The West’s export-quality democracy boomerangs

Kua Kia Soong

From Hong Kong to Washington and now from Tehran to Europe – the trouble with cheering for street protests is that the streets belong to everyone.

The West has long enjoyed a peculiar hobby: encouraging people in other countries to take to the streets in the name of democracy, freedom and human rights, while occasionally discovering that these principles become rather more complicated when the protesters are at home.

Call it democracy with an export licence – or, if you prefer, the international politics of karma.

For decades, Washington and its European allies have presented themselves as the world’s headteachers in democracy.

They issue report cards on other countries, lecture governments about human rights, and enthusiastically applaud popular uprisings against regimes they dislike.

The message is simple: when people rise against their government, they are freedom fighters; when people rise against ours, we may need to call in the riot police.

Unfortunately, history has a mischievous sense of humour – it occasionally returns the lesson to its authors, complete with interest.

Iran: The people’s uprising?

When protests erupted in Iran against the Islamic Republic, Western politicians and commentators were quick to express solidarity with the protesters.

Now, there are perfectly legitimate reasons to support Iranians demanding freedom, equality, political accountability and an end to repression. The Iranian people do not need permission from Washington to deserve these rights.

But there is a catch. Washington’s enthusiasm for Iranian resistance has often gone beyond sympathy for human rights. For some American politicians, the ultimate objective is not merely to defend the right of Iranians to determine their future, but to bring down a government they regard as an enemy.

During the current US-Iran conflict, for example, Senator Ted Cruz has called for US President Donald Trump to arm Iranian protesters, explicitly linking the policy to regime collapse.

That is a rather different proposition from standing in solidarity with peaceful demonstrators. One might ask: if Washington truly believes in the right of peoples to determine their own destiny, would it accept the same principle when the outcome is not to its liking?

And what happens when the consequences of its own foreign policy return to haunt its allies?

Look at Europe. The latest wave of unrest, reported in October 2026, has spread across France, Italy, Belgium, Portugal, Spain and Albania amid soaring fuel prices and the cost-of-living squeeze.

The US-Iran war has disrupted energy markets and intensified the economic pressures on European households. 

The irony is difficult to miss. European leaders who once felt comfortable pronouncing judgement on political instability elsewhere are now confronting angry people demanding answers about the cost of living, economic insecurity and their governments’ priorities.

Of course, not every European protest can be attributed to Washington, and not every grievance is the product of foreign policy.

But when a war helps drive up energy costs, and those costs help drive people onto the streets, the political consequences cannot simply be wished away.

Discovering the ‘virtues’ of protest

Let us rewind to 2019, when Hong Kong was convulsed by mass demonstrations against the proposed extradition bill.

The protests attracted enormous international attention and the movement became a global symbol of resistance against Beijing’s rule.

Western politicians were quick to embrace the cause.

Ted Cruz visited Hong Kong and met pro-democracy activists, dissidents and protest leaders. He publicly expressed support for those defending Hong Kong’s autonomy, freedom of speech and human rights.

Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the US House of Representatives, also voiced strong support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.

Can you imagine China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi or Premier Li Qiang doing the same in New York or Miami, egging protesters on against Trump?

But there was something revealing about the spectacle. American politicians were celebrating the courage of demonstrators confronting an authority they considered undemocratic. The streets of Hong Kong became a stage on which Washington could proclaim its commitment to popular resistance.

One wonders whether they ever considered that the same democratic principle might eventually be invoked by angry Americans against their own political establishment. After all, a protester does not cease to be a protester simply because the government being challenged happens to fly the Stars and Stripes.

Nor does every crowd that waves a national flag automatically become a defender of democracy.

When the streets came home

Then came 6 January 2021. Trump had lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, but refused to accept the result and continued promoting false claims of widespread election fraud.

On the day Congress met to certify the electoral college results, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, disrupting the proceedings and threatening the peaceful transfer of power.

The images were extraordinary: rioters breaking into the seat of American legislative government, lawmakers fleeing for safety, and the world’s self-proclaimed beacon of democracy reduced to a scene of political violence.

Pelosi, who had reminisced on the Hong Kong protests and violence as “a beautiful scene”, saw her office ransacked and defiled. 

Suddenly, the US was no longer watching a protest against somebody else’s government. It was watching its own democratic institutions come under assault.

Here was the country that had lectured the world about respecting election results, confronted with a president who refused to accept defeat.

Here was the country that had celebrated street movements abroad, confronted with a crowd seeking to violently overturn the outcome of its own election.

And here was the Capitol – the very institution in which politicians such as Pelosi had championed Hong Kong’s democratic aspirations – under attack by an American mob.

The contrast was almost too perfect for satire. The point is more fundamental: the democratic right to protest cannot be reserved for people challenging governments that Washington dislikes. And the legitimacy of a protest cannot be determined simply by whether its political objectives suit the American establishment.

The Capitol attack exposed a deep contradiction in the American self-image. A country accustomed to seeing itself as democracy’s tutor discovered that its own democratic institutions were vulnerable to the very forces of political polarisation, demagoguery and mass mobilisation that it had so often discussed in other countries.

The West’s favourite double standard

The problem with the West is their selective principle. When protesters challenge Iran’s Islamic Republic, they may be hailed as freedom fighters. When Hong Kong demonstrators challenged Beijing, they were celebrated by American politicians as defenders of liberty.

Yet when political anger erupts in Western cities, governments are suddenly confronted with difficult questions about public order, policing, economic grievances and the limits of dissent.

There is no contradiction in condemning violence while defending peaceful protest. Every government has a duty to protect people from violence and to uphold the law.

The contradiction emerges when the same conduct is described as democratic courage abroad but dismissed as dangerous disorder at home – or when political leaders invoke the people’s will only when they expect the people to deliver the result they want.

The current unrest in Europe illustrates the danger of that double standard. People facing higher fuel bills, unaffordable necessities and economic insecurity do not become less entitled to protest because their demonstrations embarrass European leaders or expose the consequences of geopolitical decisions.

Nor should the West assume that every popular uprising will produce a government friendly to Washington. People may revolt for reasons of their own, and their political destinations may not correspond to the strategic preferences of foreign capitals.

Karma does not recognise geopolitical boundaries. Perhaps the most amusing feature of this recurring drama is the confidence with which powerful countries assume they can encourage political forces abroad without ever having to confront comparable forces at home.

The people of Iran are entitled to demand freedom. The people of Hong Kong were entitled to defend their civil liberties. Europeans are entitled to protest against economic hardship and government policies. Americans are entitled to demonstrate against their own government.

But when demonstrations turn into violence, when political leaders encourage people to reject legitimate electoral outcomes, or when mobs attempt to overturn constitutional processes, the same standards must apply. Most importantly, they do not need Western support and hypocrisy.

Dr Kua Kia Soong, a former MP, is a former director of human rights group Suaram.

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