America faces a crossroads moment. Will it preserve its constitutional Republic at home and sustain the international system the Greatest Generation created? Or will it turn its back on its democratic history and the world? The president we elect in 2024 will shape America’s future direction. The question before voters is, whose vision best reflects your values and interests and America’s tradition of democracy and international leadership? For those of us who believe America and its values remain the “last best hope for all mankind,” President Joe Biden is the clear choice. 

I learned during 35 years as a diplomat that having a strategy is vital to achieving your political aims. We live in a time of profound change, which puts a premium on having a national strategy that uses all of the instruments of national power. As we approach the 2024 elections, the key consideration for me, as an Independent who has voted for Republicans and Democrats in the past, is not a candidate’s age or party, but whether a candidate has the vision and strategy to support a future consistent with American interests and values?

Since World War II, we have lived in a world shaped by America, its allies, and their liberal-democratic values. While the last eighty years have seen problems, the American-led global system has also produced an unprecedented rise in national and global prosperity, the expansion of rights at home and democracy abroad, the eradication of certain diseases like smallpox, and the development of technologies that were once considered science fiction but are now everyday appliances. 

But the system we have created and supported is under challenge. The flood of information from our devices has contributed to social alienation. Climate change is impacting the natural world, and the effects will only accelerate unless we do something. Artificial Intelligence has only recently moved out of university laboratories but is already changing the relationship between machines and humans in the workplace.  And while globalization has created problems by displacing certain kinds of employment from high-wage to low-wage nations, the world is increasingly connected by technology, a shared need for resources, as well as common problems, such as climate change and infectious diseases, which require collective action to solve.   

Another challenge is the rise of authoritarian states seeking to reshape the international order America helped to establish and sustain. China is the most consequential of these states, but Russia’s war against Ukraine has upended a founding principle of the United Nations that wars of territorial aggression are a thing of the past. Iran and North Korea, like China and Russia, also use threats and violence to coerce their neighbors. 

Which of our presidential candidates is best equipped to handle these challenges?

Unlike most Republicans since Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump has a dark view of the present and future. From his 2017 inaugural speech about American “carnage,” to his current claims about a failing U.S. economy, his objection to supporting Ukraine’s resistance to Russian aggression, and his saying he would tell Russia to do “whatever the hell it wants” to NATO allies who displease him, we’ve come a long way from Reagan urging Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. Trump treats foreign policy like a mafia protection racket. Perhaps that is why he appears chummier with authoritarian strongmen than democratic leaders. At home, while he has identified uncontrolled migration as a problem, he blocked sensible Republicans in the Senate from working with Democrats to fix it because he cares more about winning an election than fixing a problem. Worse, his proposed solution of massive roundups, detentions, and expulsions of suspected illegal aliens would upend the American economy and undermine the rule of law. 

Perhaps the most telling indicator of Trump’s lack of a vision for leading America in challenging times is that during his 2020 re-election campaign he proposed no policy platform for addressing the challenges facing the country. Since then, his principal focus has been undoing the results of an election he wrongly claims was “stolen” from him.

In contrast, Biden, in the 2020 campaign, identified clear goals (economic recovery, creating good new jobs, modernizing American infrastructure, competing with China, and addressing climate change) and, once elected, he delivered on all of them, often with Republican support, which many on the left thought was impossible. Recognizing the threat to U.S. interests, he led a strong NATO response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He has similarly strengthened alliances in the Pacific to help deal with China’s new assertiveness.  And Biden supported the Senate’s comprehensive bipartisan legislation to address migration problems on the Southern Border.

Biden acknowledges more needs to be done, but he brings to the task a record of achievement and a vision of the future based on optimism about America and its people. My 35 years of diplomatic experience tell me that Biden’s experience and vision for the future make him the best candidate for president in 2024.  

About the Author 

Ambassador Brill served as U.S. Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, to the U.N. Office in Vienna, and to Cyprus. 

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