Joshua Roberts/Reuters

President Trump attends an event at the White House in Washington on Aug. 3. The president's achievements in his early months in office have been thwarted by a contentious relationship with Congress.

America’s senators scattered to the winds for their summer recess on Thursday, leaving behind a big unfinished agenda and a peeved president.

The chief executive has lambasted lawmakers for failing to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, for their investigations into Russia and his campaign, for their arcane voting rules, and for passing sanctions legislation against Russia.

He took a parting shot in a tweet Thursday morning, saying “You can thank Congress” for a US-Russia relationship that is at an “all-time & very dangerous low.”

President Trump may think his problem is with members of Congress and the way they run things. In one sense, the decisions and behaviors of individuals in Washington – not least, himself – account for his threadbare legislative accomplishments, despite Republican control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

But in the broadest sense, the resistance he's encountering is due to America’s system of governance. The story of his early presidency might easily be called “Donald Trump meets the Founding Fathers,” as a beginner politician runs up against the checks and balances that are designed to prevent tyranny and forge consensus.

Trump and his team are “surprised at the intransigence and resistance they’re meeting, when in fact, every other president has met them,” says Don Ritchie, former Senate historian. This outsider White House “didn’t anticipate these things because they hadn’t experienced these things,” as former governors or legislators, like other presidents and senior White House officials.

During the honeymoon phase of a new administration, presidents can make significant headway. Barack Obama and George W. Bush scored some major legislative wins, when their parties, too, controlled both the House and Senate.

By the first August recess, a Democratic Congress had passed President Obama’s big economic stimulus package, confirmed a Supreme Court justice, and was deep into the policy weeds of health care, which would become law early the next year. In his first year, President Bush got a $1.35 trillion tax cut and Congress passed landmark education reform with bipartisan support.

But Trump's marriage with the GOP has been rocky from the start.

He has been able to appoint a Supreme Court justice – a biggie – and roll back 14 Obama-era regulations, which Republicans say has helped to fuel the stock market to a record high. Still repeal-and-replace failed, the president’s budget is being strongly resisted by his own party, the border wall is a disputed budget line, tax reform is a set of talking points, and Democrats have panned his infrastructure plan.

Resistance from Congress is common

It’s not uncommon for presidents to meet resistance in Congress even when their party is in control. Democrats Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, and Jimmy Carter all faced pushback, even though they had Democratic majorities.

Party members rebelled against FDR’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court. They spurned Truman on his domestic agenda, though they agreed with him on key foreign policy issues. President Carter was too conservative for many Democrats – witness Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy’s decision to challenge him in the 1980 primary.

The common notion is that it’s presidents versus the opposition party in Congress, “but it’s really presidents versus Congress as an institution,” says Mr. Ritchie, the former Senate historian, recalling President Kennedy’s observation that he didn’t realize how powerful Congress was until he was no longer just one of its 535 members.

Trump saw that in a very tangible way when Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona became the unexpected third Republican to vote down, and thus kill, the Republican effort to pass a “skinny” repeal of the Affordable Care Act in the wee hours of July 28. Senator McCain also strongly supported punishing sanctions against Russia for attempting to influence US elections last year and for its military actions overseas – as did most members of Congress.

“We are an important check on the powers of the executive,” Senator McCain said in a speech before the full Senate earlier last week. “Whether or not we are of the same party, we are not the president’s subordinates, we are his equal,” the senator emphasized, as he urged a return to the “regular order” of hearings and the painstaking business of consensus-building between the parties.

Learning curve with the judicial branch, too

That flexing of congressional muscle by Republicans – even against their own president – was on display again this week as two Senate bipartisan bills were introduced to protect against a possible firing of independent counsel Robert Mueller by the president. Trump calls the investigation by the counsel into possible collusion between members of his campaign and Russia a “witch hunt.”

Firing the independent counsel would create a constitutional crisis by undermining the rule of law, lawmakers of both parties say.

Republicans and Democrats have circled the wagons around Mr. Mueller and around the embattled attorney general, former Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) of Alabama. Senator Sessions has been one of the president’s most loyal supporters, now scorned by Trump for having recused himself from the Russia investigation.

Early on in his administration, Trump complained bitterly about the judicial branch. He chastised judges and lower-court rulings that went against his immigration travel ban, though he exulted when the Supreme Court partially upheld the ban in June.

As Ritchie points out, while just about everything in this young presidency is unprecedented, the pushback from the legislative and judicial branches is not.

