What do the 2020 Doomsday Clock - you know, the calculation that tells us which technologies and conditions may annihilate us all - and the 2020 presidential election have in common?

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The findings show the Trump Campaign's interactions with Russian intelligence agencies posed what they're calling a "grave" threat to U.S. counterintelligence. For more, KCBS Radio news anchors Dan Mitchinson and Margie Shafer spoke with Kathryn Stoner, Deputy Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford specializing in Russian politics.

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As the November 2020 presidential election approaches, it is worth imagining how a foreign adversary might attempt to intervene in the domestic political process. We have no evidence that any of the precise things we consider in this essay are actually happening—though some may well be. They are based on a review of what we know to be possible and plausible given what has occurred in the past and the vulnerabilities we can see clearly today. We don’t make specific assertions about the likelihood of any of these efforts or the probability of any having a meaningful effect.

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Volodymyr Zelensky swept to victory in Ukraine’s spring 2019 presidential election because he promised renewed reform and a real fight against corruption.

Today, the reality looks quite different.

Zelensky has fired a reformist prime minister and cabinet, replaced a prosecutor general who had begun weeding out bad eggs among prosecutors, and triggered the resignation of a National Bank of Ukraine head who had won plaudits for steering an independent course. Speculation runs rampant in Kyiv that oligarchs are reasserting control.

Ukrainians can be forgiven for thinking they have seen this movie before. They have. Ukraine’s past 30 years are filled with episodes of rising hopes turning to disappointment.  Zelensky should ask himself whether Ukraine and he personally can afford another one.

After winning the presidential election in July 1994, Leonid Kuchma appointed an economic team with strong reform credentials.  That fall, he laid out a program to accelerate the transition to a market economy, liberalize prices, cut the tax rate, and slash the government’s budget deficit.  In 1995, however, he reversed course. Lacking the critical mass of reforms that energized growth in Ukraine’s western neighbors, Ukraine’s economy weakly hobbled along.

Following his reelection in November 1999, Kuchma turned to Victor Yushchenko, a recognized reformer, to serve as prime minister.  I recall hosting a Christmas holiday party in Kyiv the evening that the Verkhovna Rada (parliament), Ukraine’s parliament, confirmed Yushchenko; my Ukrainian guests were practically giddy with optimism.  Unfortunately, those hopes turned to naught. By June 2000, the presidential administration and Yushchenko’s cabinet of ministers were at war with one another instead of working together for change. Less than a year later, the Rada voted Yushchenko out.

Yushchenko later had another turn, becoming president in January 2005 following the Orange Revolution.  Many hoped he would finally get Ukraine on track to becoming a modern European state. He appointed as his prime minister Yuliya Tymoshenko, the most effective minister in his cabinet in 2000. Unfortunately, the two never got in sync on a reform program, and new infighting broke out between the presidential administration and cabinet of ministers.  Things did not improve with new prime ministers or with Tymoshenko’s return to the job. Ukrainians became so dissatisfied with Yushchenko’s presidency that, in the January 2010 presidential election, he placed fifth, drawing a mere 5.45 percent of the vote.

In May 2014, in the aftermath of the Maidan Revolution, Petro Poroshenko won the presidential election on the first ballot, something that had not happened since 1991. He and his first prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, adopted early reforms. They cleaned up the government’s finances, introduced critical price reform at Naftogaz, put the banking sector on a solid footing, and secured a large International Monetary Fund program.  But the pace of reform slowed in early 2016 after Poroshenko fired Yatsenyuk and other pro-reform ministers. By the summer, visitors to Kyiv could hear Ukrainians voice frustration over the failure—more than two years after the Maidan—to take real steps to reduce corruption and curb the outsized political and economic influence of the oligarchs.

Poroshenko and his political team apparently missed that rising disaffection. Campaigning on an anti-corruption message, Zelensky routed Poroshenko in the April 2019 presidential run-off, winning 73.2 percent of the vote.

This latest episode of hope-to-disappointment with Zelensky comes at a difficult time for Ukraine.  Mired in a war with Russia, the Ukrainian president cannot bring peace to Donbas without Vladimir Putin’s help, but the Kremlin appears intent on continuing the conflict.

