Editor's Note:
David A. Andelman, CNN contributor, two-time Deadline Club Award winner and CEO of The Red Lines Project, is the author of "A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That Might Still Happen »and host of his Evergreen podcast.
He was a correspondent for The New York Times and CBS News in Europe and Asia.
Follow him on Twitter @DavidAndelman.
The opinions expressed in this comment belong solely to the author.
See more opinion at cnne.com/opinion.
(CNN) -
Even Boris Johnson, who has long held mutual admiration for Donald Trump, couldn't contain himself Wednesday as he lamented the images circulating around the world of the United States Capitol under siege.
"Shameful scenes in the US Congress," tweeted the UK Prime Minister as Congress continued to be invaded.
"The United States defends democracy around the world and it is now vital that there be a peaceful and orderly transfer of power."
Sadly, for much of the world, there didn't seem to be much democracy left in Washington that the United States could defend.
The position that the United States held for centuries as the shining pillar of rational government was being sacrificed for the arrogance of a leader in his departure.
As NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg tweeted about "shocking scenes in Washington," German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas compared the scenes in Washington to those of the Nazis taking advantage of the burning of the Reichstag parliament building in 1933 to boost the rise of Adolf Hitler.
LOOK: The riots in the US Capitol before the world media
"The enemies of democracy will rejoice at these inconceivable images of Washington," Maas tweeted.
Seditious words turn into violent actions, on the steps of the Reichstag and now on the Capitol.
Contempt for democratic institutions has devastating effects.
Trump and his supporters should finally accept the decision of the American voters and stop trampling on democracy.
There have been other examples of efforts by mobs abroad to assert their control over democracies.
In May 1968, French students followed by a large crowd of workers took to the streets of Paris for seven weeks to protest against capitalism, consumerism, and even American imperialism.
But they never challenged the fundamental pillar of democratic institutions, the rule of a majority of citizens, as fundamentally and violently as in Washington on Wednesday.
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And this is what horrified leaders and media around the world: images of a protester hunched over in the chair of the vice president of the United States on the Senate stage, another hanging from a balcony above the floor of Congress, the tear gas in the marble corridors of power.
Richard Ferrand, president of the French National Assembly, who was only six years old when the 1968 protests broke out and clearly shaken by what his American counterparts were enduring, tweeted his own "democratic and friendly thoughts to US lawmakers, to whom they have been prevented from doing their job. '
"I express my support and friendship to the Speaker of the House of Representatives [Nancy Pelosi]."
But the feelings of support and friendship seem like little mush to bridge the enormous gulf that seemed to open between the United States and so many of its allies and friends abroad and that, as difficult as the last four years have been for many, it seems only has suddenly expanded in recent days.
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Shortly after the election of Joe Biden two months ago, a French diplomat suggested to me that with the arrival of the new president and especially such stable and sensitive members of his National Security team as Antony Blinken, order and rationality were in place. the cusp of being restored to American democracy.
But in the horrible hours that tore apart Washington on Wednesday, that vision may have been destroyed for many abroad just as quickly.
