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.

Today, state parties have played very weak roles in their national parties’ structures, Kuo said. “There’s also been much less reliance on the affiliated groups that once constituted the core of parties, such as labor unions, student groups, women's groups, and groups that really emerged in an era of the mass organization party.”

At the same time, she noted, while not a full convergence, an increasing similarity has arisen among the major parties regarding their economic approaches to governance and markets.

This holds two key implications, she said. First, this embrace of neoliberal orthodoxies has eroded the traditional distinctions between left and right that support the party systems. “Neither party really represents the working class through an economic agenda,” Kuo said.

She added, “There’s a lot of empirical evidence that these erosions of party differences in left and right generate more political instability. They produce more extremist candidates who can capitalize on the fact that voters aren't sure how to hold politicians to account when the policies are the same and also increases the level of anti-system messaging in political campaigns.”

The second implication is that these changes to party organization have resulted in more delegation to non-party groups – political strategists, consultants, and the private sector – that end up doing the work that parties historically did.

Meanwhile, the parties increasingly reflect an “educational cleavage” among voters that, along with increased outsourcing of governance to the private sector, has contributed to a rise of “plutocratic populism.”

In his remarks, Cain raised the issue of how campaign finance reform and other institutional changes, such as the introduction of primaries, contributed to the decline of strong political parties. Meanwhile, rapid changes in technology and global economics are playing roles in the political process.

“Globalization means we don't have stable neighborhoods anymore, that labor is going in and out, that we communicate in a completely different way than the way we used to, which makes it very hard to rely on the party machines,” he said.

Azari said parties are failing to live up to their central role in representing the citizenry and “empowering less powerful groups in society” that offer “a countervailing source of power to capital.” A turn to centrism or a “third way” by the Democratic Party in the 1990s reflected such a dynamic of disconnection.

“The political center is a nondescript place, a nonexistent voter, yet it looms large in the public imagination,” Azari added.

Grumbach said that as a behaviorist, he seeks to understand the “neurology of the mass voter brain.” He cited a recent Quinnipiac survey that revealed how negatively Democratic voters now view Democratic members of Congress compared to poll results in October 2024. “It is a massive shift … the Democratic Party is ripe for a takeover.”
 

‘Democratic renewal’

Kuo, an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at the think tank New America, has written widely about democratization, capitalism, and political parties.

Kuo said, “I'll say that we are in a very bad place in American democracy that goes far beyond anything any one political party can do … I think that building stronger political parties very much needs to be part of democratic renewal.”

In a recent interview with CDDRL, Kuo noted, “Much of my research highlights the importance of understanding not just what governments and institutions look like, but how they link to society. How do they connect with citizens? How do they convince citizens that government actions are meaningful and worthwhile? These are critical questions for democracy.”

Anin stressed the importance of understanding Putin’s nationalist, Orthodox ideology that positions Russia in opposition to Western values. He said that Putin’s worldview is deeply rooted in his KGB background and a desire to regain Russia’s perceived lost influence after the Cold War. McFaul said that this ideology was “one of the things we in the United States least understand about Putin.” In his experience, it went unrecognized in the White House that Putin could be transactional, a thug and an ideologue at the same time.

Anin believes Ukraine is not a top priority for Trump, a shift which could lead to hasty decisions that are detrimental to Ukrainian interests in an effort to quickly end the Ukraine War.

McFaul noted, however, that this would not be effective in ending the invasion, and any deal excluding Zelensky was a non-starter. “Ukrainians won’t accept a deal agreed by Trump and Putin in Helsinki,” he said.

The speakers further explored the challenges facing journalists in Russia, particularly in an era of misinformation and social media dominance. Anin expressed concern about the devaluation of factual reporting and increased cognitive overload for civilians, and McFaul emphasized the importance of distinguishing between commentary and reporting.

The discussion highlighted the crucial role of independent Russian journalists operating in exile, such as Anin’s team at Important Stories (iStories), who analyze images of dead soldiers to build algorithms tracking Russian casualties. Journalists continue to investigate and expose corruption and human rights abuses, often at serious personal cost.

This pursuit of truth is critical in light of heavy propaganda in Russia. Anin described youth indoctrination for over a decade in Russia as an example of the ideological homogeneity in the country.

