Stanford Professor Assesses State of Russia-Ukraine War
STANFORD (KPIX 5) -- At the end of the fifth week of Russian invasion of Ukraine, professor Francis Fukuyama at Stanford University provided analysis on the war's progress.
Fukuyama is Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and is a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Masters in International Policy. His latest book, Liberalism and Its Discontents, will be published in spring 2022.
Fukuyama offered some observations about a possible end to the bloodshed and described what keeps him up at night.
Watch full interview:
The interview transcribed below has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
FUKUYAMA: Five weeks into the invasion of Ukraine, the Russians are actually doing pretty poorly. They claim that they're simply regrouping and getting ready to focus on the south and the west. But they really have been defeated pretty much in the area around Kyiv. They've faced huge problems with low morale, abandoned vehicles, running out of fuel and ammunition. By contrast, the Ukrainian army has done tremendously better than anyone expected. That doesn't mean that Ukraine is out of the woods yet because I think the war is going to shift to a different theater. And of course, remember the Russians have responded to their failure to deal with the Ukrainian military by attacking Ukrainian civilians. Mairupol has been reduced to ashes with thousands of people trapped there. So I don't want to pretend that anything good is happening. But in purely military terms, it does look like the Russians are being forced to pull back.
Will Russia take Kyiv?
There's no way that the Russians can take Kyiv. They couldn't do that at the beginning of the war when all of their invasion forces were intact. And given the losses they suffered, there's just no way that they can.
Would you go as far to say that it is a stalemate?
No, I don't think it's a stalemate. The momentum has been on the Ukrainian side for the last certainly for the last week or so. They've actually pushed the Russians out of a number of towns in the neighborhood of Kyiv. And even in the south, they've actually launched counter offensives. So the Russians have actually been losing ground over the last few days. The thing about a military conflict like this, a lot of it is about military logistics. And at a certain point, you can't maintain a big army in the field in a foreign country. So it's possible that in future the Russian position will collapse more suddenly.
Is that still your view that there will be a sudden collapse, not a gradual collapse?
Well, nobody really knows. But I do think that the overall level of losses is so severe that the Russians can't sustain this. People have been talking about bringing in this 'Wagner Group' which is basically a bunch of mercenaries. Bringing in Syrians, bringing in people from Central Asia, trying to conscript people from Central Russia. These are really all acts of desperation, because Russia has committed the bulk of its existing military forces to the initial invasion. And maybe a third of those forces are just knocked out of commission. The level of deaths has been really extraordinary. I mean, it's probably in the area of 10,000 to 15,000 killed in a month's worth of fighting, including seven or eight very senior generals. And so this is not a level of combat losses that even a country like Russia can sustain for long.
If Russia were to find mercenaries or draft young men, how would they even get them into Ukraine at this point?
Well, it's hard to move people. They're talking about taking people out of the Far East, which is 11 time zones away from where the conflict is. So logistically, that's very hard. The other bigger problem is morale. Because conscripts really don't want to be there fighting, especially now that they're beginning to understand how bloody the fighting has been. Foreigners are just never as committed to fighting a war as people defending their own home turf. This is not going to be a really powerful source of further escalation. I think the real thing that people are worried about, quite reasonably, is chemical and biological weapons. Putin's future is at stake. So it is an existential fight for his political future. And under those circumstances, it's not clear what he'd be willing to do. And I think an escalation to chemical or biological weapons is something that's in his power, and he's certainly ruthless enough to consider that.
Will there be some kind of military withdrawal by Russia?
I think that the Russians are already withdrawing in the north in the area around Kyiv. They may be forced to withdraw in the South as well. But that's really the area to focus on closely in the coming days and weeks.
Do you see a diplomatic end/solution at this point?
I don't see a diplomatic solution coming out of these talks in Turkey right now. Really, for the Ukrainians to agree to anything, the Russians would have to basically go back to the positions that they occupied on February 24. They'd have to give up all of the territorial gains. And I don't see Putin agreeing to that. And I don't see Ukraine agreeing to a ceasefire, or any kind of diplomatic solution that rewards the Russians for their aggression. For that reason, you might get a temporary ceasefire, but that would probably last only as long as two sides resupplied and figured out how to fight the next phase of the war.
Is that one scenario, that Russia holds on to the territories it captured and that's where the conflict ends?
I think the Russians would like it if they could get a ceasefire now, and they could hold on to all of these newly captured territories. That would be portrayed in Moscow as a victory, even though it falls far short of his original war aims. That would be a real loss for Ukraine. And so that's why I don't think Ukrainians are going to accept anything like that.
What kind of assets are on the territories that have been captured?
The big problem is the sea coast, since Ukraine is a big exporter of agricultural products. And in fact, the World Food Program has been saying that there's going to be widespread hunger in many parts of the developed world, because of the failure in both Russia and Ukraine to be able to export wheat and soybean, sunflower, oil. That's what's really critical. The Russians are basically blockading all of the Black Sea ports that Ukraine needs to keep its economy going, and also feed a large part of the world. Our attention really needs to be focused on reversing that situation and allowing shipments to get out of Ukraine, which will also be necessary for any kind of economic recovery.
