The Commonwealth June/July 2022 by The Commonwealth Club of California

Commonwealth The

THE MAGAZINE OF THE COMMONWEALTH CLUB OF CALIFORNIA

JUNE/JULY 2022

N I E R N I A A W R K U ,

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FRANCIS FUKUYAMA THE BATTLE OVER THE D.A.

THE

MAYA With Archaeologist William Saturno DECEMBER 4-12, 2022

Explore the UNESCO world heritage site of Palenque. Marvel at more remote sites such as Yaxchilan and Tonina to see remarkably well-preserved murals. Venture to the heart of the Lacandón jungle, with scarlet macaws and howler monkeys. Enjoy San Cristobal de la Casas, a stunning colonial city nestled in mountainous central highlands.

Brochure at commonwealthclub.org/travel

| 415.597.6720

travel@commonwealthclub.org CST: 2096889-40

The

Commonwealth

CONTENTS

June/July 2022 Volume 116, Number 3

FEATUR ES 16

War in Ukraine

cover story: Insights into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s plans and miscalculations, and possible outcomes; featuring the United States’ former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch; sidebars with Steven Pifer, Rose Gottemoeller, Gloria Duffy, and Anya Zoledziowski. 27

Why Did San Franciscans Recall Their D.A.?

Melissa Caen moderates a debate between Dr. Lara Bazelon and Brooke Jenkins, highlighting the issues at stake in the recent recall election of Chesa Boudin. 34

“The Russian military—clearly, [Putin] overestimated their capabilities. It doesn’t mean, though, that the Russian military isn’t really dangerous; they may not be able to fight the Ukrainian military, but they can do what they’re doing in Mariupol and countless other cities of just hurling hellfire at innocent civilians.“

The Critics of Classical Liberalism

Dr. Francis Fukuyama talks with Tim Miller about the influence of classical liberalism, and its modern opponents on the left and the right.

—MARIE YOVANOVITCH ON THE COVER: The main street of Bucha, Ukraine, after the Russian invasion. (Photo by Oleksandr Ratushniak.) ON THIS PAGE: Above: Destruction in Chernihiv, Ukraine. (Photo by State Emergency Service of Ukraine.) Right: Dr. Francis Fukuyama. (Photo by Ed Ritger.)

“Liberalism and democracy are usually allies and support one another. But they are distinct phenomena.“

DEPARTMENTS 4

Editor’s Desk

Spend Summer at the Club, by John Zipperer 5

The Commons

talk of the club: The winners of the 91st Annual California Book Awards; Dr. Gloria Duffy named by Speaker Pelosi to a congressional commission. essay: Demille Taylor reflects on Al Sharpton’s program (and last issue’s cover story) 8

Program Info

About attending Club events. 10

—FRANCIS FUKUYAMA The Commonwealth Club of California, established 1903

Program Listings

See programs coming up in June and July 2022.

EDITOR’S DESK

JOHN ZIPPERER

Vice President of Media & Editorial

The

Commonwealth Jung/July 2022 Volume 116, Number 3

BUSINESS OFFICES

The Commonwealth, 110 The Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA 94105 feedback@commonwealthclub.org

VP, MEDIA & EDITORIAL John Zipperer

HEARST EDITORIAL FELLOW Corey Rose

PHOTOGRAPHERS: Ed Ritger.

PHOTO BY SARAH GONZALEZ

ADVERTISING INFORMATION John Zipperer, Vice President of Media & Editorial, (415) 597-6715, jzipperer@ commonwealthclub.org

Spend Summer at the Club

here are some great new reasons to come to an in-person program at The Commonwealth Club this summer. It’s Summer at the Club, and it’s designed to expand your opportunities for interaction while you’re at the Club for a program. All evening events will include a complimentary drink (wine or soft drink) for all attendees, which you can enjoy while talking with your fellow members and guests. Most of the time these receptions will take place before the program, but some events will have post-program book signings, so they’ll be during the book signing. To make it even Also, to make it even more fun, why not bring a friend? For any Club events this summer, you can bring a friend for more fun, why half price. To get the discount, use the promo code friend50 when you checkout. not bring a So there’s a free drink, a good friend—what else do you need to draw you back to our beautiful waterfront home? friend to How about a great lineup of speakers? We’ve got return engagements from some of our most popular speakers, inthe Club this cluding groundbreaking chef and restaurateur Alice Waters and former intelligence officer Malcolm Nance. We also summer? have our June Pride-themed Bay Lights Mixer on June 10, featuring food and entertainment on all four floors of the building. And if you turn the pages of this magazine, you’ll come across our abbreviated listings of upcoming events, where you’ll find many more interesting speakers and topics (and more are being added each week, so you can get the latest on our website at commonwealthclub.org/ events or you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter at commonwealthclub.org/email). So free drink, good friends, interesting programs. What else? All that’s missing now is you. We look forward to seeing you—and your friends—at the Club this summer.

THE COMMO N WE AL TH | June/July 2022

The Commonwealth (ISSN 0010-3349) is published bimonthly (6 times a year) by The Commonwealth Club of California, 110 The Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA 94105. Periodicals postage paid at San Francisco, CA. Subscription rate $34 per year included in annual membership dues. Copyright © 2022 The Commonwealth Club of California. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Commonwealth, The Commonwealth Club of California, 110 The Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA 94105; (415) 597-6700; feedback@commonwealthclub.org EDITORIAL TRANSCRIPT POLICY The Commonwealth magazine covers a range of programs in each issue. Program transcripts and question-and-answer sessions are routinely condensed due to space limitations. Hear full-length recordings online at commonwealthclub. org/watch-listen, or via our free podcasts on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts or Spotify; watch videos at youtube.com/ commonwealthclub. Published digitally via Issuu.com.

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TALK OF THE CLUB

T H E COM M O N S : N E WS O F T H E C L U B , S P E A K E R S , M E M B E R S A N D S U P P O RT E R S

LITERATURE

DUFFY PHOTO BY JAMES MEINERTH

2022 California Book Awards Announced

leven outstanding books by California authors make up the latest class of winners of the California Book Awards, now entering their tenth decade. “The California Book Awards jury is proud to announce our 2022 medalists,” said Peter Fish, chair of the awards jury. “This year marks our 91st anniversary; for more than nine decades, we’ve honored the enormous creativity and energy of California writers and publishers. “This year’s winning titles are ambitious, challenging and surprising. Our gold medal in fiction goes to Shruti Swamy’s lyrical chronicle of a dancer’s search for artistic and personal fulfillment in 1970s India, The Archer; the fiction silver medal goes to Viet Thanh Nguyen for his propulsive political novel The Committed. The first-fiction gold medal goes to Yoon Choi for Skinship, her subtly powerful, moving story collection focusing on the lives of first- and second-generation Korean American families; Rebecca Sacks wins the first fiction silver medal for City of a Thousand Gates, a character-rich portrait of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “In nonfiction, Lizzie Johnson wins the gold medal for her harrowing, deeply reported Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire. The nonfiction silver medal goes to Gabrielle Selz for Light on Fire: The Art and Life of Sam Francis, a superbly written biography of California abstract expressionist painter Sam Francis. The juvenile gold medal is awarded to Muon Thi Van and Victo Ngai for Wishes, a touching, nuanced story of a Vietnamese family’s search for a new home. The winner of the young adult gold medal is Safia Elhillo for Home Is Not a Country, a novel-in-poems that pulls us into the life of a 14-year-old Muslim-American girl. “Will Alexander wins our gold medal in poetry for Refractive Africa, which tackles the devastating effects of colonialism and celebrates the brilliance of Africa and the African diaspora. Our Californiana award

Above: The 91st annual book awards winners announced. Right: Dr. Gloria Duffy.

NATIONAL SECURITY

Speaker Nancy Pelosi Appoints Dr. Gloria Duffy to Commission

goes to Rosecrans Baldwin for his deliberately provocative, entertaining Everything Now: Lessons from the City-State of Los Angeles. Finally, our contribution to publishing award goes to the Little Tokyo Historical Society for A Rebel’s Outcry, a beautifully crafted biography of Issei civil rights leader Sei Fujii.” Since 1931, the California Book Awards have honored the exceptional literary merit of California writers and publishers. Each year a select jury considers hundreds of books from around the state in search of the very best in literary achievement. Eligible books must be written while the author is a resident in California, and they must be published during the year under consideration. The Club thanks the estate of Martha Cox for providing the funds for the prize. And we are grateful to Roy and Betsy Eisenhardt, for their steadfast support of the California Book Awards.

peaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has appointed Dr. Gloria Duffy, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for cooperative threat reduction under President Clinton, and current president and CEO of The Commonwealth Club of California, to a new Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States. The bipartisan commission was mandated by the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act passed in December 2021. Its work will include a strategic threat assessment, and it will make recommendations to Congress on the most appropriate strategic posture for the United States, the most effective nuclear weapons strategy for the country’s strategic posture and stability, the role of non-nuclear weapons in strategic stability and the roles of arms control and nonproliferation policy. Duffy, an expert on the former Soviet countries and arms control, has an extensive background in national and international security. During her time as deputy assistant secretary of defense following the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, she negotiated with Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan, providing assistance to their governments under the Nunn-Lugar program to dismantle their weapons of mass

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THE COMMONS TALK OF THE CLUB destruction. Duffy’s efforts, together with her colleagues, led to the elimination of 7,000 nuclear weapons. For her work, Duffy received the Secretary of Defense Award for Outstanding Public Service in 1995 and the Nunn-Lugar Trailblazer Award in 2016. Most recently, in 2021–22 Duffy has been a member of the Senior Steering Committee for the bipartisan Strategic Stability Working Group at the U.S. Institute of Peace, in Washington, D.C. Duffy said of the appointment, “I am deeply honored by Speaker Pelosi’s decision to appoint me to this important commission. The speaker’s leadership is vital to our country, in this as in so many other areas. “At a time when Russia has invaded Ukraine and when Vladimir Putin has implied that Russia could use nuclear weapons, the questions the commission will consider are profound. I look forward to a rigorous examination of the many issues—from our strategic relationship with NATO to the size and structure of our nuclear forces to the future of missile defenses and the role of negotiations—the commission is charged with considering. I look forward to contributing to recommendations that will best protect our security and that of our allies, friends and the global community, in this challenging environment.” The commission is charged with evaluating current U.S. nuclear weapons policy and strategy and providing recommendations for the most suitable future strategic posture. It is also to recommend military capabilities and force structure to support its recommended strategic posture, as well as the necessary nuclear infrastructure. Included in its consideration will be missile defenses, cyber-defenses, kinetic and non-kinetic weapons and space systems, as well as the role of nonproliferation and arms control policies. A prior Congressional Commission on the U.S. Strategic Posture, chaired by former U.S. Secretary of Defense Dr. William J. Perry, reported to Congress in 2009. Beginning her career in the 1970s at the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, CA, conducting research for the U.S. Department of Energy on Soviet nuclear exports and nonproliferation policies, Duffy worked at the Arms Control Association in Washington, D.C. in the late 1970s and edited its magazine, Arms Control Today. She was a fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Arms Control in the 1980s and 1990s, and teamtaught a Stanford course on international

THE COMMO N WE AL TH | June/July 2022

arms control. She served in the early 1980s as the first CEO of a San Francisco-based foundation, Ploughshares Fund. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Duffy founded and led Global Outlook, a Palo Alto research institute on international security issues. She has published a textbook on arms negotiations and a book on nuclear arms control treaty compliance and dispute resolution, and a number of other reports and articles on national security, arms control, verification and negotiation. She has testified before Congress on arms control compliance and cooperative threat reduction. Duffy has served on or chaired the boards of a number of international security organizations. Among these are Stanford’s Freeman-Spogli Institute, Arlington VA-based CRDFGlobal, the Middlebury Institute’s Center for NonProliferation Studies in Monterey, Ploughshares Fund and the Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. In the 1980s, she helped the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation craft its International Peace and Security funding program, which for 35 years was the largest funder of nongovernmental work in the field. Beyond her work on nuclear weapons issues, Duffy has served for 26 years as the president and CEO of the Commonwealth Club of California. She is a trustee of Occidental College in Los Angeles, which she attended as an undergraduate. She holds an M.A., M. Phil. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. Other commission appointees include Rose Gottemoeller, former deputy secretary general at NATO and former under-secretary of state for arms control and international security; Leonor Tomero, deputy assistant secretary for nuclear and missile defense policy at the start of the Biden administration; John Hyten, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Strategic Command chief; Madelyn Creedon, the former number two official at the National Nuclear Security Administration and current professor at The George Washington University; Jon Kyl, former U.S. representative and senator; Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, former administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration under President Trump; Rebeccah Heinrichs, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute; Marshall Billingslea, another senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former special presidential envoy for arms control. The commission is charged with submitting its report to Congress by Dec. 31, 2022.

