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Reports highlighted internal research showing that Instagram, Facebook’s photo-sharing app, makes one in five American teenagers feel worse about themselves.

They paid less attention to the finding that Instagram makes twice as many feel better about themselves.

She revealed internal projections that a drop in teenagers’ engagement could lead to an overall decline in American users of 45% within the next two years. Investors have long faced a lack of open disclosure.

The question of how to regulate viral content for children goes beyond Facebook, as any parent who has left their child with YouTube knows. Likewise, dilemmas over how the firm amplifies attention and how to draw the line between upholding free speech and minimising harm.

Facebook repeated its plea that Congress should weigh in on matters such as minimum ages, rather than leaving it to firms.

Facebook’s critics are right that it should be more open. But the firm has half a point when it says that the hysterical reaction to unsurprising findings will lead companies to conclude that it is safer not to do such research at all.

The most damaging claim this week gained the least attention. Ms Haugen alleges that Facebook has concealed a decline in its young American users.

Misleading advertisers would undermine the source of nearly all the firm’s sales, and potentially break the law.

Although Facebook’s share price has lagged behind some tech giants, it has risen by almost 30% in the past 12 months. Politicians threaten to break the company up, but the antitrust case is flawed.

The Justice Department’s claim that Facebook is a monopoly rests on defining its market so as to exclude most social networks.

Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return. Even when it set out plausible responses to Ms Haugen, people no longer wanted to hear.

The firm risks joining the ranks of corporate untouchables like big tobacco. If that idea takes hold, Facebook risks losing its young, liberal staff.

Even if its ageing customers stick with the social network, Facebook has bigger ambitions that could be foiled if public opinion continues to curdle.

years of painstakingly worded treaties, high-level visits and cutting-edge disease surveillance—all meant to encourage good-faith cooperation—have only bitten around the edges of the problem.

“It can’t demand entry into a country because they think something bad is happening.”

Nearly 200 countries were counting on an agency whose budget—roughly $2.4 billion in 2020—is less than a sixth of the Maryland Department of Health’s. Its donors, largely Western governments, earmark most of that money for causes other than pandemic preparedness.

In 2018 and 2019, about 8% of the WHO’s budget went to activities related to pandemic preparedness

It took those experts more than four months to agree that widespread mask-wearing helps, and that people who are talking, shouting or singing can expel the virus through tiny particles that linger in the air. In that time, about half a million people died.

To write its recommendations, the WHO solicits outside experts, which can be a slow process.

the agency’s bureaucratic structure, diplomatic protocol and funding were no match for a pandemic as widespread and fast-moving as Covid-19.

As months rolled on, it became clear that governments were reluctant to allow the U.N. to scold, shame or investigate them.

In particular, The Wall Street Journal found:

* China appears to have violated international law requiring governments to swiftly inform the WHO and keep it in the loop about an alarming infectious-disease cluster

—there are no clear consequences for violations

* The WHO lost a critical week waiting for an advisory panel to recommend a global public-health emergency, because some of its members were overly hopeful that the new disease wasn’t easily transmissible from one person to another.

* The institution overestimated how prepared some wealthy countries were, while focusing on developing countries, where much of its ordinary assistance is directed

Public-health leaders say the WHO plays a critical role in global health, leading responses to epidemics and setting health policies and standards for the world. It coordinates a multinational effort every year to pick the exact strains that go into the seasonal flu vaccine, and has provided public guidance and advice on Covid-19 when many governments were silent.

The world’s public-health agency was born weak, created in 1948 over U.S. and U.K. reluctance. For decades, it was legally barred from responding to diseases that it learned about from the news. Countries were required to report outbreaks of only four diseases to the WHO: yellow fever, plague, cholera and smallpox, which was eradicated in 1980.

SARS convinced governments to retool the WHO. The next year, delegates arrived in the Geneva palace where the League of Nations once met to resolve a centuries-old paradox: Countries don’t report outbreaks, because they fear—correctly—their neighbors will respond by blocking travel and trade.

Nearly three times that amount was budgeted for eradicating polio, a top priority for the WHO’s two largest contributors: the U.S. and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“Everybody pushed back. No sovereign country wants to have this.”

China wanted an exemption from immediately reporting SARS outbreaks. The U.S. argued it couldn’t compel its 50 states to cooperate with the treaty. Iran blocked American proposals to make the WHO focus on bioterrorism. Cuba had an hourslong list of objections.

Around 3:15 a.m. on the last day, exhausted delegates ran out of time. The treaty they approved, called the International Health Regulations, imagined that each country would quickly and honestly report, then contain, any alarming outbreaks

In return, the treaty discouraged restrictions on travel and trade. There would be no consequences for reporting an outbreak—yet no way to punish a country for hiding one.

The treaty’s key chokepoint: Before declaring a “public health emergency of international concern,” or PHEIC, the WHO’s director-general would consult a multinational emergency committee and give the country in question a chance to argue against such a declaration.

Delegates agreed this could give some future virus a head start but decided it was more important to discourage the WHO from making any unilateral announcements that could hurt their economies.

Over the next few years, emergency committees struggled over how to determine whether an outbreak was a PHEIC. It took months to declare emergencies for two deadly Ebola epidemics

On Jan. 3, representatives of China’s National Health Commission arrived at the WHO office in Beijing. The NHC acknowledged a cluster of pneumonia cases, but didn’t confirm that the new pathogen was a coronavirus, a fact Chinese officials already knew.

That same day, the NHC issued an internal notice ordering laboratories to hand over or destroy testing samples and forbade anyone from publishing unauthorized research on the virus.

China’s failure to notify the WHO of the cluster of illnesses is a violation of the International Health Regulations

China also flouted the IHR by not disclosing all key information it had to the WHO

The WHO said it’s up to member states to decide whether a country has complied with international health law, and that the coming review will address those issues.

While Chinese scientists had sequenced the genome and posted it publicly, the government was less forthcoming about how patients might be catching the virus.

WHO scientists pored over data they did get, and consulted with experts from national health agencies, including the CDC, which has 33 staff detailed to the WHO.

Then a 61-year-old woman was hospitalized in Thailand on Jan. 13.

The next day, Dr. van Kerkhove told reporters: “It’s certainly possible that there is limited human-to-human transmission.” MERS and SARS, both coronaviruses, were transmissible among people in close quarters. Epidemiological investigations were under way, she said.

On Jan. 22, a committee of 15 scientists haggled for hours over Chinese data and a handful of cases in other countries. Clearly, the virus was spreading between people in China, though there was no evidence of that in other countries. The question now: Was it mainly spreading from very sick people in hospitals and homes—or more widely?

