with people outside our group and see them not as members of groups as such, but as individuals, part 2 of we'll store and nicholas re jaime cooperating outside of our immediate family is a major part of our human success story studio. be unscripted on al jazeera. ah, i'm carry johnston in doha, the top stories on al jazeera targeting ukraine. so russian war planes of hit the centuries old city of the viv, known for its cultural heritage. until now the western city has largely escaped serious fighting. but it's a major hub for ukrainians, fleeing across the border into poland. just 70 kilometers away. st was robbie reports the evening quiet in the west of ukraine, broken by the sound of russian missiles hitting their target. hours after the

attack of fuel storage facility still burning, smoke still covering the skies over levine, the capital, ukrainian se may be the heart of the country, but levies with nearly 800 years of history and cultural heritage. is it? so we verse and i thought that they will not touch with your brain because they were targeted mostly to the east. you grand ki, event genevieve and vic cities in the for either now they i am taking it characters hot of you. great. you're the most of us. i think it's terrible. we didn't come here from cave to hear bombings swore it's real war. it's terrible really because people are dying. all our seat is perfect. it is beautiful . it is destroyed. it's time to stop it because 21st century. what can we say about more?

there is outrage here. ukrainian say they feel betrayed by russia and despise vladimir putin on it is not so good a you look woman enough. what god love you, they all the anti christ. ukraine has never attacked anyone while they doing this. they don't need the people or land, they don't need anything. all they have is their meaningless ambitions. it's just horror, blood deck and despair. the rule of a wild hoard, the tiny gray man has done a lot of black, horrible evil. he's a beast. the west of the country has seen some high profile attack since the russian invasion began. but levine was spared the worst of the violence. warning sirens likely to be taken more seriously. now loud, such and explosions have shattered the relative calm that levine had been experiencing throughout this war. so far, we've just heard reports that the target of the attack from which the smoke is

emanating was a fuel depot. on the other side of the city, louise has been at the center of the country's humanitarian response to the war. the wider region has also been key as a military hub. moments before the 1st attack reign, we met with the cities mayor. he says he speaks to his counterparts coping with the destruction of their own cities every day to day all city in ukraine a how worry now seymour our situation. i dont know ways ah target or next russian missile. but my ear, my, my duty to serve security, my citizens and are in the safe for refugees. a job made more difficult with attacks within levine, city limits. as night came more missile strikes, hitting more targets. this is the closest,

the war has come to the center of the city, an escalation that brings the war right to the heart of levine. zane basra, theology 0 humans. luthey rebels say they're suspending at miss allen drone strikes on saudi arabia for 3 days. at least 8 people were killed off the air strikes, hit a power plant of fuel supply station and the state run social insurance office in san off a group of afghan women and girls have marched to cobble to demand the right to go to school. the government closed all girls secondary schools earlier this week. ours are open to the 1st time more than 7 months since returning, preparing august, the taliban is undone. the progress made i women in the past 2 decades. the news continues here on al jazeera after the bottom line. i

me i am steve clements and i have a question with the ukraine war stem, the rising tide of authoritarianism and reignite liberalism around the world. let's get to the bottom line. ah, in many ways ukraine has become not only a proxy fight between the east in the west, but a battle between ideologies. on one hand, there's liberalism, in the enlightenment values, and on the other authoritarianism. in ukraine's case, the question is, the states have the right to make their own choices and their own friends? what does it mean if states don't have sovereignty and independence in russia case to it's fears for its national security, justify the carnage that we're looking at every day? will it do anything to prevent ukraine from joining a western alliance then makes russia feel threatened? does might make, right?

