https://nationalinterest.org/feature/help-wanted-america-must-resume-its-postwar-role-promoting-freedom-178830
“We’re at an inflection point,” President Joe Biden told the Munich Security Conference the other day, “between those who argue that . . . autocracy is the best way forward” and “those who understand that democracy is essential” to meeting the world’s economic, health, and other challenges.
A month into his presidency, Biden seems deeply committed to restoring America’s moral voice, to resurrecting its traditional postwar role of promoting freedom and democracy around the world.
“We must start,” he told State Department employees, “with diplomacy rooted in America’s most cherished democratic values: defending freedom, championing opportunity, upholding universal rights, respecting the rule of law, and treating every person with dignity.” At a CNN town hall, he spoke passionately about rebuilding the U.S. refugee program that former President Donald Trump severely curtailed, describing “people piled up in camps, kids dying, no way out, refugees fleeing from persecution” – and about an America that “used to do our part” in accepting refugees in far greater number.
Biden recognizes that America promotes freedom and democracy for reasons of not just morality but self-interest – that a freer, more democratic world will be a safer, more prosperous one for us; and that we can best meet the challenge of what he calls “advancing authoritarianism” by highlighting the advantages of U.S.-led freedom over its authoritarian alternatives in Beijing, Moscow, and elsewhere.