The invasion of the US Congress left America’s image as a beacon of democracy severely tarnished on Thursday, with allies unable to hide their shock and authoritarian regimes happily exploiting the unrest.
In normal times, a state-backed gang that plagues a legislature to demand that a lost election be overturned would cause US diplomats to march to their laptops to write a condemnation statement.
But after the deadly violence in Washington on Wednesday, it was time for authorities in the capitals from Bogota to New Delhi to call for calm.
In a series of statements, the leaders were barely able to contain the shock when they saw Donald Trump supporters for a brief period – but quite easily – defeating the crucible of democracy in the United States and challenging the peaceful transfer of power.
“Where were the police and the Senate bodyguards …?” Czech Foreign Minister Tomas Petricek asked out loud as the world watched Trump’s supporters grab podiums, search offices or tour Congress with a horned helmet unmolested.
Through slavery and segregation, the Civil War and the Cold War, the presidents of the United States often hailed their democracy as exceptional, what Ronald Reagan called “the bright city on the hill”.
That image has been questioned many times before, but after four years of destroying Trump’s standards, it took just a few hours of mafia rule to make America look quite ordinary and as fragile as anywhere else.
Former President George W. Bush even went so far as to compare the situation to a “banana republic”, while calling on his fellow Republicans to fuel the “insurrection”.
Australia has warned its citizens in the United States to be careful, given the “continuing potential for violence”.
– Admirable new world –
Some used historical comparisons to put the important events – and the scale of the threat to democracy – in context.
The German Foreign Minister compared the incitement in the US Capitol to the Reichstag in Nazi Germany, while the Italian newspaper La Repubblica drew a parallel with the dictator Benito Mussolini’s “March on Rome” and the seizure of power.
But, as the initial shock subsided, policymakers began to try to imagine the profound implications of the preeminent world superpower that stumbled so visibly.
Former President Barack Obama’s top security adviser, Ben Rhodes, told AFP that “Americans should not be under any illusions: today’s images, such as the Trump presidency, will permanently change the way the United States is viewed in the world. “.
“Tragically, this degradation of democracy comes at a time when authoritarian nationalism is on the rise on all continents.”
The moment was not lost on such regimes, some of which immediately issued ironic statements that mimic the criticisms they normally receive from Washington.
Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza expressed his “concern” about the violence, while calling for an end to the political polarization of the United States and for the country to follow a new path of “stability and social justice”.
The Chinese state tabloid Global Times – just a day after a massive crackdown on Hong Kong’s besieged democratic movement – shouted that “bubbles of ‘democracy and freedom’ burst.”
Mike Gallagher, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin lamented: “If we don’t think other countries around the world are seeing this happen now, if we don’t think the Chinese Communist Party is sitting and laughing, then we are deluding ourselves.”
– ‘American democracy is limping’ –
Russian lawmaker Konstantin Kosachyov sought to feed the electoral fraud conspiracy theories while offering a kick to the shin of the former Moscow enemy.
“The losing side has more than enough reason to accuse the winner of fakes – it is clear that American democracy is limping on both feet,” he said.
Like Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney, some allies tried to limit the damage by emphasizing that this was a problem created by Donald Trump and did not reflect the mainstream of the United States.
“We should call this what it really is: a deliberate attack on democracy by an incumbent president and his supporters,” he said.
But with two weeks left for Trump’s four-year term, 74 million votes on his résumé and the nuclear codes at his fingertips, no one can be sure what comes next.
Even those who predicted that the United States would survive wondered whether the West’s already questioned support for the rule of law and democracy has now been fatally undermined.
“It won’t be long before we can credibly defend the rule of law,” tweeted the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass.
“It will also take a long time to persuade allies to trust us, or to teach others that they are not stable enough to have nuclear weapons.”
In the end, a State Department diplomat used the typewriter to comment.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – an ardent Trump supporter who promised to bring “arrogance” back to U.S. diplomacy and crossed the world by issuing bombastic denunciations – was left to deliver his department’s letter.
“Violence, which endangers the safety of others, including those charged with providing security for all of us, is intolerable both at home and abroad,” he said.
arb / jfx