Francis Fukuyama: America’s Putin-esque direction

Summary

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The Interview – BBC World Service

Episode Title: Francis Fukuyama: America’s Putin-esque Direction
Guest: Professor Francis Fukuyama
Host: Paddy O'Connell
Date: September 7, 2025

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Overview

In this episode, host Paddy O'Connell interviews Francis Fukuyama, a leading political economist and international relations expert, best known for his book The End of History and the Last Man. The conversation focuses on the erosion of liberal democracy in the United States, the parallels between American and autocratic governance, the shifting global order, youth political engagement, academic freedom, and the disruptive force of artificial intelligence.

Fukuyama provides a blunt assessment of America's current trajectory, warning of “Putin-esque” tendencies developing in U.S. politics and institutions, and reflects on both the challenges and responsibilities facing defenders of democracy in a rapidly changing world.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Erosion of U.S. Democracy and “Putin-esque” Direction

Timestamps: 02:49–05:29, 07:08–10:14

• Fukuyama draws alarming parallels between democratic backsliding in the U.S. and autocratic trends seen in Hungary and Russia:

  • “We're seeing that erosion taking place before our eyes with masked ICE agents snatching people off the streets with no due process whatsoever, shipping them off to foreign dictatorships. And so we're definitely moving in a Putinesque direction.” (Fukuyama, 02:49)

• He cautions that the decline of democracy is gradual, referencing Viktor Orban’s Hungary as a more apt comparison than Russia for America’s trajectory.

• Fukuyama highlights a critical shift in national self-concept:

  • “We have a United States now that does not put, you know, liberal democracy at the forefront of the way it sees itself and the way that it wants to order the world.” (Fukuyama, 03:38)

• He distinguishes between the U.S. and Russia, noting that American institutions (e.g., elections) still function, albeit under stress.

2. Comparing U.S. Presidential Power: From Reagan to Trump

Timestamps: 06:55–09:56

• Fukuyama emphasizes the transformation in American leadership style:

  • On Reagan: “He was a firm internationalist. He believed in free trade, he believed in democracy. He saw the United States as a leader of the free world.” (Fukuyama, 07:08)
  • On Trump: “That America has really disappeared under Donald Trump.” (Fukuyama, 07:08)

• He analyzes the expansion of executive power:

  • “Trump does not really want to have to listen to the courts... the so-called unitary executive theory that is animating Republicans today. They really do want to concentrate as much power as possible in the office of the President.” (Fukuyama, 08:47)

• Fukuyama notes that Trump is wielding executive power not in response to national emergencies, but as a means to override democratic constraints.

3. Critique of Both Political Parties

Timestamps: 09:56–10:45, 14:34–15:18

• Fukuyama levels criticism at Democrats for their role in enabling Trump:

  • “The Democrats have not to this day fully recognized the degree to which they are responsible for the rise of Donald Trump. I think running Biden was a huge, huge mistake.” (Fukuyama, 10:14)
  • On immigration: Failure to address border issues provided ammunition for Trump's rise.

• Regarding Trump’s hardline measures, Fukuyama is clear on his opposition to their extremity:

  • “The response has been so outside of the bounds of any... real respect for the rule of law that the treatment is much worse than the disease.” (Fukuyama, 14:34)

4. Academic Freedom, Campus Activism, and Youth Mobilization

Timestamps: 10:45–14:08

• Fukuyama finds the pushback against threats to academic freedom from students and institutions lacking:

  • “I'm a little bit disappointed in the kind of pushback that you're getting from the people in my immediate environment... I think they will come for Stanford, you know, down the road.” (Fukuyama, 11:07)
  • He expresses concern that students are more mobilized about international causes (e.g., Gaza) than domestic threats to their own freedoms.