“I can’t name a single president who has not been frustrated by the courts at some time,” he says, pointing out that it is usually only after a crisis – the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, 9/11 – that the legislative, judicial, and executive branches all come together.

Opportunities for civics lessons

While the resistance from the other parts of government might frustrate the president, many Americans have a newfound appreciation for it.

“Thank God we have three branches of government,” said Stephen Benjamin, the Democratic mayor of Columbia, S.C., at a Monitor breakfast on Wednesday. Mr. Benjamin was part of a delegation from the nonpartisan US Conference of Mayors, which visited Washington this week to meet with legislators about the president’s proposed budget cuts, among other things.

“It’s great to have strong leadership and outspoken leadership in the White House,” said John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Ariz., in an interview after the breakfast. But he also hearkened back approvingly to McCain’s speech of last week.

“Senator McCain gave us a great civics lesson … that the Senate and the Congress is not subservient to the president. They are the president’s equal.”

Yuri Gripas/Reuters

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (r.) talks to the media next to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov before their meeting at the State Department in Washington on May 10.

President Trump came into office hoping to launch a warming in US-Russia relations. Instead, over the last six months, things have gone from cool to icy cold.

If in January Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stated that the United States and Russia “are not likely ever to be friends,” Congress this month approved veto-proof sanctions legislation that baldly labels Russia America’s “adversary.”

Relations, Mr. Trump says, have deteriorated to where they are now “dangerous.”

It’s at this rock-bottom point in relations that Mr. Tillerson will meet with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, in Manila this weekend to gauge the prospects of maintaining some level of cooperation in areas of mutual interest. They include Syria, counterterrorism, avoiding a military confrontation in the Baltic Sea, and space.

But even though the two chief diplomats will meet in tropical Manila, heavy coats may be in order to ward off the chill of the deep freeze relations are in – and likely to stay in indefinitely, analysts of US-Russia relations say.

“We are looking at a serious rift in US-Russia relations [where] we have gone back to a tit-for-tat mode of bilateral interaction where each side feels compelled to retaliate for perceived or actual attacks from the other,” says Matthew Rojansky, director of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute for US-Russia studies in Washington.

Nevertheless, there is precedent for fruitful engagement between Washington and Moscow on bilateral and multilateral matters even in times of such stress, say some analysts, pointing to the cold war era that at times in recent months has seemed not so distant.

Late last month Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a steep reduction in US Embassy staff in Moscow and the seizure of two small US diplomatic properties shortly after Congress approved the new US economic sanctions bill. The measures, which Trump reluctantly signed into law Wednesday, aim to punish Russia for its belligerent actions against US allies and partners in Central and Eastern Europe, and for what US intelligence agencies assert was Russian interference in last year’s presidential election.

“It’s a mess,” Mr. Rojansky adds, “and the president is right to say that it is dangerous – the risk of further escalation, even direct military confrontation, is more acute than it has been in a long time.”

Perhaps snuffed out for good, others say, is the aspiration of anchoring Russia in the community of Western nations promoting values and global economic norms constructed by the US-led international community.

Areas of possible cooperation

In this environment, the two countries are likely to revert to where relations were during the cold war, when cooperation was limited to a few areas of interest to both sides, such as arms control, some experts say.

“The focus now will have to be on how to prevent an adversarial relationship from turning into an outright confrontation,” says Nikolas Gvosdev, a professor of national security studies specializing in Russia at the US Naval War College in Newport, R.I. “And to do that, we’ll have to return to some cold war models to figure out how adversarial countries can still work together where they have common interests.”

US officials will have to dust off the “skill sets” that diplomats honed in the 1980s for dealing with what was then the Soviet Union, Dr. Gvosdev says. “It’s a mindset that accepts that outcomes aren’t going to be optimal, so you begin to disaggregate problems into much smaller steps.”

Areas of potential cooperation are likely to be reduced to a very few, perhaps only Syria and space, Gvosdev says. Both countries have an interest in avoiding confrontation in Syria and in maintaining the different cease-fires that are more or less holding there, he says, while both countries also benefit from the cooperative relationship developed around the International Space Station and other space exploits.

Going a bit farther, Mr. Rojansky says there are areas where the two will “have to cooperate” – for example with “military to military dialogue” to “limit the possibility of unintended escalation of conventional or even nuclear conflict” – and then areas “where we might make progress if our interests align.” Those could potentially include counterterrorism and reining in North Korea, he says.