The committee met over two days, but was split. They mostly agreed on one point: The information from China “was a little too imprecise to very clearly state that it was time” to recommend an emergency declaration,

On Jan. 28, Dr. Tedros and the WHO team arrived for their meeting with Mr. Xi

Leaning across three wooden coffee tables, Dr. Tedros pressed for cooperation. In the absence of information, countries might react out of fear and restrict travel to China, he repeated several times throughout the trip. Mr. Xi agreed to allow a WHO-led international team of experts to visit. It took until mid-February to make arrangements and get the team there.

China also agreed to provide more data, and Dr. Tedros departed, leaving Dr. Briand behind with a list of mysteries to solve. How contagious was the virus? How much were children or pregnant women at risk? How were cases linked? This was vital information needed to assess the global risk, Dr. Briand said

Back in Geneva, Dr. Tedros reconvened the emergency committee. By now it was clear there was human-to-human transmission in other countries. When it met on Jan. 30, the committee got the information the WHO had been seeking. This time the committee recommended and Dr. Tedros declared a global public-health emergency.

President Trump and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo both assured constituents their health systems would perform well. The U.K.’s chief medical officer described the WHO’s advice as largely directed at poor and middle-income countries. As for keeping borders open, by then many governments had already closed them to visitors from China.

The WHO shifted focus to the developing world, where it believed Covid-19 would exact the heaviest toll. To its surprise, cases shot up just across the border, in northern Italy.

the WHO’s health emergencies unit should report to the director-general and not member states, and its budget should be protected so it doesn’t have to compete with other programs for money.

If there were one thing the WHO might have done differently, it would be to offer wealthier countries the type of assistance with public-health interventions that the WHO provides the developing world

the WHO’s warning system of declaring a global public-health emergency needs to change. Some want to see a warning system more like a traffic light—with color-coded alarms for outbreaks, based on how worried the public should be

Emergency committees need clearer criteria for declaring a global public-health emergency and should publicly explain their thinking

The WHO should have more powers to intervene in countries to head off a health crisis

Lessons learned

Implementing many of those ideas would require herding diplomats back for another monthslong slog of treaty revisions. If and when such talks begin, new governments will likely be in place, and political priorities will float elsewher

“Unfortunately, I’m very cynical about this,” he said. “We are living through cycles of panic and neglect. We’ve been through all of this before.”

Nathaniel Persily, a professor at Stanford Law School, has a neat way of describing the most basic problem in policing Facebook: “At present,” Persily has written, “we do not know even what we do not know” about social media’s effect on the world.

Rashad Robinson, president of the civil rights advocacy group Color of Charge, favored another proposed law, the Algorithmic Justice and Online Platform Transparency Act, which would also require that platforms release data about how they collect and use personal information about, among other demographic categories, users’ race, ethnicity, sex, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation and disability status, in order to show whether their systems are being applied in discriminatory ways.

one idea as “unsexy but important”: Educating the public to resist believing everything they see online.

What we need, then, is something like a society-wide effort to teach people how to process digital information.

In his new book, “Tech Panic: Why We Shouldn’t Fear Facebook and the Future,” Robby Soave, an editor at Reason magazine, argues that the media and lawmakers have become too worked up about the dangers posed by Facebook.He doesn’t disagree that the company’s rise has had some terrible effects, but he worries that some proposals could exacerbate Facebook’s dominance — a point with which I agree.

But Soave will probably get what he wants. As long as there’s wide disagreement among politicians about how to address Facebook’s ills, doing nothing might be the likeliest outcome.

crossing the Rubicon. Schnurer argues that this is more than just a familiar phrase. And he says that a U.S. Rubicon moment is in view—which would be triggered by a possible indictment of Donald Trump.

Crossing the Rubicon: If the United States, in recent years, has been tracking the decline and fall of Republican Rome, when do we pass the point of no return? By Eric B. Schnurer

How did a wealthy, powerful, and successfully self-governing people—proud of their frontier origins, piety and traditional values, and above all their origin story in throwing off monarchical rule—essentially commit democratic suicide and settle, more-or-less willingly, for a half-millennium of dictatorship?

From rising economic inequality, political violence, and governmental dysfunction on through the generally lackadaisical reaction of the Senate to a losing chief-executive candidate’s conspiracy to murder many of them, overthrow the government, and thereby block certifying his defeat, events in ancient Rome have remarkably paralleled some you might recognize more recently

What might signal the end of democracy as we know it?  There is, it turns out, an easy answer at hand.

While there is no precise end date to the Republic, there was a bright-line occurrence generally recognized as the irreversible beginning of the end for participatory government.

there is indeed an event looming—probably before the end of this year— that poses almost precisely the same situation as what provoked Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon: the possible indictment of former president Donald J. Trump.

January 6th. It is no coincidence that insurrectionists that day carried banners urging Trump to “Cross the Rubicon” and declaring “The Die Is Cast”— Caesar’s words upon alighting on the Italian side of the river—or that they will be with him to storm the forces of the Republic and ignite a civil war over Trump’s potential indictment:

Avoiding criminal prosecution is precisely why Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his army and ignited a civil war 21 centuries ago.

Caesar’s ultimate rise had begun with the Cataline conspiracy a decade or so earlier, which, as noted, bears a familial resemblance to Trump’s attempts to overturn the recent election and, both literally and figuratively, decapitate the government.

Senate conservatives, known as the optimates (i.e., “the Best People”),  chose largely to shrug off both the immediate assault on the state and the long-term threat Caesar in particular posed to republicanism.  They soon lived to regret it.

The patricians who ruled Rome, however, had long resisted fundamental economic reforms to benefit the great mass of the population, making only such concessions as necessary when times grew tense. This simply increased the internal tensions within society as the economy globalized, making those with the means richer and richer, hollowing out the middle class, and leaving more and more Romans at the edge of desperation.

Will the Trumpist party similarly ultimately prevail once they cross the Rubicon? I have been predicting for years that something resembling a civil war will arise and something like Trumpists likely will carry the day in the short-term

three of these—Caesar, of course, plus Marcus Licinius Crassus, known as “the richest man in Rome,” and Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey the Great), the undisputedly dominant figure of the era—formed a Triumvirate and became, between them, the sole possessors of real power. The only real question was which one would prevail as the sole autocrat,

Caesar thus hoped to temporize, reach some sort of cohabitation arrangement with Pompey, and eventually prevail in the long term. But his enemies forced his hand with the threat of imminent criminal prosecution.

Caesar paused with his army on the Gaul side of the Rubicon.