• On left-wing activism and state backlash:

  • “There were excesses on the left that are now being countered by the full force of the state, which is trying to basically take away academic freedom... So we are in the midst of... a really gigantic threat against academic freedom here.” (Fukuyama, 13:05)

• On democratic engagement:

  • “It's that slow, boring work of democratic mobilization and then democratic agency that is really what's needed right now.” (Fukuyama, 12:08)

5. Defending American Democracy: Resolve Versus Retreat

Timestamps: 16:20–17:31

• Fukuyama is unequivocal about staying in the U.S.:

  • “Oh, no, I'm not going to leave.” (Fukuyama, 16:33)
  • He frames the fight for democracy as a responsibility, not an excuse for exile.
  • “It is that bad, but I think the way you counter it is not by fleeing. I think you counter it by mobilizing, you know, telling people, convincing people that they've got a big problem on their hands.” (Fukuyama, 16:49)

• The crisis has increased public appreciation for democratic norms:

  • “A better consciousness of why the Constitution matters, why checks and balances are important...” (Fukuyama, 17:31)

6. The Impact and Threat of Artificial Intelligence

Timestamps: 17:47–23:40

• Fukuyama is deeply concerned about the loss of control over AI:

  • “People in the AI field worry about is what they call the loss of control problem, because they are delegating increasing authority to intelligent machines...” (Fukuyama, 18:23)

• On disinformation and democracy:

  • “More than half of the videos I see [on Instagram] are deep fakes... It's really hard to know exactly, you know, what you're seeing, whether what you're seeing is, is real or not... democracies are based on trust.” (Fukuyama, 20:51)

• Technology and inequality:

  • “It's certainly concentrating wealth and power in the hands of the big corporations that produce the technology. And, you know, that again, exacerbates the inequalities that... are destabilizing for a democracy.” (Fukuyama, 21:53)

• On the possibility of machines having rights:

  • “If a machine can't feel fear, you know, for its own existence, I. I'm not sure that, you know, the right to life is something that makes all that much sense for a machine.” (Fukuyama, 22:54)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On U.S. democratic erosion:
  “We're definitely moving in a Putinesque direction.” (Fukuyama, 02:49)

• On Trump vs. Reagan:
  “Reagan looks pretty good because he was a firm internationalist... That America has really disappeared under Donald Trump.” (Fukuyama, 07:08)

• On executive orders:
  “It's the volume and the speed and the audacity of some of those [Trump’s] orders... Trump does not really want to have to listen to the courts.” (Fukuyama, 08:47)

• On responsibility to fight for democracy:
  “The way you counter it is not by fleeing. I think you counter it by mobilizing, you know, telling people, convincing people that they've got a big problem on their hands.” (Fukuyama, 16:49)

• On the dangers of AI-powered misinformation:
  “More than half of the videos I see are deep fakes... If you can't trust the credibility of the way that the empirical world is reported to you, we're in big trouble.” (Fukuyama, 20:51)

• On tech inequalities:
  “It’s certainly concentrating wealth and power in the hands of the big corporations that produce the technology.” (Fukuyama, 21:53)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Intro to Fukuyama & “End of History” thesis context: 01:47–02:49
• Parallels to autocratic regimes and “Putin-esque direction”: 02:49–05:29
• Comparing Reagan, Trump, and U.S. global leadership: 06:55–08:09
• Expansion of presidential power and executive orders: 08:09–09:56
• Bi-partisan critique of political failures: 09:56–10:45, 14:34–15:18
• Student activism, academic freedom concerns: 10:45–14:08
• Defending democracy, public engagement: 16:20–17:31
• AI, disinformation, and democracy: 17:47–23:40

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Conclusion

Francis Fukuyama delivers a sobering but energizing analysis of the contemporary U.S. political landscape, warning against the steady erosion of democratic institutions and the dangers of both institutional complacency and overreach. He identifies the dual threats from political authoritarianism and technology's disruptive power—underscoring that the defense of democracy and liberal values is an active, continuous process requiring vigilance and collective effort, especially from a new generation. His message is clear: democratic crisis is not a call for despair or exit, but for renewed public engagement and institutional defense.

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Transcript

[Paddy O'Connell]

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[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

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[Interviewer]

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[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

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[Paddy O'Connell]

Hello, I'm BBC presenter Paddy O' Connell and this is the interview from the BBC World Service. The best conversations coming out of the BBC people shaping our world from all over the world.

