Francis Fukuyama

Neoconservatism

As a key Reagan Administration contributor to the formulation of the Reagan Doctrine, Fukuyama is an important figure in the rise of neoconservatism, although his works came out years after Irving Kristol's 1972 book crystallized neoconservatism. Fukuyama was active in the Project for the New American Century think tank starting in 1997, and as a member co-signed the organization's 1998 letter recommending that President Bill Clinton support Iraqi insurgencies in the overthrow of then-President of Iraq Saddam Hussein. He was also among forty co-signers of William Kristol's September 20, 2001 letter to President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 attacks that suggested the U.S. not only "capture or kill Osama bin Laden", but also embark upon "a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq."

As a supporter of the Iraq War, Fukuyama defended the war against critics who accused the US of unilateralism and violating international law, saying "Americans are right to insist that there is no such thing as an 'international community' in the abstract, and that nation-states must ultimately look out for themselves when it comes to critical matters of security."

In a New York Times article from February 2006, Fukuyama, in considering the ongoing Iraq War, stated: "What American foreign policy needs is not a return to a narrow and cynical realism, but rather the formulation of a 'realistic Wilsonianism' that better matches means to ends." In regard to neoconservatism, he went on to say: "What is needed now are new ideas, neither neoconservative nor realist, for how America is to relate to the rest of the world – ideas that retain the neoconservative belief in the universality of human rights, but without its illusions about the efficacy of American power and hegemony to bring these ends about."

Current views

Fukuyama began to distance himself from the neoconservative agenda of the Bush administration, citing its excessive militarism and embrace of unilateral armed intervention, particularly in the Middle East. By mid-2004, Fukuyama had voiced his growing opposition to the Iraq War and called for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation as Secretary of Defense.

At an annual dinner of the American Enterprise Institute in February 2004, Dick Cheney and Charles Krauthammer declared the beginning of a unipolar era under American hegemony. "All of these people around me were cheering wildly," Fukuyama remembers. He believes that the Iraq War was being blundered. "All of my friends had taken leave of reality." He has not spoken to Paul Wolfowitz (previously a good friend) since.

Fukuyama declared he would not be voting for Bush, and that the Bush administration had made three mistakes:

Overstating the threat of Islamist extremism to the US.

Failing to foresee the fierce negative reaction to its "benevolent hegemony". From the very beginning showing a negative attitude toward the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations and not seeing that it would increase anti-Americanism in other countries.

Misjudging what was needed to bring peace in Iraq and being overly optimistic about the success with which social engineering of western values could be applied to Iraq and the Middle East in general.

Fukuyama believes the US has a right to promote its own values in the world, along the lines of what he calls "realistic Wilsonianism", which he contrasts with neoconservatism and "cynical realism."

The US should instead stimulate political and economic development and gain a better understanding of what happens in other countries. The best instruments are setting a good example and providing education and, in many cases, money. The secret of development, be it political or economic, is that it never comes from outsiders, but always from people in the country itself. One thing the US proved to have excelled in during the aftermath of World War II was the formation of international institutions. A return to support for these structures would combine American power with international legitimacy, but such measures require a lot of patience. This is the central thesis of his 2006 work America at the Crossroads.

In a 2006 essay in The New York Times Magazine strongly critical of the invasion, he identified neoconservatism with Leninism. He wrote that neoconservatives "believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States. Neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support."

Fukuyama announced the end of the neoconservative moment and argued for the demilitarization of the war on terrorism:

[W]ar is the wrong metaphor for the broader struggle, since wars are fought at full intensity and have clear beginnings and endings. Meeting the jihadist challenge is more of a "long, twilight struggle" [quoting John F. Kennedy's inaugural address] whose core is not a military campaign but a political contest for the hearts and minds of ordinary Muslims around the world.

Fukuyama endorsed Barack Obama in the 2008 US presidential election. He states:

I'm voting for Barack Obama this November for a very simple reason. It is hard to imagine a more disastrous presidency than that of George W. Bush. It was bad enough that he launched an unnecessary war and undermined the standing of the United States throughout the world in his first term. But in the waning days of his administration, he is presiding over a collapse of the American financial system and broader economy that will have consequences for years to come. As a general rule, democracies don't work well if voters do not hold political parties accountable for failure. While John McCain is trying desperately to pretend that he never had anything to do with the Republican Party, I think it would be a travesty to reward the Republicans for failure on such a grand scale.

In 2007 Fukuyama criticized the American government's attitude to Iran, "If the only thing we're putting on the table is that we'll talk to you, it isn't going to work. What the Iranians have really wanted over a long period of time is the grand bargain." In 2009 he described Iran as "not quite a tyranny, petty or grand" but also not a liberal democracy and added that "Iran could evolve towards a genuine rule-of-law democracy within the broad parameters of the 1979 constitution."

In a 2018 interview with New Statesman, when asked about his views on the resurgence of socialist politics in the United States and the United Kingdom, he responded:

It all depends on what you mean by socialism. Ownership of the means of production – except in areas where it's clearly called for, like public utilities – I don't think that's going to work. If you mean redistributive programmes that try to redress this big imbalance in both incomes and wealth that has emerged then, yes, I think not only can it come back, it ought to come back. This extended period, which started with Reagan and Thatcher, in which a certain set of ideas about the benefits of unregulated markets took hold, in many ways it's had a disastrous effect. At this juncture, it seems to me that certain things Karl Marx said are turning out to be true. He talked about the crisis of overproduction… that workers would be impoverished and there would be insufficient demand.