His only path was forward. As he crossed, he uttered the famous phrase, “Alea iacta est”: “The die is cast.” The phrase has taken on the meaning of an inevitability, but Caesar meant quite the opposite: that, while he was committed and could not turn back, the outcome was far from inevitable but, rather, a tremendous gamble. At least for him.

The outcome for the Republic itself, however, was indeed at that point already cast as if in iron rather than in tumbling dice. Whatever the outcome of the ensuing war, whether Caesar or Pompey prevailed as dictator, the Republic—a system of self-government in which disputes were settled by politics rather than force, where power was dispersed rather than concentrated—was dead.

The defenders of the Republic folded more quickly than the French Army in World War II and left Rome open to Caesar.

Rome was now—and ever would remain—a dictatorship.

When Trump’s supporters urge him to cross the Rubicon and cast the die—events that become highly likely if he, like Caesar, faces indictment—that is what they contemplate.

What did all this mean for Rome?  And what might it mean for us?

Augustus essentially achieved the settlement of unreconcilable political, social, and economic strains within Republican Rome that even his uncle Julius could not attain. The Augustinian settlement was essentially to substitute peace and prosperity for politics, and to impose the veneer of traditional piety and moral values over the reality of an increasingly heterodox and heterogenous society.

The Augustinian Settlement had something for everyone. Augustus, ultimately the canniest politician, was himself outwardly pious, dutiful, traditional, and respectful of republican forms—thus appealing to conservatives—while he presided over a cultural efflorescence fueled by a liberality in everything except political expression

The concentration of power in the Emperor allowed Rome to mobilize its economic and military resources in a way that the Republic had not, leading to five centuries of expanding geopolitical power and economic opulence the likes of which the world had never seen before.

Politics essentially ended for half a millennium—all government was the will of one man—and so did freedom of political speech and thought. But Romans, at least if they were lucky, were free, safe and wealthy beyond imagination in every other way. It was a trade-off they were more than happy to accept.

By Caesar’s time, however, the populares were no longer so much true “Tribunes of the People” like the Gracchi, as ambitious patricians with an authoritarian bent who recognized anti-elite appeals to the disaffected mob as their pathway to power

But a reactionary philosophy that rejects fact in favor of fantasy, is economically retrograde and socially repugnant to the majority of Americans, can impose its rule for only so long.

Governments as we know them today will be left to fill the role solely of the traditionalist “night watchman state”—maintaining physical order and extracting a “protection” fee in return—much like the ancient Roman state. The demise of liberal democracy, the end of virtually all politics, and perhaps a little performative traditionalism and a destructive civil war, may all be coming, anyway. But, in return, Blue America, like Rome, will be able to carry on pretty much as it wishes, rising to new heights of wealth and global power.

Will highly-educated Americans really be willing to settle for physical security and financial success beyond anything now imaginable, in return for abandoning the American Republic for an enlightened dictatorship?

The Roman experience isn’t very encouraging on that score—but neither are contemporary Democrats.

When the crisis came, it was the optimates (i.e., “the Best People”) who were the last defenders of the Republic.

Why? Because the status quo worked for them, whereas the plebeians had long-since lost faith in “the system.” The supporters of the Republic were the cream of Roman society, those who, as the saying went, “had Greek” (world-class educations), married amongst themselves, and passed these advantages on to their children.

The republican structures they defended—elections, limited and dispersed powers, rule of law—in turn supported the rest of their existing order: an increasingly globalized economy exacerbating distributional divides but benefiting their own class.

The optimates were tone deaf to the needs of those struggling to make a living, while the insurrectionists played to the working class in order to destroy what passed for democracy and impose their personal rule.

Rich, out-of-touch, socially liberal democrats versus rich, demagogic authoritarians masquerading as the party of the working class—not far off from today. The difference is that progressives don’t recognize that they’re the new optimates.

Increasingly-illiberal “progressives” are slowly losing not just the white working class but also Black and Latino workers, those for whom they think they speak.

Meanwhile, time grows short. As aggrieved souls are forced from their dying communities and traditional social structures, into a metropolitan economy that has no place for them, the army on the Rubicon draws closer every day to the city’s walls.

The ideas that seized the imagination of millions had deep and diverse intellectual roots. For example, the mid-20th century thinker Sayyid Qutb mounted a comprehensive critique of the soulless materialism of America, tracing it in part to the separation of church and state — the fatal error, he believed, that divided the spirit from the flesh. In the Muslim world, he argued, body and soul should not be split asunder, but should live united in a resurrected caliphate, governed by Shariah law.

If extremists thought they could mobilize Muslim opinion through acts of clarifying violence, they have failed. Across 11 lands in which Pew surveyed Muslims in 2013, a median of only 13 percent had a favorable opinion of Al Qaeda.

In his 2011 book, “The Missing Martyrs,” Charles Kurzman showed that fewer than one in every 100,000 Muslims had become an Islamist terrorist in the years since 9/11. The vast majority rejected the enterprise.

When political Islamists tried to establish theocratically influenced rule in actual nations, their movement’s reputation was badly hurt. In one of extremism’s most violent, radical manifestations, the Islamic State’s caliphate in Iraq and Syria became a blood-drenched nightmare.

even in more moderate places, political Islam is losing favor. In 2019, The Economist surveyed the data and concluded, “Across the Arab world people are turning against religious political parties and the clerics who helped bring them to power.

Many appear to be giving up on Islam, too.” Ayatollah Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah Yazdi of Iran noticed the trend in his own country: “Iranians are evading religious teachings and turning to secularism.”

Globally, terrorism is down. Deaths from attacks fell by 59 percent between 2014 and 2019. Al Qaeda’s core members haven’t successfully attacked the U.S. homeland since 9/11. In 2017, the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, began a process of marginalizing radical Wahhabism.

“most Islamist terrorism today tends to be local — the Taliban in Afghanistan, Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Shabab in the Horn of Africa. That’s a major reversal from the glory days of Al Qaeda, when its leaders insisted that the focus must be not on the ‘near enemy’ (the local regimes) but rather the ‘far enemy’ (the United States and the West more broadly).”

it’s obvious that even local conflicts can create incredible danger. But the idea of global glory — a fundamental shaking of the world order — that burst on the world stage roughly 40 years ago has been brought low.

We can’t rule out, however, that Xi sincerely believes in the course he’s taking. (Indeed, the two explanations are not mutually exclusive.) It’s easy to discount the CCP’s Marxist pronouncements as a necessary but rhetorical cover for the country’s raging capitalism, but Xi regularly reminds the nation that it is socialist, and praises the successes of China’s version of the ideology.