[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

There have been so many disagreements between me and my family from putting on a show that is what it means to be Lady Gaga. Only the things that you can't solve with government and private sector is where you bring philanthropy in. There is no place in the world.

[Interviewer]

Where women are equal.

[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

Every generation, every generation has to fight to maintain democracy.

[Paddy O'Connell]

For this interview, I met the American political economist and international relations expert Professor Francis Fukuyama. Professor Fukuyama, who is currently a senior fellow at Stanford University, has written widely on issues in development and international politics. He's best known for his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man. In this publication, he questioned if the end of the Cold War, marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, represented the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. But three decades on, Western liberal democracy appears to be struggling to adapt to the many challenges of the 21st century, and amid growing geopolitical instability, its future does not appear as universal, as Professor Fukuyama once proposed. Even in the United States, the erosion.

[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

Of democracy is not something that happens overnight, especially in one that is as old and well established as the United States. But we're moving in that direction. I think you know the better comparator is maybe Viktor Orban's Hungary, where it took 10 years to really erode the liberal institutions in that country. And we're seeing that erosion taking place before our eyes with ICE agents snatching people, you know, masked ICE agents snatching people off the streets with no due process whatsoever, shipping them off to foreign dictatorships. And so we're, you know, we're definitely moving in a Putinesque direction.

[Paddy O'Connell]

Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Professor Francis Fukuyama.

[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

For most of the 20th and early 21st centuries, the United States has seen itself as a leader of, you know, what we used to call the free world, that is to say, democracies, that respected rule of law, constitutional government, and the like. And the new era that we seem to be embarking on is one in which those kinds of conditions for world order have disappeared. We have a United States now that does not put, you know, liberal democracy at the forefront of the way it sees itself and the way that it wants to order the world. And in that respect, it's quite appropriate that Putin and Trump meet, because in many ways, they share more things in common than leaders, let's say, at Yalta, who at least realized that they represented very different political systems and ways of life.

[Interviewer]

I mean, it's provocative that, isn't it? Because, you know, President Trump is polarizing, but one is still elected and the other is still a dictator.

[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

Well, that's true. I think we have to be grateful that a lot of our constitutional checks and balances in the United States continue to hold. But, you know, the erosion of democracy is not something that happens overnight, especially in one that is as old and well established as the United States. But we're moving in that direction. I think, you know, the better comparator is maybe Viktor Orban's Hungary, where it took 10 years to really erode the liberal institutions in that country. And we're seeing that erosion taking place before our eyes with masked ICE agents snatching people off the streets with no due process whatsoever, shipping them off to foreign dictatorships. And so we're definitely moving in a Putinesque direction.

[Interviewer]

I just wonder about the symbolism about the free world and the former Soviet Union. Putin wants to re establish the Soviet Union, and Donald Trump wants to see America first, which is thus not a free world. It's a free America with influence. Do you think we can say what this really represents is your famous tome in 1989, the end of history. This is the end of another era.

[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

Well, I think it's a little bit premature to go that far because you still have Europe, where most of the countries remain pretty solidly liberal democracies. You've got countries in Asia like Japan and South Korea that are in that category, Taiwan. So I don't think that all is lost at the moment. Furthermore, in the United States, we still have elections, and we don't know what's going to happen in next year's midterm elections. But it could very well be that the Democrats will recapture at least the House of Representatives. And then down the line, I think that, you know, Mr. Trump's popularity, I mean, the thing about Mr. Putin is that he doesn't have to really face serious elections, and he doesn't really, you know, you don't have real polling there. But in the United States, it's clear that Trump is losing a lot of support for a lot of the policies like tariffs and very middling economy that he's delivered. So I think that, you know, a lot will depend on what happens in domestic American politics over the next year.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I mean, it's got. So we can contrast President Reagan. They've often been comparisons made between Trump and Reagan. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall, said Reagan. Mr. Putin, carve up Ukraine, says Don.

[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

That's exactly right. I think that in retrospect, Reagan looks pretty good because he was a firm internationalist. He believed in free trade, he believed in democracy. He saw the United States as a leader of the free world. And he put a lot of muscle behind, you know, helping countries resist the power of dictatorship. That America has really disappeared under Donald Trump.

