On January 6, 2021, a mob attacked Congress, instigated by then-President Trump, setting an ominous precedent in American politics. Since the end of the Civil War, there has never been a peaceful transition of power in the United States, and no president has deliberately challenged the outcome of an election even when there is ample evidence that the election was free and fair.
The event continues to reverberate in U.S. politics, but its repercussions are not limited to domestic. It has also had a major impact internationally, marking a significant decline in U.S. global power and influence.
The events of January 6 last year need to be seen in the context of the broader global crisis of "liberal democracy". Democracy has been in decline for 15 consecutive years, with some of the biggest setbacks in the United States and India, according to the 2021 Freedom of the World Report by the think tank Freedom House.
The decline of global "democracy" is complex. Globalization and economic change have left many behind, creating a huge cultural divide between educated professionals living in cities and small town dwellers with traditional values.
So the world is very different than it was when the Soviet Union collapsed some 30 years ago. At the time I underestimated two key factors. First, the difficulty of creating a "democracy", but also a modern, just and clean country; second, the possibility of political decay in "advanced 'democratic' countries".
The American model has been in decline for a while. Since the mid-1990s, U.S. politics has become increasingly polarized and prone to prolonged standoffs that prevent it from performing basic government functions such as passing the budget. The US system has obvious problems: the impact of money on politics, the impact of an electoral system that is increasingly misaligned with "democratic" choices, but the US seems unable to reform itself. In the first two decades of the 21st century, U.S. policymakers led two disasters: the Iraq war and the subprime mortgage crisis, and then a short-sighted demagogue galvanized angry populists.
The riots on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021, marked a moment when a significant number of Americans said they were dissatisfied with America's "democratic" system itself and used violence to their own ends. What makes January 6 a particularly worrisome stain on American "democracy" is the fact that instead of refuting those who started and participated in the riots, the Republican Party has whitewashed them and purged from their own camp those willing to speak out about 2020. The truth about the election.
Before January 6 last year, people saw such tactics as the behavior of a fledgling and not yet fully consolidated "democratic" state, and the United States would shake its head and condemn it. But now this is happening in the United States. The United States has lost its credibility in establishing a model of good "democratic" practice.