Policy Alert #221 | January 19, 2021

After two months of misinformation and failed lawsuits against the result of the 2020 Presidential Election, President Donald Trump’s denial of electoral loss has culminated in the storming of U.S. Capitol by his supporters on the day when Congress was scheduled to certify the outcome of Electoral College. President Trump’s incitement of the riots on January 6, 2021 shocked political leaders around the world and seriously undermined the leadership of the U.S. among liberal democracies. In this Policy Alert, we examine how the Rising Powers react to the appalling storming of the U.S. Capitol.

 

China

During a daily press briefing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying went to great lengths to try and compare the rampage at the U.S. Capitol to Hong Kong protestors at the Legislative Council in 2019: “[U.S. officials] all condemned [what happened in the Capitol] as ‘a violent incident’ and the people involved as ‘rioters,’ ‘extremists’ and ‘thugs’ who brought ‘disgrace.’ Now compare that with what the Hong Kong violent protesters were called, like ‘a beautiful sight’ you brought up and ‘democratic heroes.’ They said that ‘American people stand with them.’ What’s the reason for such a stark difference in the choice of words? Everyone needs to seriously think about it and do some soul-searching on the reason.”

• In an op-ed for the South China Morning Post, an independent newspaper based in Hong Kong, Paul Freeland, an Editor of the South China Morning Post, argues that serious discussions about the Capitol riots, President Trump’s Twitter ban, and the siege of Hong Kong Legislative Council have been crowded out by “cheap talks” from key political actors:
  “Otherwise intelligent, capable people have made transparently cynical arguments aimed at advancing their political interests and hoodwinking the rest of us. This cheap talk is overwhelming public discourse…There are genuine concerns over the influence of ‘big tech’ and social media platforms, and there are flaws in US and Hong Kong democracy that need addressing. Instead of having those substantive discussions, though, bad-faith actors flood the zone with superficial point-scoring and shameless dissembling.”
• In an op-ed for the state-owned nationalist tabloid Global Times, He Zhijiao, a research fellow of the Institute of European Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, proposes that the events at the Capitol may weaken the prospect of better relations between the U.S. and Europe under the upcoming administration:
  “The divergences between Europe and the US are in not only policies but also ideas. These have evolved from notions of global governance to political systems and beliefs – despite the fact that Europe and the US have common Western democratic values…The Capitol riots might contribute to the reconstruction of trust or further alienate relations between the US and Europe. Either way, the event will distract the Biden administration, whose handling of US domestic conflicts and divisions is crucial for US-Europe coordination.”
• In an op-ed for Global Times, Su Hao, the founding director of the Center for Strategic and Peace Studies at the China Foreign Affairs University, explains how the storming of the Capitol embodies the long-lasting social and political division within the U.S.:
  “This is because of the deep divisions, in terms of politics, society and race. With the decline of the number of white Americans and rise of other races, racial tensions are becoming more acute. As the minority holds the majority of the wealth and the middle class is shrinking, the widening wealth gap has been escalating social divisions…[S]uch divisions may exist for a long time, posing a hidden threat to the country’s social stability, especially when it is triggered by certain incidents.”

 

India

In response to the storming of U.S. Capitol, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a tweet: “Distressed to see news about rioting and violence. Orderly and peaceful transfer of power must continue. The democratic process cannot be allowed to be subverted through unlawful protests.”

• An editorial from the pro-BJP government The Pioneer suggests that what transpired at the Capitol demonstrates the need of electoral reform in the U.S.:
  “Part of the fault lies in the convoluted American election system where different States are given the Electoral College votes based on the weightages decided decades ago… The rest of the democratic world, which largely follows the first-past-the-post system that has its own flaws, cannot understand how a voter in the sparsely populated agrarian state of Wyoming has his or her vote count as almost double that of a voter in the most populated State of California. The US electoral system is broken and it needs to be fixed urgently, particularly as the country faces off against a rival across the Pacific Ocean once again.”
• In an op-ed for the liberal Indian Express, Gyanendra Pandey, a Professor and the Director of Interdisciplinary Workshop on Colonial and Postcolonial Studies at Emory University, compares the storming of the Capitol to the destruction of Babri Masjid mosque by Hindu extremists in India three decades ago:
  “These actions expose a too-long-tolerated White supremacist and Hindu supremacist hubris – a sense of entitlement about their god-given right to rule in India and the US… [T]he dissimilarities may mask a more fundamental point of convergence – We are a great [Christian or Hindu] country, governed by a great constitution. We put the constitution in place…That founding document is pronounced stolen the moment it fails to ensure the Brahmin’s/white man’s god-given right-to-rule his promised land.”
• In an op-ed for the Indian Express, Suhas Palshikar, the Chief Editor of Studies in Indian Politics, highlights the conditions of executive coups by comparing the attempted takeover of the Capitol with Indira Gandhi’s infamous “emergency” dictatorship:
  “Executive coups are a product of a triad: Constructing a constituency of willing mobs, corrosion of institutions and producing a political establishment unconcerned with democratic norms… So, where do India’s executive coups differ from Trump’s? Indira Gandhi’s coup used institutions more effectively than Trump, but despite all her populism, her resort to mobs as instruments of takeover was very limited. While she could easily rein in her own party, she had to face an uncompromising Opposition and take recourse to preventive detention.”

 

Japan

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga did not directly comment on the storming of U.S. Capitol but told reporters that he hopes the U.S. “will go from conflict to unity under Biden, the next president.” Similarly, Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato made a reserved comment by saying that “Hopefully the difficult situation faced by U.S. democracy can be overcome, and stability and harmony will be restored as the country moves toward a peaceful, democratic presidential transition.”

• An editorial from the progressive Asahi Shimbun proposes that in the aftermath of the Capitol breach, the U.S. must immediately kickstart the process to regain public trust in the democratic institution:
  “The future of American democracy will depend, to a large extent, on whether the people will remain conscious of the urgency of the situation… The Chinese government, which has been under fire over its crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong, has made sarcastic comments on the political turmoil in Washington… Despite a decline in its global influence, the United States is still expected to play the leading role for ensuring stability in the world order. To do so, the country needs to demonstrate afresh the innate resilience of its democracy.”
• In an op-ed for the center-right The Japan Times, Jan-Werner Mueller, a Professor of Politics at Princeton University, urges that President Trump’s incitement of the insurrection must be met with necessary punishments:
  “If there is no punishment for the insurrection at the Capitol, congressional Republicans will again be signaling their own complicity in the crime. The message will be that this, too, is acceptable: A sitting president may indeed incite violence against one of the republic’s three political branches…The crucial step is not just to remove Trump but to ban him from politics for life. Though this step entails a permanent restriction of an individual’s basic political rights, many democracies nonetheless allow for such a possibility.”
• An editorial from liberal leaning The Mainichi recommends a broad debate on the powers and responsibilities of the social media platforms in the aftermath of the riots:
  “[T]here is growing debate over whether current laws that, as a general rule, protect social media companies and their ilk from legal responsibility for harmful user-generated content should be revised. Japan as well is looking to revisit current rules exempting social media platforms from responsibility for slanderous speech posted by users… However, the river of information that runs through their platforms every day is vast, and the companies alone will not be able to eliminate all the harmful posts polluting it on their own… We need to broadly examine and debate exactly what we want the internet discussion space to be.”

 

Russia

Russian deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy compared the Capitol riots to the protests in Ukraine in 2013 while citing the moment when then-U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland offered food to protesters: “Quite Maidan-style pictures are coming from DC. Some of my friends ask whether someone will distribute crackers to the protesters to echo Victoria Nuland stunt. My guess is that chances are meagre, there is no US Embassy in Washington!”

• In an op-ed for government-funded RT, Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian President and Prime Minister, highlights the flaws of the U.S. electoral system and the serious global consequences of U.S. political instability:
  “Elections in this country, especially when there is a transfer of power from one political force to the other, can trigger significant changes in the global economic development, seriously affecting the existing institutions of international law and global security system…The problem is that the rest of the world finds it increasingly ‘inconvenient’ to work with such a country, as the US becomes an unpredictable partner. This unpredictability gives other states, regional associations and military political organizations cause for concern. It would be nice if the US political establishment realized this responsibility…We do not want the US to have problems. And for practical reasons: such problems create waves of instability all around that overflow us as well. The problems of the United States can only be solved by the Americans themselves along with the good governance of the country.”
• In an op-ed for the nationalist Pravda, Michael Pravica, a Professor in Physics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, warns about the questionable power of censorship by big tech companies in the U.S.:
  “[W]e see pseudo-intellectual ‘journalists’ and other ‘professionals’ desperately try to justify the destruction of Parler and permanent banning of President Trump and hundreds of other conservative voices from Twitter and other social media with glee…As a scientist, every modicum of data I receive from my experiments is critical to better understand natural phenomena. Just because you don’t ‘like’ some data is not a reason to discount it. You never discount data without a really good reason.”