Is there any way that Vladimir Putin emerges from this better off than he started, or is he persona non grata on the world stage?
The level of sanctions that have been imposed on Russia are unprecedented, including the freezing of Central Bank assets. They haven't even begun to feel the real impact of the economic sanctions. Even if Russia somehow holds on to some of the territorial gains that they've made, it's hard to see how this is going to make Vladmir Putin look good. The trouble of course, is that the Russian people only get the propaganda that's fed through in Russian media outlets. And that's why his popularity has actually gone up since the beginning of this invasion. In the long run, it's going to be hard to keep people from noticing all these body bags are coming back, and their sons are no longer living. But it may take a while for that to sink in, and will in the end, determine (Putin's) fate.
Do you see the long-term nightmare scenario as Russia teaming up with China?
There has been this burgeoning relationship between Russia and China. That was apparently cemented during the Beijing Olympics. But the Chinese are realizing maybe this wasn't the greatest partner, because you want to glom onto success rather than failure. So I think China is being a bit more cautious. The biggest implication is really about Taiwan, because the Chinese have made moves and suggested that they might consider military action to reincorporate Taiwan down the road. The performance of the Russian military ought to give them pause, and also the response of the west to the Ukraine invasion. Because the West has been much more determined to reverse it, and much more unified than anyone expected. And I think that's something the Chinese will take into account.
Will the U.S. intervene if China invades Taiwan?
The U.S. is much more likely to intervene directly in the Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Nobody wants to say that outright very clearly in advance, because I don't think the American people are in agreement on whether that's a good thing to do. But there's a current policy of strategic ambiguity that suggests, yes, that can happen.
Are we headed toward World World III?
I think the fear of World War III is overblown, if by that, you mean escalation to nuclear weapons. That's something you always have to worry about. It is possible, but even crazy dictators like Putin recognize that this is a pretty suicidal type of conflict. So I don't think that is likely to happen. I do think you could get a wider war that would include direct conflict between NATO forces and Russian forces. That's one of the reasons I think the Biden administration has avoided calls for a no-fly zone. But if there is an escalation to chemical and biological weapons, you could get a wider war.
How will this look in a month, three months, six months?
I don't feel quite comfortable making very specific predictions. The one thing I think is safe to say is that Putin is not going to succeed in anything like his original war aims. That is off the table. I tend to think that his forces are going to be slowly expelled from Ukraine, and Ukrainians are going to end up being recognized as the victors in this conflict. I just had a conversation with a whole bunch of Ukrainian businessmen and entrepreneurs a couple of days ago. In that group, there's confidence that they're going to win the war. So, I'll go with that outcome.
How long will the goodwill last for the millions of refugees, and how long will it take to rebuild the country and move those folks back home?
The refugee problem is going to be a long term one, it's going to take a lot of time to rebuild cities like Kherson, Mariupol and Kharkiv. Although a lot of the refugees' homes are still intact, they just don't want to be in danger. If there was actually an end to the war and the Russians withdrew, a lot of those people could go back pretty quickly. The rebuilding costs are going to be enormous, hundreds of billions of dollars. The Russians ought to pay reparations, but that would be an uphill struggle. The West should not breathe a sigh of relief if there is actually a Ukrainian military victory. That's not the end of the task. Rebuilding Ukraine is really something that needs to happen.
What can we learn about democracy's role in world history from this?
There's been a lot of pessimism about the fate of global democracy in recent years because of the rise of Russia and China and other authoritarian regimes in Venezuela, Iran, Syria and the like. And also the rise of nationalist populist states in Britain and many European countries. This war may teach younger generations that it's actually better to live in a liberal democracy than in an authoritarian country. Because democracies tend not to do things like silence their own citizens, quash the media, invade other countries and bring death and suffering to their neighbors. That's an important lesson that people need to relearn.
Authoritarianism seems to be thriving. Do you see an end to that?
Authoritarianism is not going to end. Putin personally is facing a lot of challenges. If he's humiliated in Ukraine, I'm not sure that he's going to be able to hang on as the leader of Russia. But that doesn't end the struggle between authoritarianism and democracy. There's plenty of other authoritarians in other parts of the world. And it's important people recognize there needs to be solidarity among democracies, and that people need to keep struggling to fight back.
Do you think Russia will continue on as a superpower after this conflict?
Russia's prestige and global influence is going to be very diminished as a result of the kind of incompetence and failure that's already been demonstrated in Ukraine.
If capitalists sense there's money to be made in Russia, do you think that the people will look past everything that's happened in Ukraine and begin making investments again?
Sanctions are actually pretty hard to reverse. We've had experience with them in South Africa and Libya, and in many other places. And that's really what's keeping capitalists from investing in places like that. They don't want to run afoul of Western sanctions. So I don't think that there's going to be any mad rush to get back into Russia at any point.
What makes you optimistic and what keeps you up at night?
What makes me optimistic is just following the war on the ground, which still seems to be going in favor of the Ukrainians. What worries me is the possibility of escalation. There's a lot of other parts of the world that are not on Ukraine's side.
Has this emboldened other dictators and regimes?
I would say it's the opposite. They're probably chastened by this and that's one of the potentially good outcomes of this struggle.