[Interviewer]

Let's move the kaleidoscope out, because it seems to me that the two offices of president, the US Presidency is older and Donald Trump is flexing powers given to it when you kicked out the king and actually Putin rewrote the Constitution. So he did recognize he couldn't move without changing the Constitution. Donald Trump has used the ambiguities of this document written by a bunch of men in the revolutionary era. Do you agree that he's been exploring the George Washington's office, which the powers were plucked from King George?

[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

Well, yeah, I wouldn't denigrate those old white men that wrote the Constitution because they created a document that put serious checks and balances in the way of any kind of concentration of power in our executive. And I think Donald Trump doesn't like that. He doesn't want any constraints on his power. He feels vindicated as a result of the last election. And he's been pushing the limits of executive power as far as they can go. So everything now is done by executive order. It's not done by Congress.

[Interviewer]

FDR loved executive orders. I mean, you can pick your president who had muscles, can't you, if you want to go on executive orders.

[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

I think that's not quite fair because it's the volume and the speed and the audacity of some of those orders. A lot of the ones that came out under FDR were later reversed by the courts. Trump does not really want to have to listen to the courts. If a judge tells him he can't do something because it's unconstitutional, he then goes and attacks that judge and calls him a Democratic partisan and, you know, and so forth. So I think that there's a real shift in the theory, the so called unitary executive theory that is animating Republicans today. They really do want to concentrate as much power as possible in the office of the President. And that's something that we really have not seen in previous time. The further thing I would say is that FDR was facing a really major crisis for the country. You know, The Great Depression, 20% unemployment rate, you know, terrible economic conditions for many Americans. Donald Trump is doing this. He's claiming there's an emergency at a point where the United States is the world beating economy among all of the rich countries in the world. Everything's fine.

[Interviewer]

I just wonder if this critique of the Republicans and MAGA flexing the muscle of the office needs to be paired with a critique of the Democrats. I mean, the Democrats also denigrated the office by allowing someone to run until the last moment who really should not have run for the dignity of that great office.

[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

Well, you're absolutely correct in that I think that the Democrats have not to this day fully recognize the degree to which they are responsible for the rise of Donald Trump. I mean, some of it was in terms of their policies, like really not legally sealing the border. I think running Biden was a huge, huge mistake. And it was one where there was a lot of complicity by those immediately around him, by Democratic politicians. And so, yes, I agree completely that the Democrats had a lot share a lot of the blame for the rise of Trump.

[Interviewer]

You're speaking to us from Stanford, where I read in the newspaper of the students that the students are taking on the government suing over their free speech rights. And I wonder if A, you back your young students for doing so and B, if you think the learned colleagues who run the place should be suing the government or leaving it to the students.

[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

Well, I'm not so sure that the students have been that mobilized against what I think are the most serious, you know, threats. I mean, to this day they really care much more about Palestinians in Gaza than they do about, you know, as far as I can see, about the erosion of their own freedoms. I think that, you know, my university has been trying to lay low the way a lot of other big institutions have and hope that the storm passes over them without being targeted. I think in the end that's not going to work because I think they will come for Stanford, you know, down the road. So I'm a little bit disappointed in the kind of pushback that you're getting from the people. In my immediate environment, it's possible that.

[Interviewer]

Young students could care equally about both. Is it? They could care passionately about civilian lives being lost and taken in Gaza and they could care about free speech rights at universities. But you're saying they don't appear to be understanding the threat at home?

[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

Yes, I think that's right. I think that, you know, there are immediate threats that need to be confronted that will affect them directly. And I think that, you know, there could be more mobilization around that and frankly, you know, mobilization, not just protesting on campus, but doing things like, you know, helping to get out the vote when we have elections next year in the, in the midterms. I think it's that slow, boring work of democratic mobilization and then democratic agency that is really what's needed right now. And you know, I really hope we get a lot of buy in from younger people.

[Interviewer]

I hear an awful lot of criticism of Jen Z. And I don't know if that's who we're talking about here, but are you basically saying that this is a problem that can't be solved by a short attention span? If the state in the United States is going for rights that have been taken for granted at universities, is this the right generation to be pushing back?

