5 Countries to Move to if Trump Wins Again

By nearly every measure out, the credibility and influence of the United States in the world accept diminished since President Barack Obama and I left office on January twenty, 2017. President Donald Trump has belittled, undermined, and in some cases abandoned U.Due south. allies and partners. He has turned on our own intelligence professionals, diplomats, and troops. He has emboldened our adversaries and squandered our leverage to fence with national security challenges from North Korea to Islamic republic of iran, from Syria to Transitional islamic state of afghanistan to Venezuela, with practically nothing to show for it. He has launched ill-brash merchandise wars, against the United States' friends and foes alike, that are pain the American middle form. He has abdicated American leadership in mobilizing collective activeness to see new threats, especially those unique to this century. Nearly greatly, he has turned away from the democratic values that give force to our nation and unify us as a people.

Meanwhile, the global challenges facing the United States—from climatic change and mass migration to technological disruption and infectious diseases—have grown more complex and more urgent, while the rapid advance of absolutism, nationalism, and illiberalism has undermined our ability to collectively meet them. Democracies—paralyzed by hyperpartisanship, hobbled by abuse, weighed down by extreme inequality—are having a harder fourth dimension delivering for their people. Trust in democratic institutions is down. Fear of the Other is up. And the international organisation that the Usa so carefully constructed is coming apart at the seams. Trump and demagogues around the world are leaning into these forces for their ain personal and political gain.

The next U.Southward. president will have to address the globe equally it is in January 2021, and picking up the pieces will be an enormous task. He or she will have to salvage our reputation, rebuild confidence in our leadership, and mobilize our country and our allies to rapidly encounter new challenges. There volition be no time to lose.

As president, I volition take immediate steps to renew U.Due south. democracy and alliances, protect the United States' economic futurity, and once more have America lead the world. This is not a moment for fear. This is the time to tap the force and audacity that took united states of america to victory in two globe wars and brought downward the Fe Curtain.

The triumph of democracy and liberalism over fascism and autocracy created the complimentary earth. Simply this contest does not merely define our past. It will define our future, likewise.

RENEWING DEMOCRACY AT Dwelling

First and foremost, we must repair and reinvigorate our own republic, even as we strengthen the coalition of democracies that stand with u.s.a. around the world. The United States' ability to be a force for progress in the world and to mobilize collective activity starts at dwelling. That is why I will remake our educational organisation so that a child'due south opportunity in life isn't determined by his or her zip code or race, reform the criminal justice system to eliminate inequitable disparities and finish the epidemic of mass incarceration, restore the Voting Rights Deed to ensure that anybody can be heard, and return transparency and accountability to our regime.

But democracy is not merely the foundation of American society. It is besides the wellspring of our ability. It strengthens and amplifies our leadership to keep the states prophylactic in the earth. It is the engine of our ingenuity that drives our economic prosperity. It is the heart of who we are and how nosotros run into the globe—and how the world sees united states of america. It allows us to self-correct and proceed striving to reach our ethics over time.

As a nation, nosotros have to prove to the world that the United States is prepared to lead once again—not but with the example of our power but also with the ability of our example. To that finish, as president, I will take decisive steps to renew our core values. I will immediately reverse the Trump administration'southward brutal and senseless policies that separate parents from their children at our border; end Trump's detrimental asylum policies; stop the travel ban; order a review of Temporary Protected Status, for vulnerable populations; and set our annual refugee admissions at 125,000, and seek to enhance it over fourth dimension, commensurate with our responsibleness and our values. I volition reaffirm the ban on torture and restore greater transparency in U.S. military operations, including policies instituted during the Obama-Biden administration to reduce civilian casualties. I volition restore a government-broad focus on lifting upwardly women and girls around the world. And I will ensure that the White House is again the smashing defender—not the chief assailant—of the core pillars and institutions of our democratic values, from respecting freedom of the press, to protecting and securing the sacred correct to vote, to upholding judicial independence. These changes are simply a start, a day-i down payment on our commitment to living up to autonomous values at dwelling.

As a nation, nosotros accept to evidence to the world that the United States is prepared to atomic number 82 once again.

