WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden sounded an alarm about a global slide among democratic institutions Thursday as he convened the first White House Summit for Democracy. He called for world leaders to “lock arms” to strengthen democracies and demonstrate their worth in a changing world.
Biden called it a critical moment for fellow leaders to redouble their efforts to bolster democracies. In making the case for action, he noted his own battle to win passage of voting rights legislation at home and alluded to challenges to America’s democratic institutions and traditions.
“This is an urgent matter,” Biden said in remarks to open the two-day virtual summit. “The data we’re seeing is largely pointing in the wrong direction.”
The video gathering comes as Biden has repeatedly made a case that the U.S. and like-minded allies need to show the world that democracies are a far better vehicle for societies than autocracies.
That is a central tenet of Biden’s foreign policy outlook — one that he vowed would be more outward looking than his predecessor Donald Trump’s “America First” approach. Biden in his remarks announced he was launching an initiative to spend up to $424 million for programming around the world that supports independent media, anti-corruption work and more.
But the gathering also drew backlash from the United States’ chief adversaries and other nations that were not invited to participate.
Ahead of the summit, the ambassadors to the U.S. from China and Russia...
Read Full Story: https://apnews.com/article/white-house-summit-for-democracy-biden-us-1c74e38acbd8ab68ed97aa3354af7b1d
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