so what will the global consequences of this war now be? will authoritarianism everywhere begin to falter? and what happens on the other hand, if russia wins? joining me today is political philosopher, frances fukuyama, who's book the end of history. and the last man came out in 1992 and argue that western style liberal democracy had evolved over all other ideologies. what he didn't say is that other forces wouldn't try and make a come back. now he's coming out with a new book. liberalism and it's discontent, about the challenges to liberal democracy. how do you see russia, ukraine in this moment? i think that there is a much larger fight going on. i started going to ukraine regularly, back in 2013 my center at stanford runs a number of training programs for hopefully a new generation of ukrainian leaders. and we did this because all the way back then, you know, beginning with rushes, seizure of crimea,

and the don bass. it seemed to me that this was the front line in a global struggle between democracy and authoritarian government. you know, there's 2 separate issues. you've talked about sovereignty. and so there's a general principle that countries shouldn't be invaded by their neighbors that might, doesn't make right. and the people have a right to their living in their own countries. but there's also an issue about liberal democracy and you know, to me, the 2nd issue is maybe even more important. i think that, you know, i had this feeling, i remember when i was walking through the, my dog, the central square, the heave, the last time i was there, just looking at the people walking around the street. it was like a normal western european city. people were free, they could criticize the government, they could organize, they could really vote for whoever they wanted. and when they voted for president

soleski, they picked a complete outsider to the kind of corrupt establishment that had been very dominant in the country. and so, you know, there's some pretty basic values at stake when russia decided that actually no ukraine is not a sovereign nation. it really belongs to us. and i think what was driving that was the issue of liberal democracy because people had asserted that several points previously that slavic peoples, that the what he calls the greater russian people and that includes ukrainians are really not suited for democracy. that they like strong centralized dictatorship and the ukrainians were proving him wrong. if walker secret flourish and ukraine could flourish in his country, and that obviously represented a big threat to his regime. and so i think those are the broader issues that are at

stake. it's not just the question of sovereignty, it's also the question of whether you can have a free society in a place like ukraine and whether other free societies are going to support it. a lot of people have thought that while we were hand wringing in the west and talking about, you know, democracy's tough days and that we have to fight and struggle for democracy. i don't think anybody there thought the face of that would be vladimir zalinski and the ukranian people that fighting for democracy has become very, very tangible, very bloody, a very hard fight. and i'd love to know your thought as if this was framed by car gone off and others as a fight not over ukraine's sovereignty, but over the battle with democracy. well, i think in the way putin has done all of us a favor by reminding us what the stakes are in the issue of democracy.

i think that, you know, europe by and large has been very fortunate to have lived in relative peace and prosperity. i mean, that has been generally true in western europe for 75 years since the end of the 1st 2nd world war and in eastern europe since 19891991. you know, those countries were liberated from communist dictatorship and you've had a whole generation of people grow up under a democratic framework that's connected to the global economy that's produced prosperity and the like. and i think that, you know, when you're living in that condition, you tend to take it for granted. you think in the abstract, you know, maybe we need to fight for it, but you don't actually have to fight for it. and all of a sudden we've got a situation in which people are desperately fighting of you know, for their way of life. and i think it's a very useful remark. and by the way,

i mean, i think this doesn't justify anything that's happened. you know, because the suffering in ukraine is just, it's horrible and it's very, very unfair that in a way there burying a burden on behalf of all of us. but that being said, i do think that, you know, it's reminded people in the west that they can't take a liberal democracy for granted. and it does require some struggle. you know, there's a tendency, i think, in the media right now to try to distill this down almost to the point of being a star wars script. you know, they are darth vader in the empire. you know, luke skywalker and the jet eyes are on the white side, but, but there are a lot of folks who don't see it this way. they see america's invasion in response during the iraq war as something where america was perceived by many around the world to adopt that a might, might, makes right mentality. and some things they see the united states as

a nation. that was kind of gravity less in a lot of the decisions it made in the world and didn't always see it as a benign player in global affairs. or are there moments of interest section we have to have on the united states side of what we need to do to be greater supporters of the kind of liberalism that we're all talking about today? well 1st of all, what you say is correct. i was just in the balkans and there there's actually a fair amount of support for me and a fair amount of cynicism about the european union and about the west in general. because, you know, a lot of those countries have been trying to get into the e u and they've been largely blocked in the past. but, you know, of course, the introspection is necessary and very important. and i do think that the mistakes that have been made in american foreign policy, like the iraq war have echoed through the years in ways that were not