[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

Well, look, I think that everybody is educable and I think that, you know, many Americans have woken up to the fact that these rights that they have been taking for granted really can be threatened. And so that's a good thing and I think that the focus needs to be on that. The other thing though is that a lot of Gen Z people did things that really stimulated in a way, this conservative backlash. I mean, there was a lot of anti Semitism expressed on elite campuses, you know, after October 7th of two years ago. Let's make it clear this is just an excuse to crack down on universities. The administration doesn't really care about anti Semitism. But it's. It gave them a convenient excuse. So there were excesses on the left that are now being countered by the full force of the state, which is trying to basically take away academic freedom and instruct universities how they ought to teach classes, who they ought to admit and the like. And so we are in the midst of, you know, I think, a really gigantic threat against academic freedom here.

[Interviewer]

And on that, the people who run Harvard, your former institution as well, they've admitted that they did not do speak up against anti Semitism. They have taken some blame. It's one of these intriguing things where the current British ambassador to Washington, Lord Mandelson, says there's a kernel of truth in everything Donald Trump says. He even got the people who run Harvard saying, we agree that there were ugly scenes on our campuses.

[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

Well, that's absolutely right. I mean, there is a kernel of truth in many of Trump's policies. So, for example, the border and dealing with undocumented immigrants. I think it was a big mistake on the part of Biden and the Democrats not to do more to manage that border and to reduce that flow. But the problem is that the solution, you know, masked ICE agents whisking people off the street with no identification of who they are, sending them to foreign prisons. The response has been so outside of the bounds of any, you know, real respect for the rule of law that the treatment is much worse than the disease.

[Paddy O'Connell]

You're listening to the interview from the BBC World Service people shaping our world from all over the world. For this episode of the interview, I'm speaking to political economist and international relations expert Professor Francis Fukuyama. I'd long wanted to meet the professor. I read his work at the time. I was a young student when the Berlin Wall fell and was fascinated by his evocation of global ideologies going back thousands of years and what this point in history meant. He often says he's been sort of misquoted by this one phrase, the end of history. He's a very influential voice in trying to work out where the plates are shifting throughout history. So it was a real privilege to meet him through this amaz extraordinary technology, which didn't exist, of course, when he first wrote that book on the screen now promised through the various meeting sites. So I met him virtually, but it was still very exciting. Let's return to my conversation with Professor Francis Fukuyama.

[Interviewer]

I'm just checking. I mean, your critique is harsh. Are you moving from the U.S. is this a place that you're criticizing using your free speech rights? And guess What? I'm so angry. I'm going to stay. Or are you going to leave, Professor Fukuyama?

[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

Oh, no, I'm not going to leave.

[Interviewer]

So it's not that bad then? It's manageable. It's just people must be robust in exchanging ideas. And I'm going to stay. Living in the beautiful land of the free and the home of the brave.

[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

Yeah, I absolutely intend to do that.

[Interviewer]

So it's not that bad then?

[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

Well, it depends on what you mean by that bad. I think it is that bad, but I think the way you counter it is not by fleeing. I think you counter it by mobilizing, you know, telling people, convincing people that they've got a big problem on their hands. That's really what democratic politics is about. It may be boring, but I think that's the way we need to proceed.

[Interviewer]

So its critics grow up. This is a democracy that was fought for, and that spirit needs to be maintained. If that's the way that everyone's going to work in a pluralistic society, if you believe in a pluralistic future for the United States, people have got to get a longer attention Spanish and go back to their books about why the separation of powers was born.

[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

No, you're absolutely right about that. You know, one thing that this crisis has brought about is, I think, a better consciousness of why the Constitution matters, why checks and balances are important, and hopefully people will, you know, will mobilize around those issues.

[Interviewer]

We've done our best to talk about things which are ultimately human and the intelligence of all the people involved. And you've been extremely vocal and particularly, as usual, stimulating, I feel, on the grounds of the artificial intelligence that we're getting into. Can you characterize for me how you think intelligent machinery could respond if it felt it was under attack? In other words, if China sought to turn off AI machines in the United States, what would an intelligent machine do about that threat from another machine?

