The Global Fallout of the U.S. Capitol Attack

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Can I ask you first, Sir Kim, you know, your ambassadorship came to a rapid and sticky end, perhaps because of some of the very frank conversations you had with your government about President Trump’s state of mind. It does sound very prescient. I just want to read what you said. A scene from here. We really don’t believe that this administration is going to become substantially more normal, less dysfunctional, less unpredictable. You said that, for a man who’s risen to the highest office on the planet, President Trump radiates insecurity. There’s no filter. We could be at the beginning of a downward spiral, rather than just a roller coaster, something that could emerge that leads to disgrace and downfall. That was in 2017. What do you — did that come back to you as you were looking at what happened?

KIM DARROCH, FORMER BRITISH AMBASSADOR TO THE U.S.: Absolutely, it did, Christiane. Absolutely, it did. And you know, I did 40-odd years in the British service and I spent a lot of time writing judgments or predictions about how things would turn out. And I have to say, I felt at the time pretty secure, back in early 2017, with that judgment. And as I watched these awful events unfold yesterday evening, and through today, it’s been media bulletins for 24 hours now, I thought to myself, that really wasn’t about a set of cause.

AMANPOUR: So, I’m going to ask you a little bit about how it is going to be played out, but let me quickly turn to Marietje Schaake for her reaction. You’re sitting there in Europe. We’ve heard from Angela Merkel, in fact, we’ve heard from just about every leader imaginable around the world in the last 24 hours. I’m just stunned by what happened. Just tell us what you’re hearing, what you’re feeling from the reaction in Europe right now.

MARIETJE SCHAAKE, INTERNATIONAL POLICY DIRECTOR, SANDFORD UNIVERSITY’S CYBER POLICY CENTER: Well, I think what was displayed yesterday, the riots, the violence, the attack on American democracy, was the planned and also predicted result of drumming the drums of hatred ever louder. And I think people in the democratic world have watched this unfolding over the past four years with great concern for the transatlantic relation seen from the European point of view, but more broadly, from the democratic world. This has really harmed democracy. But of course, in nondemocratic countries, leaders may have been gleeful, may have been amused at the erosion of trust and the erosion of participation in the democratic process, feeling like America would not be able to call leaders out when they were repressing their own populations. What I think has been missing, though, in America, and I really hope that this will be a turning point, is what Americans can learn from the hard-fought battles for democracy and how easily it can be lost in other parts of the world.