Rich Pedroncelli/AP/File

Laura Friedman (D) of Glendale speaks at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif. Assemblywoman Friedman, a first-term lawmaker, was appointed chairwoman of the Assembly Rules Subcommittee on Harassment, Discrimination, and Retaliation Prevention and Response. The committee will hold its first hearing Tuesday, Nov. 28, in response to allegations of pervasive sexual harassment in the California Legislature.

When Samantha Corbin first called out the culture of sexual harassment in Sacramento, she figured it would get a response.

After all, the open letter – which described the lewd jokes, gropes, and threats that women in the California Capitol lived with every day – was signed by 140 female legislators, staff, and political consultants. Ms. Corbin didn’t expect the hundreds of survivor stories from across the country that have since poured into her inbox and clogged her office phone line.

But the deluge made sense, she says: The letter came out just as the Harvey Weinstein story was leading to allegations against powerful men across industries, and the “Me Too” movement began cresting in social media.

What did surprise her was how so many of those who reached out went on to ask: Now what?

“We’ve heard from women in other industries: medical, hotel, farm workers, Hollywood. They say to us, ‘You write the laws. What are we doing next?’ ” says Corbin, a lobbyist and former staffer for the state Assembly. “We quickly realized there is a burden on us specifically to lead the charge in terms of recrafting public policy.”

Women leaders have an opportunity to leverage their unique position to dismantle harassment culture long term, observers say. Already those in Congress are pushing for legislation that addresses issues of transparency around harassment claims on Capitol Hill.

But there’s plenty to do at the state level, too. In Sacramento – as in state capitols across the country – women leaders are crafting laws that take into account survivors’ experiences, opening more avenues for women to run for office, and questioning the standards for law, order, and decency that they and their colleagues set for their constituencies. 

“Our ability to get it right in the statehouse has a direct impact on our ability to craft broader policy to help women, minorities, and individuals who are most vulnerable,” Corbin says.

Following the release of Corbin’s letter in mid-October, the California state Senate hired a pair of outside law firms to investigate allegations of widespread harassment and review the Senate’s policies on discrimination and retaliation. The state Assembly is also set to begin hearings on Nov. 28 around its sexual harassment guidelines – one of the first to do so. This week, one member of the California legislature resigned and another was removed from leadership roles as the result of sexual misconduct allegations.

Addressing power imbalances

Women lawmakers from both houses say they support the initial steps the Legislature is taking to address harassment. But some also point out that effective action means looking at the underlying power imbalances and including victims’ experiences in the policy conversation. When staff members come to her with stories of harassment, for instance, Rep. Catharine Baker (R) of San Ramon wants to know that she can take the case to a third party that can guarantee confidentiality, non-retaliation, and a nonpartisan investigation.

Jessica Mendoza/The Christian Science Monitor

Katie Hill, a Democrat who is campaigning to represent California's 25th congressional district in the 2018 election, discusses the role of women in politics and sexual harassment on Nov. 20, 2017, in Santa Clarita, Calif.

“I’m not convinced hiring an outside law firm will do the trick,” Assemblywoman Baker says. “We need to take a different look at how we’re going to ensure independence.”

Similar discussions are taking place in statehouses across the country. States such as Alaska, Arkansas, Illinois, Texas, and Wisconsin have all launched efforts to reexamine their Legislatures’ sexual harassment policies. Along with the legislator in California, state lawmakers in Minnesota and Kentucky have announced plans to resign in the face of accusations of harassment and groping.

Still, ensuring that the next steps will have a lasting effect against harassment culture will require women in politics to continue to speak out and bring their experiences to bear, observers say.

“The legislating can get a process set up … and a set of real repercussions to come with this sort of behavior,” says Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. “But women who have power and agency and have a voice also need to be talking about these issues so that it empowers women in those institutions. It’s a whole culture and rules shift.”

Complications moving forward

The way forward is fraught with complications. In working to develop policy solutions, Corbin and her colleagues – whose open letter led to the founding of the nonprofit We Said Enough earlier this month – quickly found that while harassment pervades almost all industries, policies will need to be tailored to the specific communities being addressed.

“There are similar stories, but there are different power pressures at play, different cultural dynamics,” Corbin says. “We need data, best practices, to make sure that the interventions [we employ] are actually effective.”

