Conversation with Bob Wright on Russia, Japan, Papua New Guinea, and other places visited over the summer.

I traveled around Papua New Guinea for two weeks earlier this summer. My interest in coming here was related to my interest in state-building. PNG did not have a state when it was first colonized by Britain and Germany late in the 19th century. The Australians, who took over the colonial mandate from after World […]

There are two great experiments in authoritarian development going on in the world today, those represented by Russia and by China. The common Western theory, which I have argued in favor of in the past, is that liberal democracy and market economies are mutually complementary; even though countries can develop rapidly under authoritarian governments, eventually […]

I was on a panel on Sunday with Presidents Putin of Russia and Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. The following is the text of my speech:I would like to begin by thanking the organizers of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum for inviting me, and giving me the opportunity to […]

Francis Fukuyama talked to Bob Wright on bloggingheads.tv again on China, Iraq, Russian vacuum tubes, and other subjects.

From the Los Angeles Times, May 5, 2007:GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, has promised to return to Washington in September to report on the outcome of his surge strategy. I hope he will say that sectarian killings, bombings and U.S. casualties are all down. But even if he does, I doubt […]

While commentators like Charles Krauthammer and John Bolton have charged that Britain capitulated to Iran and handed them a humiliating victory in obtaining the release of the 15 British Marines last week (when has Krauthammer ever not cried “Munich!” in response to an act of diplomacy?), it would appear that something more like the opposite […]

The New America Foundation and Johns Hopkins SAIS co-sponsored a presentation of the report, Beyond Bioethics: A Proposal for the Modernization of Human Biotechnologies, on Capitol Hill March 2. The presentation was made by Francis Fukuyama and Franco Furger, with commentary by Shannon Brownlee of New America, Richard Hayes of the Center for Genetics and […]

Touching on several of the pieces I have posted in the last two weeks…https://bloggingheads.tv/videos/1103

From the Los Angeles Times, Feb. 4, 2007:IT IS EASY TO GET very discouraged when surveying the state of the world. Few Americans need to be reminded about the chaos in Iraq, Iran’s ambitions as a regional and potentially nuclear power or the possibility of Sunni-Shiite conflict spreading throughout the Persian Gulf.But there’s also the […]