But others caution that with the US and Russia locked in adversarial stances toward each other – and focused when they are communicating on avoiding unintended confrontations – the space for cooperation on other issues is likely to remain limited.

“Lavrov is going to arrive at this meeting [with Tillerson] with a very long laundry list of Russia’s complaints about [US] actions, and they’ll spend some time going through the list,” says Paul Stronski, a Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “Once that’s over I’m sure they’ll talk about the Middle East and North Korea, but there aren’t going to be any breakthroughs.”

US public is cool, too

With the two countries’ top diplomats limited to going over grievances, Dr. Stronksi adds, “the relationship will continue to play along, but without much chance of getting better any time soon.”

Indeed any progress Tillerson and Lavrov are able to eke out is likely to be set back by looming bumps in the path ahead.

The Pentagon is expected to announce in the coming weeks its recommendations on providing heavy weaponry to Ukraine. “That’s the next crisis,” Gvosdev says. He adds that the campaign leading up to Russia’s presidential election next March is likely to stoke anti-American sentiments that will further dampen the prospects for a bilateral defrost.

Not that the US public is exactly clamoring for a US-Russia repair operation – on the contrary. In a new survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, nearly 8 of 10 Americans polled said they support either maintaining or increasing sanctions against Russia.

Moreover, the council president, Ivo Daalder, a former US ambassador to NATO, notes that a majority of Americans – 53 percent – now think the US should work to limit Russia’s international influence, as opposed to 43 percent who favor bilateral cooperation.

That’s a reversal from last year’ survey, Mr. Daalder underlines, when 58 percent favored cooperation and 39 percent wanted the US to work to contain Russia.

All of these different forces are likely to accelerate the rift that has been building between the US and Russia, and more broadly between the West and Russia, since the rise of Mr. Putin and the collision between his revanchist vision of a reconstituted greater Russia and NATO’s eastward expansion.

'World without the West'

The coming year is likely to bear witness to redoubled Russian efforts to not just prosper under US financial sanctions, Gvosdev says, but to build an alternative to the US-based international system that has put it in a straitjacket.

“The Russians are going to test their ability to route around the United States,” Gvosdev says. That will start with an effort to raise capital in international markets that do not touch US financial institutions. But the end goal will be fashioning “a world without the West,” he adds.

That effort, broadly supported by the Chinese, will further buttress the alignment of the world’s two major non-Western powers, says Stronski, who served as director for Russia and Central Asia in President Barack Obama’s National Security Council.

“There are a lot if things bringing the Russians and Chinese together, but underneath it all is this common desire to challenge the global order that was constructed by the West under US leadership,” he says, “and designed to make the West and Western values prosper.”

Yet while both powers may be envisioning a global alternative to the West, Stronski says it is Putin’s Russia that is being the most aggressive about it – and it’s that aggressive challenging that he says will put off any improvement in US-Russia relations.

And if the recent past is any indication, he adds, the downward spiral may not be over. “When I was at the White House,” Stronski says, “I was always saying that right when I didn’t think things could get worse between us, they always did.”

Andy Wong/ AP

Chinese paramilitary policemen march outside the Great Hall of the People after attending a ceremony to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army in Beijing on Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2017.

The military parade China held on Sunday to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army was an impressive show of force. More than 12,000 troops marched at the remote Zhurihe training base in Inner Mongolia, about 250 miles north of Beijing, as President Xi Jinping looked on from an open-top jeep.

On display were 600 pieces of military hardware and more than 100 aircraft, nearly half of which were making their public debut, according to the Defense Ministry. They included new and improved intercontinental ballistic missiles, surface-to-air missiles, stealth fighters, and drones specifically designed to target radar systems.

Two days later, China formally opened its first overseas military base in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti.

The message sent by these two high-profile events was clear: as China seeks to expand its global clout and position itself as an international leader, it wants to have the military to match. Years of double-digit percentage increases in the defense budget have led China to become the world's second-largest military spender after the United States. 

“The duty of the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] is to protect China’s national interests,” says Zhao Gancheng, a senior fellow at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies. “If China’s national interests expand to other parts of the world, its military ability will extend to those areas as well.”

A modern fighting force

The opening of the base in Djibouti is only the latest in a series of military milestones China has reached this year. In April, it launched its first domestically built aircraft carrier from the northeast port of Dalian. Then, in July, Chinese warships held drills with the Russian Navy in the Baltic Sea, more than 6,000 miles from their home ports – and in NATO’s backyard. The drills were China’s first war games in those waters.

China's military hasn't always been so well-equipped and far-flung. Formed in 1927, the PLA originally fought against China’s then-ruling Kuomintang, or Nationalists. After the PLA chased the Nationalists across the Taiwan Strait in 1949, it gained the reputation of being a bloated, poorly trained fighting force.

The modernization of China’s military has accelerated in recent years under Mr. Xi. As chairman of the Central Military Commission, Xi has implemented sweeping reforms aimed at transforming the PLA into a modern fighting force, including a reduction of 300,000 troops and a far-reaching crackdown on corruption. On Sunday, Xi said it was important for China to have a strong military “now more than any other time in history.” 

“No one should expect us to swallow bitter fruit that is harmful to our sovereignty, security, or development interests,” he added on Tuesday, at a ceremony to mark the anniversary in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People. “The Chinese people love peace. We will never seek aggression or expansion, but we have the confidence to defeat all invasions.”

Guarding land and influence

With a standing military of 2.3 million members – the largest in the world – China has plenty of reasons to feel confident. But as the country’s global ambitions grow, so too does the risk of military conflict.

The South China Sea has long been a source of tension between China and its neighbors, as well as the United States. And now the country is bogged down in an armed standoff with India over a sliver of land in the Himalayas.

How China manages these disputes could have far-reaching implications for regional security, especially as it angles to supplant the US as the predominant military power in Asia. In his speech on Tuesday, Xi issued a tough line on national sovereignty, saying China will never permit the loss of “any piece” of its land to outsiders.

“China doesn’t want to have gunboat diplomacy used against it,” says Carlyle Thayer, an emeritus professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy at the University of New South Wales in Canberra. “It certainly has ambitions to deploy farther to better protect itself and its national interests.”

China’s ambitious “One Belt, One Road” initiative is the largest example of its growing influence beyond its own borders – and its need for an expanded global military presence. Through the initiative, Beijing has pledged $900 billion for the construction of infrastructure projects across Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

But building roads, dams, and ports in many of these regions – some of the most unstable in the world – comes with serious challenges. Take Pakistan, for example, where China plans to spend $57 billion on joint infrastructure and industrial projects. Militants have killed more than 40 Pakistani workers on and around project sites since 2014. As China’s military capabilities improve, how the country uses them to protect its economic interests in places like Pakistan remains to be seen.  

A long road ahead

Chinese officials say the new base in Djibouti – which they officially describe as a logistics facility – will enable China to better support anti-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia and peacekeeping operations across Africa. China has 2,400 troops serving as United Nations peacekeepers on the continent.

American military analysts say the base is a major strategic development for Beijing’s growing global ambitions and a possible threat to the longstanding dominance of the US military in Africa and the Middle East. Camp Lemonnier, America’s only permanent military installation in Africa, is just a few miles away.

Experts like Dr. Thayer, however, say that China has a long way to go before it catches up to the US on military grounds. The US spends more money on defense than the next seven countries combined – about $600 billion in 2016 alone. China has two aircraft carriers; the US has 10, with two more under construction.

Perhaps most importantly, the US has a large network of alliances that helps it maintain hundreds of bases with tens of thousands of troops in dozens of countries around the world. 

“For China, there is no alliance system like the US has,” Thayer says. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional security group, is likely the closest thing.

“Where would China be able to put 38,000 troops in the world and be welcomed?” Thayer asks, a reference to the number of American troops stationed in South Korea. “I can’t see that happening for decades.”

Xie Yujuan contributed reporting.

Jim Mone/AP

A woman and child ride the escalator at a Sears store in St. Paul, Minn., in March. Sears is one of many US retailers that has been closing stores and cutting jobs as online commerce grows.

Situated just off Interstate 70 in Ohio’s Belmont County, between Pittsburgh and Columbus, the Ohio Valley Mall is well positioned for attracting drive-by shoppers and motorists in need of a pit stop. “We have a lot of people traveling through,” says Mark Thomas, the president of the county’s board of commissioners.

That geographical advantage hasn’t spared it from a wave of store closures, however. This year, Ohio Valley Mall has lost K-Mart, an Elder-Beerman department store, appliance dealer HHGregg, and MC Sports, a sporting goods chain that declared bankruptcy in February.