In a review for The Washington Post, Fukuyama discussed Ezra Klein's 2020 book Why We're Polarized regarding US politics, and outlined Klein's central conclusion about the importance of race and white identity to Donald Trump voters and Republicans.

In 2020, Fukuyama became the chair of the editorial board for American Purpose, a magazine established in 2020 to promote three central ideas. Firstly, it wants to promote liberal democracy in the United States. Secondly, it seeks to understand and opine on the challenges to liberal democracy in other countries. Thirdly, it wants to "offer criticism and commentary on history and biography, high art and pop culture, science and technology."

Fukuyama also perceived Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election as the result of the Western system's ability to correct mistakes.

Views following Russian invasion of Ukraine

A few weeks after the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Fukuyama made several prognoses in the magazine American Purpose:

Russia was heading towards defeat, with its planning being incompetent and based on flawed assumptions about Ukrainians being favorable to Russia and about the Ukrainian military suffering immediate collapse in an invasion scenario. "Russian soldiers were evidently carrying dress uniforms for their victory parade in Kyiv rather than extra ammo and rations." The bulk of Russia's military had been committed to the invasion and so there were no vast reserves available to it.

Russia's position could collapse suddenly and catastrophically rather than through a slow war of attrition. Its army would reach a point where it could be neither resupplied nor withdrawn, and morale would collapse accordingly.

A Russian defeat was a prerequisite for any diplomatic solution to the war as otherwise both Russia and Ukraine's losses meant that there was no conceivable compromise which they could both accept.

Vladimir Putin's rule over Russia would not survive a military defeat. "He gets support because he is perceived to be a strongman; what does he have to offer once he demonstrates incompetence and is stripped of his coercive power?"

The invasion had done huge damage to populists such as Matteo Salvini, Jair Bolsonaro, Éric Zemmour, Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, and Donald Trump; all had expressed sympathy for Putin before the war, and their "openly authoritarian" leanings had been exposed by the war's politics.

The war thus far had been a "good lesson" for China whose military, like Russia's, was technologically sophisticated but had minimal combat experience. The People's Liberation Army Air Force's lack of experience in relation to complex air operations meant that in a future conflict it would likely replicate the poor performance of Russia's air force. "We may hope that the Chinese leadership will not delude itself as to its own capabilities the way the Russians did when contemplating a future move against Taiwan"; as for Taiwan itself, Fukuyama expressed his hope that it would now begin to prepare for a future conflict including by reintroducing conscription.

"Turkish drones will become bestsellers."

A Russian defeat would permit a "new birth of freedom" and assuage fears about the declining state of global democracy. The spirit of 1989 would live on thanks to Ukraine's bravery.

Fukuyama has also put emphasis on the importance of national identity for a sound defense of liberal values – and thus the need to reconcile the nation-state with liberal universalism, even if they seem at odds at first – in a Foreign Affairs article:

Liberalism, with its universalist pretensions, may sit uneasily alongside seemingly parochial nationalism, but the two can be reconciled. The goals of liberalism are entirely compatible with a world divided into nation-states.... Liberal rights are meaningless if they cannot be enforced by a state.... The territorial jurisdiction of a state necessarily corresponds to the area occupied by the group of individuals who signed on to the social contract. People living outside that jurisdiction must have their rights respected, but not necessarily enforced, by that state.... The need for international cooperation in addressing issues such as global warming and pandemics has never been more evident. But it remains the case that one particular form of power, the ability to enforce rules through the threat or the actual use of force, remains under the control of nation-states… Ultimate power, in other words, continues to be the province of nation-states, which means that the control of power at this level remains critical.... There is thus no necessary contradiction between liberal universalism and the need for nation-states. Although the normative value of human rights may be universal, enforcement power is not; it is a scarce resource that is necessarily applied in a territorially delimited way.

In a 2022 interview with El País, Fukuyama expressed support for social democratic policies: "In Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, you've had social democratic parties in power for a long time. [They've] done a lot of redistribution – you don't get this kind of polarized politics and you have an alternation between the center-left and center-right, which I think is much healthier." However, Fukuyama also said that he "was never opposed to social democracy. I think that it really depends on the historical period and the degree of state intervention. By the 1960s, many social democratic societies had become mired in low growth [and] high inflation. At that point, I think it was important to roll some of that back. That is, in fact, what happened in Scandinavia. Most of those countries reduced tax rates, reduced levels of regulation and therefore became more productive. But I think that in the current period, we need more social democracy, especially in the United States."

On June 29, 2023, at an event hosted by Stanford University, Fukuyama met with the delegation from the Azov Brigade, posing for a picture with them and expressing his support "to Ukraine on [their] sure way to victory."

In a 2026 interview with Jacobin, Fukuyama stated that he no longer considered himself a conservative, characterising himself as a "classic social democrat" instead. He affirmed a belief in regulated markets with "a certain amount of distribution", arguing that this type of mixed economy was a "winning formula" post-World War II and suggesting that moving away from this was one of the reasons for increasing political instability in recent decades. However, he also described himself as more conservative regarding "certain cultural issues", especially identity politics, and welcomed an increasing focus on economic equality over identity politics among progressives in the Democratic Party. He also described Zohran Mamdani's approach to governing as mayor of New York City as "politically pretty smart", noting Mamdani's partial embrace of deregulation as advocated by the abundance movement and arguing that this was a necessity to deliver his agenda successfully.