Leadership of The Commonwealth Club CLUB OFFICERS

Board Chair Martha C. Ryan Vice Chair John L. Boland Secretary Dr. Jaleh Daie

Treasurer John R. Farmer President & CEO Dr. Gloria C. Duffy

BOARD OF GOVERNORS

Robert E. Adams Willie Adams Deborah Alvarez-Rodriguez Scott Anderson Dan Ashley Dr. Mary G. F. Bitterman David Chun Charles M. Collins Mary B. Cranston Susie Cranston Claudine Cheng Dr. Kerry P. Curtis Dorian Daley Evelyn Dilsaver James Driscoll Joseph I. Epstein Jeffrey A. Farber Dr. Carol A. Fleming Leslie Saul Garvin Gerald Harris Peter Hill Mary Huss Michael Isip Nora James

Dr. Robert Lee Kilpatrick Lata Krishnan Alexis Krivkovich Dr. Mary Marcy Lenny Mendonca Michelle Meow Anna W.M. Mok DJ Patil Ken Petrilla Bruce Raabe Skip Rhodes Bill Ring George M. Scalise George D. Smith Jr. David Spencer James Strother Hon. Tad Taube Marcel TenBerge Charles Travers Don Wen Dr. Colleen B. Wilcox Brenda Wright Mark Zitter

PAST BOARD CHAIRS & PRESIDENTS

* Past Chair ** Past President

Dr. Mary G. F. Bitterman* J. Dennis Bonney** Maryles Casto* Hon. Ming Chin** Mary B. Cranston* Evelyn Dilsaver* Joseph I. Epstein** John Farmer* Rose Guilbault*

Claude B. Hutchison Jr.** Anna W.M. Mok* Richard Otter** Joseph Perrelli** Toni Rembe** Victor J. Revenko** Skip Rhodes** Renée Rubin** Richard Rubin* Connie Shapiro** Nelson Weller** Judith Wilbur** Dennis Wu**

ADVISORY BOARD

Karin Helene Bauer Hon. William Bradley Dennise M. Carter Steven Falk Amy Gershoni Jacquelyn Hadley Heather Kitchen

Amy McCombs Don J. McGrath Hon. William J. Perry Hon. Barbara Pivnicka Hon. Richard Pivnicka Nancy Thompson

ESSAY ONE STUDENT’S PERSPECTIVE

Rev. Al Sharpton’s Untold Stories of the Social Justice Movement Reflections on Sharpton’s Commonwealth Club program, which was excerpted in the previous issue of The Commonwealth BY DEMILLE TAYLOR Freshman, San Francisco State University; 2021-2022 Education Intern at The Commonwealth Club of Californa

only Black person in my school, and having people scream and throw things at me; the experience must still be traumatizing for her to this day. And Emmett Till’s mother y generation has a very limited idea is propped up as a strong and about civil rights leaders. We might resilient woman, but the reality is know about Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, that she had to share her child’s and maybe Malcolm X, if I’m being generous. mutilated body with the world, People think the Civil Rights Movement because she knew that others died after the “We Shall Overcome” era of would have to go through the the 1950s and 1960s, then popped up again same thing if she didn’t speak up. after George Floyd’s murder. They don’t Rev. Sharpton’s personal conknow that people like Rev. Al Sharpton were nection with historical figures still organizing and working against police helps bridge the gap between brutality and poverty in the years between. It the civil rights era and now, and has been inspiring to learn that his National gives us a different perspecAction Network has been assisting the family tive on issues that we usually members of victims such as Michael Brown, just see through the media. I George Floyd, and Trayvon Martin, helping understand now that there’s them with travel and personal bills and sup- more to the news stories porting them to raise public awareness even about police brutality and while they’re still mourning. He’s not just the other incidents than what we see on screen. When these man in a suit who shows up are sensationalized, we forget when the cameras are rolling. I’ve learned that there are real people I’ve realized that the reason we don’t know about all this more about involved and we don’t realize is because it isn’t taught— Black history the implications of the differhonestly, I think I’ve learned ent situations. They’re shown more about Black history from Twitter as isolated incidents, but from Twitter posts and Net- posts and Netthey’re not. The issues that are flix documentaries than I plaguing us today are deeply did in school. Rev. Sharpton flix documenta- embedded in American hishelped me see that what we ries than I did tory, so the same things keep do learn is glossed over and happening over and over. in school. simplified, or sensationalized Rev. Sharpton pointed out by the media who rebrand that if we see him in the news Black people’s trauma as strength without again and again, helping victims of injustice acknowledging our real feelings of pain and and their families, maybe it means something! sorrow. Ruby Bridges, for example, was turned Maybe it means that there’s a problem that into the poster child for school integration, keeps happening again and again, and that but she and her family had to endure violent we need to pay attention. threats and hatred just for her to go to school. I gained a greater respect for Rev. Sharpton’s I can’t imagine being a 5- or 6-year-old girl, the work after reading his book and watching his

program. I had thought he just showed up to make public speeches at news conferences. I didn’t realize that when we see him speak, we are just seeing the façade; we don’t see the moving parts and the level of organization it takes for him to do what he does. He compared his work to the protection and financial and psychological support that police unions give to fired police officers and their families. The victims of those officers don’t have that kind of support, so Rev. Sharpton’s organization steps in to give it to them. It was inspiring to learn how they help behind the scenes. He’s not just there for camera time, but to see the families through and help them get justice. Rev. Sharpton’s longevity in the Black social justice movement is a gift that very few of our leaders have had the opportunity to achieve and is something I think our community and those who are in the fight can be grateful for.

commonwealthclub.org | THE COMMO N WE AL TH

PROGRAMS INFORMATION T

he Commonwealth Club organizes nearly 500 events every year on politics, the arts, media, literature, business and sports. Programs

are held online and throughout the Bay Area in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Marin County, and the East Bay. Standard programs are

RADIO, VIDEO, & PODCASTS

PROGRAM DIVISIONS In addition to its regular lineup of programming, the Club features a number of divisions that produce topic-focused programming. CLIMATE ONE Climate scientists, policymakers, activists and citizens discussing energy, the economy and the environment. COMMONWEALTHCLUB.ORG/CLIMATE-ONE

CREATING CITIZENS The Club’s new education department. COMMONWEALTHCLUB.ORG/EDUCATION

INFORUM Inspiring talks with leaders in tech, culture, food, design, business and social issues targeted towards young adults. COMMONWEALTHCLUB.ORG/INFORUM

MEMBER-LED FORUMS Volunteer-driven programs that focus on particular fields. COMMONWEALTHCLUB.ORG/MLF

MICHELLE MEOW SHOW Talks with LGBTQ thought leaders from a wide range of fields of expertise. COMMONWEALTHCLUB.ORG/MMS

WEEK TO WEEK Political roundtable paired with a preprogram social. COMMONWEALTHCLUB.ORG/W2W

THE COMMO N WE AL TH | June/July 2022

typically one hour long and frequently include interviews, panel discussions or speeches followed by a question and answer session.

Watch Club programs on KAXT and KTLN TV every weekend, and monthly on KRCB TV 22 on Comcast. Select Commonwealth Club programs air on Marin TV’s Education Channel (Comcast Channel 30, U-Verse Channel 99), C-SPAN, and on CreaTV in San Jose (Channel 30). View hundreds of streaming videos of Club programs at youtube.com/commonwealthclub

CreaTV

KAXT/KTLN TV

HARD OF HEARING? To request an assistive listening device, please e-mail Mark Kirchner seven working days before the event at mkirchner@commonwealthclub.org. PODCASTS Subscribe to our free podcast service on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Spotify to automatically receive new programs: commonwealthclub.org/podcastsubscribe

Hear Club programs on more than 230 public and commercial radio stations throughout the United States (commonwealthclub.org/watch-listen/radio). For the latest schedule, visit commonwealthclub.org/broadcast. In the San Francisco Bay Area, tune in to: KALW (91.7 FM) Inforum programs select Tuesdays at KQED (88.5 FM) 7 p.m. Fridays at 8 p.m. and Saturdays at 2 a.m.

KRCB Radio (91.1 FM in Rohnert Park) Thursdays at 7 p.m. KSAN (107.7 FM) Sundays at 5 a.m.

KNBR (680 and 1050 AM) Sundays at 5 a.m.

KFOG (104.5 and 97.7 FM) Sundays at 5 a.m. TuneIn.com Fridays at 4 p.m.

TICKETS Prepayment is required. Unless otherwise indicated, all events—including “Members Free” events—require tickets. In-person programs often sell out, so we strongly encourage you to purchase tickets in advance. Due to heavy call volume, we urge you to purchase tickets online at commonwealthclub.org; or call (415) 597-6705. Please note: All ticket sales are final. Please arrive at least 10 minutes prior to any program. Select events include premium seating, which refers to the first several rows of seating. Pricing is subject to change.

Leave Your Legacy Leave Your Legacy Make a lasting impact through a planned gift.

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To learn more about how to leave a legacy gift to The Commonwealth Club please contact Kimberly Maas at kmaas@commonwealthclub.org or (415) 597-6726. commonwealthclub.org | THE COMMO N WE AL TH

June & July 2022 UPCOMING PROGRAMS

YOUR GUIDE TO IN-PERSON & ONLINE EVENTS AT THE COMMONWEALTH CLUB

On the following pages is a preview of in-person and online programs scheduled for June and July 2022 at The Commonwealth Club. To see more, including event details and to buy tickets, visit commonwealthclub.org and/or subscribe to our weekly newsletter at commonwealthclub.org/mail Summer at the Club! All summer, our in-person evening programs will feature a complimentary glass of wine or soft drink for attendees, plus members can bring a friend at 50 percent off! Book your tickets today at commonwealthclub.org/ events Safety Protocols for in-person attendance • We follow best practices laid out by the CDC and state and local guidelines. • All guests, staff, and volunteers must be fully vaccinated. Guests must show proof of full vaccination with photo I.D. • Masks are encouraged while indoors (if you do not have one and would like one, inquire at our front desk for a complimentary mask). • In-person capacity is limited. Our LEED Gold-certified building is designed to cool with outside air, using digitally controlled moveable windows and large ceiling fans. We are deploying additional HEPA filters inside to scrub the air. This is all in addition to increased cleaning of surfaces throughout the building.

THE COMMO N WE AL TH | June/July 2022

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UPCOMING PROGRAMS JUNE–JULY 2022

THE COMMO N WE AL TH | June/July 2022

Book your tickets today at commonwealthclub.org/ events

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UPCOMING PROGRAMS JUNE–JULY 2022

June 2022

THE COMMO N WE AL TH | June/July 2022

July 2022

Book your tickets today at commonwealthclub.org/events commonwealthclub.org | THE COMMO N WE AL TH

Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the Beijing Olympics shortly before ordering the invasion of Ukraine.

THE COMMO N WE AL TH | June/July 2022

UKRAINE AT WAR

In early 2022, Vladimir Putin upended the postwar world by invading Ukraine. Why did he do it? What are Ukraine’s chances? What can the West do?

WITH WAR-RAVAGED UKRAINE CONTINUING TO RESIST Russia’s invasion, it’s important to hear from those with firsthand experience and an understanding of the complexities of the fight being waged there. Marie Yovanovitch served as U.S. ambassador to Kyiv from 2016–2019, and has intimate family connections to the region as the child of survivors of the Nazi and Soviet regimes. From the March 28, 2022, online program “Marie Yovanovitch: Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine.” Part of our Good Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation.

MARIE YOVANOVITCH, Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine; Author, Lessons From the Edge: A Memoir In conversation with OLGA OLIKER, Director, Europe and Central Asia Program, International Crisis Group

poised potentially to rewrite the future of European and perhaps even global security. But we also come back to the fact that it’s a war tearing apart the country of Ukraine in the very center of Europe. Ambassador, welcome. Let me start off by asking you—in this terrifying and critical moment in which the United States and its allies are trying to find a path forward that supports Ukraine, but avoids the direct involvement that could lead to an unfathomable escalation—based on your experience in Ukraine in the Foreign Service, and in Washington, are they getting it right? And what, if anything, would you be doing differently? What would you be advising the Biden team to do differently if you had the opportunity? MARIE YOVANOVITCH: I actually do

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PHOTO BY WWW.KREMLIN.RU/CREATIVE COMMONS

OLGA OLIKER: Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was the last U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and is now the author of a book, Lessons from the Edge. As we begin this conversation, it is just over a month since Russian troops embarked upon a fullscale invasion of Ukraine on February 24. According to Reuters, some 10 million people have been displaced, about 4 [million] outside of Ukraine and the rest inside of it. There are tens of thousands of confirmed deaths as this war continues, and we don’t know how many [total] deaths there are; it’s impossible to count. And these numbers are poised to continue to grow. It’s truly a cataclysmic, historical moment. Russia’s war on Ukraine is devastating for that country, but it also has wrought tremendous changes for Russia itself and is

War Objectives and Wartime Alliances From the March 3, 2022 online program “Ukraine Under Siege: What’s Next.”

