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In my weekly column forWorld Politics Review,I write about the ethos that should infuse Bidens plans for his democracy summit and how the missing ingredient is not foreign but domestic.

The second impeachment trial of Donald Trump presents a dilemma for Joe Biden, who wants to make democracy promotion a central plank of his foreign policy. How can the United States claim to embody, much less promote, democratic values when one of its two major political parties is gripped by an emergent, homegrown fascism? Unless and until the Republican Party or its successor unequivocally repudiates the authoritarian cult of Trumpism and the conspiratorial mindset that fuels it, the United States will remain a house divided, lacking credibility to advance the cause of democracy and the institutions of free societies abroad.

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Democracy

Joe Biden

Global Governance

Donald Trump

What a difference three decades makes. When the Cold War suddenly ended, leaving liberalism unchallenged, many Western intellectuals and policymakers heralded the end of history and ideological conflict itself. The Clinton administrationsNational Security Strategy, in 1994, defined the countrys chief international goal as facilitating the expansion of the worlds community of market democracies, a trend many considered inexorable. Americas hubris reached its apogee a decade later, in the freedom agenda of George W. Bush. In the wake of the invasion of Afghanistan and then Iraq,his administrations second National Security Strategy, in 2006, elevated democracy promotion to the chief goal of U.S. foreign policy, even if it was by force. The United States would defend worldwide what Bush called the nonnegotiable demands of human dignity.

The Internationalist

Read the fullWorld Politics Reviewarticlehere.

More on:

Democracy

Joe Biden

Global Governance

Donald Trump

Continued here:
Trump Still Casts a Shadow Over Bidens Pro-Democracy Ambitions - Council on Foreign Relations