Xi and his propaganda machine are presenting China’s authoritarian governance as a more appropriate model for the world than democratic capitalism, better able to create a more harmonious, just, and prosperous society, and more capable of achieving great tasks, such as conquering the coronavirus pandemic, than a dysfunctional, decadent, and declining America.

this current movement could follow those of the Communist past, which had “a pattern of first cracking down on whomever is identified as the corrupt, and then cracking down on whomever is identified as the impure, and then widening the lens to a more broad mass movement.”

Xi “may believe the recent wave of crackdowns is necessary to bring about socialism at home to differentiate from capitalism as practiced in the West.”

That raises the ugly prospect of the competition between the U.S. and China becoming more like the Cold War—a battle between ideologically opposed political, economic, and social systems.

That is, if Xi’s new China succeeds. By attacking the wealthy, constraining private enterprise, and strangling education, Xi could discourage entrepreneurship and independent thinking, the magic ingredients for technological breakthroughs and innovative products. Starting a company is already a risky business. Why attempt it if you’ll end up in trouble? By experimenting with Chinese society, Xi is gambling that his bid for social control won’t smother the incentives and initiative that the economy requires to excel.

The West is convinced that political and social freedoms and economic progress are inseparable. Xi and his Communist cadres do not agree, and, in their minds, they have China’s four-decade record of triumphs to prove their point. China’s leader appears to believe that greater top-down control will ensure his country’s continued ascent, not derail it.

In other words, AOC can win in NY-14 but AOC-type candidates are no solution at all to the Democrats’ working class problems in most areas of the country. The grim fact is that as education polarization has played out geographically, Democratic votes are now distributed so inefficiently that the translation of these votes into political power has been severely undercut

As a result, Democrats’ hold on political power is ever on a knife’s edge even when their last election was a good one (as it is today).

Consistent with other recent research, the study finds that:

Working-class voters prefer progressive candidates who focus primarily on bread-and-butter economic issues, and who frame those issues in universal terms.

Candidates whose campaigns focused primarily on universalist policy issues such as jobs, health care, and the economy performed better than those who focused on group-specific policies, such as racial justice or immigration.

In addition, woke messaging decreased the appeal of other candidate characteristics. For example, candidates employing woke messaging who championed either centrist or progressive economic, health care, or civil rights policy priorities were viewed less favorably than their counterparts who championed the same priorities but opted for universalist messaging.

easier said than done given Democrats’ recent evolution away from universalist messaging and toward foregrounding the equity effects of unambiguously universal programs and deferring to group specific concerns around race, gender and sexuality, even where they are clearly unpopular and dubious as policy. The result has a been a shift in the Democratic party “brand” that has created barriers to Democratic party voting among broad swathes of the working class.

The grim prospects for the Democrats in 2022 and the gut-wrenching prospect of losing the White House to Donald Trump (again) in 2024 make clear the stakes.

A Democratic brand reset is clearly in order to stop the bleeding among working class voters, along the lines suggested by the Jacobin study. A good way to start would be to embrace widely-held American views and values that are particularly strong among the multiracial working class.

Equality of opportunity is a fundamental American principle; equality of outcome is not.America is not perfect but it is good to be patriotic and proud of the country.

Discrimination and racism are bad but they are not the cause of all disparities in American society.No one is completely without bias but calling all white people racists who benefit from white privilege and American society a white supremacist society is not right or fair.

America benefits from the presence of immigrants and no immigrant, even if illegal, should be mistreated. But border security is still important, as is an enforceable system that fairly decides who can enter the country.Police misconduct and brutality against people of any race is wrong and we need to reform police conduct and recruitment. But crime is a real problem so more and better policing is needed for public safety. That cannot be provided by “defunding the police”.

There are underlying differences between men and women but discrimination on the basis of gender is wrong.There are basically two genders but people who want to live as a gender different from their biological sex should have that right and not be discriminated against. However, there are issues around child consent to transitioning and participation in women’s sports that are complicated and not settled.

Racial achievement gaps are bad and we should seek to close them. However, they are not due just to racism and standards of high achievement should be maintained for people of all races.Language policing has gone too far; by and large, people should be able to express their views without fear of sanction by employer, school, institution or government. Good faith should be assumed, not bad faith.

Besides positively embracing these views it is necessary for major Democratic officeholders and candidates to actively dissociate themselves and their party from the woke stances that contradict these views and tarnish their brand among working class voters. That entails not just saying that one does not endorse now-familiar strands of cultural leftism but in some well-chosen places directly criticizing by name some who hold extreme views that are associated with the Democrats. That will be of great assistance in getting the message through to average working class voters.

these views are entirely consistent with a very progressive Democratic program in the areas of health care, education, social programs, jobs and the economy that would disproportionately benefit the poor and working class, and therefore blacks and Hispanics.

In that sense, one might respond to the inevitable accusation that a universalist, mainstream approach is tantamount to throwing loyal Democratic constituencies in need of help “under the bus”: who is throwing whom under the bus? Perhaps it is those who stand in the way of a Democratic approach that could plausibly generate the widest possible support that are throwing those who need help the most under the bus.

And this approach, unlike the Democrats’ current default setting, has the potential to make the Democrats and their progressive policies consistent winners

Chinese universities have organized classes to give students a “correct understanding” of the war, often highlighting Russia’s grievances with the West. Party newspapers have run series of commentaries blaming the United States for the conflict.

Mr. Xi has given that tale a more urgent, ominous spin. In doing so, he has embraced Mr. Putin as a fellow authoritarian lined up against Western dominance, demonstrating to the Chinese people that Mr. Xi has a partner in his cause.

“The most powerful weapon possessed by the West is, aside from nuclear weapons, the methods they use in ideological struggle,”

Since the demise of the Soviet Union, it says, “some countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Transcaucasia have become forward positions for the West to contain and meddle in Russia.”

It describes Mr. Putin as cleansing Russia of the political toxins that killed the Soviet Union.

In 2013, propaganda officials under Mr. Xi put out a documentary on the lessons of the collapse of the Soviet Union. This latest take offers an even more conspiratorial interpretation

They regard China and Russia as both menaced by “color revolution,” the party’s phrase for insurrections backed by Western governments

“They actually believe their own narrative about color revolutions and tend to see this whole situation as a U.S.-led color revolution to overthrow Putin,”

“Both domestically and internationally, Xi has been pedaling this dark narrative since he took power,” Mr. Johnson said in an interview. “It allows him to justify his accumulation of power and the changes he’s made by creating this sense of struggle and danger.”

The Biden administration has cast the war as a contest between democracy and authoritarianism. Chinese officials are mounting a counternarrative that American-led domineering is the source of conflict in Ukraine and elsewhere.

