DECEMBER 9, 2021
President Biden Gives Opening Remarks at Virtual Summit for Democracy
President Biden gives opening remarks at the White House virtual Summit for Democracy.
President Biden gives opening remarks at the White House virtual Summit for Democracy.
Biden calls preserving global democracy 'challenge of our time' at virtual summit
“This is an urgent matter,” the president said in remarks to open the Summit for Democracy. “The data we’re seeing is largely pointing in the wrong direction.”
Dec. 9 - President Joe Biden on Thursday opened the first White House Summit for Democracy by sounding an alarm about a global slide for democratic institutions and called for world leaders to “lock arms” and demonstrate democracies can deliver.
Biden called it a critical moment for fellow leaders to redouble efforts on bolstering democracies. In making the case for action, he noted his own battle with passage of voting rights legislation at home and alluded to the United States’ own challenges to its 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, something that Biden had called a priority for the first-year of his presidency, comes as he’s 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.
The premise 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.
The summit was billed by the White House as an opportunity for leaders and experts from some 110 countries to collaborate on defending against authoritarianism, fighting corruption and promoting respect for human rights. But the gathering already has drawn 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 wrote a joint essay in the National Interest policy journal describing the Biden administration as exhibiting a “Cold-War mentality” that will “stoke up ideological confrontation and a rift in the world.” The administration has also faced scrutiny over how it went about deciding which countries to invite.
Biden told the virtual gathering this is a moment when a profound diminishment of freedoms is trending around the globe, calling it “the challenge of our time.”
The U.S. may be at its own pivot point... more
DECEMBER 8, 2021
Defense Department Briefing
Defense Department Spokesman John Kirby briefs reporters at the Pentagon.
Defense Department Briefing
Defense Department Spokesman John Kirby briefs reporters at the Pentagon.