U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch in a 2016 visit to the Holodomor Memorial in Kharkiv.

think the administration is getting it mostly right. It is a very narrow lane between supporting Ukraine, even saving Ukraine, and avoiding a wider war, the kind of escalation that nobody wants to see. So I think it’s important that we keep on looking at what we can do to help Ukraine, that we not take items off the table, because as we’ve seen, assistance that would have been inconceivable six months ago, even a month ago, is now being provided. So let’s not take items off the table. Let’s focus on what we can do and let’s keep on providing assistance to Ukraine. Of course, now I’m mostly talking about security assistance, but across the board as well. And on the security systems side, we need to keep on backfilling, because what we’re seeing is there is some success with the Ukrainian military. They are using their training. They’ve got unbelievable leadership, starting with President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy, who is the greatest communicator since Winston Churchill, but down through the ranks the military leadership is extraordinary. And they have reformed their military so that they do have NCOs [non-commissioned officers], who are leading forces and leading them well. And then, of course, there’s the will of the Ukrainian people. So there is a lot of success on the battlefield, and they’re using the equipment that we and others are sending. We need to keep on backfilling that, so that we can maximize the possibility for success. I would say one thing, which is that we look at these issues through our own cultural lens, our American lens. So when we look at things and we think we are being restrained and not provoking a greater escalation and so forth, that is our definition of what is not escalatory. It’s not at all clear that other countries—and certainly Russia and Vladimir Putin—agree with that definition. I also think that Vladimir Putin is a man

THE COMMO N WE AL TH | June/July 2022

CARLA THORSON (Ph.D., former Russia analyst, RFE/RL and RAND Corporation; Commonwealth Club vice president of programs; moderator): The battle currently unfolding within Ukraine’s borders is the largest military action in Europe since the end of World War II. It threatens to destabilize Europe and the NATO alliance and will have major implications for the global economy. Steve, having been ambassador to Ukraine in its early years of independence, can you give us some perspective on the history of the relationship between an independent Ukraine and Russia? What has happened and what has prompted Russian President Putin to resort to a full-scale invasion? STEVEN PIFER (former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine; fellow, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University): This crisis really had its roots back in 2013, at a time when Ukrainian leaders in government had no desire to join NATO but wanted to sign an association agreement with the European Union. In late 2013 the Russian government put a lot of pressure on then-President Yanukovich not to do that. In the end, Mr. Yanukovich decided not to sign, and that triggered that night the first demonstrations of the Maidan revolution. Over three months, the revolution morphed from a pro-European Union revolution into anti-Yanukovich, because of his growing autocracy. After violence, Yanukovich fled. An interim government . . . said the first goal was to sign the association agreement. I think the Kremlin panicked. We saw Russia seize Crimea; [it] provoked the conflict in Donbass, which took 14,000 lives over eight years. That’s the background. It reached a point, I believe, in the last few months where President Putin had two real concerns. One concern was about domestic politics in Russia; that was a concern that a Western-oriented, democratic, economically successful Ukraine would be a nightmare for the Kremlin, because that kind of Ukraine would cause the Russians to say, “Why can’t we have the same democracy, the same political force they have in Ukraine?” So in one sense, this is about Russian domestic politics, and it’s very much about regime survival for the Kremlin. The other concern was that Ukraine was irretrievably slipping out of Moscow’s orbit and toward the West. Now, I would argue

Russian policy over the past eight years did more than anything to push Ukraine away, toward the West, and to stoke interest in joining NATO. Ten years ago in a poll, 10 percent of Ukrainians would have said that they wanted to see their country in NATO. The last poll I saw last week had 62 percent. That’s all the result of Russian action. So I think what the Russians are trying to achieve now is a pretty maximalist goal on the part of Putin, which is to occupy a good part of Ukraine, to depose the current government and put in place a different government that would be more pro-Russian. But even if the Russians at the end win and they put that pro-Russian government in, that government doesn’t last 2 minutes after the Russians leave. So in sort of what you might call the Moscow best case, where they win the military battle, they will be occupying Ukraine for years or decades with a hostile and angry population. THORSON: Your colleague at Stanford, Ambassador Michael McFaul, has been quoted as saying he doesn’t really think Putin has an endgame and doesn’t really know what he’s going to be able to do. Do you think he’s right about that? And are there short-term objectives that Putin can achieve? PIFER: Yeah. If you look at the scale of the military operation, when the operation began last Thursday, you could see two possibilities. One would have been consistent with Putin saying, “We’re not going to occupy the country, and we want to demilitarize the country.” But that would have been an operation focused around Donbass and perhaps attacking and degrading Ukrainian military forces in the eastern part of the country. But you now see the offensive really coming from multiple directions with a huge push, although it’s been stalled for the last three days coming out of Belarus toward Kyiv. That leads me to think that his objective is not just something around Donbass, but that he has a much wider plan, including taking Kyiv. I would be happy to be wrong on that, because that might open up some possibilities to resolve this. But if he is going after Kyiv, I think it then makes it very hard for diplomacy to find some kind of a middle ground between Putin and the Ukrainian government. THORSON: Rose Gottemoeller, what about the longer-term objectives? There’s

certainly been a lot of discussion about whether or not Putin’s ultimate goal is to undermine the NATO alliance and that he really won’t stop with Ukraine. What are the risks to the NATO alliance and neighboring states if the conflict were to escalate? And how well is NATO positioned to respond? ROSE GOTTEMOELLER (former deputy secretary general, NATO; lecturer, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University): I did want to add to the point about what’s driving Putin. It is very clear that he has been isolated seriously during this pandemic period and has been stewing in his own juices. Last summer, he published a 6,000-word treatise talking about the necessity of recreating the Slavic heartland, as I call it, wanting to put Ukraine back into a confederation with Russia and Belarus, protecting Russian-speaking peoples. I thought it was amusing today that Zelenskyy said, “We don’t need our Russian-speaking peoples protected; protect your own Russianspeaking peoples inside the borders of Russia.” But that seems to be one of Putin’s goals. It’s a conservative, nationalistic approach, also, I think related to his sense of religiosity, linked to the Russian Orthodox Church and the fact that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has set itself up as independent of the Moscow Patriarchate. All of these are things that have really been eating at Putin. The other factor here is that he’s in a small bubble with very few advisers, and these advisers don’t give him information that he doesn’t want to hear. It’s a classic kind of story of an isolated dictator. And that is, I think, a really important danger. Now as to the danger to the NATO alliance per se, NATO, yes, has been very concerned about Russia since Crimea. It was at that time that NATO upped its defense spending. Russia has been upping its defense spending, too, pouring money into military modernization, both at the conventional and the nuclear level. But NATO in Wales in 2014 gave an investment pledge to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense. It was this defense investment pledge that was so frustrating for

President Donald Trump, because he couldn’t get [all of] the NATO allies to step up to it. Germany was a special frustration for Mr. Trump. I just want to note how this crisis again has changed NATO in terms of driving it together and getting countries like Germany to step up to those commitments. This past weekend, on Sunday, the German chancellor gave a remarkable speech to the German public and said, “Look, we are going to be spending 2 percent on GDP”—which is huge. It’s a huge GDP in Germany. And that means that they will be really modernizing their armed forces. So NATO’s being driven into tighter coherence. I think I’ve seen across the NATO alliance commitments to higher defense spending. This is all very good. Poland, I think, is committed to 3 percent of GDP. So there’s a real move now to pay attention for the long run to what needs to be done to deter and defend Russia. And that is going to be all-important, because this is going to last for a long time. Finally, I would say in the immediate period, in a more tactical moment that we are in now, NATO’s actually pretty well prepared to deal with possible spillover in air incidents and sea incidents from the invasion of Ukraine, because it practices all the time. Since Crimea in 2014, NATO’s air policing has been operating out of Baltic states. They are very well-practiced now at turning back Russian air incursions and making sure they are safely escorted back out of NATO’s airspace. THORSON: Gloria, with your experience working with WMD and on arms control and Russia, what concerns you most regarding the risks of what kinds of attacks? GLORIA DUFFY (Ph.D., former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense; president and CEO, The Commonwealth Club of California): We have seen a level of Russian veiled and notso-veiled threats about using nuclear weapons. That is perhaps the most dire concern that many people have about the possibility of this war escalating. There are other issues related to NATO and so on with regard to escalation. Let me start by saying the Russians have the largest nuclear force in the world. They have not committed themselves against the use of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons play an important role in Russian military doctrine. Russia did not, for example, sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that came into force last year. Some people think that he made the threat that he made a few days ago as the war in Ukraine began to seem more difficult than he’d expected. But to me, it looks as though waiving the nuclear

threat may have been part of his plan from the beginning. You remember that there were some nuclear systems tests that went on right before the attack was launched. And then a few days ago he raised the alert level of Russian nuclear forces and made the statement about “Whoever tries to hinder us will face consequences that you’ve never faced in your history,” which seems like a fairly clear reference to nuclear weapons. Nobody is exactly sure what that means or what it could mean—the use of tactical nuclear weapons against NATO? The use of some type of nuclear weapons in Ukraine? The use of strategic nuclear weapons against the U.S.? An empty threat? An actual intention? But it is very worrying and very disturbing. I woke up this morning very pleased to see Foreign Minister Lavrov of Russia making a public statement that Russia has no thoughts of nuclear war. That appeared to back Russia off from Putin’s statements a few days before. It was very nice to see someone in the Russian leadership exhibiting some prudence. A footnote here is that that may indicate some worry and dissension going on among perhaps some of the more responsible members of the leadership in Russia about the extent to which Putin has gotten out on a limb here. Nonetheless, the fact that Putin made those statements is of great concern here. Putin is violating many different agreements on many different levels, many different international agreements. Ukraine did have nuclear weapons. As my colleagues here and most people know, prior to the the breakup of the Soviet Union, they had nuclear weapons on their territory, at least. When they gave up those weapons—about 1,700 nuclear weapons—there was an agreement signed between the U.S., the United Kingdom, Russia and Ukraine called the Budapest Memorandum in 1994 stating that if Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons, none of the other parties would threaten Ukraine and would respect its territorial integrity. So on many levels Russia is violating this agreement as well as waiving the nuclear threat. The fact that they have done that is creating some concern by the U.S. and NATO about keeping a very bright line stating that we won’t commit troops, that NATO will not enforce a no-fly zone. I think there have been some promises of fighter aircraft to provide to Ukraine, and I don’t know that at this point they are actually being delivered by those who have promised them all, because of the concern to not see this conflict escalate, not engage NATO, not engage the U.S. directly, and keep that line with hope that there will be no escalation to a nuclear level.

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who only understands strength. He is a bully. He has always been a bully. And he only stops when he is stopped. So when we are restrained, I’m not sure he understands that in the same way that we mean it, which is that we are strong and we can do more but we are not, because we don’t want to escalate. I think he may sometimes understand that as weakness. So this is the very narrow lane that the Biden administration and other world leaders are trying to navigate right now. Where to do too much could perhaps send us into a much wider war, which nobody wants. And to not respond sufficiently—as I believe we did not respond sufficiently in Georgia in 2008 when Putin grabbed hold of Georgia and in Ukraine in 2014 when he illegally annexed Crimea and initiated the war in the Donbass. And now here we are in 2022 with yet another war of aggression, another war of choice by Russia. So not acting sufficiently robustly also bears risk. Navigating that lane is very difficult. The military calls it a wicked problem, because they’re just so hard to solve and they’re just very difficult. OLIKER: It’s a tremendous challenge to America’s diplomats, to Ukraine’s government and its diplomats, its military forces and its civilians. It’s really amazing what they’ve been able to do over the last month. So I don’t know about you; I expected the Ukrainians to resist, but I didn’t expect them to be as successful about it. I’m wondering what, if anything, has surprised you the most over the last month and a half of watching events unfold. YOVANOVITCH: I’m going to give you the answer that you probably already know. It’s an obvious answer, but it is my answer, which is the three huge miscalculations that Putin and I guess those around him made. The first that Ukraine is not really a country and does not deserve to exist and that the Ukrainians are just little Russians, as they’re called in Russia, and aren’t a distinct and separate people with their own language, their own culture, their own traditions, their own long history, the history that also includes fiercely resisting Russian attacks over the centuries. I mean, on the one hand, this is new perhaps to us. But on the other hand, it is very, very old. That his reading of history is so different from, frankly, what the facts would indicate is troubling. But that understanding, that belief system, led him to a huge miscalculation that he would somehow be welcomed as a

conqueror. In fact. I think the latest news is that Ukrainian forces have found dress uniforms for generals and others for that victory parade that they were going to have on day two or three when they marched into Kyiv. Over a month [later], that just seems ridiculous, as I think anybody who knows Ukraine would know that it was ridiculous. The most favorite poet of Ukraine, Taras Shevchenko, has this very famous line: “Fight—you will prevail.” That embodies the Ukrainian spirit. I think that’s what you’re seeing in President Zelenskyy when he is out there communicating and uniting his country and inspiring them and inspiring the world. I would say he reflects the spirit of the Ukrainian people, where they are fighting, whether they are kids or grandmas making Molotov cocktails or out there in the Ukrainian territorial defense units or driving an ambulance—whatever they are doing, they are bound together as a nation to resist this war of aggression, this occupation, which is a huge miscalculation on Putin’s part. The second miscalculation that he made was that his own military would be so strong that, even if there was some resistance, it could prevail. I think what we’re seeing is just the opposite. It doesn’t mean that the Russian army is done, by any stretch of the imagination. But the Russian military, clearly, [Putin] overestimated their capabilities. They themselves overestimated their capabilities. Not just on the military front, the tactical front, but also on things like logistics, which are hard to get right. But nevertheless, as Napoleon said, an army [marches] on its stomach. And if you don’t have food, you don’t have gasoline and diesel and all the things that people need to fight, the military’s not going to work. Now, what we’re hearing is that troops are withdrawing to Belarus. Perhaps it’s to regroup and to come back to fight another day. When I was in the government, we would always remind each other, the Russian military is not 10 feet tall. And I think now we realize that it’s not 10 feet tall. It doesn’t mean, though, that the Russian military isn’t really dangerous, because they may not be able to fight the Ukrainian military, but they can do what they’re doing in Mariupol and countless other cities of just hurling hellfire at innocent civilians and causing them to suffer and hoping that that will break the will of the Ukrainian people. So far, they have miscalculated on that. Honestly, I don’t see a path to the Russians being able to be ultimately—and I’m talking in the long, long term—victorious

THE COMMO N WE AL TH | June/July 2022

in Ukraine, because even if they somehow prevail militarily, I don’t think the Ukrainian people will tolerate that. I think there will be a guerrilla war. I think there will be civil disobedience and it will be very, very ugly. I would not want to be a Russian soldier going into that Ukrainian cafe and be worried about what I was being served. [Or] getting into a car. There are many, many ways that a civilian population can make its will known. I think that a Russian occupation, if it actually came to that, would be hugely expensive, mortgaging Russia’s future, all of that money that should go to the development of the Russian people and the Russian economy would be spent on an expensive occupation. So they would be paying in treasure, but also I think in blood. And the third miscalculation that I think Vladimir Putin made was in underestimating the West. I think he looked at the United States, he looked at the divisions in the U.S., he looked at the withdrawal in Afghanistan. He looked at Europe, England, obviously, with lots of challenges there. Elections coming up for Macron in France, a new and untried chancellor in Germany, and I think he thought, “This is my moment” to go in there and recreate, depending on your theories, whether it’s the Russian empire, the Soviet Union; securing [his] legacy and maybe getting a leg up on the 2024 presidential elections in Russia. So I think there were a lot of surprises for me. There are others as well. But those are the three major ones that were really strategic, actually, that have impacted the war. OLIKER: I think that’s a great analysis. So I’m going to ask you a question that I hate when people ask it of me, because I don’t have a good answer, but I’m still going to ask it, which is: Okay, we’re pretty sure that it doesn’t end the way Vladimir Putin thought it was going to end. How could it end? YOVANOVITCH: Yeah, I don’t like that question either, because none of us has a crystal ball. I think the other part of this is, at least for me, now being out of government, not having access to a lot of reports, intelligence and so forth, so I could be wrong, but it’s not clear to me that anybody really has insight into where Vladimir Putin’s head is. I would say I also wonder whether those around him know where his head is and where his heart is, if he has a heart, and where he wants to go. And I’m not sure he exactly knows, either. There are sort of idle hints and threats about the fact that Russia has nuclear power and so forth—is that a threat actually? Is that a

