Police officers guard the US Capitol building after protesters broke into the building in Washington, DC, on January 6.
Photographer: Victor J. Blue / Bloomberg
Photographer: Victor J. Blue / Bloomberg
US democracy survived the attack on the Capitol building. What has come to be known as American exceptionalism may not be.
The idea that the United States, for reasons of its history and seemingly rock-solid democratic institutions, has a unique advantage has long been behind American claims for global leadership, as well as the expectation – at least among allies – of who should exercise it.
The concept is riddled with contradictions, supported by crude military and economic strength and rejected by many, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and America’s outgoing leader Donald Trump, who directed his supporters to the Capitol to protest the certification of his election defeat – by 7 million votes – in November.
Although it has eroded over the years, the soft power of what former President Ronald Reagan liked to call “a bright city on a hill” has sometimes been powerful. On Wednesday, he suffered a physical blow.
“Yes,” said Howard Dean, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, when asked on Bloomberg TV whether Wednesday’s show marked the end of American exceptionalism. “It probably ended on the day Trump took office.”
The consequences may include a weakened ability to confront and compete with the China superpower, or to call on Russian, Turkish, Saudi or other leaders for democratic and human rights abuses, including smaller economies in Africa and Latin America.
“It won’t be long before we can credibly defend the rule of law,” Richard Haass, a former US diplomat and chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based think tank, said on Twitter. . “It will also take a long time to persuade allies to trust us or to lecture that they are not stable enough to have nuclear weapons.”
China quickly used events in Washington to convey a narrative of US hypocrisy, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying compared to the US endorsement of pro-democracy protesters who invaded the Hong Kong legislature in 2019. The United States under Trump often link trade to political actions, penalizing Beijing for its repression in Hong Kong and for its treatment of the Uighur Islamic minority in Xinjiang province.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, chosen from a heavily administered electoral system that excludes opponents of Tehran’s Islamic regime, said in a state television statement that Wednesday’s events “really show us how weak and flabby Western democracy is “. He added that Trump damaged America’s reputation and “created many problems for America’s relationship with the rest of the world.”
President-elect Joe Biden said he plans to convene a summit of the world’s democracies to restart the cause that led the West during the Cold War. Proponents say the initiative could also act as a counterattack to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, creating a forum to launch common approaches to trade and technology patterns in competition with Beijing.
China has also made use of Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreements to position itself as a global champion of measures to tackle climate change, a mantle the United States hopes to recover under Biden, but which requires strong US leadership and collaboration. .
It is unclear how the image of American lawmakers taking shelter of protesters will help in this effort. Nor does Biden’s promise to revive U.S.-led alliances weakened by Trump’s four years of skepticism, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Congressman Jason Crow comforts Congresswoman Susan Wild while hiding while protesters interrupt the joint session of Congress.
Photographer: Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc.
But as the world watched protesters waving flags enter the United States legislature, the shock was even greater because such scenes would typically be more familiar in presidential parliaments and palaces in weak, nascent or undemocratic countries. Former President George W. Bush even compared Wednesday’s events in the United States to a “banana republic”.
‘Disturbing images’
“We have all seen the disturbing images of the invasion of the US Congress last night, and these images made me angry and sad,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday, blaming Trump’s refusal to budge.
Europeans recognized the threat to American exceptionalism – and in some cases their own – in TV footage they saw earlier, said Jonathan Eyal, a Romanian foreign policy analyst at the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank.
“The driving force for this is the same as what we saw in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall: the feeling that the transfer of power is illegitimate, that the rules of the game have not been agreed and the belief that the loser loses everyone, ”said Eyal. “It is also a profound shock to me that there are a large number of people in the United States who reached the same conclusion after 200 years of constitutional order.”
Protesters walk through the United States Capitol after violating barricades on the building in Washington, DC
Photographer: Victor J. Blue / Bloomberg
Biden seemed well aware of the challenge ahead in a televised speech on Wednesday, asking Americans to “think about what the world is seeing”. And even the final discredit of American exceptionalism may not inevitably lead to weakening alliances or promoting democracy, according to Eyal.
As long as Biden aggressively refutes false equivalence, such as between the excesses of those who demand a democratic vote in Hong Kong and those who try to overthrow him in Washington, and as long as he can persuade Trump’s 74 million voters, they will not lose everything by losing in the vote, a little more US humility could work in your favor.
Not only did Trump probably burn his chances of running for election again in 2024 by inciting violence, but a skilled administration could use Wednesday’s events to their advantage by taking a less “Olympic” approach and therefore more persuasive in their criticism of other nations’ failures, according to Eyal.
“Yes, the next few days are going to be terrible for American soft power, but in a year or more, not at all,” he said. “It’s not that bad to be part of the team.”
Facing his own Trump-like populist threat from the far right, French President Emmanuel Macron recalled the common history of centuries of nations as democratic republics in a TV speech on Wednesday night, suggesting that there will be no loss of appetite to work with the next government.
“What happened in Washington DC today is definitely not America,” said Macron, switching to English at the end of his comments. “We believe in the strength of our democracy. We believe in the strength of American democracy. “
– With the help of Tom Keene, Francine Lacqua, Golnar Motevalli and Michael Winfrey