anticipated. that had been very damaging to america's image into the image of democracy. democracy promotion in the eyes of many is synonymous with invasion and that's, that's a very bad situation. i just think the timing is important. so that interest section is important. but i don't think that that should get in the way of our doing whatever we can to help protect your brain, because that protection really needs to come now. and i think that, you know, having these self doubts at this particular moment is just not the right timing for it. hopefully, if this russian assault can be beaten back, then i think it'll be completely appropriate to say, well, we haven't created the kind of world where nobody uses military force, you know,

across borders in this particular fashion. i guess i'd been ask you to over your long career of looking at russia of looking at the soviet union, what did we get wrong after 1989 that we need to pay attention to after this episode is over whatever you predicted pollutant is going to have a bad end and will, will lose and won't survive that loss. what do we do at that moment so that we don't repeat history again? yeah, that's a really complicated question. i think there's an internal russia dimension and of foreign policy dimension. i think in terms of what the advice we are giving russia as they were trying to make a transition to a market economy. we made a lot of mistakes that we haven't fully owned up to. i think that we kind of assumed at that point that, you know, this was sort of the neo liberal wave that had to gripped, you know, a lot of economists at that time. but somehow free markets were the answer to

everything and that they would be self sustaining without a political structure of the state that could actually enforce property rights and the like. and i think we encouraged a 2 rapid transition to a market economy in a way that impoverished a lot of russians, whether we could have, you know, reverse that by a marshall plan for russia. i don't know, that's a complicated question, but i do think a lot of the economic advice that we're giving at that time was, was really wrong. that the transition should have been much more careful and much more gradual. the foreign policy argument is one that still echoing in people like john mearsheimer, where, you know, the argument was that we should not have expanded nato. and that russia might have developed into a kind of normal, you know, maybe somewhat authoritarian but,

but not a terribly ambitious country. if we had not pushed nato right up to its borders, including countries that have been part of the former ussr. that argument, i don't, you know, it's a counterfactual that, that nobody's ever going to be able to prove. i just don't believe that that's the case because i think that the eastern european country, 1st of all, the expansion was not driven by you know, by the west. it wasn't driven by washington was driven by countries that had a long, historical experience of living under russian power. and they understood, i think that once the balance of forces changed and russia was powerful again, that they would revert to this long term. historical pattern of trying to dominate their neighbors and that they wanted some protection against that. and i think that, you know, if you look at prudence narrative,

he claims that his the reason for his acting is kind of short term threat posed by ukraine to russia. security, but if you listen to the other stuff, he says about how important is to reverse the entire democratization of the of eastern europe that occurred after 991. you see that the issue is this one of democracy versus authoritarianism. and it really doesn't have to do with ukraine . it's really trying to restore the former soviet union in all of its glory and reversing the idea of a europe whole and free that we supported at the end of the cold war. and i think that that would have happened regardless of whether we had expanded nato. we hadn't expanded nato than poland, and the baltic states would be in exactly the same position that ukraine is in today. so that's my view. i cannot prove that again because it's a counterfactual,

but i believe that that was not the fundamental mistake that we've made. i'd be interested in, in your reflections, not only on the global wave that has hit some of these populous leaders, but also the, what's been happening in the u. s. u. s. political system. and, and how you see the, the winners or losers of the shaping of voices from this point forward. you know, in, in, in the u. s. electric. well, i think the impact is going to be quite extensive. you know, it's interesting that all of those populous leaders beginning with donald trump as you mention all liked her. and i think it, tony tells you something about the nature of this new wave of populism. you know, there's been this argument where a lot of people have said, well populous are just doing things that are popular,