LGBTQ Assistance for Ukraine From the May 5, 2022 online Michelle Meow Show program “LGBTQIA Ukraine, with Anya Zoledziowski of Vice World News.” MICHELLE MEOW (producer and host, “The Michelle Meow Show,” KBCW/KPIX TV and podcast; member, Commonwealth Club Board of Governors): Here to talk about LGBTQ in Ukraine is journalist and Vice World News reporter Anya Zoledziowski. You were able to speak to three young LGBTQ people who share that they’re doing things to [help people in] war-torn Ukraine right now. And one of those things is smuggling HIV meds or gender-affirming medications to [Ukraine]. How [did] you get connected to these young folks? ANYA ZOLEDZIOWSKI (staff reporter, Vice World News): I was on the ground in Warsaw, Poland, reporting on the Ukraine war and actually the refugee crisis coming out of that. Like with anything, when you’re on the ground, you meet a bunch of people. It all started because there was a flea market that was run by . . . university students in support of Ukraine. One of the students is trans and comes up and is like, “What if I donated my hormones?” That kind of planted a seed and really, really quickly, [in] a matter of days, this team really rallied and decided to start collecting both HIV meds as well as hormones for trans people so that they could get those across the border, because they realized, how are people getting these meds right now? That’s how it started. It was introduced to them through word of mouth. JOHN ZIPPERER (Commonwealth Club vice president of media and editorial): So how are they actually getting it there? Because, except for the ones in Poland, they have to get it basically across Europe. They’re not, I presume, just sending it in the mail, or are they? ZOLEDZIOWSKI: It’s important to also point out that a lot of the meds that are being donated or hormones that are being donated are from people who have HIV or who are trans themselves. So they’re taking their extra boxes and either handing them over or sending them in some cases, absolutely, or driving them. So it’s through these donations, really this informal way of accessing this, that they gather as many as possible and get them into Warsaw and then drive them down to the border, then across the Poland and Ukraine border to where they have a center that they work with to drop those off. MEOW: What do you know about how the war has affected or impacted access to health care? I think that is one of [Russia’s] strategies, to cripple the health-care systems in Ukraine. ZOLEDZIOWSKI: Oh, yeah, hugely. Health-care systems have been targeted. That makes it hard for everyone to get care, let alone trans folks who already have a harder time than the average person to get

access to care. Also, if you look at heavily war-torn cities in Ukraine, access to pharmacies has largely dwindled. It’s also hard for those pharmacies to get stable and regular shipments of medication. So ultimately, access to so much has been so drastically put into decline that a lot of trans folks in Ukraine or people who do have HIV are having a really, really hard time accessing these meds. An interesting thing that came up in these interviews that I had with the students who are coordinating these shipments is, What does it mean to have a lifesaving medication? Because oftentimes we’re thinking antibiotics—we need to get these lifesaving meds over the border into war zones so that people don’t die from infection, for example. But here, having access and safe access and immediate access to hormones or HIV meds, that is arguably also lifesaving. That’s why these students really rallied to be able to, to the best of their ability, make up for this lack of access right now that is caused by war and Russia’s invasion. ZIPPERER: Since your story came out, have any other organizations or even governments or pharmaceutical companies stepped in to try to help with the effort? ZOLEDZIOWSKI: I can’t answer that 100 percent, because I don’t know if I’ve missed something under my radar. What I can say is what makes this grassroots and sort of informal way of getting meds across the border so effective is that it is illegal. You know, they are essentially giving prescription medications to people whose names these prescriptions aren’t under. So for a really big NGO or aid organization, that’s a really hard thing to do and a really hard thing to do if you’re talking about organization, funding, working well with other governments, etc. So these students, what they’re doing is illegal and it works so well because it’s so informal. For context, the Poland–Ukraine border, it just has so much traffic. So many Poles are crossing the border to deliver different kinds of aid all the time. That could include helmets, bulletproof vests, food, things like that. So it’s a lot easier for a few students to drive over and say they’re coming over to help and then also have some of these meds in the trunk of their car than it would be for the Red Cross to come in and be like, “Oh, we’ve got HIV meds for everyone who needs them, even though we don’t have everyone’s names.” MEOW: You’d mention, for example, one issue that LGBTQ people in Ukraine will face if they don’t have access to these meds—and some of them are making the sacrifice—such as detransitioning. Did they share with you those types of sacrifices that they must make and how it’s really created these unimaginable circumstances for themselves as LGBTQ people? ZOLEDZIOWSKI: Oh, yeah, it is unimaginable. I was talking to an activist in Ukraine who helps coordinate where these meds end up going across the country, and this also came up with the students who are doing this. If you have a few weeks to a month before you start to detransition, that is not a lot of time, especially when you don’t know when the war is going to end and when Russia will stop invading. So we’re talking about huge sacrifices that you have not even decided to make for yourself, and that can have all sorts of mental health implications that, again, go back to that life-saving question: What does it mean to be life saving? Same thing with HIV meds. These are lifesaving meds that have allowed people who have tested positive for HIV to live totally normal lives and live very healthy lives. And we are basically saying you don’t have the access to these medications right now and you have a very limited amount of time before you get them again to not feel the effects. These are huge ramifications, and we should be paying a lot of attention to them. commonwealthclub.org | THE COMMO N WE AL TH

really serious thing, or is he just playing with our heads? Because on one level, at least, it’s working. That’s gotten our attention, as it should. This is a serious concern. There’s also the [chemical weapons] issue. So I guess I guess there are a couple of different ways that this could go. But is Vladimir Putin going—I hate this word— but the famous off ramp, is there a way that Putin could find a way to move off of the military instrument that would preserve some of his pride, etc., so that we could stop the war and stop the killing and find a way to at least a cease fire if not a lasting peace? But of course, the ultimate objective will be a lasting and a fair peace. So that’s one question. Can we do that? Or do we think that the wounded animal in his little cave, because it does appear that he doesn’t have a lot of social or even work interaction, is he going to take another tack and kind of up the ante to some of the things we’ve just mentioned that’s kind of frightening. So what I’m hoping as a diplomat, because diplomats are always hopeful and you have to be, is that the negotiations that the Russians and the Ukrainians have been carrying on— and tomorrow there’s going to be another round of negotiations, and Zelenskyy has put out preliminary ideas about what he might be willing to accept—let’s see whether that might move us forward, in some way. But I think the crucial thing to remember about negotiations between Ukraine and Russia is that while Russia is not a democracy and it only really matters what one man thinks about an ultimate solution, Ukraine is, for all of its faults, a democracy. And the Ukrainian people need to feel good about whatever that

diplomatic solution is or it will not hold. I think Zelenskyy himself has recognized this by saying that there would have to be a referendum to approve this. That makes it, on the one hand, the power of the people, because if they agree, there will be a lasting peace in Ukraine. But it also makes it much more tricky to negotiate, because perhaps it certainly impacts how you can negotiate and what the elements of the negotiation are. OLIKER: I want to spend some time talking about you and your experience in your career, because in your book, you talk about all of this. Your family, like mine, like many families, ended up in the United States after having fled oppression and violence. In our case, in Eastern Europe; in many people’s cases, all over the world. Then you spent much of your career navigating corruption and authoritarian creep and backdoor dealings in various former Soviet countries and in Africa, all on behalf of the United States. But you ended up facing something similar in America, when it was Ukrainian special interests aligned with American special interests, I guess, that decided to work against you. Where do you think that leaves you as as an American? Has it made you rethink these missions that we sometimes send our diplomats on to try to help countries reform? One of my friends likes to say regime change begins at home; democracy promotion begins at home; that we need to get our own house in order. Has it changed any of your views—this harrowing experience you had to go through? YOVANOVITCH: I thought a lot about this, but it actually hasn’t changed my mind about what we do overseas. But you know, it was shocking to me that the president of

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the United States will be willing to use his position in order to get a favor from president Zelenskyy, a personal favor, a political favor, in terms of getting investigations into the Biden family. Americans elect their president and they are absolutely entitled to believe that the president of the United States is working in the interests of all of the people, not just himself. And it was quite clear in that phone conversation that he was not doing that. That was shocking to me. It weakened the United States, because it wasn’t just Americans who saw the transcript of that phone call. It was Vladimir Putin. It was every dictator out there. It was bad actors, both in the United States and overseas that understood that they could make a deal basically with the Trump administration about whatever their personal interests were, if they offered something in exchange. And that is a shocking thing. I’ve seen that overseas. I never expected to see that in the United States. I mean, I think all of us have had differences with administrations over the years, but I at least never thought that those policy differences were coming from a place where people were navigating their personal interests. Then, of course, it culminated—I hope it’s the end—in the unwillingness to accept the outcome of a free and fair election. Then the conspiracy that followed on various different levels on that culminated in the January 6 insurrection. Again, I’ve seen elements of that overseas, but this was not something I ever expected to see in the United States. It made me realize, as your friend said, that we need to tend and defend our own democracy if we want it to endure.

On the Road to Freedom: Understanding the Civil Rights Native American Voices North Dakota, South Dakota & Colorado Movement September 11 - 19, 2022 With Discussion Leader Danielle Ta’Sheena Finn

Bismarck

Standing Rock

Keystone

Pine Ridge

Denver

Ignacio

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Discussion Leader Danielle Ta’Sheena Finn

The Hon. Danielle Ta’Sheena Finn is a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. She is Hunkpapa Lakota, Inhanktowan Dakota, Assiniboine, and Metis. Her Lakota name is Wicahpi Sakowin Win, which in English means the Seventh Star Woman. Judge Finn is from Porcupine/ Bismarck, North Dakota. Currently, Judge Finn serves as an Associate Judge for the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, but still enjoys speaking at engagements, working on her artistry, dancing at powwows, and participating in Indigenous activism. She was Miss Indian World 2016, a four day competition that tests one’s knowledge of their tribe’s culture, language and skills.

What to Expect Please note that our itinerary involves some time driving from city to city, as well as, a fair amount of walking around the sites including some stairs and uneven terrain. Most days have an earlymorning start and include a full day’s schedule of activities. Participants must be in good health and able to keep up with an active group. Drive times average is between 3-4 hours per day, sometimes over winding roads. The longest day of driving is 7 hours total with stops for touring along the way. In September the temperatures in the region average in the 60- 70s (°F) during the day, and 40- 50s (°F) in the evenings. This program will be covering topics that include violence, and that may be difficult for children. Therefore, we do not recommend this program for people under 16.

BISMARCK, NORTH DAKOTA

Sunday, September 11 Arrive in Bismarck and make your own way to the hotel. Meet in the hotel lobby at 2.00pm to depart for an afternoon visit to the North Dakota Heritage Center and State Museum. Dakota Wind Goodhouse, an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and a Native American Studies instructor at the United Tribes Technical College, a Native American owned and operated college, will guide us through the museum. Before dinner meet with discussion leader Danielle Ta’Sheena Finn, for a trip overview and briefing. Enjoy a welcome reception and dinner with fellow travelers. Radisson Hotel R,D

BISMARCK, NORTH DAKOTA

Monday, September 12 Depart the hotel and drive to Knife River Indian Village, a National Parks Service site, which preserves the historic and archaeological remnants of bands of Hidatsa, Northern Plains Indians. This area was once a major trading and agricultural area and the remains of hundreds of earth lodges are clearly visible. Continue on to the Double Ditch Indian Village, a large earth-lodge community inhabited by the Mandan Indians for nearly 300 years, and once a center of trade between the Mandan people, their nomadic neighbors, and later, EuroAmerican traders. After lunch meet with Cheryl Kary, co-founder of the Sacred Pipe Resource Center (SPRC) whose mission is to maintain a home-away-from-home for off-reservation Native Americans living in the area while respecting the sovereign nature of their individual Tribal citizenship.

End the day meeting staff from the Indian Affairs Commission of North Dakota. Radisson Hotel B,L,D

KEYSTONE, SOUTH DAKOTA

Tuesday, September 13 En route to Standing Rock this morning drive by Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park, the last home of General Custer. Continue driving along the Standing Rock Scenic Byway, an 86-mile route that climbs up and down the Missouri River, past buffalo herds and eagle’s nests. History comes alive on this journey where the great Lakota spiritual leader Sitting Bull lived and died. Enter the Standing Rock Reservation, home to the Lakota and Dakota people. Stop at the community of Cannon Ball where we will meet with Phyllis Young, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux and one of the founders of the resistance camps of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) protests. Continue on to nearby Fort Yates, the main town of Standing Rock and enjoy a locally cooked lunch at the Community Center. After lunch, visit the original burial site of Sitting Bull who was assassinated on the western part of the reservation. We will stop at the Cheyenne River Reservation to meet with Julie Garreau, executive director of the Cheyenne River Project. Drive about three hours to our Keystone hotel, tucked deep in the Black Hills. Dinner at our hotel. K Bar S Lodge B,L,D

KEYSTONE, SOUTH DAKOTA

Wednesday, September 14 This morning drive about an hour and a half to the Red Cloud School, a school founded by Jesuits which incorporates Lakota studies as a vital part of the curriculum. Visit the recently built Oglala Tribe Justice Center which houses courtrooms, a short term holding facility, offices for law enforcement and justice officials and a “peacemaking” room for family and group disputes. This first of its kind arrangement saw the Bureau of Indian Affairs fully fund the project which allowed the Oglala tribe to hire their own design, architecture, and engineering firms. Head towards the town of Pine Ridge stopping at the site of the Massacre of Wounded Knee. The 1890 “battle” was actually a mas-

For more information or to make a reservation, contact: Commonwealth Club Travel THE COMMO N WE AL TH | June/July 2022 Telephone: (415) 597-6720, Email: Travel@commonwealthclub.org

sacre where hundreds of unarmed Lakota women, children, and men, were shot and killed by U.S. troops.

can Indian College Fund which invests in Native students and tribal college education to transform lives and communities.