Reform and the struggle against corruption, however, are fights that Zelensky can control.  If he turns away from them, he risks losing support in the West, particularly in Europe, where calls for a return to business as usual with Moscow are growing in EU member states. Zelensky should worry that, after 30 years of failure to rein in corruption and the oligarchs, Europeans may well begin to wonder whether Ukraine’s political elite is incapable of change.  Few things would damage Ukraine more than if its friends in the West begin to question whether the country is worth the trouble—and simply give up.

If Zelensky does not worry about his country’s future, perhaps he should worry about his political prospects.  Just thirteen months after assuming office, his approval rating plummeted to 38 percent in June, a far cry from the 71 percent he enjoyed last September.  His apparent reversal on corruption and long-needed economic reforms undoubtedly contributed to that.

Zelensky can still turn things around and become the pro-reform, anti-corruption champion that he promised Ukrainian voters.  Kyiv is full of reformers who can help him. However, if he does not change course, he most likely will follow in the footsteps of Yushchenko and Poroshenko — one-term presidents turned out by an electorate badly disillusioned with their failed promises.

Originally for Kyiv Post

In South Korea’s case, the politicization of the court system serves as a prime example of this subtle subversion. To date, Moon has named 10 of the fourteen-member Supreme Court and will have an opportunity to appoint three more before the end of his term. He has also named eight of the nine judges to the Constitutional Court. Many of these appointees have left-wing connections, and some even openly echo the administration’s rhetoric to “expel deep-rooted evils.” Many of the judges and prosecutors were appointed from partisan positions, and many have entered politics immediately following their tenures in law using a loophole in the 2017 amendment of the Korean Prosecutor’s Act.

The appointments follow the letter of the law and fall within the purview of the executive office, but the clear partisanship at work is at odds with the spirit of democratic tradition. While it technically breaks no laws, it calls into question the impartiality of the courts, the legitimacy of the law, and the separation of powers within the government.

Similarly, the administration plays favoritism with the standards of free speech, another essential element of democracy. Free speech and a politically active society served Moon Jae In well in 2017 when protestors and an ultra-loyal cohort of civically-engaged citizens propelled him to victory. But in 2018, Moon’s government declared a “war on fake news.” Rather than expunge falsehoods, it used this effort to stifle voices critical of the administration both in and outside of Korea. In February 2020, the Democratic Party sued a professor for her newspaper op-ed urging people to vote against Moon. In 2018, the U.S.-Korea Institute, a Johns-Hopkins-affiliated think tank, closed after the Moon administration ended financial support to the institution, citing concerns its directors were “too conservative.”

These actions are indications that Korea is slipping towards a “democratic depression,” says Shin. “Both the spirit of democracy and actual liberal-democratic standards are under attack,” he writes. “Opponents are demonized, democratic norms are eroded, and political life only grows more polarized.”

Left shaken by COVID-19, the trajectory of the country is uncertain. Still in control of the executive, with supportive judges stacked in the judiciary and control of a majority of seats in the legislature, there are few checks left to balance Moon’s ambitions and aggressive reforms. Though he was elected as a champion against corruption and authoritarianism, Moon’s dismantling of democratic norms now leaves him teetering on the edge of becoming the thing he promised to eradicate.

On whether or not Korea can arrest its slide towards a democratically-sanctioned regime, Shin says, “For Korea to have a chance at overcoming the polarizing forces that are pulling it apart, the president must hold himself to a higher standard. Nothing but democratic ideals hold the power to revive a politics of concord big and strong enough to contain the politics of anger and revenge.”

Read the full article at the Journal of Democracy.

On April 15, 2020, South Korea became the first country in the world to hold a national election amidst the coronavirus pandemic. Gi-Wook Shin, APARC's director, joined the Korea Society's Stephen Noerper and Jonathan Corrado for an open analysis of the election results and its implications.

While the safe execution of the election is certainly a success, Shin cautions that the real challenge for Moon Jae-In's reelected administration will now be to bolster the Korean economy.

“Even before the health crisis, the Korean economy was going through a very tough time . . . My worry is that the [Moon administration] might interpret the election outcome as a confidence vote on their policy, and they might push forward more aggressively even though the performance of the last three years has not been that great.”

Watch Dr. Shin's full analysis and commentary with the Korea Society below.