A climate of intense political polarization doesn’t help, either. The partisan wrangling over the sexual misconduct cases of Senate candidate Roy Moore (R) of Alabama and Sen. Al Franken (D) of Minnesota demonstrate that some politicians and voters are willing to look the other way in the name of party politics. And some worry that one wrong step on the part of those making allegations – a false accusation or an accuser’s unsavory past – could put women right back on the defensive.

“What happens when it’s impossible to make a case, or make it compellingly? Or what if the man doesn’t admit it at all?” asks Jennifer Lawless, director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University in Washington. “Are we going to regress to the same kind of behavior we’ve seen in the past, where we put the woman on trial?”

There is, however, a sense of having come too far to turn back. Many women lawmakers, having now spoken out, have committed to creating and maintaining an environment where others can speak up. “I put up with comments I probably shouldn’t have and I helped perpetuate that culture,” says Sen. Connie Leyva (D) of Chino, who spent years as a labor activist before getting elected to the California state Senate in 2014. “I need to help the women coming up after me be better than I am.”

Indeed, another key part of the conversation are the women who are aspiring to elected office. Statehouses and city halls saw a surge in female candidates this year. And as of November, nearly 400 women have identified as potential candidates for Congress in 2018 – about double the number this time in 2015.

“Our generation of women has a recognition at this point that we have the opportunity and the ability to stand up against this culture,” says Katie Hill, a political newcomer and one of six Democrats targeting Republican incumbent Steve Knight’s seat for California’s 25th congressional district. Ms. Hill, who at 16 was stalked by a teaching assistant at her high school, says she draws from her own experience when she champions educating students early on about harassment and the nature of consent.

The We Said Enough initiative, while still soliciting stories to get a sense of scope, is also establishing an advisory board made up of a variety of stakeholders to determine what policies work for which industries and community groups. They’re also reaching out to other statehouses and consulting on the kind of interventions that are “fair to both the accused and accusers,” Corbin says. And they plan to commission research into the prevalence of sexual harassment so that new policies can be guided by data.

“We want to ensure that this isn’t a moment but a movement,” Corbin says. “We’re building for long term solutions.”

[Editor's note: This article has been updated to reflect the correct age of Katie Hill when she was harassed in high school.

Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service/AP/File

This undated propaganda photo, distributed by the North Korean government, shows what was said to be the test launch of an intermediate range ballistic missile.

It’s a bit of a mystery: Why did North Korea take a two-month time out from testing missiles?

On Tuesday, Pyongyang launched a ballistic missile from South Pyongan Province, according to South Korea’s military. Officials did not immediately disclose any information about missile type. They said only that it traveled to the east.

But prior to that, North Korea’s last test launch was in mid-September. It tested at a rapid pace in the summer – seven launches from July through the end of August. Then, for two months, zip, nada. The launch pads were quiet until today.

It’s tempting to speculate about possible geopolitical reasons for this pattern. Perhaps President Trump’s rhetoric, such as his vow to use “fire and fury” to counter North Korean nuclear threats, gave Pyongyang pause, and they took time to rethink the issue. Perhaps China leaned on North Korea – finally – to rein in its impetuous behavior.

Then Mr. Trump relisted North Korea as a state that sponsors terrorism. The United States added some new sanctions to squeeze the already-constrained North Korean economy. North Korea leader Kim Jong-un felt he had to respond. The result: Tuesday’s launch.

Perhaps – but it’s more likely the pause has practical causes, say experts. In recent years, North Korea has generally tested few missiles in the fourth quarter of the year. Occasionally, it launches one or two. But generally there is no rapid pace at the end of the year.

“North Korea tests its missiles when it’s ready to. They’ve got a program in place that probably has a schedule and a timetable for deliverables,” says Shea Cotton, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif., in an email.

Mr. Cotton is an expert in open source intelligence who has built and runs a North Korean Missile Test Database. He is also part of a team that uses satellite images and modeling techniques to geo-locate North Korea’s missile test and nuclear sites, and even the exact location of Kim Jong-un in propaganda photos.

His data show that North Korea accelerated its missile test program beginning in 2014. It stepped back a bit the next year, then leapt ahead in 2016 with 24 major tests.

So far in 2017 there have been 19 tests, according to Cotton’s figures. Tuesday’s launch was the first in the fourth quarter.

It did not come completely out of the blue. The Japanese government on Monday told reporters it had detected radio signals indicating North Korea might be preparing a test launch.