Enjoy lunch in the home of Bette Black Elk, a descendant of the famous Oglala Lakota medicine man Black Elk, an Oglala Lakota visionary and healer.

Depart Denver and drive through spectacular landscapes stopping at the Great Sand Dunes National Park, home to the highest sand dunes in North America. The mountains, forests, and dunes in the park are sacred to the Apache, Navajo, Ute, and Pueblo Indians. Drive on to Del Norte and the Windsor Hotel, one of Colorado’s oldest hotels. Windsor Hotel B,L,D

Visit with members from the Thunder Valley Community, a Lakota-run grassroots Community Development Corporation. Learn how they are “building a community” to create systemic change on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Meet with Star Means, enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Nation. Return to Keystone and before dinner meet with Sequoia Crosswhite, an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and a descendant of Chief War Eagle and Chief Swift Cloud. He is an accomplished musician, grass dancer and historian, and his handmade flutes and musical recordings uphold the traditions of his Lakota ancestors. K Bar S Lodge B,L

DENVER, COLORADO

Thursday, September 15 This morning drive by Mt. Rushmore and through the Black Hills National Park to the Wind Cave National Park for a visit. This site is central to the Emergence Story of the Lakota people. Continue to Denver making a stop in Longmont to meet with Michael Roberts, president of the First Nations Development Institute which improves economic conditions for Native Americans through technical training, advocacy, and direct financial grants. First Nations is the most highly-rated American Indian nonprofit in the nation. Continue to Denver and checkin to our hotel. Dinner at leisure. Downtown Renaissance Hotel B,L

DEL NORTE, COLORADO

Friday, September 16 Morning meeting with Sarah Ortega, an artist, actress and dancer whose piece titled, “Home is Where the Heart Is” is in the Denver Museum of Art and who is featured in the PBS Film, “The Art of Home”, which aired nationally in November 2019. Continue on to the offices of the Ameri-

IGNACIO, COLORADO

Saturday, September 17 This morning drive about two hours to Chimney Rock, an intimate, off-the-beaten path archaeological site located at the southern edge of the San Juan Mountains. The site was home to the ancestors of the modern Pueblo Indians. Enjoy lunch nearby before driving to Durango and Fort Lewis College where about a third of students are Native American or Alaskan Native. Meet with Michael Watchman, an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation and alumnus. Continue on to Ignacio and the Sky Ute Casino Resort, located on the Southern Ute Reservation. The oldest continuous residents of Colorado are the Ute Indians. End the afternoon at the Southern Ute Cultural Center and Museum and meet with director Susan Cimburek to view the Permanent Gallery chronicling the story of the Ute. Sky Ute Casino Resort B,L

IGNACIO, COLORADO

Sunday, September 18 This morning meet with Linda Baker, a member of the Southern Ute Tribe and a Sky Ute Tribal Council member. Apart from having a wealth of experience and knowledge about the Southern Ute tribe, Linda is a talented beader and she specializes in Ute regalia and Bear Dance accessories for men, women, and children.

Tour Price Per Person: $4,995 Single Supplement: $980 Based on minimum of 15 travelers Maximum 24 travelers, not including staff.

Tour Price includes:

• Accommodations and meals as per itinerary • All sightseeing in an air-conditioned coach • Bottled water on the bus • All entrances and events as listed • Discussion Leader to accompany the group • Pre-departure materials and reading list • The services of a tour manager to accompany the group • Gratuities

Does not include:

• Airfare to Bismarck and back from Durango • Alcoholic beverages except for wine and beer at welcome and farewell events • Excess luggage charges • Trip Insurance • Items of a purely personal nature

After lunch at the Fox Fire Farms winery, meet with staff at the Southern Ute Drum, the tribe’s biweekly community newspaper. This evening enjoy a farewell dinner. Sky Ute Casino Resort B,L,D

DEPART

Monday, September 19 Independently transfer to the Durango–La Plata County Airport for flights home. B

Please note this tinerary is subject to change

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TERMS & CONDITIONS

Medical Information: Participation in this program requires that you be fully vaccinated and in good The Commonwealth Club (CWC) has contracted health. All travelers will be expected to comply with with Distant Horizons (DH) to organize this tour. any local COVID requirements in place and sign a Reservations: A $1,000 per person deposit, along waiver agreeing to abide by these requirements. It is with a completed and signed Reservation Form, will essential that persons with any medical problems and reserve a place for participants on this program. The related dietary restrictions make them known to us balance of the trip is due 60 days prior to departure well before departure. and must be paid by check. Itinerary Changes & Trip Delay: This itinerary

respective services. CWC and DH shall not be held liable for (A) any damage to, or loss of, property or injury to, or death of, persons occasioned directly or indirectly by an act or omission of any other provider, including but not limited to any defect in any aircraft, or vehicle operated or provided by such other provider, and (B) any loss or damage due to delay, cancellation, or disruption in any manner caused by the laws, regulations, acts or failures to act, demands, orders, or interpositions of any Cancellation and Refund Policy: Notification of is based on information available at the time of cancellation must be received in writing. At the time printing (November 2021) and is subject to change. government or any subdivision or agent thereof, or by acts of God, strikes, fire, flood, war, rebellion, we receive your written cancellation, the following We reserve the right to change a program’s dates, terrorism, insurrection, sickness, quarantine, epidempenalties will apply: staff, itineraries, or accommodations as conditions ics, theft, or any other cause(s) beyond their control. warrant. If a trip must be delayed, or the itiner•90 days or more before departure: $250 per person The participant waives any claim against CWC/ ary changed, due to bad weather, road conditions, •61-89 days before departure: $1000 per person transportation delays, airline schedules, government DH for any such loss, damage, injury, or death. By •60-30 days before departure: 50% of fare intervention, sickness or other contingency for which registering for the trip, the participant certifies that •29-1 days before departure: No refund he/she does not have any mental, physical, or other CWC or DH or its agents cannot make provision, The tour can also be cancelled due to low enrollcondition or disability that would create a hazard for the cost of delays or changes is not included. The ment. Neither CWC nor DH accepts liability for him/herself or other participants. CWC/DH shall not minimum group size of this departure is 15 paying cancellation penalties related to domestic or internabe liable for any air carrier’s cancellation penalty participants, should the number of participants fall tional airline tickets purchased in conjunction with incurred by the purchase of a nonrefundable ticket below this number, a small group surcharge and/or the tour. to or from the departure city. Baggage and personal revised staffing will apply. effects are at all times the sole responsibility of the Trip Cancellation and Interruption Insurance: Limitations of Liability: CWC and DH its Owners, traveler. Reasonable changes in the itinerary may be We strongly advise that all travelers purchase trip Agents, and Employees act only as the agent for made where deemed advisable for the comfort and cancellation and interruption insurance as coverage any transportation carrier, hotel, ground operator, well-being of the passengers. against a covered unforeseen emergency that may or other suppliers of services connected with this force 26 you to THE cancel or leave tripAL while is in prog- 2022 The Commonwealth Club (CST# 2096889-40) and Distant COMMO N WE TH |itJune/July program (“other providers”), and the other providers ress. A brochure describing coverage will be sent to Horizons (CST #2046776-40) are California Sellers of Travel are solely responsible and liable for providing their and participants in the California Travel Restitution Fund. you upon receipt of your reservation.

PHOTO BY SFGOV.TV / WIKIPEDIA

MELISSA CAEN: San Francisco has long been on the forefront of the whole idea of a recall. We were one of the first cities in the nation to actually implement it. In 1907, voters in San Francisco added the option to our charter just a few months after our mayor was found guilty of bribery and embezzlement. So you can see maybe what they were thinking about when they put that in our city charter. One of the district attorneys who worked on the case was a young man named Hiram Johnson, who went on to become the governor of California, where he continued

On my right is a professor of law and the director of criminal juvenile justice and racial justice clinical programs at the University of San Francisco School of Law. She’s been a vocal supporter of the D.A. and is going to be arguing against the proposition for the recall. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Professor Laura Bazelon. Ms. Jenkins will give her opening statement first, please. BROOKE JENKINS: I spent seven years of my career at the San Francisco district attorney’s office up until this past October of 2021. When I joined the D.A.’s office, that was in large part because I wanted to bring a diverse representation into the role of a prosecutor, which historically had not really been seen as a job for somebody that looked like me. I wanted to ensure that the person making the decisions about the fate of somebody’s life shared maybe a similar back grou nd, or ju st would view them as a true person. I knew Chesa Boudin as a defense lawyer. He was the only one that reached out to me during his campaign and asked me to sit down with him and discuss my thoughts about how he should run the office, what advice I had about changes that needed to be made, and how he could build trust with the attorneys. I spent an hour at a coffee shop talking to Chesa about my thoughts. When Chesa won the election and took office, he promoted me to the homicide unit. At the point at which he began, never did I think we were headed down this road. Never did I intend to be somebody who was publicly opposing his work in the office. To the contrary, I wanted to support whoever won that race because this wasn’t about politics. This was about the office and even moreso about the city and our victims. But what I have seen over the last two years is a man who is unwilling to embrace his obligation as the district attorney. He has refused to take off his hat as a public defender whose primary obligation is to his client and put on the hat where your primary obligation is to public safety and to be an advocate for the victim while balancing the interests of justice for a defendant. That is our primary function as the district attorney’s office. We

WHY DID SAN FRANCISCO VOTERS RECALL THEIR D.A.?

AS SAN FRANCISCANS

decided whether to recall District Attorney Chesa Boudin on June 7, we invited experts with opposing views to discuss the election. From the May 17, 2022, program “San Francisco Decides: The District Attorney Recall Election.” LARA BAZELON, Professor of Law and Director of Criminal Juvenile Justice and Racial Justice Clinical Programs, University of San Francisco BROOKE JENKINS, Former Assistant District Attorney of San Francisco MELISSA CAEN, Attorney; Political Analyst—Moderator

to advocate for the recall mechanism. In 1911, California voters elected to add the recall to the state constitution. They also gave women the right to vote on the same basis as men. In San Francisco, women pretty quickly organized and got together the first recall of a judge who they regarded as being too soft on crime against women. Because judges are employed by the state and not local governments, it was actually the first ever exercise of the statewide recall mechanism right here in San Francisco. So we’ve always been at the center of all of this. A few decades later, there was a thwarted attempt to unseat another mayor. Then in 1983, there was another thwarted attempt to unseat then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein. Earlier this year, in 2022, . . . three members of the Board of Education were recalled. And then that brings us to tonight—Proposition H. Arguing in favor of the proposition that Chesa Boudin should be recalled is a former district attorney who worked in the office for seven years, two under District Attorney Boudin before she quit the office in October of 2021, citing that in her estimation, his actions have been making the city less safe. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Brooke Jenkins.

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Left to right: Lara Bazelon, Melissa Caen, and Brooke Jenkins.

have to be able to look at each individual case and assess what is best for public safety. How can we advocate for the rights and interests of a victim to make sure that there is a just outcome for them? And how can we be fair and proportional in whatever consequence we deem is appropriate for a defendant? That has been lost. Everything about the way the D.A.’s office functions at this point is solely what is best for the person charged with the crime, or the person who’s been arrested. We cannot function that way. What’s being lost is that voice of reason and of justice for our victims and for our potential victims. Every day that we don’t put public safety first is a day that we potentially create yet another victim. I have heard Chesa give a number of talks, conversations, interviews where he has given misleading and false statements. It is for that reason that I felt it was necessary to continue to explain just how this system works and just how the things that he is saying are false, and how we don’t have to make a choice between reform and public safety. We can have both. Reform is absolutely necessary. Trust me, I’m half Black and half Latina. It is something that is truly meaningful to me, not from an academic sense, not because I’ve watched TV, but because I’ve lived my life in this body. Because I’ve had a family member charged with a crime in San Francisco. I’ve known people from my neighborhood charged with a crime in San Francisco. But I’ve also seen the other side of things where a family member has been gunned down and killed in this city. We have to balance the interests of both sides in order to achieve true reform and true justice. That is where Chesa is failing. And

that is why I have been pushing for this recall. LAURA BAZELON: I am here tonight in a variety of capacities: a supporter of Mr. Boudin; I am here as someone with experience working and advocating and litigating in the criminal legal system to make it less racist and more fair in a variety of respects, including through the work I do with my students in the USF Racial Justice Clinic. I want to talk to you about Chesa Boudin and his platform and highlight a couple of things that he ran and won on and why this makes him different, why it makes him progressive, and why this movement is about more than just him. It’s about pushing forward an agenda that’s going to be fairer for everyone. What do I mean by that? When Chesa was running for district attorney, it was clear to him that we had a problem with people who had been wrongfully convicted, which was that they had no means of getting out. There was technically a conviction review unit in the D.A.’s office, and it had exonerated no one. When he was elected, he created an Innocence Commission that’s my honor to chair pro bono. The five of us [on the commission] are independent experts. We labor pro bono to investigate these cases from the ground up, to try to do justice, which is forward thinking and backward looking. On April the 15th, 2022, a man named Joaquin Syria walked free after 31 years in prison, and that is entirely due to the work of this D.A. Had it been anyone else, he would still be there, because the standard response from days when an innocent person is trying to present their claim is to reflexively deny it. Rather than do that, he allowed us the responsibility

