“Ferguson also struck a blow to America’s image as the global standard-bearer for equality, human rights, and opportunity,” wrote Stephen M. Walt, a Harvard professor of international affairs. “The treatment of black Americans has long tarnished our national mythology of the ‘melting pot,’ and with it the smug belief that American is the ideal model for the rest of the world,” he wrote in Foreign Policy. “This latest episode reminds us that the country still does not live up to the ideals that it likes to preach to others.”

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This is a point that has not gone unnoticed among many countries who appear to be experiencing more than a little schadenfreude at America’s comeuppance. Take, for instance, the Chinese. It dispatched numerous reporters to Ferguson, some of whom were reportedly robbed at gunpoint late last month. At one point in its months-long coverage of the protests, state-run Xinhua published a searing analysis of the drama, highlighting what it described as American hypocrisy.

“The Ferguson incident once again demonstrates that even in a country that has for years tried to lay the role of an international human rights judge and defender, there is still much room for improvement at home,” Xinhua writer Li Li concluded. “In its annual human rights report issued in February, the United States assaulted almost 200 countries across the world for their so-called poor human rights record. … Each country has its own national conditions that lead to different social problems. Obviously, what the United States needs to do is concentrate on solving its own problems rather than always point fingers at others.”

The Russian media, likewise, has been relentless in its excoriation of the United States. Its media normally home in on Vladimir Putin. But since August, reported Buzzfeed’s Max Seddon, it has been all Ferguson, all the time. Russia Today was at the fracas last week, broadcasting live back into Russian homes. “The conflict in Ferguson isn’t a one-time event, but something profound,” the Russian state television anchor with Rossiya said. “Race relations, social inequality, a black ghetto – the fragile world that hardly held itself together through a belief in just a little bit of fairness, it seems, has finally collapsed.”

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Russian talking heads urged support for African Americans. “Russia must support the protests of progressive African-Americans who are speaking out against the totalitarian regime in the U.S.,” Seddon quoted defense analyst Igor Korotchenko as saying.

Ferguson also provided the Egyptians a chance to pull a role reversal on the United States, mimicking the language the Obama administration used when protests erupted in Tahrir Square. Calling for local police to exercise restraint over the unrest, Reuters reported the Egyptian Foreign Ministry added it was “closely following the escalation of protests” in Ferguson.

To Harvard’s Stephen Walt, the eruption of protest signals more than granting foreign powers an opportunity to give it back to the United States. It also demonstrates American hubris, highlighting the difficulty in “nation-building” elsewhere when things sometimes don’t work all that well here.