Why Liberals Must Not Give Up Hope (Francis Fukuyama)

I am extremely honored to be in Poznań, and to be awarded a Doctor Honoris Causa by Adam Mickiewicz University. Receiving this title in Poland has a special meaning for me, because this country has played an important part in shaping my life and views.

I visited Poland for the first time in July 1989. Back then, I was serving as a Deputy Director of the Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. Department of State. I was in Poland as part of the entourage of then-Secretary of State James Baker, who met up in Warsaw and Gdańsk with President George H. W. Bush. The “Round Table” elections had just been held the previous month, and it was clear that Poland, along with Hungary, was making a rapid transition to democracy.

On that trip, I remember that I had been separated from my luggage after missing an early baggage call, and had to buy a new suit. It cost me all of $30 because the złoty was so low at the time. Our State Department car was a late model Volvo, and our Polish driver looked at it longingly and said he hoped he would be able to afford a car like that someday.

The events that unfolded over the next two years were the most significant of my lifetime. Poland continued its transition to liberal democracy, the Berlin Wall fell, the Warsaw Pact collapsed, and in late 1991 the former Soviet Union itself dissolved. It was the most rapid and massive expansion of human freedom in the 20^th century, and perhaps for all historical time. The world had been moving in a democratic direction since the early 1970s in what my mentor Samuel Huntington labeled the “Third Wave” of democratization, and the collapse of communism marked the wave’s peak. In 2004, I attended a meeting at the Vatican shortly after Poland’s entry into the European Union, and sat at a table with a Polish minister who had fought with the Polish resistance, and a German minister who served in the Wehrmacht. That meeting seemed to me to symbolize the achievement of a “Europe whole and free.”

Things are obviously different today. Suits cost more than $30 in Poland, and Poles can buy not just Volvos but any other car they want. Polish per capita income has soared past that of many EU member states, and the country has become a leader in setting the agenda for the European Union as a whole on issues like Ukraine.

And yet, despite these miraculous transformations of both politics and the economy, we are not in a happy state of affairs today. The Third Wave of democratization began to reverse around 2008, and has been backsliding ever since. There was one individual in particular who had a very different reaction to the events of 1989-1991, and his name was Vladimir Putin. He did not celebrate the collapse of the USSR; rather, he felt it was one of the greatest tragedies of the 20^th century. Ever since, he has been trying to reverse that outcome.

Today, many countries in Europe have populist-nationalist parties that are growing in power and popularity. Many of their supporters believe that the chief source of danger is not dictatorships like those in Russia or China, but rather the European Union itself. Many of these groups are, unbelievably, sympathetic to Moscow and oppose military and economic assistance to Ukraine as it seeks to resist Russian aggression.

Unfortunately, the United States is among those countries that are afflicted with this kind of populism. We have a president who seems to admire strongmen leaders like Putin and Xi Jinping, and who has very little regard for America’s democratic allies. Indeed, he is intent on waging a trade war on those very allies, whom he accuses of “ripping off” the United States over many decades.

The world order we are entering into will not be structured by those liberal principles that have anchored it since 1945. The current leadership in Washington seems intent on reviving a 19^th century world of great powers and empires, in which small countries need to submit to the domination of their larger neighbors. This is not a formula for global stability, as those great powers will have large and clashing ambitions. Nor will it be a prosperous world, if every country believes it needs to meet its own needs within its own borders.

As an American, it pains me to tell you and other Europeans that the world that existed before 2016 is not going to come back. A United States that could elect Donald Trump is a different sort of country from the one I believed I lived in back in 1989. For the time being, the burden of leadership of the liberal democratic world will have to fall on other countries.

Nonetheless, it is critical that those of us who believe in the fundamental value of liberal democracy do not give up hope. A year and a half ago, Poland showed that the slide towards authoritarian government was not inevitable and that citizens still had the ability to make other choices. That ability to make political choices is a precious gift, one that needs to be nurtured and developed by every citizen.

I have spent a good part of my life studying democratic institutions, and working with organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy to help build strong democracies around the world. Today, I believe the most important work that I can do is inside the United States itself, which is in danger of sliding into authoritarian rule. It remains vitally important that those of us who continue to believe in the promise of liberal democracy continue to work together across national boundaries. We need to resist growing authoritarianism in all of our countries, and remind our fellow citizens of the stakes involved.

A full generation has grown up in your country and in mine that has no direct experience with dictatorship, and therefore no deep appreciation for the value of living in a free society. It is up to us who do have this experience to remind younger people of our experience, and why we continue to believe that liberal democracy is the best available way to organize politics.

Thank you very much for your attention, and for the honor you have provided me.