The US Senate trial to impeach President Donald Trump is a history-making event for Americans but most major foreign governments are showing little interest.
Many governments would be pleased to see Trump go partly because of his bullying style in US foreign policy. But there seems to be little appetite for an ouster through impeachment rather than electoral defeat.
The Senate trial’s content and tone have decreased confidence in the ability of the Democratic party to dethrone Trump by winning the November elections. More so, since the case of House impeachment managers now rests mainly on an unlikely Senate decision to call John Bolton, the former national security advisor, as a witness.
Bolton is disliked by many in Europe and Asia as a warmonger and proponent of muscular US foreign, who treats international agreements with disdain.
In the recent past, lead House impeachment manager Adam Schiff and other Democrats repeatedly rejected Bolton as lacking credibility and prone to conspiracy theories. Schiff is now rooting for Bolton as a credible witness. Such politically convenient about-turns undermine confidence in the process.
Trump’s impeachment by the Senate would likely to be welcomed by most foreign countries and increase confidence in American democracy as a lighthouse for others around the world.
But the hasty congressional process and the blatantly partisan Senate trial have given cause to perceive impeachment as a domestic political maneuver. Worse, it is a futile maneuver with a foregone victory for Trump delivered by the Senate’s Republic majority.
Trump’s victory will be Pyrrhic because it will not remove doubts about his abuse of presidential power and the ethical pusillanimity of many Republican lawmakers.
In turn, Democrats will have reduced a grave constitutional process to a political ploy to turn swing voters against Trump just months before presidential elections.
Such perceptions about democratic process are damaging for US influence among its allies and friends. Early evidence is the rarity of foreign commentary, despite detailed news reports.
Almost anything the US does, e.g. Trump’s Middle East peace plan, quarrels with Iran, and trade conflicts with China and Europe, produce copious analyses and editorials around the world.
But the momentous event of a US President’s impeachment is being treated at arm’s length if not outright scorn.
The House took a foreign policy event in Ukraine as the spearhead to impeach the President. But it utterly failed to convince any significant foreign audience that impeachment is not the backdoor for apprehensive Democrats to take votes away from Trump in the forthcoming elections.
Many governments would like to see Trump go because he has undermined respect for international law and multilateral cooperation in everything he has touched, including the global struggle against adverse climate change impacts.
However, it now seems that the impeachment process will leave him in a stronger position to win in November and use his second term to further disrupt international cooperation or incite more violence in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay