“What’s amazing to me is the way the protesters in the U.S. were able to just, well, force their way in.”
Rune Roas, a German businessman of the Capitol insurrection.
“I’ve spoken to over 140 heads of state since I became president… Do you know what
they all ask me?... Is America going to be all right? What about democracy in America?...
Did you ever think you’d be asked that question by another leader?” Joe Biden
Watching Russian President Vladimir Putin escalate his threat to take Ukrainian territory, listening to Chinese President Xi Jinping deflect American pledges to protect Taiwan, and watching various regional Asian allies recognize that a relationship with China is more sustainable than depending on an American umbrella to protect their interests are bad enough. Russia and China are increasingly and openly hostile to any pressures from Washington, often dismissing our willingness, even our ability to back up our threats of concerted action, military or otherwise. Indeed, according to Pentagon sources, every wargame scenario where US military resources are deployed to protect Taiwan against a Chinese invasion produces a uniform result: China wins. Beijing just has too many military assets in that theater for us to assume we can repel an assault on Taiwan. Unless we are willing to escalate to a mutually destructive nuclear war.
As our intelligence community knows well, the underlying assumption in both Moscow and Beijing is that the United States is, under an optimistic scenario, a bumbling and contracting superpower unable to function because of internal dissent… and under a more pessimistic view, a nation on the verge of a civil war. It is no secret that both China and Russia (along with North Korea, Iran, etc.) are having a heyday assaulting a dramatically open and insecure American assemblage of social networks with tailored campaigns of polarizing disinformation suborning conspiracy theories and encouraging militants to tear down the country.
Indeed, dictators like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping or North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and rising autocrat Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (whom Trump has directly endorsed in an upcoming election) have long mocked bedrock principles of liberal democracy, pointing to the Capitol riot as another emblem of a failing system. Our clumsy foreign policy, even under Biden, struggles under a Rodney Dangerfield notion of “I don’t get no respect” in the minds of leaders the world over.
Even as Joe Biden musters support against Russian aggression in Ukraine from the UK and the European Union, he is acutely aware that Russian natural gas is a necessity for most of Europe to cope with a bitterly cold winter… in the middle of surging pandemic. Europe has more to lose if Russia retaliates against US demands, and NATO powers seem only to accommodate Biden’s efforts so far. But without support from our allies, the United States is increasing unable to protect American interests worldwide. The isolationist, go-it-alone policies established during the Trump administration, continue to loom large in the minds of our democratic allies.
Not only do they mistrust the latest international American pledges – after all, with a wave of his populist wand, Donald Trump sequentially undid numerous treaty commitments almost immediately after he assumed office in 2017 – but there is an increase belief among our allies that the United States itself is approaching an unraveling that portends self-destruction. As the above quotes illustrate, the visuals from the Capitol riots, along with GOP support of the rioters as “patriots,” seems seared in the minds of our prominent allies.
Reporting for the January 4th Los Angeles Times, Laura King looks at this revised vision of America: “In Western Europe, major powers were openly relieved by President Trump’s exit from the Oval Office. Even so, there is a sense among them that the long-term threat to U.S. democratic institutions remains… Perhaps nowhere is that feeling more acute than in Germany, rebuilt from the ashes of World War II, thanks in no small measure to the helping hand extended by its former adversary, the United States. The country still bears the imprint of 20th century traumas, including the prewar slide from democracy into Nazism and the East-West division that ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
“‘I do think it is fair to say that there is great concern in Europe, and in my own country, about the challenge to democracy in America,’ said Constanze Stelzenmueller , a German scholar and expert on transatlantic relations at the Brookings Institution. ‘It’s becoming clear to everyone that Jan. 6 wasn’t just an isolated episode. It was part of something larger, more deeply rooted, and more pernicious.’
“Groups that study democratic metrics see much of the world on a troubling trajectory, with the United States being no exception. In November, a European think tank, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, for the first time put the U.S. on a list of ‘backsliding democracies.’…
“Concern over the long-term U.S. commitment to traditional democratic values may be running highest among the country’s postwar allies in Europe, who make up the core of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But they are not the only ones worried… Canada’s leading newspaper, the Globe and Mail, published an op-ed last month by author and academic Thomas Homer-Dixon, who warned that the United States could be headed for ‘extreme domestic political instability’ that could have dangerous repercussions for its northern neighbor… ‘We mustn’t dismiss these possibilities just because they seem ludicrous or too horrible to imagine,’ the Canadian political scientist wrote.
“Domestic political quarrels are nothing new, in the United States or elsewhere, but the strikingly bitter tone of American political discourse is alarming to some onlookers, whether or not it actually explodes into violence, as on Jan. 6.” It is equally clear that our allies are taking our political instability into consideration as they chart a course that no longer relies on American support or participation. It is what it is.
I’m Peter Dekom, and if only those “patriots” eroding our democracy were as remotely concerned about our survival as a nation as our allies are.
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