Stephen Wertheim

“We’ve got to prove democracy works,” Joe Biden declared in his first press conference as president. He has dedicated his administration to this task. Biden took office weeks after his predecessor tried to overturn an election and sparked an insurrection. The violent transition of power confirmed America’s spot in the “democratic recession” that has beset dozens of countries since the mid-2000s.

In World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt rallied what he dubbed the “United Nations,” among them Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union, to keep the Axis powers from eliminating whole countries across Europe and Asia. After the Cold War, George H. W. Bush likewise assembled a 35-nation coalition to beat back Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.