Is Ukraine the front line in a global struggle pitting democracy versus autocracy, liberalism versus illiberal nationalism? Political scientist Francis Fukuyama, author of the famous "The End of History and the Last Man," says liberal democracy is in recession across the globe, ceding the historic gains of the post-Cold War period. His view is meant to rebuke the arguments of the foreign policy realists, who contend that Ukraine's fate is not a vital U.S. national security interest. But Fukuyama says democratic states need one another, so what happens in Ukraine matters at home.
