PARIS (AP) – For America’s allies and rivals, the chaos that unfolded during Donald Trump’s final days as president is the logical result of four years of man-made global instability that promised to change the way the world viewed U.S.
From the outside, the United States has never looked so vulnerable – or unpredictable.
Alliances that lasted for generations reached a breaking point under Trump – from his decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement and the nuclear agreement with Iran to the departure of the World Health Organization in the midst of a pandemic.
And then, in trying to reverse his defeat for Joe Biden, Trump overturned the fundamental principle of the democratic elections that the United States tried – and sometimes even succeeded – to export worldwide. How long these aftershocks can last is unclear.
“It is one of the biggest tasks of the future for America and Europe – to fight against the polarization of society at its roots,” said German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. “We will only be able to preserve the belief in unity, in democracy as the most human form of the State and the belief in science and reason if we do it together.”
But in many ways, Europe has already moved forward, moving forward with the Iran deal, negotiating a trade deal with China led by Germany and organizing global actions to protect the environment.
On the same day, an angry mob stormed the Capitol to try to overthrow the presidential election won by Biden, a record number of Americans died of coronavirus. Another recent event also showed the vulnerability of the United States: the cyber espionage operation still working on countless government computers and attributed to elite Russian hackers.
World leaders who saw the deadly violence in Washington “will need to consider whether these events are an atypical event – a ‘black swan’ – or whether these extremist white supremacist groups will continue to have significant influence about the direction of US foreign and domestic policy, rather than backing down with the end of the Trump administration, ”wrote the Soufan Group, a global intelligence and security company on Tuesday.
People tend to think of fragile countries “in terms of war as the biggest problem, rather than violence, and think in terms of state collapse as the biggest problem, rather than states that disintegrate internally,” said Rachel Kleinfeld, a democracy and violence scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Kleinfeld, like many others, said the attack on the United States Capitol may have peaked in a matter of weeks, but it took years to happen.
And the United States’ ability to fight for democracy was already tarnished before the crowd instigated by Trump tried to reverse his electoral defeat. For many, these events were just a confirmation.
Opponents like Russia, China and Iran used violence to question America’s democracy more generally.
In an internal note on the State Department’s “channel of dissent” obtained by The Associated Press, American diplomats said Trump’s actions made his job more difficult. “It is essential to communicate to the world that, in our system, no one – not even the president – is above the law or immune from public criticism,” the statement said. “This would be a first step in repairing the damage to our international credibility.”
Trump showed no regret, however, saying on Tuesday that his inflamed comments to supporters were “entirely appropriate”.
In Iraq, a country still struggling with the controversial legacy of a US-led invasion in the name of democracy, many people followed Washington’s events with a mixture of shock and fascination.
The then President of the United States, George W. Bush, boasted that Iraq would become a model of democracy in a region governed by dictators. Instead, the country entered a protracted war between Sunnis and Shiites, in which tens of thousands of people died. Although it has an active parliament and regular elections, it is a dysfunctional democracy based on a sectarian power-sharing agreement, with corrupt parties vying for ministries and positions so they can give jobs to supporters while filling their own pockets.
Ahmad al-Helfi, a 39-year-old Iraqi political cartoonist, said that what happened on the United States Capitol is a blow to the democracy he tried to take to Iraq and other countries.
“By mobilizing his followers in an effort to overturn the election results, Trump confirmed that, instead of exporting democracy to Iraq, America imported chaos, the non-peaceful transition of power and the inability to accept election results ”Said al-Helfi.
Anahita Thoms, a German lawyer and trade expert who has spent years living and working in the United States, said last week’s events would indelibly mark America’s image abroad. Thoms is a board member of Atlantic Bridge, a think tank that promotes cooperation between Europe and the US – the kind of organization founded after World War II, when the US helped rebuild the economies of many Western European countries that had been destroyed by war.
Germany was one of the countries that benefited most from the financial and democracy-building efforts of the United States.
Looking to the future, she said that American officials may have a harder time promoting democracy abroad.
“The United States remains a country that lives up to its democratic values. But this aspiration, which is presented very strongly to the outside world, should not have many cracks ”, said Thoms. “I think a lot of diplomatic skills will be needed to contain these images.”
The International Crisis Group, which usually focuses on global war zones, wrote its first assessment of the risk of election-related violence in the United States in October. Stephen Pomper, who helped lead the work on the report and lives in the DC area, said that under the best of circumstances, the United States could eventually point to Congress’ decision to resume certification of the Biden election after the breach as a first step to successfully protect your democracy.
“Look, we created these institutions. They have become a source of resilience for us. They helped us to overcome this very difficult period. Let us help you develop the same kind of resilience, ”he said, describing a hypothetical future conversation between the United States and a struggling government. “It would be a positive story to tell at some point, but I think the pieces are not there yet.”
Pope Francis was more optimistic, saying to the Italian broadcaster Mediaset: “Thank God, it exploded” because “we could see why it happens and how it can be remedied”.
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Associated Press writers Kirsten Grieshaber and Frank Jordans in Berlin, Abdulrahman Zeyad in Baghdad, Matt Lee in Washington; and Frank Bajak in Boston contributed.