The Pentagon did not immediately confirm that North Korea had pushed the launch button again. Department of Defense spokesman Col. Rob Manning said that US equipment had detected a “probable missile launch” from North Korea, but he added that officials were still assessing the situation before saying they were sure what had occurred.

A test drop-off beginning in September is common for Pyongyang. The pace for the first three quarters of the year is roughly similar, ranging from an average of 4.1 to 4.8 launches since 2012. The average for the quarter that stretches the last three months of the year, however, is 0.8.

The consistency of this quiet period supports the idea that it is caused by circumstances that recur every year. Cotton believes one obvious and prosaic reason may be the cycle of agriculture. Harvest time starts every year in September. In North Korea, scarce personnel and fuel resources may be diverted to getting in the crops. Fields often surround military bases, for example. Troops may be used for harvest purposes.

In this context North Korean tests appear less planned provocations than part of a plan for a steady march toward greater and greater ballistic missile capabilities. It is entirely possible that Tuesday’s launch was a reaction to perceived taunts on the part of the US and its allies. But it is likely to be a one-off event.

“I don’t see them returning to the rapid pace of testing missiles every other week like we saw earlier this year,” Cotton says. “That’ll probably have to wait until next February or March.”

February might be the preferred month for resuming full-scale testing, other experts point out. That’s when South Korea will host the Winter Olympics, in Pyeongchang, only about 60 miles from the border between the Koreas.

The Olympics could showcase South Korea’s economic progress and social stability, relative to its northern neighbor. Lobbing a few multi-stage missiles into the ocean might be a way for Pyongyang to crash this international party of sport.

Meanwhile, the US appears to be intent on irritating the North, rather than pulling together a comprehensive plan that might actually change its behavior, according to Anthony Cordesman, the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Relisting North Korea as a terrorism sponsor is a case in point, says Mr. Cordesman. It effectively ratchets up tensions with Pyongyang without doing anything to effect the underlying situation. Sure, it grabs headlines in the US – but it also gives Kim Jong-un a reason to reply in kind.

“I think the problem is [the relisting] was done without any regard to a consistent overall strategy,” says Cordesman.

As the steady progress of missile tests shows, the reality is that it may be too late to stop the march of North Korea’s development of nuclear weaponry, according to Cordesman. The only viable US option may be a strategy of containment, which accepts the reality of North Korea’s new power and tries to counter it directly, as the US did with the Soviet Union during the cold war.

Yulia Morozova knows heroin addiction inside and out.

Today she is a clinical psychologist, helping people with addictions through the final stages of their recovery treatment at the sprawling Center for Practical and Research Narcology in southeast Moscow. But a decade or so ago she was a patient there herself, suffering “cold turkey” Russian-style.

The three-week withdrawal process was “not easy,” Dr. Morozova says now. But “everything that’s going to be interesting in your life happens after that. In my case, this was the only way. I have been clean for nine years now.”

Russia has an opioid addiction crisis about as grave as America’s. But the two countries’ approaches to the problem could hardly be more different. Where most US and European clinics offer patients methadone as replacement therapy, Russian doctors disdain such “soft” treatment.

They acknowledge that their methods of curing addiction have a lower success rate than the 50 percent achieved in the United States. Some put it as low as 10 percent. But they do not consider people who rely on methadone to be free from their addiction.

In Russia, says Yevgeny Bryun, who runs the 1,400 bed center where Morozova works, “We call a person's addiction in remission if they are completely drug-free. Not otherwise.”

So addiction treatment, like many other topics these days, has become a field for East-West sniping.

Who are you calling 'liberal?'

Russian doctors claim that the American crisis is the result of “liberal” attitudes that enable the over-prescription of powerful opioid pain killers, and lax medical approaches that treat heroin addiction with replacement therapy drugs like methadone.

Western doctors argue the Russian “cold turkey” approach to ending addiction is a brutal kill-or-cure solution that ignores the scientific evidence that replacement drugs can wean people off their addiction while allowing them to get on with their lives.

“Our philosophy is simple. We organize treatment and rehabilitation in a completely drug-free environment,” says Dr. Bryun. “In Russia it is illegal to use any drugs in treating drug addicts.”

Treatment in Bryun’s center – often ordered by the courts – starts with a mandatory 21-day withdrawal period when the patient undergoing “cold turkey” is kept under close supervision but given nothing more than aspirin to help weather the experience.