THE COMMO N WE AL TH | June/July 2022

to look into it. And then he followed our recommendation. A judge concluded that, yes, indeed, newly discovered evidence was of such persuasive force and value that this conviction could not stand. Two days later, Mr. Syria walked free into the arms of his son, who was an infant when he had been taken away. And the first words that he said were “This is a great country.” The second thing he said was “And I am grateful to the district attorney, Chesa Boudin.” It was a historic moment in San Francisco history. It’s the first time there was ever a collaboration of this kind, where someone didn’t have to fight tooth and nail to prove the basic fact that they didn’t do something and someone else did. These are the kinds of reforms that Chesa Boudin ran and won on. Are people in the city angry and upset? Are there a lot of auto burglaries, property crimes? Is there a sense, a feeling that people are less safe? Yes. And I think denying that is ridiculous. I think telling people that their feelings don’t matter is not appropriate. And I don’t think the city is doing that. I think he is showing through his reforms that change is hard, it zigzags, but ultimately we are moving in the right direction. What do I mean by that? This D.A. has actually filed more cases in his two years than the past two administrations. He’s filed 10,000 of them. He has gone after police who beat and shoot unarmed people. He has, in fact, locked up serious offenders. He has secured felony convictions in all kinds of cases, including narcotics cases, contrary to what you have been hearing. What are some of the issues that are plaguing the city? Well, one of them is the

“The concept of diversion is to get at root causes. . . . Why do people commit crimes? Because if we don’t get to those root causes and ask those questions and actually provide solutions that aren’t just jail, what we’re going to have is the same endless cycle.” —LARA BAZELON clearance rate. The San Francisco Police Department clears less than 9 percent of all reported crimes. And when it comes to the crime that makes people the angriest, which is auto burglary, they clear less than 1 percent. He files 86 percent of the time in that 1 percent. But here’s the thing. Chesa is not a cop standing on the corner with handcuffs, ready to tackle a miscreant and take them into custody. That is not his job. District attorneys, prosecutors—they cannot prosecute people unless the police arrest them and bring them in. That is not happening. What the recall gets to do is make misrepresentations about this D.A.—and we’ll get into them, because the entire recall campaign is built on them—but the most dangerous lie of all is the idea that if you just get rid of this one person, everything else is going to be fine. And he’s the problem. We all know it’s much, much more complicated than that. CAEN: What role in terms of crime rates in the city is really attributable to the D.A.’s office versus the police force and their ability to arrest people? JENKINS: Ninety percent of the time or more, police are not present at the time that a crime is committed. Auto burglary has become so popular in large part because you can do it in 30 seconds; get in, get out. And most of the time, there are no police officers present. By the time someone calls [for police], the perpetrators are long gone. The D.A.’s office does have control over the cases that are filed and the arrests that are made. And what we are seeing is Chesa’s failure to address the perpetrators that are caught. You can file cases, you can even charge them with felonies all day long. But if you are resolving them for dismissals or for misdemeanors, then the fact that you are charging them does not equate to

accountability. When you set a tone as the D.A., that it doesn’t matter whether the police solve the case because there still won’t be accountability, it’s still not a deterrent at all. CAEN: Now, on this issue of charging versus dismissals, you said 10,000 cases filed. Are those charging cases or those convictions? BAZELON: Those are cases that have been filed. The way that the system works is that charges are filed and very, very often, in fact, in most cases, 90 to 95 percent, they result in pleas. Justice Kennedy said we don’t have a system of trials, we have a system of pleas. A plea is a negotiation between the two sides to get to an end result that is going to resolve that case. That is true under every single administration, going back from Terence Hallinan to Kamala Harris to George Gascón to Chesa Boudin. There is nothing new under the sun going on here. What is different is that what Chesa Boudin has said, what he campaigned on, and what the voters elected him to do was divert more cases. Diversion means you have the charge hanging over your head and then you are held to a very rigorous standard. Depending on the case, you have to go get a job. You have to go get substance abuse treatment if you are addicted. You need to get mental health help if you are mentally ill. There are standards you have to meet. If you fail to meet those standards, the charges are reinstated and in all likelihood, you will be convicted. The concept of diversion is to get at root causes. Why do people do what they do? Why do people commit crimes? Because if we don’t get to those root causes and ask those questions and actually provide solutions that aren’t just jail, what we’re going to have is the same endless cycle. We’ve been hearing the same story about tough on crime since the 1950s. We lock up more people in the

United States than any industrialized country by an exponential margin. The evidence has come in, and it’s overwhelming that it doesn’t make us safer. JENKINS: San Francisco has not locked more people up. That’s the difference here. We are not talking about a county that has overwhelmingly used prison as a tool for accountability. It has been reserved in San Francisco for a long time now, certainly under my five-and-a-half years working for George Gascón, primarily for violent offenders. We are not talking about the ’80s—war on drugs, locking up Black people for selling crack versus cocaine. That’s not the universe we have been in for the last decade. What we are talking about, though, is diversion versus actual rehabilitation. A diversion program in the San Francisco Superior Court system is a watered down version of rehabilitation. It often simply requires that you take a number of classes. It could be parenting classes if you’re in parental diversion, it could be mental health classes, not residential treatment. We’re talking just some classes that you have to go to, usually about 15 over the course of a year or two. Those were designed for low-level offenders; those were not designed for violent offenders. If you want to address the root causes of their crimes, violent offenders oftentimes need something much more demanding. They need residential drug treatment programs. They need residential mental health treatment programs. Those are not covered under the diversion statutes that Chesa is abusing. We have cases of armed carjackings sent to diversion, violent assaults sent to diversion, which again just requires somebody to undergo classes. What he has said is misleading, which is this notion that the charge is still hanging over your head and a year or two later we can proceed if you fail out.

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“Everything about the way the D.A.’s office functions at this point is solely what is best for the person charged with the crime, or the person who’s been arrested. . . . What’s being lost is that voice of reason and of justice for our victims and for our potential victims.” —BROOKE JENKINS As a prosecutor, if you have not kept in touch with your victim and/or witnesses for over a year, it is not that simple to just magically snap your fingers and make that case two years later fall into place. It’s nearly impossible. What used to happen under George Gascón is that we would require—in order for somebody to go to a true rehabilitation program through our collaborative court system—that they’d have to take a plea at the outset. They’d have to admit guilt, take a plea to a charge that was agreed upon by the parties, then they could proceed into the program; and should they fail out, there was already a mechanism of accountability there in place. We didn’t have to worry about compiling a case two years later. But now that’s not happening. No longer does Chesa Boudin require anybody to take a plea. The benefit of their completion of the program is that we would then withdraw the plea to a lower charge or sometimes get a dismissal. But you had to complete the program first. Now, there’s no plea that’s allowing us as prosecutors to have that safety net. BAZELON: I don’t think that’s an accurate characterization of the full diversion program in all of the different tools that are available to prosecutors. There are other diversion that requires that you plead guilty first. There’s situations where you plead guilty, you complete a program and then the charge can be dismissed, there are situations where you plead guilty and that plea sticks and you are stuck with a felony conviction, which is very problematic. CAEN: Chesa Boudin ran on a platform of using more diversion, of being a progressive district attorney. To what degree is what he’s doing a deviation from what you feel like voters were promised?

JENKINS: He never explained to voters what he was going to actually do to achieve these end goals, so I don’t truly believe that people understood what that was going to look like. Everybody thinks diversion—because Chesa says this—is this onerous process. Diversion is separate from our collaborative courts, which are our mental health court, our drug court, young adult court. We have specialized courts that are designed to get at the root cause of crime, that have an oversight process with a particular judge and oftentimes require residential treatment. That is not diversion. And so people, when they hear it, it sounds fabulous. It makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside to say, “Yes, I support diversion. I support not incarcerating Black and brown people, of course.” But no one asked him to explain what that was going to look like, because you couldn’t have paid anybody to think that meant we are not going to lock up anyone, right? It doesn’t matter. Our rate of Asian hate crime can shoot through the roof by 567 percent, but that person will get diversion. They will be out of custody, taking classes. Nobody envisioned that it was going to look that way. And so that’s where you’ve seen this pushback. CAEN: I do want to come back to the issue of race in this recall. The idea that this is white people freaking out about crime, basically, that maybe Chesa Boudin is the only person looking out for minority folks in the criminal justice system. To what degree do you feel like the recall itself is sort of race-based. BAZELON: The recall has been telling [voters] that Chesa Boudin doesn’t care about them, only cares about defendants, is secretly a public defender, and that is 100 percent false. He cares deeply about crime and deeply about public safety. Trying to say that he somehow hoodwinked the voters by not fully explaining

THE COMMO N WE AL TH | June/July 2022

his position is belied by the fact that this was an incredibly hard-fought four-way race. Chesa’s policies were set forth in granular detail and gone over, raked over the coals at every single debate. The voters, when they went to the polls, were extremely well educated. They got the person that they wanted. They got the person who was going to be reform-minded. Issues of race have been used to divide all of us in a way that’s extremely unfortunate. And I think the hate crimes against AsianAmericans is one of those. He has filed hate crimes in many of those cases. Others have been completely distorted in the media. I just heard him having to correct Scott Shafer on KQED about one of those very cases. And is it racist or race-baiting? I don’t think it’s about that. I think it’s about going to people’s worst gut visceral instincts and preying upon their fears to sell them something that isn’t true. JENKINS: I’ve been left for the last two years to wonder, what about the victims who are Black? What about the victims who are Latino? What about the victims that are Asian? I see Jason Young here, father of sixyear-old Jace Young, who was gunned down on the 4th of July while doing fireworks outside. I see my husband sitting here, whose 18-year-old cousin was gunned down on the street just walking to go meet a girl the day after Jace was killed. Who is their voice? I’ve talked to countless mothers and fathers of murder victims in this city who say “We don’t have a voice in the D.A.’s office anymore. What about us?” You want to talk about helping Black people? You want to talk about helping Latino people? What about the ones who are getting murdered in this city? The D.A.’s office has an obligation, and it is to be an advocate for those victims in that courtroom. And that’s what’s been left

behind in this discussion. You want to only talk about defendants? No, no. That does a disservice to the role of the district attorney’s office. We are to also, and most especially, be a voice for those who do not have a voice in this system. We’ve been disadvantaged, you are absolutely right, when we are the ones in orange. But the D.A.’s office dang well better stand up for those who are in that courtroom audience chair as a victim. And right now, Nothing is being done. You’re not helping any Black man or Latino man by saying, “Here’s your slap on the wrist.” We’re not dealing with the root causes of crime. We’re allowing them to go back out with no assistance, no training, in the same position that brought them in to us at 850 Bryant Street. And what’s happening? The crimes they go out and commit next are worse. And then people have less sympathy and rehabilitation is off the table. So if we’re going to talk about race, let’s talk about it in its truest form. Who is actually being the most impacted by what’s going on in this city, and are they truly being helped by what he’s doing? BAZELON: It’s unfair and false to say that Chesa Boudin does not care about victims. Victims and the people who offend are often part of the same community. They are intimately intertwined and related to each other. I have done a great deal of work talking to victims in the course of the work that we do in the Racial Justice Clinic, and I’ve also studied it extensively. Not all victims want the same thing. Some victims want jail. Some victims want an apology. Some victims want services. What all victims want is to know that it won’t happen again. What we had before Chesa Boudin took office were skyrocketing rates of recidivism and a revolving door of people going in and out of jail. The easiest thing to do is someone just to sit in jail for a few weeks and then go right back out. It is not true to say that the programs that have been put in place don’t have rehabilitative services, or that these treatment courts, behavioral courts, young adult court, those courts are up and running and thriving and actually more full than they used to be, because more people are going to get those services . . . rather than simply going to jail and going to prison. Not all victims want a million years in prison. Some do. Not all victims are the final voice in what should happen. A prosecutor is there to represent the entire community. All of us here, everyone. It’s not simply about one side having a greater stake than the other. It’s about this very complicated task of doing

justice. And doing justice requires balancing competing interests. It requires having complicated decisions and conversations. Inevitably, there are horrific crimes and tragedies, and there is also accountability. JENKINS: This is an adversarial system, and you have to have two sides in it. You have the public defender’s office and the defense bar who are solely tasked with representing the interests of defendants to the disregard of public safety, because that person needs a voice in that courtroom that is only looking out for them. But we have to have a D.A.’s office who comes in and says, “We are the advocate for the people. We represent the interests of the victims.” Of course, we should always be seeking a just and proportional outcome for the defendant. Nobody is necessarily saying that means life in prison. Nobody is saying that victims determine outcomes; but they have a right to be heard. Legally, they have a right to be acknowledged and to be heard. When there’s no true accountability, when there’s no justice and fairness, and you’re talking about six years later [after committing a murder], somebody’s getting out. What happens in communities like Hunters Point in the Bayview, in Sunnydale and the Mission is that what we call the OGs on the block, right? The old time gangsters. They say, “Well, look, young man who’s 16 or 17, you go do the shooting because guess what? You’ll be out by the time you’re 24 or 25.” There’s a ripple effect when you take a certain position unequivocally. There’s no balance. CAEN: Laura, do you want to respond to this issue of of the adversarial system and the sense that some people have that the public defender is the one looking out for the accused, and . . . what you need is a counterweight [to] really focus on the victim and keeping the community safe? BAZELON: The prosecutor is a servant of the law. He has a twofold obligation, which is that the guilty not escape nor the innocent suffer. He is supposed to do justice. This idea that prosecutors and defense attorneys are flip sides of the same coin isn’t true. Defense attorneys have a very specific job, which is, of course, to advocate within all reasonable and zealous bounds for the best interests of their client. Prosecutors have a much more complicated job because, as I said before, they represent everyone in the system, every single person, and they are meant to uphold and safeguard the Constitution, which is why they are called ministers of justice. And in that role, they have an obligation to hold people accountable in meaningful ways so that there

isn’t recidivism, so that there isn’t spikes in crime. They have a duty to keep us safe. We have heard a lot of stories. We could talk about various horrific things that have happened under this D.A., and I can turn around and tell you that they have happened under every single D.A., including the most tough-on-crime D.A.s in this state. Let’s take the mass shooting in Sacramento. It’s interesting to me that one of the alleged perpetrators, Smiley Martin, was let out of jail after, I think, a period of six years because of a plea bargain struck by that office under Anne Marie Schubert, who brands herself a tough-on-crime person and who is running for attorney general to the right of our current attorney general. But did anybody turn around after that mass shooting and talk about the underlying plea that was responsible for Smiley Martin being out on the street and then allegedly carrying out this mass shooting? No. And why is that? Because even as one of the proponents of this recall admitted to the San Francisco Chronicle, the D.A. does not control crime rates and the idea that there is a direct correlation, and that every horrific tragedy lies squarely at the feet of one person and could have been prevented if we had just elected someone else? It’s false. The San Francisco Examiner made the point that if the case against Chesa Boudin was so strong, in their words, why, “was the recall relying on so many falsehoods?” We need to think about who is behind this recall. Billionaires; $5 million has been dumped into this race—$5 million. The major donor behind this recall is a man who donated seven figures to elect the Senate Republican majority, who got us the three justices that were rammed through to confirmation under President Trump. There is no separation between the funders of this recall and the money that they are dumping in and those policies and they are going to take us backward. They are dumping half a million dollars every week into advertisements that are demonstrably false. And you don’t have to believe me. You can just read what is reported debunking all of these lies. CAEN: Would you like to address the issue of the backers of the campaign? JENKINS: It’s conveniently left out that Brandon Shorenstein, from a well-known Democratic family who’s a well-known Democrat, is actually the largest donor to this recall. It’s conveniently left out that Chris Larson, who is one of Chesa’s largest donors, has a laundry list of Republicans that he’s donated to. Again, this is not about politics. One thing

