When President Barack Obama arrived in Athens to launch his final foreign tour as US President, he made no secret of the fact that visiting this particular country had been a lifelong ambition of his.

Few images could be more striking  ̶  the leader of the world’s only superpower dwarfed and humbled by the marble columns of the Acropolis. Indeed, the contrast of a man who knows his country is in turmoil because of the democratic process visiting the roots of where the whole story of democracy began, is inspiring.

Obama is using his final foreign tour to calm anxieties in Europe after the election of Donald Trump and the uncertainty his win has caused. Questions immediately arose about what Trump’s win meant for NATO, for security across Europe and for business. Obama addressed all these issues during his two-day visit to Athens and reminded all those watching of the beauty and value of democracy. 

The trip, according to some sources, was a long time in the making. Obama’s choice of Athens was no coincidence. Given recent events in the world and the meteoric rise of populism, many feel that democracy is at a crisis point, and this visit was a metaphoric, as well as literal, return to democracy’s Ground Zero to set about fixing what went wrong.

The birthplace of democracy was the perfect frame within which Obama was able to add some context to the issues the world faces today. He used his rousing speech at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center to highlight his view that though democracy is an imperfect system of governing, it is still the best system humankind has come up with, describing Greece’s notion of western democracy as “the most precious of gifts” for which America is indebted to our country.

His speech was an address not just to Greece and the Greeks, it was an address to the world, and a message that the fight against the forces of isolation must continue. In choosing Greece as his first stop of his final foreign tour, Obama’s message was clear: from the stage of Athens, his work in fighting for democratic rights has only just begun.