NYT:

It is the element of President Biden’s foreign policy that overlaps most significantly with his domestic agenda: defending democracy.

His drive to buttress democracy at home and abroad has taken on more urgency as Russia wages war in Ukraine, China expands its power and former President Donald J. Trump and his Republican supporters attack American democratic norms and fair elections.

In a speech in Philadelphia last week, Mr. Biden warned about the threat to democracy in the United States and said American citizens were in “a battle for the soul of this nation.”

Even as he hammers home that message ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, Mr. Biden’s efforts to bolster democracy abroad are about to come into sharper focus. The White House is expected to announce a second multinational Summit for Democracy. And the National Security Strategy, which could be released this month, will highlight reinforcement of democracies as a policy priority, officials say.

On his most recent overseas trip, Antony J. Blinken, the secretary of state, announced in the Democratic Republic of Congo that the United States would help the country with “preparations for next year’s free, fair and on-time elections” — an emphasis on the sanctity of elections that echoes Mr. Biden’s defense of the 2020 U.S. presidential election against Mr. Trump’s persistent attempts to undermine its results.

Pursuing parallel policies to strengthen democracy at home and abroad allows the Biden administration to focus on a single central message, while the president’s political aides shape the identity of the Democratic Party around it.

And it gives Mr. Biden the standing to claim he is the torchbearer of an American foreign policy tradition that contrasts sharply with Mr. Trump’s isolationist “America First” approach and praise for autocrats. That tradition, liberal internationalism, revolves around the idea that global stability comes from democratic systems, free markets and participation in American-led multinational organizations.

“I think the rhetorical — and I would say sincerely moral — emphasis is welcome, as is the effort to draw democracies together,” said Larry Diamond, a scholar of democracy at Stanford University.

But in recent years, liberal internationalism has come under criticism from politicians, policymakers and scholars well beyond the Trump camp, and Mr. Biden risks being seen as naïve or imperialistic in centering his foreign policy on strengthening democracies.