Received:
2024-03-14 | Accepted:
2024-06-29 | Published:
2024-09-30
Title
Role of sustained democracy in US foreign policy during presidency of Joseph R. Biden
Abstract
Value-based foreign policy has always been a point of controversy, and the situation is no different today. This question becomes all the more controversial in the event that its executor is to be a pre-eminent power - the United States of America. In this respect, the present is not so different from the recent past, and in the context of the great power rivalry of the USA, especially with the PRC and the Russian Federation, analogies with the Cold War are offered and often brought. It was precisely at that time that both (super)powers claimed to a certain extent that they carried out their foreign policy in accordance with their values, which they considered to be key and not in favor of the cold calculation of national interests. The choice was not binary then and it has not become so even today, and even if during the mentioned period both superpowers supported different groups in different sections and entered into conflicts under the different pretexts, neither side could actually claim the title of valuable foreign policy. Although comparisons with the Cold War are often exaggerated, indeed the newly renewed (or never ended) and growing great power rivalry shaping to a large extent the current international system, at least in the case of the US, complicates the never-ending formal commitment to supporting democracy and democratic regimes in its foreign relations. Also, on the basis of the mentioned facts, we decided to investigate this phenomenon and through the article we want to contribute to the debate about the role of democracy in international politics and foreign relations of the current J. Biden administration as a whole.
Keywords
United States, foreign policy, democracy, values
JEL classifications
Z00
, N40
, H56
, F50
URI
http://jssidoi.org/jesi/article/1214
DOI
Pages
10-24
Funding
This work was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under the contract no. APVV-20-0334 and also was prepared within the framework of VEGA project no. 1/0578/23 "Cybersocial security threats in contemporary world: case study on threats on disinformation and emerging security threats in the societal context".
This is an open access issue and all published articles are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
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