World leaders see Washington turmoil as a warning for democracies everywhere.
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Version 0 of 1. Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain condemned President Trump on Thursday for encouraging mob violence at the U.S. Capitol, describing his behavior as “completely wrong,” joining world leaders who expressed concern about the health of American democracy. “Insofar as he encouraged people to storm the Capitol, and insofar as the president consistently has cast doubt on the outcome of a free and fair election, I believe that that was completely wrong,” Mr. Johnson said at a news conference in London. He said he wanted to “unreservedly condemn encouraging people to behave in the disgraceful way that they did in the Capitol.” Mr. Johnson, who until recently cultivated close ties to Mr. Trump, was among those leaders who suggested that the values America represented for the rest of the world had been endangered. “All my life America has stood for some very important things, an idea of freedom and an idea of democracy,” Mr. Johnson said. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said she deeply regretted that Mr. Trump had not accepted his defeat in the election. “He stoked uncertainties about the election outcome, and that created an atmosphere that made the events of last night possible,” she said. Ms. Merkel, who addressed a joint session of Congress during a visit to Washington in 2009, said it was “tragic” that people lost their lives during Wednesday’s violence but that it was a sign of “hope” that Congress worked through the night. A woman was fatally shot inside the Capitol and three other deaths were reported nearby, the police said. Ms. Merkel’s comments mirrored a deep-seated faith in the strength of democracy in the United States that is held by many in Europe. President Emmanuel Macron of France, in a formal address recalling longstanding ties between his country and the United States, said the chaos in Washington did not reflect the America he knew. “We believe in the strength of our democracies,” Mr. Macron said. “We believe in the strength of American democracy.” Le Monde, one of France’s leading newspapers, said in an editorial on Thursday that the violence in Washington amounted to a “day of shame.” In the first government response from Russia, the spokeswoman for the country’s foreign ministry, Maria Zakharova, said, “We once again point out that the electoral system in the United States is archaic and doesn’t meet modern standards of democracy, creating the possibility for multiple violations and the American media have become instruments of political struggle.” Ms. Zakharova said she hoped the “friendly people of America will with dignity get through this dramatic period in their own history.” Russian politicians and political analysts were quick to point out that the attack on the Capitol would send immediate ripples through one cornerstone of American foreign policy: support for pro-Western protesters in the street politics of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. “Color revolutions just lost a serious argument in their favor,” Konstantin F. Zatulin, deputy chairman of a committee in Russia’s Parliament on relations with former Soviet states, said in an interview, referring to American-supported popular uprisings in countries including Georgia, Serbia and Ukraine over the past two decades. In Asia, much of which was asleep while American lawmakers were being evacuated from the Capitol, the unsettling scenes from Washington greeted those who were starting their day. In China, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hua Chunying, pointedly referred to American expressions of support for the huge protests that took place in Hong Kong, which at one point included the takeover of the legislature in 2019. “You may still remember that at the time, American officials, congressmen and some media — what phrases did they use for Hong Kong?” she said in Beijing on Thursday. “What phrases are they using for America now?” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand said she and her country were “devastated” by the events in the United States, but she expressed confidence that democracy would ultimately prevail. “The right of people to exercise a vote, have their voice heard and then have that decision upheld peacefully should never be undone by a mob,” she wrote on Twitter. Charles Santiago, an opposition lawmaker in Malaysia, said that Mr. Trump had joined other world leaders “in subverting democracy and the will of the people.” He cited Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia and President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines. “The U.S. has lost its moral authority to preach democracy and human rights to other countries,” he said. “It has become part of the problem.” |