How Can Joe Biden Strengthen Democracy Around the World?

The Good Fight

Yascha Mounk

News

4.7 • 963 Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2020

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With Trump gone it’s tempting to think that America’s foreign policy can return to normality – no more praise of Putin, no more maligning of allies. But as Thomas Wright makes clear, restoring America’s place in the world will be far from plain sailing. As Director of The Brookings Institution’s Center on the United States and Europe, Wright’s access to the incoming administration has afforded him a unique understanding of the challenges it will face. His view that Biden’s presidency may be “the last best chance to demonstrate that liberal internationalism is a superior strategy to populist nationalism” serves as a vivid reminder that post-Trump, the stakes remain higher than ever. In this week's conversation, Yascha Mounk and Thomas Wright brainstorm practical ways to prevent further democratic backsliding, why the public must understand the connection between domestic and foreign relations, and how much the Biden administration can actually achieve in the fight against dictatorships around the world. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: goodfightpod@gmail.com Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by John T. Williams and Rebecca Rashid Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Many people in the Biden team believe that the connection between the domestic
0:07.4	and the foreign is absolutely vital and you can't have an effective foreign policy
0:11.4	unless we also address these domestic issues.
0:14.3	Trump showed that on the negative side.
0:16.3	He was the first person to win the presidency, basically on a foreign policy platform.
0:21.2	His entire argument was, we're getting ripped off by everyone else and I'm
0:24.8	going to fight back.
0:26.6	And now the good fight with Yasha Monk.
0:32.1	There's a new kind of conventional wisdom that I'm seeing in the media on
0:37.3	Twitter and the United States around the world and this is that Donald Trump
0:41.0	will do what he can to stay at the center of public debate,
0:45.5	that he will continue tweeting, that he will build his own television network, that he'll
0:49.5	run again for president in 2024 and that he might well succeed in all of those
0:54.8	endeavors to a very considerable degree that we will remain as obsessed with
0:59.7	Donald Trump in the 20-20s as we were in the 2010s. Now let's be clear, I don't want to rule that
1:07.4	out. It is absolutely possible that Trump will keep a lot of support, that he will find ways to stay in the limelight, that is after all his only real talent.
1:18.0	At the same time, I think that the challenges to him staying relevant may be rather bigger than many people at the moment appreciate.
1:29.0	One of the reasons why he won in 2016 was not any particular ideological position. It was simply that most Americans who don't particularly care about politics saw him as a successful and powerful winner.
1:43.5	Well, now for the first time, he looks like a sore loser whose hold on power is rapidly slipping.
1:53.0	And the more he railed and goes on about conspiracy theories and how the election was stolen,
2:00.0	the more boring the show might become.
2:04.0	In 2016, infamously the news networks showed the empty lectern at which Trump was about to speak.
	...

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