[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

Well, look, you know, we're getting into science fiction scenarios there. I think that, you know, one of the things that people in the AI field worry about is what they call the loss of control problem, because they are delegating increasing authority to intelligent machines to make decisions autonomously without necessarily having human control. This is already happening with drones on the battlefield, you know, in Ukraine and Russia. And I think that's something that's going to continue. And so I think there's a broader problem that we are racing to create machines, and we're probably going to delegate too much authority to them because that's Just the nature of, you know, hierarchical organizations is to have lower level agents that can do things quickly and, you know, with a lot of skill, take over command. So whether you can actually turn these machines off in some future scenario, that may be a stretch at the moment, but I think that's the direction that we are moving in.

[Interviewer]

I mean, just to steal from your famous title, do we say that the end of human LED history is coming?

[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

Well, look, it's not a sharp break. Human beings have been using technology, you know, for millennia. You know, the wheel is a form of technology that didn't exist in pre human nature. But I think the pace of the increase has been steadily increasing. And you know, with AI, it's moving so fast that, you know, the ability to actually control this technology has not been established. I have friends in the field that are quite pessimistic about the ability of any modern government to actually regulate this technology. And it's made worse by our geopolitical situation where we're racing against a competitor, very capable competitor like China, as to who can get, you know, to, let's say, artificial general intelligence first. And so that's why I think it's, it's a challenge to slow this machine down.

[Interviewer]

And AGI, which you've mentioned is, I've read, is the point at which machine intelligence is equal to or greater than humans. And it's a, it's seen as a, as a tipping point. Do you yourself confess to being fooled by AI? We think of you there at Stanford as, you know, representing a peak of human learning. But do you sometimes see a meme or a piece of junk created by a machine that fools you?

[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

Well, I've noticed in my Instagram feed, I would say more than half of the videos I see are deep fakes. You know, things that just never happen. And it's really hard to know exactly, you know, what you're seeing, whether what you're seeing is, is real or not. And that's simply going to increase. And I think that creates a big problem in a democracy because, you know, democracies are based on trust. We have to trust the sources of information on which, on the basis of which we make decisions. And if you can't trust the credibility of the way that the empirical world is reported to you, we're in big trouble.

[Interviewer]

And the great inventions of the Industrial revolution, many of which came from these islands, the British Isles, but also, you know, other great inventions gave us the Industrial age, led to cities coming together, greater rights, more democracies, more health care for Instance, does the artificial intelligence age or the age that we're talking about, is it going to have that much similar dramatic impact on human history? Street?

[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

I believe that this technology is powerful enough to have a really major impact. I'm a little hesitant to predict exactly what that impact is going to be. But if you do have machines that are this capable, I think it's. It's hard to see how it's not going to bring about big changes. For example, in the labor market. We're seeing some early examples or evidence already that young people just out of university are having trouble getting jobs because what they'd normally do right out of university is something that a machine can do. And so that's already having that kind of disruptive effect. It's certainly concentrating wealth and power in the hands of the big corporations that produce the technology. And, you know, that again, exacerbates the inequalities that I think are destabilizing for a democracy. So I think there are a lot of reasons to be concerned about this kind of technological advance.

[Interviewer]

Do you think that we'll see machines given rights?

[Professor Francis Fukuyama]

Well, that's a little bit of a stretch. I think that, you know, one of the areas where nobody in the AI field really has any idea what will happen has to do with things like consciousness, feelings, emotions. You know, these are all things that are basic to what it means to be a human being. And I don't think that any machine is, you know, even close to developing those kinds of capabilities. If a machine can't feel fear, you know, for its own existence, I. I'm not sure that, you know, the right to life is something that makes all that much sense for a machine. So we're, you know, I think we're pretty far away from that sort of outcome.

[Paddy O'Connell]

Thank you for listening to the interview from the BBC World Service. You'll find more in depth conversations on the interview wherever you get your BBC podcasts, including episodes with US President Donald Trump, misinformation expert Elliot Higgins, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Until the next time. Bye for now.