WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is ready to urge participants at the first White House Summit for Democracy to reverse an ongoing “recession” of democracy that is playing out at a time of rising authoritarianism around the globe and extraordinary strains on foundational institutions in the US, According to AP.
The two-day virtual summit that starts on Thursday has been billed as an opportunity for leaders and civil society experts from some 110 countries to collaborate on 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.
The ambassadors to the US 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.
The Biden administration, for its part, says the virtual gathering is a critical meeting at a moment when a profound diminishment of freedoms is trending around the globe. Biden has said that confronting that dynamic is “the challenge of our time.”
