Washington, D.C. — World-renowned American political scientist and philosopher Francis Fukuyama believes that three ingredients are needed to propel Ukraine to a better future.
These are the creation of a modern state with a functioning economy, attaining the rule of law (which goes hand in hand with eradicating official corruption) and – most importantly – good, honest elections that bring a new generation of leaders to power.
A sound, democratic and prosperous state was necessary not just for Ukraine but for the whole of Europe, where “Ukraine plays an outsize role” tightly intertwined with the continent’s future, Fukuyama said during his keynote address on April 18 at an event entitled “Ukraine’s Future Leaders on the Frontlines of Change” at the Atlantic Council think tank’s headquarters in the U.S. capital.
Fukuyama was speaking in his role as a senior fellow at Stanford University in California.
Whereas some new members of the European Union like Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Czech Republic, have shown disturbing signs of “backsliding” into authoritarianism, Ukraine has tried to keep true to a Westward-leaning, democratic course, Fukuyama said.
It has twice shown its will through mass demonstrations in 2004 and the bloody 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution that the country is determined to break with its “kleptocratic northern neighbor.”
Fukuyama also introduced three Ukrainian scholars who are spending nine months at Stanford University’s Spogli Institute emerging leaders program. The discussion was moderated by Atlantic Council’s Melinda Haring.
The three visiting scholars were Nataliya Mykolska, a former deputy economy minister in the Ukrainian government whose job was to promote foreign trade, Ivan Prymachenko, an educational technology innovator who co-founded Ukraine’s biggest free online courses Prometheus platform, and Oleksandra Ustinova, who has worked as head of communications and anti-corruption in various healthcare projects.
Critical of failure
All three of them were critical of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s failures to deliver on promised reforms but also expressed various degrees of apprehension about the upcoming presidency under Volodymyr Zelenskiy – an inexperienced and untried leader who has mostly kept tight-lipped about his intentions.
Like her two compatriots, Ustinova believes that for major positive changes to come about, reformers should unite in a new party for the Ukrainian parliamentary elections in the fall. She said that Ukraine mostly lacked political parties in the Western sense that have a clearly defined ideology and an agenda of goals set out in a manifesto.
Though “nobody pays attention to those agendas because they do not believe politicians’ promises,” Ukrainians tend to vote for faces they know and respond to public statements on TV and billboards – rather than pursuing a deeper examination of candidates for office, Ustinova said.
Prymachenko said that Ukraine had to squeeze oligarchs out of their dominant roles in the country’s current political structure. He said gathering reformers in a strong party is essential for change. He said if reformers are dispersed among various political parties then, as in the past, “they will be isolated and pushed out.”
Mykolska, who has been honing her knowledge about IT in California’s Silicon Valley, believes Ukraine’s future would be driven by the “innovation and creativity” of its younger generation if reforms bring about conditions enabling them to put their talents to use.
“Ukrainians are good at uniting to fight against something… when the country is in danger,” Mykolska said. “We need to find people who are willing to unite to fight for something.”
Fukuyama shot to fame in 1992 with his book “The End of History and the Last Man” in which he maintained that after the fall of communism the Western model of capitalism working harmoniously with liberal democracies would provide the template for all the governments of the world.
That thesis did not quite work out, forcing Fukuyama to revise some of his arguments and conclusions, but he nevertheless has managed to retain his authoritative position as an oft-quoted academic.
After the event the Kyiv Post asked Fukuyama to elaborate on what he meant by Ukraine’s important role in Europe.
“I think it’s pretty clear that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin has been arguing that democracy doesn’t work – that democracy means chaos. He says that the 2004 Orange Revolution and then the 2014 Maidan and the Revolution of Dignity have put Ukraine into this terrible position of anarchy and corruption and so forth. And I think that he has a (political) model that’s really different from the model that we observe in the European Union and America.
“It’s very important the democratic model is really made to work in a former Soviet republic – a communist country – to show people that there is no legacy of the past that prevents a country from making a choice.”
He said that it was a contest of ideas and Ukraine must demonstrate “that it really can join the modern world, and that it’s not fated to end up like Russia – authoritarian, corrupt, and kleptocratic. That is critical.”
He said Ukraine is a large country and occupies a very central, geographic piece of Europe and that in itself makes it important.
Fukuyama believes that the West must continue to help Ukraine but he said he was not sure whether Ukraine needed to become an EU or NATO member to be closely bound into the West.
“I do think that it’s very good for the EU and NATO to help Ukraine in many ways, so in essence it’s important. But fundamentally none of these outside countries or groups or organizations is going to save Ukraine. That really is up to Ukrainians themselves,” he said. “And everybody has to bear that in mind – that only Ukrainians can save Ukrainians.”
Lost opportunity?
The Kyiv Post asked Fukuyama whether he thought Ukraine had developed sufficiently strong and healthy political structures and institutions to weather any political storms that might come after the results of the elections are known.
“I think that Ukraine has made more progress than people here in Washington understand,” Fukuyama said. “But do I think it’s strong enough to survive anything happening in the next few months?
“I think that’s a question none of us know the answer to. If Zelenskiy is elected, there’s no choice, we have to hope he turns out to be a half-decent president.”
He lamented though that Ukrainian rock star Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, lead singer of the band Okean Elzy, did not run for president even though many Ukrainians hoped he would. Fukuyama had also expressed support for Vakarchuk’s candidacy.
“I think it’s bad that Slava Vakarchuk didn’t run because he would be much more qualified (than Zelenskiy) and would have policies that were much more well thought out, and he’s able to assemble a better team.”