There’s some good news. The mall so far has kept both its Macy’s and its Sears, despite those two chains shuttering hundreds of stores nationwide. Replacements, including a Marshalls and a Levin Furniture, are moving in. Still, as a result, several dozen jobs in the suburban county have disappeared in the space of a few months. “We were hit pretty hard in the spring,” says Mike Schlanz, the director of Ohio Means Jobs, an occupational training and placement program in Belmont County. But he says that some of the surrounding areas, without highway access, have fared even worse.

A similar phenomenon is happening all across the country. An estimated 5,300 retail locations have closed through June 20, according to one estimate – nearly triple the rate from a year ago. That makes 2017 poised to surpass the number of closings in 2008, in the depth of the Great Recession.

Yet it’s the decline of industries like coal and manufacturing that get the big attention, especially from politicians. That’s surprising, since the closings mean that retail, which employs about 10 percent of all working Americans, is shedding jobs at a rate that dwarfs either of those. The retail sector shed 6,100 positions in June this year alone, according to the Labor Department. Since 2001, employment at department stores like Sears and JCPenney has declined 46 percent. An estimated 89,000 employees in “general merchandise” stores were laid off between October 2016 and April 2017 – more than the entire workforce of the US coal industry.

The plight of a laid-off sales clerk at Old Navy simply hasn’t resonated in quite the same way as an out-of-work coal miner or factory worker. The reasons offer some cause for hope that the economy is simply shifting in a new direction, and that many retail jobs will be replaced with other, possibly better ones. The overall job market, for instance, looks healthy and added a robust 209,000 jobs in July, according to a new Labor Department report on Aug. 4.

But there’s also reason to worry that the decline puts the most vulnerable members of the workforce at the most risk.

“I think retail has for a long time been the white noise of the economy,” says Mark Muro, the director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings. “It’s taken for granted. While they may not be glamorous, these jobs provide livelihoods for millions of people.”

A national, and local, problem

One of the unique features of retail’s jobletting is how difficult it is to see up close. It’s not a gush, like when a factory closes and puts hundreds out of work, but a slow trickle. Belmont County’s numbers illustrate the point: 11 people were laid off when HHGregg closed; 70 at K-Mart; 45 at Elder-Beerman. Mr. Thomas that says in eastern Ohio, a region that has been roiled by the collapse of coal mining and especially the steel industry, retail is “a concern, yes.” But “the coal jobs that have been lost here, steel, they’re living-wage jobs with benefits. Retail jobs more often than not are not on that level. They’re second and or supplemental jobs for some people, and unfortunately don’t come with benefits. I think that’s why you don’t see it as much discussed vis-à-vis the others.”

Indeed, service occupations, including retail, are the nation’s largest employers of low-wage workers. According to the Aspen Institute, about one-third of retail workers are part-time, and workers in that sector are about twice as likely as the workforce overall to be part-time involuntarily (they would rather be working full-time). Service jobs in clothing and shoe stores, too, are occupied primarily by women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and have higher percentages of black women than other occupations.

Optimists point out that retail may be in decline, but several other industries that employ low-wage, entry-level workers are booming, including restaurants, hotels, and the health-care field. As e-commerce continues to eat a larger and larger share of retail profits, Amazon is on a hiring spree. The company vowed in January to create 100,000 new jobs in the United States over the next 18 months, and held a massive job fair to that end this week. Plus, Mr. Schlanz at Ohio Means Jobs points out, bricks-and-mortar retail itself has always been cyclical. The Ohio Valley Mall’s shuttering K-Mart originally replaced a Montgomery Ward; the incoming Marshalls is working with his office to recruit new hires.

Location, location, location

But there’s early evidence that as the consumer economy shifts away from malls and toward e-commerce and experience-based industries, like restaurants, it will be harder for places like Belmont County, and especially more rural areas of the country, to make up for those lost jobs. Recent research from Mr. Muro’s team at Brookings, analyzing data from 2016 and the first three months of 2017, found that jobs added in e-commerce are highly concentrated in and around dense urban areas like Seattle and New York.

Lower-population metro areas, meanwhile, have experienced higher rates of bricks-and-mortar retail job loss than big cities and their surrounding metros. What's more, e-commerce overall is still a small segment of the overall retail job picture. According to a New York Times analysis, e-commerce has gained about 178,000 jobs over the past 15 years. Department stores alone have shed nearly half a million.   

