WaPo column quotes European diplomats who say America is 'shorthand for democratic decline and disinformation'

In her latest Washington Post column on Monday, Christine Emba trotted out the opinions of various foreign diplomats, that she heard during an international conference, about how America is on the decline in the world’s eyes because of conservative policies.

These leaders cited the spread of "disinformation" in the U.S., rampant "gun violence" and the lack of leaders in the vein of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., as being the reason that America isn’t held in such high esteem in Europe or in the rest of the world. 

Emba opened her column with a quote from a Bavarian civil society organizer she spoke to at the Bucerius Summer School on Global Governance, an international conference recently held in Hamburg Germany. He told her "It’s frightening, what’s happened to you. America has become smaller."

As the columnist noted, the theme of the conference was, "Facing New Realities: Global Governance Under Strain," and, her being an American, she got the impression talking to many people in attendance that "the United States’ light has dimmed."

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Emba wrote, "We are still watched intently and remain a major power. But it was clear that to many of the conference’s attendees — hailing from Germany to Mongolia, Ghana to Ukraine — the United States has become shorthand for democratic decline and disinformation."

She added that people at the event view America as a "home to citizens who react to dissatisfaction by rejecting reality, and to institutions that are increasingly hollowed out."

Though the collection of opinions gathered for the column indicated that these Europeans see decline as coming from the conservative side of the aisle.

Quoting another diplomat, she wrote, "’We don’t want the people who lose jobs during the climate transformation to end up as Trump voters or the equivalent,’ a European foreign minister said during a discussion of economic retooling amid climate change. My fellow conference-goers looked my way apologetically, pity on their faces."

"I thought about settling in the U.S., but I couldn’t imagine living in a place where my children would have to practice ‘active shooter drills," an "Ivy League-and Oxford-educated internationalist now working for the United Nations" told Emba.

Seemingly sympathetic to these digs, Emba provided her own assessment of how Europeans and the world must view this country. "The United States’ most famous exports used to be Coca-Cola, Levi’s and jazz — not to mention such ideals as freedom, civil rights and the rule of law. Now, we’re best known for rampant gun violence and gruesome school shootings," she declared.

And supposedly the only times in recent memory America has been respected happened when the country embraced radical left-wing movements. Emba noted, "Yet glimmers of respect for what we used to (and sometimes still) stand for do exist. Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential run was brought up again and again as an example of the American political system’s openness to outsiders and capacity to surprise."

Emba also noted how the people at the conference loved the Black Lives Matter movement. "The George Floyd protests of 2020 and the successes of the Black Lives Matter movement were commended as rare examples of truly free expression," she claimed. 

The columnist then diagnosed when this decline in respect for America started and how it progressed. "The United States’ reputation has been deteriorating for at least two decades. During the Iraq War, as Bush-doctrine foreign policy was derided across the globe, the trope of American backpackers abroad pretending to be Canadian to avoid shame by association became something of a cliché," she wrote. 

Though she noted it has declined at record pace in recent years. "Yet, the past six years have seen an unprecedented acceleration. Our geopolitical rivals have always had ammunition, but the old embarrassments pale in comparison to the new." 

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Pointing to the claims the 2020 election being stolen, Emba wrote, "The idea that credence is still given to arguments about whether the 2020 election was ‘stolen’ — the settled view of the rest of the world is that this is obvious nonsense — is a source of alarm."

According to the columnist, Trump winning the 2016 election soured the Europeans’ view as well. "After the 2016 election, European leaders warned that the United States could no longer be relied on as a partner in defense and security," she stated, before going on to say that, in general, "Our country is famously self-centered. It’s possible, or perhaps probable, that most Americans… don’t care what people in Europe or the rest of the world think."

In the end, Emba claimed "It might not be too late to effect a reversal," and that a first step to having a better reputation on the world stage would involve "holding our former president accountable to the rule of law."

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