I volition enforce U.S. laws without targeting particular communities, violating due process, or tearing apart families, every bit Trump has done. I will secure our borders while ensuring the dignity of migrants and upholding their legal correct to seek aviary. I have released plans that outline these policies in item and describe how the United States will focus on the root causes driving immigrants to our southwestern border. As vice president, I secured bipartisan back up for a $750 million aid program to support commitments from the leaders of El salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to take on the corruption, violence, and endemic poverty driving people to leave their homes at that place. Security improved and migration flows began to decrease in countries such as El Salvador. Equally president, I will build on that initiative with a comprehensive four-twelvemonth, $four billion regional strategy that requires countries to contribute their own resource and undertake significant, concrete, verifiable reforms.

I will besides have steps to tackle the cocky-dealing, conflicts of interest, dark money, and rank corruption that are serving narrow, private, or foreign agendas and undermining our democracy. That starts by fighting for a constitutional subpoena to completely eliminate private dollars from federal elections. In improver, I will suggest a constabulary to strengthen prohibitions on foreign nationals or governments trying to influence U.S. federal, state, or local elections and directly a new contained bureau—the Commission on Federal Ideals—to ensure vigorous and unified enforcement of this and other anticorruption laws. The lack of transparency in our entrada finance system, combined with extensive foreign money laundering, creates a significant vulnerability. We demand to close the loopholes that corrupt our commonwealth.

Having taken these essential steps to reinforce the democratic foundation of the United States and inspire activeness in others, I volition invite my swain democratic leaders effectually the globe to put strengthening republic back on the global calendar. Today, commonwealth is under more pressure than at any time since the 1930s. Freedom Firm has reported that of the 41 countries consistently ranked "free" from 1985 to 2005, 22 have registered cyberspace declines in freedom over the last five years.

From Hong Kong to Sudan, Chile to Lebanon, citizens are once more reminding us of the common yearning for honest governance and the universal abhorrence of abuse. An insidious pandemic, corruption is fueling oppression, corroding man dignity, and equipping authoritarian leaders with a powerful tool to split up and weaken democracies beyond the world. Yet when the world'due south democracies look to the The states to stand for the values that unite the country—to truly lead the free world—Trump seems to be on the other team, taking the word of autocrats while showing disdain for democrats. Past presiding over the nigh decadent administration in modern American history, he has given license to kleptocrats everywhere.

A demonstrator in Beirut, Lebanon, Jan 2020

Mohamed Azakir / Reuters

During my first yr in role, the The states will organize and host a global Summit for Democracy to renew the spirit and shared purpose of the nations of the free world. It will bring together the world's democracies to strengthen our democratic institutions, honestly confront nations that are backsliding, and forge a common agenda. Building on the successful model instituted during the Obama-Biden assistants with the Nuclear Security Summit, the United States will prioritize results by galvanizing significant new country commitments in three areas: fighting corruption, defending against absolutism, and advancing human rights in their own nations and abroad. Every bit a summit commitment of the United States, I volition issue a presidential policy directive that establishes combating corruption every bit a core national security interest and democratic responsibleness, and I will lead efforts internationally to bring transparency to the global financial system, become after illicit tax havens, seize stolen avails, and make it more difficult for leaders who steal from their people to hibernate behind bearding front end companies.

The Tiptop for Democracy volition also include civil lodge organizations from around the world that stand on the frontlines in defense of republic. And the summit members will effect a telephone call to action for the private sector, including engineering science companies and social media giants, which must recognize their responsibilities and overwhelming involvement in preserving democratic societies and protecting free spoken communication. At the same time, free speech cannot serve as a license for engineering science and social media companies to facilitate the spread of malicious lies. Those companies must act to ensure that their tools and platforms are not empowering the surveillance country, gutting privacy, facilitating repression in China and elsewhere, spreading detest and misinformation, spurring people to violence, or remaining susceptible to other misuse.

A FOREIGN POLICY FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS

Second, my administration will equip Americans to succeed in the global economy—with a foreign policy for the middle class. To win the competition for the future confronting China or anyone else, the United states of america must sharpen its innovative edge and unite the economical might of democracies effectually the world to counter calumniating economic practices and reduce inequality.

Economic security is national security. Our trade policy has to starting time at home, by strengthening our greatest asset—our centre class—and making sure that everyone can share in the success of the country, no matter one'south race, gender, zip code, faith, sexual orientation, or disability. That will require enormous investments in our infrastructure—broadband, highways, rail, the energy filigree, smart cities—and in education. We must give every student the skills necessary to obtain a skillful 20-first-century job; make sure every single American has admission to quality, affordable health care; raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour; and atomic number 82 the clean economy revolution to create ten 1000000 skillful new jobs—including union jobs—in the United States.

