Page 60 - bneMag Oct23

60 Opinion bne October 2023
The consequences of Putin becoming embroiled in "a much bigger action than he intended" could open the way to a new era for Central Asia, according to Fukuyama. / Fronteiras do Pensamento, cc-by-2.0
Francis Fukuyama says a weakened Russia will present opportunities for Central Asia
Ben Aris in Berlin
Renowned US political scientist and philosopher Francis Fukuyama – best known for his 1992 book
The End of History and the Last Man – says a diminished Russia caused by losses in the Ukraine war would remove
any territorial threats to Kazakhstan and give Central Asian countries more opportunities to devise their own policies.
Fukuyama, director of the Center for the Advancement of Democracy and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, was in Almaty, Kazakhstan, for the Kazakh-language release of his new book, Liberalism And Its Discontents. While there, he was interviewed by RFE/RL’s Kazakhstan Service.
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Fukuyama, who sees Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a strategic mistake by the Kremlin, said: "I think that Putin thought that he could launch that so-called special military operation and the regime in Kyiv would fall in two or three days, and he can install somebody to be sympathetic to Moscow. But more than a year and a half later, the Russian Army has suffered horrendous casualties. This was a much bigger action for Russia than Putin had intended."
Fukuyama also observed that the fall of Ukraine to Russian forces would pose a significant threat to Kazakhstan, given that some ultranationalist politicians in Moscow claim parts of northern Kazakhstan should be Russian.