but they're basically democratic. and they're representing a group of people that feels neglected and despised and looked down upon. there's a degree of truth to that, but i think the, the attraction to prudent indicates that there's something else that's much more sinister behind their agendas, which is that they actually don't like liberalism. meaning, not the cultural liberalism that we've been fighting about in this country, but liberalism, in the sense of a constitutional order the produce as a rule of law that restricts the power of executives and presidents and prime ministers to just do whatever they want. they like the idea of a strong leader that can just cut through, you know, all of the, all of the bureaucracy and rules and just do what the people want. and it's a very dangerous tendency, and i think that's one of the reasons they liked. the fact that so many of them are

on record praising pooty, trying to get photographed with him like marine le pen or failing to criticize him in any way like former president trump. that's something that you know, their opponents can hang around their heads the next time they're up for an election. because i think that the you know, the devastation and the moral clarity that has been produced as a result of will reflect on them. and russell, reflect on the kind of moral people that they are, are in this case, armed. what sorts of pressures do you think this moment puts on china? i remember reading a piece you wrote years ago that as we had simultaneous wars going on, an afghan, a stand in iraq, the united states in the west, china was on a charm offensive around the world and taking advantage of that moment. i see china right now, of course, you know, we also saw pictures as emerging paying move vladimir putin recently. but in other

ways, if you are kind of look at an analytical china is trying to keep its powder dry in some ways by be interested in what you think they're getting out of this. what impact you see on china and the way it engages with the equities it cares about in the world? well, there's 2 separate questions with regard to china that we need to think about. so the 1st is the more short term one. do they actually answer putin's call for assistance? and there, there seems to be increasing evidence that they've decided that they made a wrong path. and that they don't wanna, you know, associate themselves with a leader who has become a global pariah. they've got a lot of short term economic interest and not getting caught up in secondary sanctions and the like, i mean, it's not going to be possible to sanction china the way a russia has been sanctioned, but that still will have a bad impact. and i do think that there's still this residual desire to be seen as

a good player in global politics. and so it looks like they're trying to back away from, you know, what at the olympics they had called and whatever it was, forever, friendship. the more crucial thing is a longer term issue about taiwan. because, you know, as many people have recognised, they want to take back taiwan. they've pretty much said that that could happen peacefully, or there might be circumstances in which it might have to happen militarily. i think that the calculus that they're making on taiwan is, 1st of all, obviously the military dimensions of an attack. but more importantly, what's the response going to be? what's the response from the united states and what's the response from the rest of the world? and i think that if i were a chinese leader, i would be very careful. you know,

the russian military did not perform that. anything like the level that it is expected to given all the money that had been poured into new weapons and training . and i think china will suffer from similar problems, but more importantly, the kind of resolve of the democracies around the world to resist that has been very surprising. and i think the chinese are probably taking that into account as well. so i do think it may have, you know, some deterrent effect. can you finally just give us a quick glimpse of your new book that's coming out soon. liberalism, in its discontents, you know, knowing a frank fukuyama book, i know that you probably are giving counsel to those of us who believe in the liberal order that we've not been doing our job that we've been kind of bored at the switch, that there are a lot of things that haven't been, you know, held up and you kind of see that in the way, even the kind of board i'm over the,

you know, the big summit for democracy that joe biden had recently. it was kind of a yawn that came and went. so i love, i love our audience to kind of hear about the book. if you give us a quick moment on it. sure. so i think that for many people, especially kind of jump gens the people that have been born after the cold war and have a very different experience. liberalism seems like old hat, you know, it seems like something that their parents generation or maybe even their grandparents generation believe them. but it's not appropriate for the moment. you know, that's for many progressives on the left and i think for people on the right they, they blame liberalism for all the terrible things that they see affecting. you know, let's say american national identity, you know, the attack on religion and disrespect for kind of ordinary americans were patriotic and hardworking and so forth. and there's been