I will make investment in enquiry and development a cornerstone of my presidency, so that the U.s. is leading the charge in innovation. There is no reason we should be falling behind Mainland china or anyone else when it comes to clean energy, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, 5G, loftier-speed rail, or the race to cease cancer as nosotros know it. We accept the greatest research universities in the earth. We take a strong tradition of the rule of law. And almost important, nosotros have an extraordinary population of workers and innovators who have never let our land down.

A foreign policy for the middle grade will too work to make sure the rules of the international economic system are not rigged against the United states—because when American businesses compete on a fair playing field, they win. I believe in fair trade. More 95 percent of the globe'due south population lives beyond our borders—we want to tap those markets. Nosotros need to be able to build the very all-time in the United States and sell the very all-time effectually the world. That means taking down trade barriers that penalize Americans and resisting a dangerous global slide toward protectionism. That'southward what happened a century ago, subsequently Earth War I—and it exacerbated the Great Depression and helped lead to World War Ii.

The wrong thing to do is to put our heads in the sand and say no more merchandise deals. Countries will merchandise with or without the Us. The question is, Who writes the rules that govern merchandise? Who will make sure they protect workers, the surroundings, transparency, and middle-form wages? The United States, non China, should be leading that effort.

Every bit president, I volition not enter into whatsoever new trade agreements until we take invested in Americans and equipped them to succeed in the global economic system. And I will non negotiate new deals without having labor and environmental leaders at the table in a meaningful manner and without including strong enforcement provisions to hold our partners to the deals they sign.

China represents a special challenge. I take spent many hours with its leaders, and I understand what we are up against. China is playing the long game past extending its global reach, promoting its own political model, and investing in the technologies of the future. Meanwhile, Trump has designated imports from the Usa' closest allies—from Canada to the European Union—as national security threats in order to impose damaging and reckless tariffs. Past cutting us off from the economic clout of our partners, Trump has kneecapped our state's chapters to accept on the real economical threat.

Biden and Chinese President 11 Jinping in Beijing, December 2013

POOL New / Reuters

The Us does need to get tough with China. If Red china has its style, it will proceed robbing the U.s.a. and American companies of their technology and intellectual property. It will too go on using subsidies to give its state-owned enterprises an unfair advantage—and a leg upward on dominating the technologies and industries of the time to come.

The most constructive way to run into that challenge is to build a united front of U.Southward. allies and partners to confront China'south abusive behaviors and human rights violations, even as we seek to cooperate with Beijing on problems where our interests converge, such as climatic change, nonproliferation, and global wellness security. On its own, the United states of america represents about a quarter of global Gdp. When we join together with young man democracies, our forcefulness more than doubles. China can't afford to ignore more than half the global economy. That gives us substantial leverage to shape the rules of the road on everything from the surround to labor, merchandise, technology, and transparency, and then they continue to reflect autonomous interests and values.

Dorsum AT THE HEAD OF THE TABLE

The Biden strange policy agenda will place the United States back at the head of the tabular array, in a position to work with its allies and partners to mobilize collective action on global threats. The world does non organize itself. For lxx years, the United States, under Democratic and Republican presidents, played a leading role in writing the rules, forging the agreements, and animating the institutions that guide relations amid nations and advance collective security and prosperity—until Trump. If we continue his abdication of that responsibility, and then 1 of two things will happen: either someone else volition take the United States' place, but not in a way that advances our interests and values, or no one will, and chaos will ensue. Either way, that's not good for America.

American leadership is not infallible; we have made missteps and mistakes. As well oft, we have relied solely on the might of our military instead of drawing on our full array of strengths. Trump's disastrous foreign policy record reminds usa every day of the dangers of an unbalanced and incoherent approach, and one that defunds and denigrates the part of affairs.

I will never hesitate to protect the American people, including, when necessary, by using strength. Of all the roles a president of the United States must fill up, none is more consequential than that of commander in chief. The U.s. has the strongest war machine in the earth, and as president, I volition ensure it stays that fashion, making the investments necessary to equip our troops for the challenges of this century, not the concluding one. But the use of force should be the concluding resort, non the kickoff. Information technology should exist used only to defend U.S. vital interests, when the objective is articulate and achievable, and with the informed consent of the American people.

