International observers watched stunned as a mob of protestors, after hearing an incendiary speech by President Donald Trump, stormed the U.S. Capitol building Wednesday, sending into hiding lawmakers who were there to count Electoral College votes. While rioters rifled through lawmakers’ offices, and one climbed down to the dais of the Senate chamber, America’s image abroad was being dismantled minute by minute.

Many world leaders spoke up to publicly condemn the chaos and the president, but on Thursday morning, Zimbabwe’s president chimed in to do something else: demand the U.S. drop sanctions on officials in his country, as America had clearly lost the moral high ground from which to teach any lessons about democracy.

“Last year, President Trump extended painful economic sanctions placed on Zimbabwe, citing concerns about Zimbabwe’s democracy,” President Emmerson Mnangagwa wrote on Twitter. “Yesterday’s events showed that the U.S. has no moral right to punish another nation under the guise of upholding democracy. These sanctions must end.”

The U.S. has enforced sanctions on Zimbabwe since 2003, in response to anti-democratic actions and human rights abuses allegedly perpetrated by the administration of then-strongman Robert Mugabe, and which purportedly continued under Mnangagwa. The latest continuation of the sanctions, signed by Trump in March 2020, slammed the Zimbabwean government for actions that “pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States.”

So, after such an anti-democratic spectacle in the heart of the world’s strongest supporter of democracy, does the U.S. still have any ground on which to demand others act properly, as Mnangagwa asked? One powerful answer came from a top U.S. official about 1,000 miles south of Zimbabwe, at the U.S. Embassy in Harare, Uganda.

“After Wednesday’s events, many people may question America’s right to speak out on issues of democracy around the world, and they are entitled to their perspective,” Ambassador Natalie Brown wrote. But when America speaks out in defense of human rights, judicial independence, freedom of the press and the other trappings of democracy, Brown said the U.S. does so not because the U.S. is free of issues with those things. “On the contrary, we do so because we are mindful of the work still to be done in the American experiment with democracy and because our history has taught us that democracy must be defended if it is to endure.”

Tamara Cofman Wittes, a former State Department official who worked on human rights and democracy issues in the Middle East, put it more succinctly:

“To all those who say the U.S. has no standing to speak about democracy abroad, this is why you are so wrong,” she wrote on Twitter in part Friday, linking to Brown’s statement. “Our ‘standing’ doesn’t come from our perfection. It comes from our struggle.”

Zimbabwe is unlikely to see any sudden change in U.S. policy, especially under a President Joe Biden. Biden, after all, co-sponsored the 2001 legislation that paved the way for sanctions to be placed on the African nation in the first place.

As for America’s work on promoting democracy abroad, Brown wrote that won’t stop either.

“While our work begins at home, we will continue to share the lessons we have learned from our own experience as we look outward toward the world around us.  We will continue to work with partners in Uganda and elsewhere toward a world where every child, woman, and man has opportunities to achieve our full potential, secure in our rights.

“The principles of equality, freedom, decency, tolerance, and justice that we strive for in America’s democracy are the same principles that have guided, and will continue to guide, our partnerships in Uganda and throughout the world,” she said.

Primary Source: Statement by U.S. Ambassador Natalie E. Brown on the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol Building and the Nurturing of Democracy

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