The documentary attributes the decline of the Soviet Union to political liberalization, especially what Beijing calls “historical nihilism,” or emphasizing the Communist Party’s mistakes and misdeeds. It accuses historians critical of the Soviet revolution of fabricating estimated death tolls by many millions for Stalin’s purges.

Stalin, it argues, was a modernizing leader whose purges went too far but initially “were something of a necessity” given the threats to Soviet rule. It suggests that rock music and modern fashion were symptoms of the moral rot that later set in.

“They’ve taken only one lesson from all of this, and that is you do not allow any freedom of expression,”

Previous leaders in Moscow — above all Mr. Gorbachev and Nikita S. Khrushchev — are portrayed as dupes, bewitched by the siren song of liberal reform and Western superiority.

Officials overseeing the screenings are often described in official notices as calling for cadres to maintain firm loyalty to Mr. Xi.

“Loving a party and its leader is not a cult of personality,”

Chinese leaders have been debating why the Soviet Union fell apart ever since it dissolved in 1991. More than his predecessors, Mr. Xi has blamed the Soviet Union’s breakup on lack of ideological spine and Western political subversion.

“If you have the worldview that you see in this documentary, you could tell yourself the story that the Russians are facing a real threat from the West,”

Political loyalty has become more crucial to Mr. Xi as Beijing tries to contain Covid outbreaks with stringent lockdowns, and manage a slowing economy. China’s foreign policy is under scrutiny, after some Chinese scholars posted essays criticizing Beijing’s refusal to condemn Mr. Putin.

Universities and colleges have organized indoctrination lectures for students, suggesting that officials are worried that young, educated Chinese may be receptive to the criticisms that Beijing has been too indulgent of Mr. Putin.

“There’s an ‘either we hang together or we hang separately’ attitude that comes into play,” Mr. Johnson, the former C.I.A. analyst, said of Chinese leaders. “If it’s a strong nationalist approach, then who in the party doesn’t want to be a good nationalist?”

The government says it will get the Royal Navy to police the seas and send applicants away, reportedly to be processed in Ghana or Rwanda. None of that bluster survived the briefest encounter with reality.

This week the Tories took credit for the fact that Britain has the fastest annual growth rate in the G7 and that output regained its pre-pandemic level in November, ahead of forecasts. But they have not grappled with Brexit’s probable long-term hit to productivity, of about 4%.

unveiled plenty of big economy-boosting ideas, including levelling up prosperity across Britain, tearing down planning restrictions and making Britain a science superpower.

To get Brexit done, Mr Johnson agreed on a customs border in the Irish Sea and then proceeded to pretend he hadn’t.

He argued that Britain would escape the regulatory straitjacket of the European Union, but he has avoided doing much deregulating—which, however swashbuckling it sounds in a headline, tends in real life to be unpopular.

Mr Johnson has crumbled because he repeatedly failed to tell the truth to Parliament and the nation about Downing Street’s bacchanals.

almost half of Conservative Party members still believe that Mr Johnson’s account of Number 10’s revels is true, compared with just 13% of all voters in a poll published a few days earlier.

the excesses of Partygate have shown that the post-Brexit Tory party has lost touch with reality.

It is a strength of the parliamentary system that MPs can bring about a rapid change of direction. If the Conservative Party is to find its way, it will need a new leader. If reforms are to take root, they will need detailed planning and sustained application.

the need to pass sweeping voting rights legislation favored by Democrats is “equally as consequential” as the debt limit vote,

Republicans used the filibuster to prevent action on major parts of the Democratic agenda.

thwarting legislation that Democrats say would counter efforts in Republican-controlled states to impose new voting restrictions.

he can pass an immigration overhaul, address prison reform and enact more ambitious climate change legislation.

will leave office with half his priorities unmet.

Democrats bring legislation to the floor that would benefit communities of color, and Republicans won’t even engage in a good-faith debate.”

They must act with urgency to get rid of the filibuster.”

likely to give Democratic activists some renewed hope that he will take on the filibuster.

which he said would surpass the Affordable Care Act in its scope and impact on American society.

But Mr. Biden needs the support of all 50 Senate Democrats and nearly every House Democrat.

Napoleon’s legacy is now wrapped up in France’s cultural wars. France grapples with him just as Americans weigh Jefferson and Washington’s contributions to the country with their ownership of slaves. However, history is not black and white. Both sides leave out large swaths of history when making their cases. Macron, ever the politician, attempted to appease them both by visiting the Little Corporeal’s tomb at Les Invalides, while also attacking him in his remarks. The self-proclaimed emperor of Europe has turned into a pawn in France’s 2022 presidential elections. The conqueror of Europe is dividing France today. Selectively remembering history only inflames tensions in the present. Politicians, institutions and the broader society alike need to be more responsible in order for an honest telling of history to be remembered.

spent $7.44 million on lobbying during the third quarter alone, a nearly 25% increase from the same period last year.

But a small cadre of Democratic holdouts appear to be enough to have stopped the proposal in its tracks.

Most were among the top recipients of money from the pharmaceutical industry.

But it’s also “very good at knowing exactly how many votes they need to kill pieces of legislation, and figuring out a way to get those votes.”

Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden also said he was continuing to have conversations on the drug pricing issue

It would allow Medicare to negotiate prices—but only for medications used in outpatient services, and only after the drugs’ patents expire.

It stands in sharp contrast to the more sweeping plan favored by Sen. Bernie Sanders and other Democrats that would allow the government to negotiate in Medicare Part D, which covers far more drugs.

On Thursday, he called the omission of the drug pricing provision in Biden’s framework a “major problem.”

He argued that just because the prescription drug pricing provision has been popular among voters doesn’t make it the right policy.

If Democrats end up passing any proposal, even a modest one, that gives the government the power to negotiate drug prices, it would mark a historic shift.

If Democratic lawmakers end up with no drug pricing proposal in this wide-ranging spending bill, they not only leave millions of Americans struggling to afford their medicines, they also miss the best chance they’ve had in decades.

The severity of the charges is part of a concerted effort by the government to deter further public expressions of discontent, activists said.

“What reigns here is an empire of fear,” said Daniel Triana, a Cuban actor and activist who was briefly detained after the protests. “The repression here doesn’t kill directly, but forces you to choose between prison and exile.”

For six decades, Cuba has lived under a punishing U.S. trade embargo. The Cuban government has long blamed the country’s crumbling economy solely on Washington, deflecting attention from the effects of Havana’s own mismanagement and strict limits on private enterprise.

Cuba exploded into unexpected protest on July 11, when thousands of people, many from the country’s poorest neighborhoods, marched through cities and towns to denounce spiraling inflation, power outages and worsening food and medicine shortages.

