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The sight of right wing protesters taking control of the Capitol Building in Washington DC is certainly a unique and disturbing sight. However, it is important to keep in mind that it could have proceeded differently. Rather than simply taking control of the Capitol for a few hours, suppose these protesters had spread to other states, with more supporters of President Trump, deluded by his lies about the 2020 election, taking control of government buildings across the country. Rather than the one protester who was murdered by Capitol Hill Police, imagine if the violence had spread to the point that hundreds were killed. Imagine that instead of President-Elect Joe Biden coming onto TV to request that President Trump publicly call on the protesters to leave the Capitol, he had instead been forced into exile in a foreign country.

Fortunately, this is not the situation that we are dealing with in the United States. The protests petered out throughout the day and a hyper-militarized version of calm seems to have returned DC. Unfortunately, it is exact situation like the one detailed above that have played themselves in other countries, often instigated by agents of the United States. The particulars of the scenario are most similar to what happened in Ukraine between 2013 and 2014 during the Euromaidan when protests occupied government buildings throughout Ukraine and forced out of power a democratically elected president—Viktor Yanukovych—who had won by a similar margin in his 2010 election as Joe Biden did in the 2020 election.

However, the Obama-Biden administration’s reaction to these protests was decidedly different from the reaction to the events of January 6, 2020. Then Secretary of State John Kerry spoke in support of the protests saying “Ukrainian authorities bear full responsibility for the security of the Ukrainian people. As church bells ring tonight amidst the smoke in the streets of Kyiv, the United States stands with the people of Ukraine. They deserve better.” White House Spokesperson Jay Carney said “We continue to support the aspirations of the Ukrainian people to achieve a prosperous European democracy. European integration is the surest course to economic growth and to strengthening Ukraine’s democracy.”  This public support for the anti-Government protests in Ukraine should not be surprising. Indeed, there is strong evidence that the United States was involved in supporting the protests.

This hypocrisy is, of course, nothing new. The United States has a long history under Republican and Democratic regimes of thwarting democracy abroad, even as it weaponizes language of support for democracy against official state enemies. The comparison of the reaction to the Capitol Hill protests with similar protests in Hong Kong is telling. Much like the Capitol Hill protests, Hong Kong Protesters stormed and vandalized the city’s Legislative building in scenes similar to those the played out on Capitol Hill. However, the reactions of officials across the political spectrum in the United States to these protests were decidedly different. Senator Mitt Romney, for instance, who has positioned himself as a principled Republican opponent to the extremes of the Trump Presidency has issued numerous statements in support of the Hong Kong protests. Among Democrats, Speakers of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who had her office ransacked by protests once described the Hong Kong protests as “a beautiful sight to behold.” A fact that she has been reminded of by Chinese Media and online commentators.

Schadenfreude like this from countries that have endured state interference from the United States is to be expected. In another example, Deputy Russian Ambassador to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy wrote “Some of my friends ask whether someone will distribute crackers to the protesters to echo the Victoria Nuland stunt.” This statement refers to an episode when then Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, handed out food to anti-government protesters in Kiev. One can only imagine the justified condemnation if representatives from Russia or China were walking through the streets of Washington with food for the pro-Trump protesters.

More nefariously, some politicians have already started to try to frame these protests as being instigated by foreign governments with little evidence. A common refrain that has been repeated since the protests began is that “[Insert name of a leader of official state enemy] must be laughing.” Whether speaking about Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin or some other leader, these accusations all have the same assumption, that leaders of these countries see much to gain by de-stability in the United States. On a recent episode of NPR’s Morning Edition, Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton went so far as to assert without evidence that it would be naïve to think that there were not foreign actors involved in the protests.

This is a clear case of projection from the west. The role that the United States played in destabilizing Ukraine has already been discussed. US politicians have also played a similarly destabilizing role in Hong Kong and attempts to do so in other parts of China, with politicians across the politician spectrum encouraging the protest. In the past, United States money has been earmarked to the protests. In a similar way, the recent Appropriations/COVID-19 Relief bill has a whole section dealing with the re-incarnation of the Dali Lama.

This type of hypocrisy and projection is not surprising or new. Finally, however this hypocrisy has been made more clear. So what should be done with this information? For one, it is time for the United States to end all efforts at “democracy promotion.” These efforts have often been little more than fig-leaves to fund efforts to destabilize unfriendly countries. The absurdities of these efforts are even more clear given the current situation. Unfortunately, the prospects for such changes are not likely to improve, even in the new Biden administration. In a time of, supposed, unprecedented political polarization, it is notable how different the foreign policies of the incoming Biden team are likely to be from the outgoing Trump team. For example, compare the almost identical reaction Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, with those of Blinken’s nominee for the position Anthony Blinken. Imperial meddling in the affairs of the world appears to be one of the few bipartisan tendency that remains in Washington. Unfortunately, feeling, even for a brief moment what the instability so often brough by this type of interference, is not likely to change this tendency

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