What that means, Muro explains, is that the map of areas that can expect to prosper in the newly-evolved retail sector is shrinking. “Retail activity is moving online, and that means a broadly diffuse ubiquitous economic activity is going to dwindle,” he says. “More places are struggling than places are gaining.”

Going local?

That includes Johnstown, Pa., about 70 miles outside Pittsburgh. Once an industrial hub, that metro area has lost an estimated 19 percent of its retail jobs since 2001. “The economy here is very fragile,” says John McGrath, a lifelong resident and marketing professor at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. “Every job lost, including retail, is a precious, precious job. There’s not a lot to replace it.”

Business leaders there are seeing some potential in attracting new businesses and residents by highlighting what the area has to offer, including a low cost of living and natural resources, like miles of hiking trails and several nearby state parks. Taking advantage of a river basin nearby, a whitewater rafting park recently opened up.

“Younger, more entrepreneurial people are taking over and saying, ‘Let’s look at what can we do to make this community thrive,’ ” says Leah Spangler, who runs a network of after-school programs across central Pennsylvania.

Muro suggests that local mindset could point to a way forward if malls and big-box retail fade away. “There are all kinds of movements to brand local, eat local, buy local. I think that there will be a minority but important response that will value localness, authenticity, quality, face-to face problem solving” he says. “Main Street retail is going to have to stress its virtues, and if done well can generate real prosperity in a smaller way.”

That doesn’t mean it will be easy for areas like Johnstown, which isn’t on a major highway and has been struggling with population loss and high levels of opioid addiction. Unemployment is higher than both Pennsylvania and the national average.

“Opening a small business here, you have headwinds,” McGrath says.

Lewis Wickes Hine/Library of Congress

In 1911, the settlement of Dunbar, La., was home to Eastern European immigrants and hub of the local oyster industry. Today, rising seas threaten to wash away what little archaeological evidence of the community remains.

The Gulf of Mexico is creeping up over centuries of history south of New Orleans. Inching up through the timeline, Civil War-era forts are now abandoned ruins. Next up for inundation: temporary settlements from around a century ago, along with who knows what else.

The threat of losing long-abandoned settlements may seem minute compared with the millions of people and billions of dollars in economic resources at growing risk as rising seas threaten the Louisiana coast. But to Brian Ostahowski, an archaeologist, the chronicling of Louisiana’s disappearing coastal history is one small area – amid the state’s sprawling, multipronged coastal protection efforts – where he can make a difference.

“I just want to record this before it’s gone,” says Mr. Ostahowski on a gray, humid morning in early June, as he surveys a small beach on Rabbit Island, a narrow spit of marshland about an hour’s boat-ride northeast of New Orleans. “Maybe not to have all the answers, but at least to have them available, so if somebody has a research question [in the future] we’ll have recorded that for them.”

His efforts date back 18 months, to when he met Richie Blink. Ostahowski, president of the Louisiana Archaeological Society, wanted to chronicle historical artifacts along the coastline before they disappeared. Mr. Blink had a boat (the New Delta). The rest, as they say, is history.

Henry Gass/Staff

Archaeologist Brian Ostahowski and environmental activist Richie Blink catalog the remnants of a Civil War-era lighthouse on Rabbit Island, a narrow spit of marshland about an hour’s boat-ride northeast of New Orleans.

Their efforts are becoming more urgent. Blink, a native of southern Plaquemines Parish who works on community outreach for the National Wildlife Federation here, has watched as storms and gradual coastal erosion have damaged or destroyed four of the region's centuries-old forts in recent years.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita damaged Fort Jackson, a battle site during the Civil War, and successive storms have also crippled nearby Forts Livingston and St. Philip. Livingston has since been abandoned and St. Philip rendered inaccessible without a boat. Fort Proctor, a battle site from the War of 1812, is being “slowly engulfed” by Lake Borgne.

“The more disciplines that are clued into what’s happening the better. When the water’s coming up isn’t the time to go out and study these sites,” he says, tiptoeing around dozens of bricks scattered along the shoreline – the remnants of a lighthouse that operated from the Civil War until the 1920s.

“Getting people to realize this is happening in their backyard in America and not an obscure island in the Pacific Ocean,” he adds, “Anything that can help that out is a good thing.”

Later in the morning, Blink steers the New Delta to two more sites: a ruined oyster cannery in the now-nonexistent town of Dunbar, where Eastern European immigrants settled in the early 1900s; and another area of Pearl Island that had been used as a quarantine station during an 1880s yellow fever outbreak.

