
Dave Schuler: I do not know what President Trump is trying to do.
Trump is acting like an imperialist autocrat. For instance, he wants Ukraine’s mineral wealth, so he will lie and use threats to get what he wants. In the short run, that may work. In the long run, it will weaken the United States and hasten the general decline in its relative global influence.
I agree that Russia’s invading Ukraine in 2022 is an objective fact. I don’t believe we know, for example, how many military and civilian casualties have been incurred during the war. The official Ukrainian and Russian statistics vary widely and I don’t believe either one of them.