“There’s not a single drop of compassion left,

The scale of the government’s reaction shocked longtime opposition figures and Cuba observers.

Cuba’s leaders had always reacted swiftly to any public discontent, jailing protesters and harassing dissidents. But previous crackdowns tended to focus on the relatively small groups of political activists.

After being initially caught by surprise, the government responded with the biggest crackdown in decades, sending military units to crush the protests. More than 1,300 demonstrators were detained,

But on his way back to work, he ran into a crowd that was demanding political change, said Ms. Rodríguez. Driven by a surge of indignation at the unbearable cost of living, Mr. García joined the march, she said.

He was beaten by the police who broke up the rally later that day, but came home to his wife that night. Four days later, he was cornered by the police near his home and taken to jail.

including five teenagers aged 17 and 16, the minimum age of criminal responsibility in Cuba. All are facing penalties of at least five years in prison; Mr. García is facing a 30-year sentence.

She said she only realized he had joined the protest when police came to arrest him several days later. Prosecutors are seeking a 23-year sentence against him for sedition.

“Through him I came to realize the evil that happens in this country,” she said, referring to her jailed son. “He didn’t do anything, apart from go out and ask for freedom.”

He was not part of the old guard that rose to power with the Castros.

In office, he tried streamlining Cuba’s convoluted currency system and introduced reforms to expand the private sector in an attempt to ameliorate a crippling economic crisis caused by the pandemic, sanctions imposed by the Trump administration and dwindling aid from the island’s Socialist ally, Venezuela.

When the protests broke out, he reacted with force.

“They don’t have any intention of changing,” said Salomé García, an activist with Justice J11, the rights group, “of allowing Cuban society any participation in determining its destiny.”

The measure expands job training and other efforts aimed at reducing recidivism, expands early-release programs and modifies sentencing laws.

The law gave the Justice Department and the Bureau of Prisons leeway in interpreting some aspects of its implementation, including whether credits for good behavior and job training accrued before the law was passed could be used to apply for early release.

Critics argued that the proposed rule did not accurately reflect the intent of the lawmakers who had drafted the bill, and that it kept thousands of people behind bars who should be immediately released.

Last May, Senators Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the panel’s top Republican, pressed the Justice Department and the Bureau of Prisons to revise the proposed rule.

They said that it included limitations that were not part of the act, and penalties that were unduly harsh.

In the guidelines announced Thursday, the Justice Department said inmates could apply credits that had been earned as far back as Dec. 21, 2018, when the First Step Act was enacted, subject to the Bureau of Prisons determining eligibility.

Justice Action Network, a bipartisan criminal justice reform group, said that the new guidelines could result in the release of as many people as were freed immediately after passage of First Step Act, which was more than 3,100. The home confinement decision had already affected about 2,800 inmates. There are 157,596 federal inmates, according to the Bureau of Prisons.

Schranz’s supporters contended the mystery man had been a French policeman or soldier who had purposely interfered with the run to ensure Killy’s victory. The French hinted Schranz had made up the story."I was descending and I saw a dark shadow ahead of me," Schranz said at a news conference. "I wanted to avoid it, and I stopped. It was apparently a ski policeman."

The women's luge competition at the Grenoble Games was all but a lock for East Germany. Defending champ and gold-medal favorite Ortrun Enderlein stood in first; teammates Anna-Maria Müller and Angela Knösel were second and fourth. 

“A jury member acted immediately,” International Luge Federation president Bert Isatitsch said, according to UPI. "He went to the starting line and put his hands on the runners. They were warm."Isatitsch said East German officials used "foul language" when notified of the disqualification. “One waved his arms around, shouting and screaming," he told UPI. 

A month before the 1994 Winter Games, a man wielding a metal baton attacked gold- medal favorite Kerrigan during a practice at the U.S. Nationals, paving the way for Harding to win the event and to qualify for the Olympics. Soon afterward, however, it was discovered that Harding’s ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, had planned the attack. With Kerrigan recovered—and Harding allowed to compete despite her not-yet-confirmed connection to the crime—the women’s figure skating competition became the hottest event at the Olympics. TV ratings soared.

Ice dancing got a dose of spy games in Nagano, Japan, when a Canadian judge secretly taped a conversation with another judge about picking winners before the competition.After her complaints to officials had been brushed aside, Jean Senft recorded Ukrainian judge Yuri Balkov discussing skater placements as proof of her accusations. During the call, Balkov said he would vote for Canadians if Senft voted for a Ukrainian pair."The athletes are not competing on a fair playing field," Senft later told CBC News. "This isn't sport. Somebody had to get proof."

were made. (Ice dancing was not removed from Olympic competition.) "If [cheating] happens at the world championships in some small town, nobody notices," Pound said, according to The New York Times. "But in the Olympics, hundreds of millions of people are watching."

The Russian team of Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze edged Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier for the gold medal. But Marie-Reine Le Gougne, a French judge, came forward, saying she was pressured by the French ice sports federation to put the Russians first. “I knew very well who would vote in favor of the Russians and who would vote in favor of the Canadians," she told Reuters. "I was almost certain that I was the one who would award the Olympic title. What I feared would happen really did.”

Le Gougne was suspended from judging for three years and banned from the 2006 Winter Games. The scandal led to sweeping judging reforms in the sport. 

One of the hostages was released shortly after 5 p.m. and FBI crisis negotiators continued to communicate with the man in the synagogue Saturday night.

John Floyd, board chair of CAIR Houston and longtime legal counsel for Siddiqui’s brother, said in a statement that his client is not responsible for the situation, is not near Dallas-Fort Worth and that hostage taker has nothing to do with Siddiqui.

The hostages, all of whom were adults, were not physically harmed and did not require medical attention, officials said. “Prayers answered. All hostages are out alive and safe,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a tweet.

Three senior law enforcement officials briefed on the situation said the man told authorities he wanted the release of Aafia Siddiqui from federal prison. They also said the hostage taker had the rabbi in Colleyville call a rabbi in New York City to say he was being held hostage and that the man wanted his “sister” Siddiqui freed.

New York City Police Department counter-terrorism teams were seen Saturday at the synagogue connected to the New York rabbi who received the call.

A spokesman for Britain's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said in a statement Sunday: “We are aware of the death of a British man in Texas and are in contact with the local authorities.” He did not say whether he was referring to suspect.

“We want the assailant to know that his actions are wicked and directly undermine those of us who are seeking justice for Dr. Aafia,” Floyd said in a statement.

It was unclear how many people were in the synagogue when police received the first disturbance call Saturday morning. On a Facebook livestream of the congregation’s Shabbat morning service, a man could be heard speaking, at times cursing and sounding angry.