Information technology is past time to cease the forever wars, which have cost the United States untold blood and treasure. Equally I accept long argued, nosotros should bring the vast majority of our troops home from the wars in Afghanistan and the Eye East and narrowly ascertain our mission as defeating al Qaeda and the Islamic State (or ISIS). We should also end our back up for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. We must maintain our focus on counterterrorism, around the globe and at home, only staying entrenched in unwinnable conflicts drains our chapters to lead on other problems that require our attention, and it prevents us from rebuilding the other instruments of American power.

U.S. troops in Afghanistan, June 2011

Baz Ratner / Reuters

We tin be strong and smart at the same time. In that location is a big difference between large-calibration, open-ended deployments of tens of thousands of American combat troops, which must stop, and using a few hundred Special Forces soldiers and intelligence assets to support local partners against a common enemy. Those smaller-scale missions are sustainable militarily, economically, and politically, and they advance the national interest.

However diplomacy should exist the kickoff instrument of American power. I am proud of what American diplomacy achieved during the Obama-Biden administration, from driving global efforts to bring the Paris climate agreement into force, to leading the international response to end the Ebola outbreak in Westward Africa, to securing the landmark multilateral bargain to cease Islamic republic of iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Diplomacy is not but a series of handshakes and photograph ops. It is building and tending relationships and working to place areas of common interest while managing points of conflict. Information technology requires subject field, a coherent policymaking process, and a team of experienced and empowered professionals. As president, I will elevate diplomacy equally the United States' principal tool of foreign policy. I will reinvest in the diplomatic corps, which this assistants has hollowed out, and put U.South. diplomacy dorsum in the easily of genuine professionals.

Affairs as well requires credibility, and Trump has shattered ours. In the conduct of foreign policy, and especially in times of crisis, a nation'due south word is its most valuable asset. Past pulling out of treaty subsequently treaty, reneging on policy subsequently policy, walking abroad from U.S. responsibilities, and lying about matters large and minor, Trump has bankrupted the United states' word in the world.

He has likewise alienated the U.s.a. from the very democratic allies it needs most. He has taken a battering ram to the NATO alliance, treating information technology like an American-run protection noise. Our allies should practice their fair share, which is why I'm proud of the commitments the Obama-Biden administration negotiated to ensure that NATO members increase their defence spending (a motility Trump now claims credit for). But the alliance transcends dollars and cents; the U.s.' commitment is sacred, not transactional. NATO is at the very heart of the U.s.' national security, and it is the barrier of the liberal democratic ideal—an alliance of values, which makes it far more durable, reliable, and powerful than partnerships congenital by compulsion or cash.

As president, I will do more than than just restore our historic partnerships; I volition atomic number 82 the endeavor to reimagine them for the earth nosotros confront today. The Kremlin fears a strong NATO, the most effective political-military brotherhood in modernistic history. To counter Russian aggression, we must proceed the brotherhood's war machine capabilities precipitous while too expanding its chapters to take on nontraditional threats, such equally weaponized abuse, disinformation, and cybertheft. Nosotros must impose real costs on Russian federation for its violations of international norms and stand with Russian civil society, which has bravely stood up time and over again confronting President Vladimir Putin's kleptocratic authoritarian organization.

Working cooperatively with other nations that share our values and goals does non brand the United states a chump. It makes us more secure and more successful. We dilate our own strength, extend our presence around the globe, and magnify our impact while sharing global responsibilities with willing partners. We need to fortify our collective capabilities with autonomous friends beyond North America and Europe by reinvesting in our treaty alliances with Australia, Nihon, and Republic of korea and deepening partnerships from Republic of india to Indonesia to advance shared values in a region that will determine the Usa' future. We need to sustain our ironclad delivery to Israel's security. And we demand to do more to integrate our friends in Latin America and Africa into the broader network of democracies and to seize opportunities for cooperation in those regions.

In order to regain the confidence of the world, we are going to have to prove that the United States says what information technology means and ways what it says. This is particularly important when it comes to the challenges that will ascertain our fourth dimension: climate change, the renewed threat of nuclear war, and confusing engineering.

