WASHINGTON : 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 wrote a joint essay 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. China and Russia were among those not receiving invitations.
Other leaders took turns delivering their own remarks on the state of democracy — many prerecorded — often reflecting on the stress that rapidly evolving technology is having on their nations. They also bemoaned the increase of disinformation campaigns aimed at and undermining institutions and elections.
“The democratic conversation is changing,” said Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. “New technologies and large tech companies are increasingly setting the stage for the democratic dialogue, sometimes with more emphasis on reach than on freedom of speech.”
The summit comes as Biden is pressing Russia’s Vladimir Putin to stand down after a massive buildup of troops on the Ukraine border, creating growing concern in Washington and European capitals that Russia may look to once again invade Ukraine. Biden on Wednesday said that he warned Putin in a video call of “severe consequences” if Russia invaded.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who took part in Thursday’s summit and later spoke by phone with Biden, said on Twitter, “Democracy is not a given, it must be fought for.
Poland’s Andrzej Duda also spoke out against Russia in his address, decrying Moscow and its support of Belarus. Poland and Western allies have accused Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko of using migrants as pawns to destabilize the 27-nation European Union in retaliation for its sanctions on his authoritarian regime. Hundreds of migrants, mostly from the Middle East, flocked to the Belarus-Poland border. Most were fleeing conflict or despair at home and were looking to reach Germany or other Western European countries.
Putin made no public comment on the summit Thursday as he took part in his own video call with members of the Kremlin council for human rights.