The only infrastructure from those days still functioning is the railway. Along the tracks, Ostahowski studies a grainy black-and-white photograph of the old town. Where there used to be houses and people going about their lives, there is now only open water.

Henry Gass/Staff

Long-since abandoned, what little archaeological evidence of the settlement of Dunbar, La., (seen in 1911 at top of page) has been overtaken by marshland (as seen in 2017 above). Rising waters threaten to take that back over.

Ostahowski's mission, he explains, is to try to ensure that communities marginalized when they were alive aren’t marginalized in the historical record.

“When all that gets destroyed, our ability to understand these groups – where they went, who they interacted with – somewhat softens over time, and eventually we just won’t know anything about these people,” he says. “We’ll just know that they were here.” Recording those remains in as much detail as possible, “gives us a fuller perspective of what our own history is.”

Imagine, for example, what it would mean for future generations if every remnant of slavery was lost to the sea?

That's not to say that the dead are more worthy of saving than the living, he says. “We need to take care of our current communities” on the Louisiana coast, he adds. “But I think some of these histories are worth mentioning and taking a look at.”

This report is the final installment of a four-part series. For the first installment, watch the video below. Click here for Part 2, a look at two towns' very different paths to relocation. Click here for Part 3, a look at Louisiana's $50 billion master plan to protect and restore the coastline.

AP Photo

Libya's Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj of the U.N.-backed government, left, France's President Emmanuel Macron, center, and General Khalifa Haftar of Libya's self-styled national army, stand together before their talks July 25 at La Celle-Saint-Cloud, west of Paris.

In late July, the United Nations Security Council sent a strong message to the people of the country long called Libya: Please unite again. In 2011, Libyans were split apart by the Arab Spring and the toppling of dictator Muammar Qaddafi. A civil struggle has since raged between regions, tribes, warlords, and terrorist groups. A special UN envoy, Ghassan Salamé, is on a listening tour this August to find Libyans willing to reconcile into a democratic nation-state.

The art of diplomatic listening is a valuable skill these days in a world in which nation-states come and go. This fall, Kurds in Iraq and Catalans in Spain will each hold a referendum on whether to declare independence. The world’s newest nation, South Sudan, is convulsed by fighting. Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008, is still not truly sovereign. Scotland may hold another vote on whether to leave Britain. Syria and Yemen, like Libya, fell apart after 2011 and are stuck in warfare. And in Ukraine, the Russian-speaking eastern region seeks a separation by force of arms.

Of all these, Libya now has the UN’s closest attention. This is in large part because its disintegration is causing big problems elsewhere. Libya has become the main launching pad for African and Arab migrants seeking asylum in Europe. An estimated 530,000 people are waiting to cross the Mediterranean Sea and land in Italy. Terrorist groups in Libya have sent suicide bombers to Europe and Egypt. And Libya’s turmoil has spilled over the borders into its North African neighbors.

Like other hot spots, Libya is also ripe for foreign meddling. Russia and Egypt side with the most powerful military leader, Khalifa Haftar, who dominates the eastern region. The West backs Fayez al-Sarraj, who holds the title of prime minister but has little influence outside the old capital, Tripoli. The Gulf states and Turkey, meanwhile, also have a finger in this pie.

To assist the UN effort, French President Emmanuel Macron brought the two Libyan leaders together for talks outside Paris last month. They forged an agreement to hold elections, perhaps next spring, and to quell the fighting. “The Libyan people need this peace, and the Mediterranean deserves this peace,” Mr. Macron said. “We are directly affected.”

The meeting helped boost the legitimacy of strongman Mr. Haftar, a former protégé of Mr. Qaddafi. Many people fear he may not be committed to democracy. But as long as he stays within the UN peace process, and outside powers stay united in reuniting Libya, the UN envoy might succeed.

Mr. Salamé, like previous mediators in the crisis, must tap into Libya’s traditional methods of peacemaking. For centuries, local tribal sheikhs often applied customary law to resolve disputes within communities and restore relationships. These “wise men” are respected for their listening and find a way to balance interests and renew social harmony. In the absence of state authority, this method has contained much of the fighting since 2011.

Peace and unity cannot be imposed on Libya. But effective listening that finds opportunities for political bonding can work. Statehood comes in many forms these days and seems to be fluid. But the path to statehood, old or new, must come peacefully.