Global Democracy Is Failing. Will the US Save It or Kill It?

Few developments have mattered so much, for so many people, as the global rise of democracy. Three hundred years ago, virtually no one lived in a democracy. As recently as the 1940s, at the darkest moments of World War II, there were perhaps a dozen scared, scattered democracies left. But by the early 21st century, democracy had become the dominant form of government.

Billions of people now lived in countries that were relatively free, humane and insulated despotic cruelty and arbitrary rule. The strength and support of a democratic superpower were indispensable to all this world-changing progress, which is one reason democracy’s global future feels so precarious right now.