Biden is advancing the key foreign policy issue of 2020
The most important element of Joe Biden’s foreign policy speech last week lay in his embrace of one critical idea.
“The overarching purpose of our foreign policy,” he said at City University of New York, must be to “defend and advance our security, prosperity and democratic values that the United States stands for.”
President Donald Trump’s “failures to uphold basic democratic principles have muddied our reputation and our place in the world, and … our ability to lead the world,” Biden added. Thus, the greatest soft power America possesses — its postWorld War II status as the world’s premier democracy — is being squandered, here and with allies and adversaries.
I believe Biden has advanced the key foreign policy issue of 2020: the need to restore democratic norms at home and revive U.S. leadership of the “free world” abroad.
America’s premier standing worldwide over the last seven decades has relied on respect for the success and functionality of its system and institutions, including from citizens and leaders of adversarial nations. Many leaders of dictatorial regimes have sent their children to study here, China as far back as the 1980s.
When our democratic norms are shredded, the world notices. In Europe, the Mideast and Asia in recent years, I get the same question: “What has happened to your country?”
When Trump began encouraging violence toward the mainstream media and denouncing journalists as “enemies of the people,” my Russian journalist colleagues were first astonished and dismayed; now they just assume U.S. democracy is waning, just as Vladimir Putin says. That’s why it’s so easy for the Kremlin to meddle.
And Trump’s disdain for democratic allies comes at a particularly dangerous moment in history.
“Nations are more intertwined than they ever have been,” Biden rightly said. The threats from climate change, nuclear proliferation, cyber warfare and mass migration require the U.S. to lead the world’s democracies on these issues, which would then increase the pressure on autocracies to behave better. Yet, “Donald Trump’s brand of America First has too often led to America alone,” said Biden.
Democracy is under the most pressure seen in a generation. China and Russia promote their authoritarian ideologies as an alternative to “failing” liberal democracy. Extreme populist nationalism and xenophobia are rising globally, including, of course, in the U.S.
Freedom House reports that 41 countries ranked consistently free from 1985 to 2005; 22 have registered net declines in freedom since 2013. Rather than lead our democratic allies, says Biden rightly, “Trump seems to be on the other team.”
“We are now entering an existential period of challenge for freedom and democracy in the world,” says Larry Diamond, author of “Ill Winds: Saving Democracy From Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition and American Complacency.” “If you are Russia and China, your goal would be to simply have America withdraw from the contest. And that is the direction in which Trump seems to be headed.”
Could a President Biden reverse this devastating trend? His proposal for a global summit of democracies, whose leaders focus on fighting authoritarianism and corruption, is no panacea. But it might focus attention on current threats to democracies.
However, at least Biden recognizes the importance of making “democracy once again the watchword of U.S. foreign policy.”
“The United States must lead not just with the example of power, but the power of our example,” he added. This is the message any Democratic candidate must promote.