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we know about San Francisco is that it’s about 90 percent, if not more, Democrat. It may vary in shades of blue, but this is a blue city and will always be a blue city. And crime affects everybody, right? That’s something that we cannot deny. We are not. This is also one of the most educated, affluent areas of this country. We’re not all being bamboozled by one donor. We know that somebody else can do this job more competently and more effectively and can actually be that minister of justice in San Francisco, because that’s what he’s failing at. And across the board if there’s anything that’s united San Francisco, it’s this recall. It has united what at some times is a polarized city because of those shades of blue. But across the color span, we have united. CAEN: One of the audience questions is, “Why can’t we get accurate and transparent data about the performance of the D.A.’s office? We should talk about some statistics when it comes to things like diversion and dismissals and conviction rates and the like.” So I want to give our experts here the opportunity to talk about some some of the statistics. Hopefully we can try to flesh them out if they’re confusing. But in addition to diversion, there are dismissal rates, that I saw numbers that they were higher than than during Gascón’s administration. JENKINS: Yes. Those were actually figures that Chesa provided to the San Francisco Chronicle, I believe, that said that his diversion rate had gone up 20 percent, conviction rate down 20 percent. That’s a little bit less of the issue here. Much of it is he again touts this prosecution rate, which is a very vague term, but never releases the data about what actually those cases are resolving for. So people have said, “Look, we can listen to you tell us how many cases you’ve charged, but what are the outcomes of these cases?” That’s despite a number of public records requests. He’s refused in a lot of instances to turn over that information, or there’s been significant delays. I don’t know how many people saw the [San Francisco] Standard put out an article this afternoon; that reporter was able to get data from the court management system, she was able to compile data on narcotics cases; and what her article demonstrated from compiling that data—not from Chesa’s office but from the court management system—was that in the year of 2021, 80 percent of the narcotics cases were resolved for an accessory after the fact.

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Only three cases were resolved for actual drug sales charges. None of those cases involved the sale of fentanyl. None of the cases where possession with intent to sell fentanyl, which was charged, resulted in anyone having to plea to actually selling fentanyl. That’s the dilemma with the transparency, is most of the time you’re relying upon the D.A.’s office to provide that data. This just so happened [to be] a situation where this reporter was able to get the data from a neutral place, which was the Superior Court. BAZELON: This is the most transparent D.A.’s office in San Francisco history. You can go to the website and look at the statistics for yourself. This D.A. posts them. The idea that cases settling out for an accessory after the fact is somehow letting people off the hook is false. They have the exact same consequences as someone pleading to the actual drug dealing. The law requires the D.A. to take into account immigration consequences. This isn’t Chesa Boudin, this is the law of the state of California. It requires the top elected official to take into account someone’s immigration status when resolving a case. And that is a plea. That means that some of these folks are not going to be deported back to Honduras, where they will be killed. If you think that it’s appropriate to have people plead to a charge that’s going to give them the same accountability, but get them deported so they can go to a country where harm is going to come to them, then by all means. But that is not what [accessory after the fact charges] are. They are not a dodge. This idea that people aren’t getting convicted of narcotics felonies is not true. The article starts out with this very showy claim, and then if you keep reading, it tells you the truth, which is that there are hundreds of felony convictions, often for other drug charges and often for 32s. And in fact, Miss Jenkins herself has pled cases to 32s. This is not a Chesa Boudin situation, this long predates him, and it is because in this city we are required to take other considerations into account, including the immigration of status of some of these people who are being trafficked here, being trafficked here and forced to sell drugs. So let’s just take a step back, because it is far more complicated than the clickbait headline and the first paragraph of the article. JENKINS: The way that it worked before was that when it was someone’s first offense that they were caught selling drugs, that

was what was afforded to them a 32 felony. At the point at which they were released and they come back with another case, a third case, a fourth case, a fifth case, that’s off the table. Because if you’re not going to take responsibility for your status, then you cannot ask the D.A.’s office to continue to overlook your conduct. The second issue was that there was a particular problem with public defenders only seeking that plea for Latino defendants, but accepting more serious charges in large part for Black defendants. And that was something that I took great issue with because I wanted to see fairness across the board. What didn’t happen under George Gascón’s administration was us giving 32 misdemeanors—that didn’t happen. And if it did, it was far and few between. And the data supported that. But what is happening now is you’re seeing people with five cases out of custody and getting a 32. CAEN: Brooke, are you supporting this recall because you want to run for D.A.? JENKINS: This is not about any intent to run. This is about me taking an oath and pledging my career to being a voice for the people and for the victims. And I have felt that it is necessary that victims continue to have a voice, whether or not Chesa is going to choose to be that voice for them. BAZELON: So does that mean that if the recall is successful and London Breed asked you to be the interim [D.A.], you would say no or you would not run in November? JENKINS: It doesn’t mean anything. I can’t speak to what London Breed is going to do. I don’t know her. What I will say is that I’m a career prosecutor. I’ve dedicated the last seven years of my life to doing this job. I hope to return to do it. If somebody deems me capable of doing it in another capacity than what I was doing it before, I’d be honored to consider that. But right now, and for the last seven years, I have been completely content being in the courtroom. BAZELON: I think it is significant that you wouldn’t rule out either thing, and that the only Democratic elected official who has come out in support of the recall is a supervisor [District 2’s Catherine Stefani], who also wants Chesa Boudin’s job. JENKINS: We also have two other D.A.s who have spoken out. So perhaps they all want to be the D.A. as well. But for some reason, I’m the only one that gets attacked with that statement.

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FRANCIS FUKUYAMA: Classical Liberalism on the Line POLITICAL SCIENTIST FRANCIS FUKUYAMA

engages in a critical and timely discussion of classical liberalism, why it remains one of the most influential political ideologies of the past millennium, and why its challenges from the left and the right will determine the path of the 21st century. From the May 16, 2022 program “Francis Fukuyama: Liberalism and Its Discontents.” This program is supported by the Ken & Jaclyn Broad Family Fund. FRANCIS FUKUYAMA, Ph.D., Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow, Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; Author, Liberalism and Its Discontents

TIM MILLER: [Your] book is Liberalism and Its Discontents, so I would like to start the conversation by defining our term, specifically liberalism. For those of you that don’t know, I’m a former, never-Trump Republican type. As a college Republican growing up, liberal was a dirty word for me. You know, it meant San Francisco taxhiking tree huggers. And then as I’ve come to read your book, I was like, actually, I think liberalism is the opposite of a dirty word. And it turns out I might be a liberal. But over in Europe, obviously an opposite definition. So when we talk about the discontents of liberalism, what are you talking about specifically? FRANCIS FUKUYAMA: Sure. That’s very important, because I definitely don’t mean it in that American sense. I mean it in the sense of the doctrine that really got its start in the middle of the 17th century after the European wars of religion. At that point, Europeans had been killing each other for about 150 years over whether they are Protestant or Catholic or what sect of Protestantism. At that point, a number of thinkers said, “Well, maybe we shouldn’t actually be killing ourselves over these concepts of the good life, and lower the horizons of politics to life itself and to protect each citizen in their personal security, and agree to disagree.” That’s a doctrine that is associated with certain institutions, the most important of which is a rule of law. These are rules that protect individuals from state power and limit what executive authorities can do, through constitutional checks and balances. It is really designed to enable individuals to exercise choice, moral choice, autonomy. That’s what gives them dignity. Liberalism says we’re all equal human beings, universally, because we do have this capacity for moral choice. And that’s really what the government needs to protect. It’s not associated with a particular economic policy. So on the right, you have libertarianism, which is not what I consider liberalism. That’s kind of a funny, uniquely

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PHOTO BY ED RITGER.

TIM MILLER, Founder, Light Fuse Communications; Contributor, The Bulwark; Communications Director, Jeb Bush 2016; Author, Why We Did It (Forthcoming)

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FRANCIS FUKUYAMA: I’m not in favor of just any old kind of national identity. The Hungarian kind or the Russian kind is really toxic, because it is exclusive, aggressive, intolerant. If you’re going to have a national identity, it really has to be a national identity built around liberal values. We have to take pride in the fact that we’re a free people. That’s what Americans used to say about themselves—we’re a free people, and we’re proud of that freedom and we’re willing to fight for it.

American, anti-government attitude on economic and social issues. The center-right version in Europe is like the German Free Democrats, that are kind of pro-market but socially more liberal. That’s not my version either. As far as I’m concerned, Sweden—a social democratic state—is a liberal state, because they protect individual rights. They respect the rule of law. And that’s really the essence of liberalism for me. MILLER: So you’re really breaking it down to a few attributes. We’re talking about rule of law, a democratic republic, but you also talked about some other attributes—the scientific method, other elements of a liberal society. What are some of them? FUKUYAMA: Well, that’s particularly important now in the Internet age, because liberalism was highly associated with a certain cognitive mode called modern natural science. So modern natural science assumes that there is an objective reality that’s outside of our subjective consciousnesses. It can be apprehended through something called the scientific method. And that apprehension can be used to manipulate the world. That’s really what creates not just science,

but the technology that flows from science. Our modern economic world would not exist but for that technology. So that cognitive mode is very much embedded in the liberal approach. MILLER: I want to get into the discontents on the right and left. But before we do that, one of the things I think was in the introduction to the book that I felt was interesting and timely for what we’re going through now here is, as you assess the threats that we face to liberalism are actually more acute maybe than the threats to democracy, even though we spent a lot of time talking about the threats to democracy. I’m sure we’ll have more here at the Club of what we saw on January 6—we were on a panel together about that. But your point, as I take it, is basically that democracy is not necessarily protection from illiberalism. Right? [There are] demagogic democratic winners. As you kind of do a threat assessment right now, compare the threats facing the liberal order versus the democratic order. FUKUYAMA: Liberalism and democracy are usually allies and they usually support one another. But they are distinct phenomena.

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So liberalism is really about law and legal constraints against the abuse of power. Democracy is the legitimation of power through reference to the people and governments ought to reflect the will of the largest number of their citizens. Although the two support each other in what we call liberal democracy, they can also be separated. So Viktor Orban in Hungary had announced a number of years ago that he’s trying to build not a liberal democracy, but an illiberal democracy, meaning he’s democratically legitimated—he just won a big election, he got a pretty good majority in parliament, so there’s no question that he’s democratically legitimate, but he’s undermining the independent press in Hungary, he’s undermining the court system, he’s fostering a system of corrupt cronyism. All of that reflects the erosion of the rule of law. On the other hand, you can have a country like Singapore or maybe Imperial Germany in the 19th century that actually does have a strong rule of law. They respect property rights and permit individual freedoms, but they’re not democratic, they don’t hold elections. I think that the reason I wrote about

PHOTO BY ED RITGER.

