By Jimmy Quinn
Sunday, January 10, 2021
The Capitol Hill mobs egged on by the president and his
associates dealt the United States an unfathomable international embarrassment
that doubled as a gift to its adversaries — one they were all too eager to
exploit. As packs of rally-goers stalked the halls of Congress, and soon after
the violence was quelled by law enforcement, the chattering classes concluded
that the day’s events have crippled U.S. global leadership.
Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass
wrote on Twitter that it’ll be a long time before Washington can “lecture
others they are not stable enough to have nuclear weapons.” The Washington
Post’s Karen Attiah was similarly pessimistic, and her post reflected what
now seems the prevalent thinking among opinion makers: “When the President of
Zimbabwe is telling America to sod off with moralizing about democracy to other
countries, you know its [sic] a wrap.”
These observers and others are right to lament the damage
that this does to U.S. democracy promotion efforts and the gift that it’s been
to foreign authoritarian regimes. Still, the precise extent of that harm
remains to be seen. This depends on how — and whether — Americans remedy the
ills wrought by the mayhem and confront the political forces and disinformation
epidemic that enabled it. In the short term, though, these efforts should be
accompanied by a forceful rebuttal of foreign authoritarian efforts to exploit
the moment.
In the aftermath of the storming of the Capitol, there’s
been an obvious difference between the good-faith international responses and those
that sought to weaponize the crisis toward anti-democratic ends. U.S. allies
responded with a mix of shock, expressions of confidence in American
institutions, and condemnation of the president. They sized up American
democracy not by the depths to which it has plunged this election season, but
by the yardstick of the example that the United States has historically set.
French president Emmanuel Macron recorded a short video
address: “What happened today in Washington, D.C. is not America, definitely.”
“Democracy in the US must be upheld — and it will be,” assured Canadian prime
minister Justin Trudeau. The U.K.’s Boris Johnson called it “vital that there
should be a peaceful and orderly transition,” and the government of Japan said
in a statement that it is “hoping” for one. Some were more pointed. Former
European Council president Donald Tusk warned that “there are Trumps
everywhere,” and Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte issued a plea: “Dear
@realDonaldTrump, recognize @joebiden as the next president today.”
The difference between the world’s democrats and its
autocrats could not be more stark. Just take the tweet Attiah mentioned, posted
by Zimbabwean president Emmerson Mnangagwa:
Last year, President Trump extended
painful economic sanctions placed on Zimbabwe, citing concerns about Zimbabwe’s
democracy.
Yesterday’s events showed that the
U.S. has no moral right to punish another nation under the guise of upholding
democracy. These sanctions must end.
Then he congratulated Joe Biden on his victory and
offered the friendship of the Zimbabwean people. Of course, the U.S. does still
have the moral authority to encourage respect for human rights in the country.
Mnangagwa, who displaced Robert Mugabe in a 2017 coup, has a brutal record to
match that of the infamous dictator: Security forces in the country still
routinely use indiscriminate force against innocent demonstrators, whom they
arbitrarily imprison, torture, and rape. The New York Times reported
last year that his “opponents now fear he is more dangerous than his
predecessor.”
What about U.S. adversaries with more global influence?
While statements out of Beijing, Moscow, and other capitals seem to illustrate
the strains on America’s democratic tradition, the primary reaction to these
messages should be ridicule, if they’re paid any attention at all. And they
certainly don’t make for propaganda capable of convincing anyone who didn’t
already take for granted what these governments have to say.
The Twitter account of the Global
Times, a Chinese state-run tabloid, used the incident to draw an
equivalence between the Washington riot and the Hong Kong pro-democracy
movement, comparing photographs of the Washington riot with those of the
occupation of Hong Kong’s legislature by demonstrators in 2019. According to
the regime’s propagandists, if figures such as Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pompeo
condemn the riots they should also condemn the pro-democracy movement (which
the Chinese Communist Party falsely tarnishes with separatist, terrorist, and
otherwise violent intentions). A GT article quotes Chinese foreign ministry
spokesperson Hua Chunying: “Many Chinese netizens are wondering why some
politicians and media in the US reacted so differently to a similar situation.”
Only these were not remotely similar situations. Hong
Kong’s democrats are up against an aspiring totalitarian regime that’s
swallowing whole the democratic practices that the city was promised. It bears
stating this simple truth, particularly in the aftermath of this week’s police
raids in Hong Kong, which swept up over 50 pro-democracy politicians for their
participation in a primary for legislative elections. The Capitol rioters
sought to subvert a legitimate election result that’s withstood numerous legal
challenges by means that defied the law.
Other examples abound. The Venezuelan government
statement says that “With this unfortunate episode, the United States is
experiencing what it has generated in other countries.” Iranian foreign minister
Javad Zarif wrote that for all of Trump’s damaging actions, he “has been doing
much worse to our people — and others in the past 4 years,” referencing the
sanctions campaign targeting Tehran’s support for terrorism and nuclear
aspirations. Russia’s U.N. ambassador gleefully compared the overtaking of the
Capitol with Ukraine’s Maidan protests, which toppled Viktor Yanukovych, the
country’s Kremlin-backed strongman. It hardly needs pointing out that these are
all regimes that routinely crack down on peaceful demonstrations, then
retaliate against those who seek justice. The current unrest hands them an easy
message to convey — but it remains a fundamentally ridiculous one.
So the immediate reaction should be to discredit foreign
propaganda and expose the anti-democratic motives behind it. This alone won’t
be enough, though. Messages for an international audience to protest measures
to punish human-rights abusers stand less chance of swaying people than do
similar messages designed for domestic consumption that can erode the efforts
of pro-democracy forces in those countries. The president’s conduct and the
Capitol mobs handed them a news cycle that’s crowded out talk of everything
from Beijing’s Hong Kong crackdown to Iran’s obstruction of the investigation
into the civilian airliner taken down by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps
over Tehran last year.
There’s little disputing that this assault on the
peaceful transfer of power seems likely to have severe consequences for
America’s global credibility unless the downward spiral slows.
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