“They dress kindergarteners in military uniforms, teach weapon use and glorify killing Ukrainians,” Anin said. Putin has managed to “raise a generation of young Russians who support him and are ready to fight,” he said.

Asked about Putin’s potential successor, Anin named Putin’s ex-bodyguard, Alexei Dyumin. “He truly believes in Putin’s ideology, and he’s devoted to him like a dog,” Anin said. He added that Putin “sees himself not as a president, but rather as a father of the nation.”

McFaul had a hopeful outlook: “I know from Russian and Soviet history that it’s not inevitable that Putinism in its current form will still exist in twenty years. In fact, I actually think it’s improbable. There are still courageous Russians that believe in an alternative Russia, and we should do what we can to support that.”

Diya Bhattacharjee ’28, who attended the panel, said she “really enjoyed listening to two experts on Russian affairs answer difficult questions about the future of Russia and U.S.- Russian relations and share their interesting experiences living in the country.”

Another attendee, Bay Area-based reporter Valerie Demicheva, said she thought that JSK did a service to the journalistic community by hosting “a raw and poignant conversation with the experts who truly understand geopolitics and the state of democracy.”

This story originally appeared in The Stanford Daily.

In the February 2025 issue of The Diplomat magazine, APARC and Korea Program Director Gi-Wook Shin, professor of sociology and the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea, discusses the political crisis in South Korea following President Yoon's ill-fated attempt to impose military rule and its implications for the country's future.

On January 26, 2025, the impeached and arrested Yoon was formally indicted on insurrection charges. Separately, the Constitutional Court has begun deliberations on whether to dismiss him as president or reinstate him. The national reaction to Yoon’s martial law declaration "underscores how South Koreans’ hard-won democracy is not taken for granted,” Shin, an expert on social movements and democracy in South Korea, says. "This episode highlights both the fragility and resilience of Korea’s young democracy."

In this interview with The Diplomat's Editor-in-Chief Shannon Tiezzi, Shin explains how sharp political polarization in Korea set the stage for the marital law episode of December 2024 and how the country can start bridging these gaps, how the prolonged political upheaval is impacting Korean economy and society, and what's ahead for the ruling People Power Party and the opposition Democratic Party.

How did South Korea’s history as a dictatorship – and past experiences of martial law – inform both Yoon’s decision to declare martial law and the public response?

South Korea’s painful history with dictatorship and martial law casts a long shadow over contemporary politics. I entered college in 1979, a year marked by the assassination of Park Chung Hee in late October and a period of intense political instability ensued under martial law. In fact, President Yoon Suk Yeol entered a college in the same year as me and it is hard to understand how he could forget these shared experiences and decided to declare martial law.

When Yoon declared martial law last December, it triggered an immediate and decisive public backlash, driven by a collective memory of decades of struggle against autocratic regimes. This reaction underscores how South Koreans’ hard-won democracy is not taken for granted. Civic groups, citizens, and lawmakers mobilized swiftly, reversing the martial law decision within six hours and passing the motion to impeach Yoon 10 days later. Despite recent backsliding, proactive civic engagement demonstrates that their experiences have informed strong commitment to safeguarding democratic principles.

Read the complete interview in The Diplomat magazine (subscription) >

Additional Media Commentary and Analysis

In recent weeks, Professor Shin has commented on and analyzed the evolving political situation in Korea via the following media outlets:

“For a United States that Remembers the Capitol Riots, Korea’s Turmoil Isn’t Someone Else’s Business”
Shindonga, January 8, 2025 (interview – Korean)

South Korea Needs to Move On from This Crisis
Bloomberg, January 8, 2025 (quoted)

It’s a Challenge for a Weakened Political Leadership in South Korea to Handle Trump Presidency
CNBC Squawk Box Asia, January 7, 2025 (interview)

South Koreans Adopt Trump's “Stop the Steal” Slogan for Impeached Yoon
AFP, January 6, 2025 (quoted)

South Korea: “The Crisis Risks Lasting Beyond the Next Presidential Election”
Les Echos, January 6, 2025 (interview)

South Korea Divided Over Yoon Standoff
BBC News - The Context, January 3,  2025 (interview)

Is South Korea a Beacon of Global Democracy?
The Korea Times, December 30, 2024 (author - Korean)