Miller, the Colleyville police chief, said officials began receiving reports that a “gunman” had entered the synagogue and had taken four hostages. Local authorities responded and evacuated nearby homes.

DeSarno, the FBI special agent in charge, said hostage negotiators had contact for long periods of time with the man, and credited their work, as well as that of the nearly 200 state, federal and local law enforcement officers, with the resolution.

Virginia, descended on Colleyville as the situation unfolded. Miller said Saturday night that the rabbi of the congregation is a close friend and that the situation was very personal. He added that he saw hope in how the community came together during the crisis.

Late Saturday night, Biden thanked those who worked to bring the four hostages home to their families.

Congregation Beth Israel, affiliated with Judaism's Reform movement, began in 1998 as a chavurah or a small group of Jewish people who gather for prayer services, according to its website. The group officially established a synagogue in Colleyville in July 1999, and began services at its current location in 2005.

The principle of the equality of taxation was maintained, all citizens were liable. This reflected a confirmation of the abolition of feudalism and an expressed belief in “career open to talent”. There was to be both formal legal equality and equality of opportunities, holding office would depend on ability, loyalty and experience, not accident of birth.

Analysis of the massive votes in favour had undermined their credibility. The organiser of the 1800 plebiscite, Napoleon’s brother, perhaps worried at the Jacobin sympathies of many soldiers, simply added 500,000 votes to the “yes” column for the army. What is more, the system of voting was open rather than by secret ballot and the question in the plebiscite only sought approval for a decision that had already been taken.

In the government Napoleon agreed with Sieyes concept, there should be authority from above and trust from below, of the general nature of the Constitution but instead of 3 Consuls as Sieyes thought Napoleon wanted political authority in his own hand. At the end he accepted maintaining the government with 3 consuls but he named himself the First Consul and ordered that the other two would have no independent executive authority. This showed how Napoleon wanted power. He reinforced his power when in the 2 Constitution he was made the First Consul for life and in the 3 Constitution named himself Emperor. Moreover, Napoleon established effective control over the legislative process. He established a similar control over the executive. Under the Constitution he could appoint the second and third consuls, government ministers, the prefects of the departments of France and the mayor of larger communes. The first three were appointed from the national list and the last from the communal lists. At the centre there was no cabinet system, individual ministers reported directly to Napoleon. All effective decision making was concentrated in his hands, no minister or prefect, for instance, could take action unless sure that it was authorised by Napoleon. This was top-down government, centralised and authoritarian. Even at the local level, holders of government posts were appointed from above, not elected from below. Napoleon’s control of the government system was more absolute than that of the monarchy that ruled in France before 1789.

In terms of liberty, it could be argued that Napoleon fundamentally violated revolutionary principles. Whilst he allowed religious freedom by tolerating all religions, as is expressed in the Organic Articles, the hierarchies of the various churches were under his control. What is more, there was no freedom of speech. Censorship was a key element of Napoleonic rule of France, and those suspected of sedition could be tried and punished outside the normal framework of the law. Nor was there freedom of movement for workers compelled to carry their livret. It also affected Napoleon’s view about the subordinate position of women and children. Whilst a man could imprison an adulterous wife or disobedient child, a married woman had few property rights and could only sue for divorce if a husband insisted on his mistress sharing the family home.

Secondary education was largely restricted to the middle classes and sons of officers in the army. In the 37 schools that were found in France the curriculum was closed supervised. Free thinking was discouraged. Schools taught a utilitarian curriculum based around France, mathematics, history, geography and science and inculcated both military values and loyalty to the regime. Alongside this state system, independent and Catholic schools continued to flourish, despite high fees. In order to bring such schools under closer government supervision, in 1806 Napoleon set up the Imperial University, which was in some respects a kind of nineteenth-century Ofsted, to oversee the curriculum and inspect schools.

For the past three decades, most countries have acted with one lodestar in mind: economic growth. They have embraced trade, technology and domestic reforms, all to produce more growth.

Those kinds of choices are possible in an atmosphere in which one does not have to worry that much about the core issue of national security. But today, countries around the world that took security for granted — from Canada to Germany to Japan — are thinking anew about their defense postures and forces.

Countries are searching for greater national security in their supply chains and economies more broadly, a trend that began some years ago

From Brexit to “Buy American,” the policies being adopted by many of the most fervently free-market countries are animated more by populist nationalism than market economics.

We may be seeing the reversal of 30 years of globalization.

efficiency, will surely have the effect of raising prices everywhere.

inflation could become a more permanent feature of the new world even if the supply shocks caused by the war are temporary.

One of the defining features of the new era is that it is post-American. By that I mean that the Pax Americana of the past three decades is over.

The United States remains the world’s leading power, still stronger than all the rest by far. It also benefits from some of the features of this new age. The United States is the world’s leading producer of hydrocarbons.

Geopolitically, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has put Washington’s chief competitor, China, in an awkward position, forcing Beijing to defend Russia’s actions and putting it at odds with the European Union, with which it has tried hard to have close ties.

The greatest strategic opportunity lies with Europe, which could use this challenge to stop being the passive international actor it has been for decades.

If Europe becomes a strategic player on the world stage, that could be the biggest geopolitical shift to emerge from this war. A United States joined by a focused and unified Europe would be a super-alliance in support of liberal values.

But for the West to become newly united and powerful, there is one essential condition: It must succeed in Ukraine. That is why the urgent necessity of the moment is to do what it takes — bearing costs and risks — to ensure that Putin does not prevail.

It means scrapping rules about weapons exports, a huge boost in defence spending and an end to Russian energy imports. A Russian gas pipeline to Germany called Nord Stream 2 has already been suspended.

"For the foreseeable future, co-operation with Russia will not occur. It will be more about containment and deterrence and, if needed, defence against Russia," Mr Schmid tells me.

Unexpectedly hawkish words for a party that until seven weeks ago believed Germany's historical guilt and moral duty to make up for Nazi crimes meant peace with Russia at all costs.

Even Germany's view of its own history is changing.

Until the invasion mainstream opinion was that German reunification was thanks to dialogue with Moscow by another SPD chancellor, Willy Brandt. But now the debate has shifted, with reminders that Mr Brandt's diplomacy was backed up by strong deterrence, including a West German defence budget of 3% of GDP.

The issue of German historical war guilt has also become more nuanced. Before the invasion the government argued against weapon deliveries to Ukraine because of Nazi crimes against Russia.

"Under Putin, official Russian policy tried to monopolise the memory of the Second World War for the bilateral German-Russian relationship," explains Mr Schmid. This blinded parts of German society to the suffering of Ukrainians during he war, he adds.

