Every four years, millions of foreigners watch America choose its president, knowing a decision in which they have no say could reshape their lives. In 2020, observers abroad see a choice that isnt about a conservative turn or a liberal shift, but whether the worlds most powerful country can maintain the democratic standards its long promoted.

A victory for President Donald Trump would be a blow to the principle that leaders should commit to peaceful transitions of power. It would give a stamp of legitimacy to his methods aimed at entrenching his rule, like rushing to appoint a friendly Supreme Court justice pre-election before ballots may face judicial challenges , working to make it harder to vote and rejecting nearly all scrutiny by lawmakers or the public. And a Trump reelection would vindicate authoritarian tactics like his dismissal of opposition to him as un-American and criminal, and his months-long effort to depict the U.S. voting system as too broken to produce a trustworthy result, which some intelligence officials call a greater threat to the upcoming vote than foreign interference.

On Tuesday, Trump used the biggest moment of the campaign so far the first presidential debate to tell violent right-wing group the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by, as he declined to condemn them or white supremacists who have expressed support for him.

For Trump to triumph over Democratic nominee Joe Biden would be an alarming sign that U.S. democratic institutions are badly damaged and likely to crumble further. And that would reverberate internationally. With the worlds most influential country clearly in democratic decline, authoritarianism and political figures dismissive of the rule of law will take advantage.

Despite all the hypocrisy all its faults and all its problems with racism, [America] is seen as a very vibrant democracy which is discussing its problems very openly, said Oliver Stuenkel, a professor at the Getlio Vargas Foundation in So Paulo. Even people who are very critical of U.S. foreign policy recognize that these things are very important for the global fight for human rights and for democracy.

Brazil serves as an example. Trumps shock 2016 win boosted Jair Bolsonaro to that nations presidency two years later, Stuenkel said. Should Trump succeed in 2020 using undemocratic means, Bolsonaro could behave similarly in his own reelection bid in 2022 without fear of American condemnation.

Possibilities like that are what makes Americas election so much more consequential than I think most U.S. voters appreciate, Stuenkel added.

In India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his allies have echoed Trump by whipping up fear of Muslims and bashing independent media outlets, Trumps attacks on the rule of law suggest even more troubling developments could lie ahead in both countries, said Harsh Mander, a rights activist who runs the Centre for Equity Studies in New Delhi. Fear of international criticism, particularly from the U.S., is one of the few constraints on Modis power. Trump would be unlikely to offer that because of his ideological brotherhood with the prime minister, Mander said.

The danger to the United States and to the world of a leader like Donald Trump is something we are conscious of around the world, Mander added, describing American institutions as enormously shaky.

Trumps disdain for American allies and values , and his transactional, flippant and often brutal approach to global affairs, have already damaged the U.S.s historic claim to global leadership. His disastrous response to the coronavirus pandemic has further weakened the image of the U.S. to all-time lows in some countries.

Now even Europeans, Americas closest partners on the world stage, have huge concern over the state of U.S. democracy, according to Nathalie Tocci, the director of the Instituto Affari Internazionali think tank in Rome and an adviser to the European Unions foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell.

Democracy is not just elections, Tocci said. The real stuff that democracies are made of are the rights and the laws and the institutions. The extent to which that is being harmed and that is being degraded is probably the most dangerous element of all.

Dark Days Ahead

After campaign season ends, the immediate aftermath of the election will likely spur even more anxiety internationally. The widely expected scenario a popular vote loss by Trump, legal battles over ballot-counting and days, if not weeks, of uncertainty over who won the Electoral College will suggest a divided, drifting nation rather than a confident, mature republic.

America is the champion of the liberal order, of checks and balances, and at a time in which autocracy is trying to gain momentum, the very fact that there are doubts in the U.S. election, such as a contested result and the use of the Supreme Court to find out who will be the president, is of great concern, said Paolo Magri, the executive vice president of the Italian Institute for International Political Studies in Milan.

Should Trump secure a second term, he and the Republican Party would be emboldened to further solidify their grip on power. Thats a familiar pattern elsewhere: Since winning re-election last year, Indias Modi has revoked the quasi-independence of the disputed state of Kashmir, broken worldwide records for internet shutdowns to deter protesters, rendered almost two million people stateless, pushed new citizenship restrictions that discriminate against Muslims and cracked down on watchdogs like Amnesty International.

The United States in a second term with Donald Trump might actually see what is happening to us in our second term [with Modi] where all institutions of democracy seem to be being destroyed, Mander said.