a lot of debate about the rights and wrongs of all of these different criticisms. but in the process, you know, it seems to me that nobody's gotten up and said, yeah, i'm, you know, i'm an old fashioned liberal and i'm proud of it. and i think that there's a lot of intrinsic reasons why liberalism is the best political system. and that none of these criticisms that have been made ultimately are, are decisive. so that's why i decided to write this book. i mean, it deals with all the criticisms and explains why i don't think they're correct. but it's also an attempt to explain why liberalism exists, why it's a good thing, why you should be very grateful for living in a liberal society as opposed to either a kind of nationalist or you know, more traditional kind of authoritarian country and why? you know, some of the ideas on the left for placing liberalism with, you know,

some form of identity based politics is also not a good idea. so that's really the purpose in, in writing this to say, you know, say it now instead loud, i'm a liberal and i'm proud. let me ask you one last question. president lansky is speaking to parliament all over the world. they're remarkable speeches to the canadian parliament to the u. s. congress now to the european parliament, and he's asking for more, he's asking for help. he's asking for military supplies. airplanes, no fly zones. is america doing enough? from your perspective? is joe biden doing enough to give the landscape what he needs? you know, the no fly zone issue is a really difficult one. and one the my because, you know, i have not been in favor of that and not something that's upset. a lot of my ukranian friends, i think that there is a kind of technical issue that many people don't understand,

which is that if you were to impose a no fly zone over ukraine, you would have to attack russian targets in russian territory. because a lot of the threats, you know, the rockets that are raining down on car kids and keys and other ukrainian cities are coming from russian territory. and you can't really protect the ukraine without actually attacking russia and for nato to start that kind of attack. i think is a very grave step. it may be necessary at some point, but i think that we haven't reached that moment yet. and so i think that, you know, what we need to do is to accelerate what we've been doing, which is to provide them with, you know, the maximum amount of usable ground base air defense systems. you know, like s 3 hundreds that can be used in the short run to protect

ukrainian cities. but to not go, you know, to the next stage of escalation. because i just think the, the scenarios that could unfold from that are really pretty numerous and pretty scary. well, frances fukuyama, author and senior fellow at stanford university, thanks so much for being with us. thank you, steve. so what's the bottom line? sometimes history goes to sleep. francis fukuyama wrote about the end of history 30 years ago when the soviet union fell apart. now he says, history is waking up. we're being reminded of what the stakes are if might makes right, becomes the rationale for any countries behavior as america did in the iraq war, and banding about popular slogans like america 1st, which really means in america that doesn't care about the rest of the world populous leaders don't like liberalism, they don't like the given take of a democracy where both political winners and losers actually believe in the rights

of each other. but as graphic and disturbing, as the image of ukraine atrocities are, maybe fukuyama is right, they are igniting the spirit. and the purpose of those who believe in justice in liberalism, democracy, and sovereignty history is awake again. and that's the bottom line. ah, there is no channel that covers world views like we do. the scale of this camp is like nothing you've ever seen access to healthcare, but we want to know how do these things affect people? we revisit places, state, even when they're no international headline. al jazeera, really invest in that, and that's a privilege, as a journalist, does the mind play tricks them her? is always this car break there or are they really out there and you pass them by like they pull up a leg like they're not in the car. the film make, it takes the f,

b i to court to find out approximately 33120 pages of records did the process. mobilize is how community as long as people are free to talk, then there is no check against the feeling of being watched on al jazeera. ah, i'm carry johnston in doha, the talk stories on al jazeera, ukraine's western city of the viv has been hit by russian missiles. officials say the strikes of significantly damaged city infrastructure. the bib is just 70 kilometers from the polish border and a major hub for fleeing ukrainians. u. s. present, joe biden says russia's warren. ukraine has been a strategic failure. speaking in poland to bide andrew criticism from moscow. after stating that russian president vladimir putin cannot remaining.