The United States must lead the world to take on the existential threat we confront—climate change. If nosotros don't get this right, nada else volition matter. I will brand massive, urgent investments at home that put the United States on track to take a clean energy economy with net-zero emissions by 2050. Every bit important, because the United States creates simply 15 percent of global emissions, I will leverage our economic and moral dominance to push the earth to determined action. I will rejoin the Paris climate understanding on day one of a Biden administration and then convene a summit of the earth's major carbon emitters, rallying nations to raise their ambitions and push progress further and faster. We volition lock in enforceable commitments that will reduce emissions in global shipping and aviation, and we will pursue strong measures to make sure other nations can't undercut the The states economically equally we meet our own commitments. That includes insisting that China—the world'southward largest emitter of carbon—stop subsidizing coal exports and outsourcing pollution to other countries by financing billions of dollars' worth of dingy fossil fuel free energy projects through its Belt and Road Initiative.

On nonproliferation and nuclear security, the United States cannot be a apparent voice while it is abandoning the deals it negotiated. From Iran to North Korea, Russia to Saudi Arabia, Trump has made the prospect of nuclear proliferation, a new nuclear artillery race, and even the utilize of nuclear weapons more probable. As president, I volition renew our commitment to arms control for a new era. The historic Iran nuclear deal that the Obama-Biden assistants negotiated blocked Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Withal Trump rashly cast the deal aside, prompting Islamic republic of iran to restart its nuclear program and become more than provocative, raising the risk of another disastrous war in the region. I'yard under no illusions about the Iranian regime, which has engaged in destabilizing behavior across the Eye East, brutally cracked down on protesters at domicile, and unjustly detained Americans. Simply there is a smart way to counter the threat that Iran poses to our interests and a self-defeating mode—and Trump has chosen the latter. The recent killing of Qasem Soleimani, the commander of Iran'south Quds Force, removed a dangerous thespian but also raised the prospect of an ever-escalating cycle of violence in the region, and it has prompted Tehran to jettison the nuclear limits established under the nuclear deal. Tehran must return to strict compliance with the deal. If information technology does so, I would rejoin the understanding and use our renewed commitment to affairs to work with our allies to strengthen and extend information technology, while more finer pushing dorsum against Iran's other destabilizing activities.

With Democratic people's republic of korea, I will empower our negotiators and jump-outset a sustained, coordinated campaign with our allies and others, including Cathay, to advance our shared objective of a denuclearized N Korea. I volition as well pursue an extension of the New START treaty, an anchor of strategic stability betwixt the United States and Russia, and use that as a foundation for new arms control arrangements. And I will take other steps to demonstrate our commitment to reducing the role of nuclear weapons. Equally I said in 2017, I believe that the sole purpose of the U.Due south. nuclear arsenal should be deterring—and, if necessary, retaliating confronting—a nuclear attack. As president, I will work to put that conventionalities into practice, in consultation with the U.Due south. war machine and U.Southward. allies.

When it comes to technologies of the future, such as 5G and artificial intelligence, other nations are devoting national resources to dominating their development and determining how they are used. The United States needs to practice more to ensure that these technologies are used to promote greater commonwealth and shared prosperity, not to curb freedom and opportunity at habitation and abroad. For case, a Biden administration will join together with the Us' autonomous allies to develop secure, private-sector-led 5G networks that exercise not leave any customs, rural or low income, behind. As new technologies reshape our economic system and society, we must ensure that these engines of progress are bound past laws and ethics, as we have washed at previous technological turning points in history, and avert a race to the lesser, where the rules of the digital age are written past China and Russia. It is time for the United States to lead in forging a technological future that enables democratic societies to thrive and prosperity to be shared broadly.

These are ambitious goals, and none of them can be reached without the The states—flanked by boyfriend democracies—leading the style. We are facing adversaries, both externally and internally, hoping to exploit the fissures in our guild, undermine our republic, suspension up our alliances, and bring about the return of an international organization where might determines correct. The answer to this threat is more than openness, not less: more than friendships, more than cooperation, more than alliances, more than democracy.

PREPARED TO LEAD

Putin wants to tell himself, and anyone else he can dupe into believing him, that the liberal thought is "obsolete." But he does and so because he is afraid of its power. No army on earth can friction match the way the electric idea of liberty passes freely from person to person, jumps borders, transcends languages and cultures, and supercharges communities of ordinary citizens into activists and organizers and change agents.

We must again harness that power and rally the costless world to meet the challenges facing the world today. It falls to the United States to lead the way. No other nation has that chapters. No other nation is congenital on that idea. We have to champion freedom and commonwealth, reclaim our credibility, and look with unrelenting optimism and determination toward our future.

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Source: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-01-23/why-america-must-lead-again

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