liberalism being under threat rather than democracy is that these days, almost nobody contests the principle of democracy, that the people’s will should be sovereign. Even the Chinese— MILLER: Even Putin claims democratic [legitimacy]. F U K U YA M A : H e p a y s h o m a g e hypocritically to democracy by holding fake elections, but he still holds them. And the Chinese Communist Party say they represent the true democracy, because they’re really representing the will of the Chinese people. But people don’t like liberalism in the first instance, and they attack those legal constraints. That’s what every populist in the world—Modi in India, Orban in Hungary, Erdogan in Turkey, and our Donald Trump here in the United States—[did; they] all get elected, and the first thing they do with that mandate is to try to undermine the rule of law. That’s why I think that it’s really liberalism that’s the first victim. Now once you undermine the rule of law, then you can go after democracy, which is what you’re now seeing. In Hungary itself, there’s a lot of gerrymandering; in our country, something similar is going to happen. Federal judges are not going to stand in the way of election manipulation; then Republicans are going to manipulate elections. So the two of them are related, but they’re not identical. MILLER: I want to get into the critiques of our illiberal right and left here. But first, what are the legitimate grievances with liberalism that is sort of undermining this liberal movement on each side and— FUKUYAMA: Before we get into that, can I tell you what’s good about liberalism? MILLER: OK, I was going to end with what’s good, but we can start with what’s good if you want to. FUKUYAMA: Start with what’s good, because I think it’s kind of a baseline from which you can then measure what’s not so good. I really think there’s three issues, very simply. There’s a pragmatic issue, there is a moral issue and there’s an economic issue. The pragmatic issue is very simple. It’s a way of dealing with diversity in a diverse society. If you have a system that stresses tolerance for people that have different opinions from yourself, then it’s a way of managing violent conflicts. It starts out managing the conflict between different types of Christians in the 19th and 20th centuries. It’s an antidote to out-of-control nationalism. And in that respect, it’s very good; if you are coming out of two big world wars that have destroyed European

civilization, liberalism looks pretty good to you. Or if you’re living under a communist dictatorship, having the freedom to come and go and speak your mind looks pretty good. So that’s pragmatic. The second is moral, because liberalism is really about human choice. I think that it’s something that is pretty universal among human beings. They don’t like to be ordered around. They like to be able to decide what they’re going to do in life, who they’re going to marry, where they’re going to live; these basic freedoms. But it’s more than that, because going all the way back to the book of Genesis, what makes human beings uniquely human in that Judeo-Christian tradition is their capacity for moral choice. They can choose right or wrong, and that elevates them above the rest of nature. So by protecting the ability to choose, liberalism protects this fundamental human quality, and that’s what makes liberals think that all human beings are actually equal, because we may differ by skin color, intelligence, height, all sorts of things, but we all are moral creatures underneath. Final thing is economics, because liberalism protects property rights and freedom to transact. So it’s historically been associated with prosperity, with modern economic growth and the like. So I just want to say it’s important to hit the good points [about classical liberalism]. MILLER: Before you had the critique. FUKUYAMA: We’ve been getting a lot of critiques lately. MILLER: OK, that’s fair. I want to one up you actually then; let’s start about the positives of liberalism, because you sort of expressed toward the end of the book that one of the critiques of liberalism is the sense that it doesn’t foster a sense of community and that that’s optional. But as I was reading that, I was thinking myself, is that really true? Your second point, this moral component, this component that everyone has this individual dignity when put together into a broad, diverse society, I think there is this sort of communal sense, right? Maybe we don’t agree on every specific thing. Maybe our backgrounds aren’t exactly the same. But we have this one thing in common, which is that we all want to flourish and that we all want everybody to succeed. I’m just imagining here in San Francisco, you’re sitting in Dolores Park on a Sunday afternoon like I was doing on Sunday. And there’s all kinds of people, all races. And I think everybody in that park does feel like there’s some communal, some connective

tissue. We’ve all chosen to be here in this free country. So I wonder sometimes why advocates of liberalism aren’t that good at making the case for the communal nature. FUKUYAMA: I think the problem is that it’s not one community, it’s many communities. So liberal societies produce a very variegated and healthy and vigorous civil society. But there are people doing all sorts of things. They’re environmentalists, they’re feminists, trade unionists, stamp collectors. There’s all sorts of people, and that is an aspect of our human freedom to be able to join with other people voluntarily to pursue passions and interests that we share. But I think that for many people, that’s not enough. They would like to actually see a stronger sense of a broader community where people share more than just these hobbies and kind of interests, but religious views or a sense of national purpose. I actually do think you can see that in Ukraine right now. I mean, you’ve got— MILLER: This is where I was going. FUKUYAMA: You got this unbelievable degree of national unity right now. So something like a quarter million Ukrainians that had been living in other parts of Europe have actually gone back to Ukraine after the war started so that they could fight on behalf of their country. That degree of civic spiritedness and engagement is certainly not—even in our country, I think it’s deteriorated. I remember reading Dean Acheson’s autobiography many years ago when I was a graduate student. World War I broke out when he was an undergrad at Yale. Every member of his Yale class volunteered to join the U.S. Army at that point and then went off to Europe. Now, can you imagine the members of the Yale undergraduate class answering this— MILLER: We don’t need zoomer slander here, OK? [Laughter.] Who knows what the threat would be from the Gen Z crowd at Yale? But I like your own challenge on that point a little bit, though. I absolutely hear what you’re saying about the national fervor of what’s happening in Ukraine. But I think that there has been a sort of reanimation of kind of a pan-Western unity behind Ukraine. And you see this across Europe. Obviously, in some of the countries closer to Ukraine, there’s a security element. But in France, I don’t think that they’re that concerned that Russia’s going to march across Europe. I think [we] saw the rejection of the nationalist wing there. I think Ukraine played a big part of that in the recent French election.

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FRANCIS FUKUYAMA: I just wanted to point out I’m wearing a baseball cap with the Ukrainian trident. I’m now going to take it off, although I realize that it’s actually quite helpful in shielding me from those bright lights— but just in politeness to The Commonwealth Club. TIM MILLER: I had just purchased a Slava Ukraine sweatshirt, which I would have worn had you told me that’d be in theme tonight.

Here in America, speaking to my peer group, I see a lot of people who want to volunteer, they want to contribute, they want to help. Maybe they’re not flying to Ukraine, but there is this sort of sense that we might not share this nationalist or religious connection with Ukraine, but we do share something. It’s this connection of a free people. FUKUYAMA: That’s absolutely right. In that respect, I think Ukraine has been really useful in reminding another generation that there are these kind of higher ideals that can bind the country together. I want to make something really clear. I’m not in favor of just any old kind of national identity. The Hungarian kind or the Russian kind is really toxic because it is exclusive, aggressive, intolerant. So if you’re going to have a national identity, I think it really has to be a national identity built around liberal values. So we have to take pride in the fact that we’re a free people. That’s what Americans used to say about themselves. You know—we’re a free people, and we’re proud of that freedom and we’re willing to fight for it. And it has to be something that is equally accessible by the actual diversity of the people that live in your society. So you can’t, like Viktor Orban has, say Hungarian national identity is based on Hungarian ethnicity. That’s kind of what people on the right, the MAGA right, want to do in the United States. And that’s not the right kind of national identity.

But I do think that there has been a tendency of certain liberals taking seriously the universality of human equality to dislike the idea of national borders and the idea that we’re going to treat Americans differently from non-Americans. I think a lot of that has kind of conceded the patriotism issue to the right, where it shouldn’t be, because you’re absolutely right. There’s no reason liberal society can’t feel this sense of national pride. MILLER: I agree with that. I wonder about that kind of critique of the left a little bit, because that is frustrating to me as sort of an immigrant to the left coalition now, having left my old party. That seems so natural at Republican events, that sort of patriotism. And I understand the concern of people on the left about overdoing it. But I don’t know. I traveled to Brazil last month. I was there on vacation. I went to a festival; it was all these American bands and American brands and American fashion and really kind of the types of people that probably didn’t vote for Donald Trump. I’m thinking to myself, there is an American cultural identity that is healthy, that does embrace diversity, that is not revanchist. Right? And it does feel like sometimes the left is hesitant to sort of wave the American flag and say “This is all of us.” There are these elements that aren’t about throwing back to the ’50s. FUKUYAMA: If you ever want to be imbued with that spirit, go to a naturalization ceremony. They’re very, very moving. In

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most European countries, it’s actually very hard to get naturalized, because they don’t want you to be a citizen. But in the United States, we typically have wanted immigrants to become citizens. [In U.S. naturalization ceremonies], the governor will show up. There’ll be a military color guard. Everybody will say the Pledge of Allegiance. And it’s a very, very moving ceremony. This is what I mean about a liberal national identity. My former colleague and mentor Seymour Martin Lipset used to say that you can’t be unGerman or unJapanese, because those identities are basically racially based. But you can be accused of being unAmerican, because American identity had become detached from ethnicity or religion or race, and became a political thing that could be shared in terms of common love for the Constitution, rule of law, but also a broader culture and a lot of it was popular culture. So you think what’s defined America in the 20th century? Well, the Great American Songbook, rock and roll, jazz, hip hop. All of these incredibly vigorous cultural forms that have really defined what it means to be an American. And even sports; like in all these World War II movies, there’s a Nazi infiltrator and you want to find out whether he’s a real American so you ask him— MILLER: —who the Cowboys quarterback is. FUKUYAMA: But unfortunately, that’s deteriorating. And even in sports it’s become politicized. So there are some sports that are

PHOTO BY ED RITGER.

red and some that are blue. And I think that those cultural icons, unfortunately, have seen some deterioration in recent years. MILLER: I agree with that. So let’s take that just then for a moment into the right and left critiques of liberalism. And then we kind of pick apart what’s wrong with them. FUKUYAMA: OK, so the right wing critique is exactly what I just outlined. But it’s not enough that you have a diverse civil society. They basically want to go back to an America that they imagined; for some of them, it’s a Christian America, for some, it’s a white America. A monoculture. I think this is kind of a fantasy, because in the 19th century, everyone may have been Christian, but the Protestants hated the Irish that were coming in and so on. MILLER: And nobody told the Black people about the monoculture, I don’t think. FUKUYAMA: And you know, and now you’ve got these conservative intellectuals like Adrian Vermeule and Patrick Deneen and so forth that are toying with integralism, where you basically have a state religion that’s backed by the power of the state. That’s a kind of extreme version. But I think that hankering for that kind of deeply rooted national identity is one of the things that they don’t like about the current diverse America. On the left, it’s pretty understandable; liberalism is based on the rule of law. It’s highly procedural, and therefore it’s very slow. Just to point out one glaring example: the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments after the Civil War, in theory, give African Americans equal juridical rights to white people. But for the next hundred years, you still had Jim Crow, and it’s only until the Civil Rights Movement that the legal segregation gets wiped away. And that’s pretty slow progress. It is progress, but it’s slow. And I think anyone interested in social justice wishes that it would be faster. But you got a system that protects property rights and therefore you’re going to protect the rights of oligarchs and rich people as well as ordinary ones. And that’s a problem on the left. That’s the problem in their eyes. MILLER: And so how are you seeing that left critique manifest? FUKUYAMA: It’s not just the slowness of the system. It’s also a questioning of the liberal premise of “under the skin we’re all human beings,” because there’s a couple of versions of identity politics that have appeared as a redefinition of what it means to be a progressive. So one version of identity politics is actually just liberalism in a different form, where you have a

marginalized group—African-Americans, women, gays and lesbians, so forth—that say “We’ve been excluded, we’re mistreated, we want to be treated equally.” So that’s a liberal understanding of identity. But there’s an illiberal one that says, you know, those identities are so essential to who we are that we deny the individualist premise; that’s the thing that you ought to look at first when you’re apportioning our resources or hiring people for jobs and so forth. And that’s the point at which it becomes potentially illiberal, because you’re judging people based on a group characteristic and you’re giving rights to groups rather than to individuals. MILLER: I thought this was maybe the most interesting part of the book. It put some language around a problem that I’ve been having, because I’m gay and have a little Black daughter. So there are elements of identity politics that resonate with me, right? Like the representation elements, that it’s hard for my mom to go find my daughter a black ballerina toy. The representation would be nice. I see her looking at Black women [and] this is good. It’s something that I think does have value. I wrote a lot about Pete [Buttigieg]’s candidacy, and I felt like people undermined how important that was. It’s kind of crazy to me. It didn’t even occur to me that I could get married when I was in college, and now a married gay man is running for president. That has to have an impact on college. So I thought all of those elements of identity are good. At the same time, there’s this obvious pernicious element to identitarian politics, I think is causing some of the right-wing backlash. How do you kind of navigate that line well? FUKUYAMA: So this is kind of the larger theme. So you ask me what’s wrong with liberalism? So we’re finally getting to that. [Laughter.] And I think that it’s not liberalism as a theory itself, but interpretations of liberalism that have been carried to extremes. One of them on the right has been the evolution of liberalism into what’s called neoliberalism. You know, the market is good, so 10 times as much market is going to be 10 times better. And the state is an obstacle to markets working efficiently, so let’s get rid of the state. That’s one of the things that’s led to the kind of inequality in the United States. But on the left, you have a similar evolution where you say, well, autonomy is a good thing. Basically, all of us want to be free agents and want to be respected for that. But certain liberal thinkers want to carry that to say autonomy is the be-all and end-all of

human life, and it doesn’t matter what you choose as long as you’ve chosen it. So it’s not just your ability to follow the rules as established by a religion or culture, but you’ve got to make up the rules yourself. And that in a way undermines every existing moral tradition that people have. People actually don’t want to be completely autonomous free agents. You can’t, like [Friedrich] Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, just make up a new moral order. They actually want to live their lives according to orders that have been existent before them, that their ancestors practiced and so forth. There’s a version of liberalism that says, “No, no, you have to start from zero. You get to decide everything.” MILLER: You get into this sort of tension in the book that you’re talking about now, this liberal value of individual rights. But then a critique of what you refer to as Rousseauian individualism, which is what you’re getting at now, where it goes too far. This idea that American culture has developed [to where it] has replaced some of those uniting values with individualist pursuits—I don’t know, self-care, yoga, the lived experience, kind of these cliches of modern life. But what struck me is, OK, but when does that become problematic? At an individual level of somebody that wants to find community through these sort of self-care and pampering, is there anything that’s fundamentally wrong with that in a free society? FUKUYAMA: No, it is just an aspect in a way of liberal choice. Where it does become dangerous, I think, is when it becomes a matter of public policy and a kind of formal way of distinguishing groups. If you think of a liberal society not as a collection of free individuals, but a collection of sort of closed groups that are competing with one another, that becomes a very problematic sort of society. We have a lot of examples of that around the world. Political scientists call it associationalism. As we speak, Lebanon is melting down, because it’s a very diverse society. But in Lebanon, you don’t act as an individual, you act as a member of a particular sect. And all the political positions are given out based on which sect—the speaker of the parliament, the president, they’re all given to different people. That’s a very, very extreme example. But I think that to the extent that you can maintain a liberal order that is based on individuals rather than on formally recognized group rights, that’s a better way to proceed.

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The Commonwealth June/July 2022

Articles inside

Why Did San Franciscans Recall Their D.A.?

The Critics of Classical Liberalism