Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election comes at a moment of turbulence for global democracy. It’s been a year marked by almost universal backlash against incumbent leaders by voters apparently eager to express their anger with the status quo—and also an era when liberalism has been in retreat, if not in crisis.

Francis Fukuyama, a political scientist at Stanford University, has done as much as anyone to elucidate the currents shaping and reshaping global politics. He wrote The End of History and the Last Man, a seminal work of post–Cold War political theory, more than three decades ago. And in the years since, he has written a series of influential essays for Foreign Affairs and other publications.

He joins Editor Dan Kurtz-Phelan to consider what Trump’s return to the presidency means for liberal democracy—and whether its future, in the United States and around the world, is truly at stake.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

Earlier this week, Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris in the U.S. presidential election, ushering in a new era of uncertainty at home and abroad.

In a special bonus episode, Foreign Affairs Editor Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with Daniel Drezner and Kori Schake on Wednesday, November 6, about what the world might expect from a second Trump term—on everything from wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, to China and alliances, to trade and immigration.

Daniel Drezner is a professor of international politics at Tufts University. Kori Schake, director of defense and foreign policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, has served in senior jobs in the Defense Department, the State Department, and on the National Security Council. They reflect on the lessons of Trump’s first term and whether, this time, he will take his “America first” agenda even further.

You can find transcripts and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

If there’s a thread that connects unsettling trends across domestic and international affairs today, it’s the return of forms of violence that we once thought were more or less obsolete. That’s true of the return of political violence in the United States. It’s also true of the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine.

Robert Pape is a political scientist at the University of Chicago and the founding director of the Chicago Project on Security & Threats. He has made a career of studying these types of violence—whether carried out by American extremists, by suicide bombers, or by Russian or Israeli fighter jets. In a series of pieces in Foreign Affairs, he explains why all of these phenomena are likely to endure—including, in the wake of the U.S. presidential election, with what he calls an era of violent populism here at home.

He spoke with Foreign Affairs editor Dan Kurtz-Phelan on October 30 about the resurgence of these forms of violence—and the consequences for the United States and the world.

You can find transcripts and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.