Now there is a greater awareness of Ukraine's traumas under the Nazis.

Berlin's rhetoric has shifted dramatically. But some ask whether actions are following fast enough. Certainly warm words of support are not enough for Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky. He has criticised Germany's continued reliance on Russian oil and gas.

In a BBC interview last week, Mr Zelensky called payments for Russian energy "blood money". And a planned visit to Kyiv by President Steinmeier was cancelled at the last minute.

certainly German politicians and commentators interpret the failed visit as a sign of Ukraine's distrust in the German president, who as foreign minister under Angela Merkel spent years trying to achieve peace by engaging with Russia.

"Our partners look at us, and say: OK, you do a Zeitenwende but what are you practically doing?" she says. "On sanctions we are timid and on weapons delivery, we are reluctant. So, rightly, they wonder what that Zeitenwende is about, and given that Germany is a big economic, military, political power in the middle of Europe, whatever we do makes a difference, in good ways and bad."

"This is a dilemma that Germany has created itself," argues political scientist Liana Fix, head of the Körber Foundation. "That's obviously difficult to accept for other countries, who are willing to go ahead with an embargo and have done their homework on energy diversification."

Ironically, it's a Green Party politician, Economy Minister Robert Habeck, from a party that for years has been calling for energy independence from Russia, who is having to solve this dilemma.

On military support for Ukraine, Berlin says it is prepared to send whatever weapons Kyiv needs. But there are allegations that some ministries are getting tied up in bureaucracy. Here, too, it is a Green politician, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who is pushing the governing coalition to go faster. She has called for heavy weaponry, such as tanks or fighter jets, for Ukraine.

Olaf Scholz has to keep his party onside, govern in a three-way coalition and overturn Germany's guilt-laden pacifist identity overnight.

But even his allies say the chancellor should at least communicate better what's going on

Meanwhile, it feels like many individual Germans are going through their own Zeitenwende. Ariane Bemmer, a columnist for the Tagesspiegel newspaper, has written about reassessing her own feelings towards Russia. "I definitely got it wrong, it's like losing a friend,"

Like many in the former West Germany in the 1980s, she was wary of US-style cutthroat capitalism. She bought a book called Ami Go Home - she never read it, but felt it would look good on her bookshelf - and was intrigued by the reforms in Russia.

"In America you had Ronald Reagan as a president, which was a shock for us. We thought: what will he do, this crazy actor with his cowboy boots? Will he set the world on fire? Russia was a place where all the good changes were, perestroika, freedom, wind of change," she says.

Few in Germany think that now. In one recent poll, 55% of Germans said Berlin should send heavy weapons, such as tanks and fighter jets, to Ukraine to fight against Russia.

For Ariane, and many other Germans, any lingering Russophile romanticism vanished for good the day Putin's tanks rolled over Ukraine's border.

Several who switched their vote between 2019 and now objected to measures they said did not specifically address strengthening NATO to help Ukraine. Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) found it particularly problematic that the resolution instructed NATO to be involved when a country has “internal threats from proponents on illiberalism,” which he says could be interpreted as conservatism.

Similarly, from Rep. Robert B. Aderholt (R-Ala.): “I am wholeheartedly, unequivocally, without reservation, supportive on NATO.”

Aderholt said he worried that the resolution “had some language in that I thought went on the political side. And I don’t want to see NATO go political. I want to see NATO stand up for, you know, what’s going on in Ukraine — stand up for Ukraine against Russia.”

Another sign of the party’s isolationist wing emerged Thursday, as the House passed an update to a World War II-era military bill creating a lend-lease program intended to make it easier for the United States to supply Ukraine with military aid. Only 10 lawmakers — all Republicans — voted against the measure.

For some foreign policy experts and international allies, the mere fact that nearly one-third of the Republican conference voted against a bill that fundamentally seeks to support both NATO and Ukraine highlights a marked foreign policy evolution in the Republican Party.

“We now are really seeing the true impact of deep, deep political polarization, where it is better to harm the other side than do what’s right for the country,” said Heather Conley, president of the German Marshall Fund. “This deep domestic polarization has now crept into foreign and security policy. There has always been strong bipartisan support for NATO, but everything now has become polarized and can be weaponized against the other side, even if it supports U.S. national security interests.”

The answer, however, is existential in Europe, where the fallout from the war in Ukraine has showcased the importance of the United States and the limits of aspirations for European autonomy on matters of technology and defense, according to lawmakers and diplomats.

Flash points are already coming into view. In 2020, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg started a working group aimed at strengthening NATO. The group’s final product, “NATO 2030: United for a New Era,” included proposals, such as the creation of a Center for Democratic Resilience, that have been scorned by pro-Trump Republicans, including many of the 63 Republicans who recently voted against the House resolution affirming support for NATO.

A diplomat from a Baltic state, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid alienating U.S. partners, called the vote a “Trump effect.”

But for some, the changes are not enough. Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), who voted against the recent resolution, said he objected not to NATO but to its future direction, which in his view places too large a burden on the United States and involves too much promotion of specific values.

Disagreements have broken out among member nations over the erosion of democracy within the alliance, with criticism directed in particular at Turkey, Hungary and Poland. A Central European diplomat said objections to the democracy center reflect admiration for the likes of Hungary’s Viktor Orban in other Western nations.

De Maizière echoed that view, saying his primary concern about upcoming U.S. elections was that “right-wing Republicans are drifting away from this common path of Western values.”

Radoslaw Sikorski, a Polish member of the European Parliament who chairs the body’s delegation for relations with the United States, said Ukraine “is the second big issue on which Republicans and Democrats agree, after China.”

“Ukraine has given new credibility to the Atlanticist wing of the Republican Party, which I find encouraging,” said Sikorski, a member of his country’s centrist Civic Platform party and a prominent critic of the ruling, right-wing Law and Justice party. “There seems to be competition in being pro-Ukrainian and wanting to stop Putin.”

“We’re certainly going to have a lot of these talks with my colleagues, particularly next cycle, if there’s any assault on NATO that is launched,” Fitzpatrick said. “I will tell you that NATO needs to be reformed significantly. But it is absolutely critical that it be maintained because without NATO, dictators are going to, it’s going to be the Wild West internationally.”

Tommy Vietor, a National Security Council spokesman under Democratic President Barack Obama, said: “It’s a pretty shocking turn.”

“There’s an appropriate and important conversation to be had about the history of NATO expansion and whether it was well-thought-through,” said Vietor, now a co-host of “Pod Save America.” “But you didn’t see people in either party really fundamentally questioning the value of the alliance.