Russians who suffer through this experience call it the “vegetative state,” says Morozova, when you know nothing and you are not yourself.

That is followed by nearly three years of regular visits to the center as an outpatient, and then a final month in its rehabilitation wing, where the rules are so strict that even the strong-brewed Russian tea known as chifir is prohibited.

Around 720,000 of Russia’s 1.5 million citizens with a heroin addiction are currently undergoing such programs, says Bryun.

An Afghan heritage

Heroin was unknown in the Soviet Union until its troops invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Today as much as 20 percent of Afghanistan’s annual opium production makes its way through central Asia to Russia, flooding its cities with cheap heroin.

That history makes the origins and causes of Russia’s heroin habit very different from the US experience, where four out of five new users start out by misusing prescription pain killers.  

“In Russia that’s impossible. You can’t obtain opioids in drugstores because there is very strict control,” says Dmitry Movchan, deputy director of the Marshak Clinic, a private addiction-treatment center in Moscow.

Too strict a control, perhaps. The extreme difficulty of obtaining strong painkillers condemns many patients to excruciating pain, often in the final stage of life, and some have even committed suicide.

“It’s true, we’ve erred on the side of making access to palliative medicines too difficult,” acknowledges Bryun. “We are developing policies … to find the right balance.”  

But “allowing easy prescription access to opioids as tranquilizers or pain killers is reckless policy,” Dr. Movchan argues. “Over there [in the US] they ‘play democracy’ with drug addicts. But these are not people to be treated with half-measures. Either you cure them, and they stay clean, or they will have this addiction for their entire life,” he says.

That is a far cry from modern thinking in the West, where experts argue that Russians' fear of the “cold turkey” approach deters a lot of people with an addiction from seeking treatment in the first place, and that anyway it works only 10 percent of the time.

On top of that, one pillar of the Russian approach to drug addiction is a ban on Western-style programs that provide clean needles to patients in order to block the spread of HIV/AIDS. HIV infection rates have risen by about 10 percent annually in recent years, according to the Russian Federal AIDS Center, the third-fastest pace in the world. Half of new victims are infected by shared needles.

Tough love and 12 steps

Bryun says he debates frequently with Western colleagues at international conferences. He argues that the replacement therapies favored in the United States are often just the cheapest and easiest way to treat people who can’t afford to pay for expensive rehabilitation.

Those who can, he says, often opt for a “cold turkey” approach in private clinics which is not very different from the Russian way, though American doctors are readier to provide palliative drugs to suffering patients.

“In Russia we have an integrated system, and it is all paid for by the state. In our center you find all the facilities for detox, psychiatric and support services, and rehabilitation all together under one roof,” he boasts. “We view treatment as a single continuous process, and we follow each patient through the entire three year program.”

Morozova is one of the system’s success stories; she credits its “tough love” with curing her of her heroin addiction. But once her three-year program ended, she turned to a linchpin of Western addiction control that has caught on widely in Russia – “Narcotics Anonymous.”

“The 12 steps saved my life,” she says.

The young Iraqi painter can’t help herself: She loves Iraq, she loves Baghdad, and she is determined to illuminate minds with her art despite monumental challenges.

The art market has shriveled in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. But Zahraa al-Baghdadi says she won’t let Iraq’s chronic violence force her to join the legions of Iraqis who have fled to Europe or the US.

“We all have a confused vision for the future, because of the things we saw here like war, like killing, like kidnapping,” says Mrs. Baghdadi, sipping tea in the Hawar Gallery, one of the last bastions of art still open in the Iraqi capital. “But still we love it. I can’t leave.”

That is the mantra of Iraqi artists determined to resuscitate a once-renowned past of Iraqi art, and to finally overcome the crisis of motivation that has afflicted Iraqi culture since the US invasion of 2003 and, to a lesser degree, before.

Baghdadi, who drew her first portrait at the age of six, of her teacher, says her work focuses on “human problems inside.” Her paintings can be large – 5 feet high – or tiny, at barely 4 inches square. But just like the disrupted canvas of her native Iraq, crippled by decades of war, her paintings are never child’s play.

“I don’t want to show the simple, I just want complicated things to show,” says Baghdadi, who works from a home studio and cares for a 20-month-old toddler. “You have to stand for a long time in front of my paintings.”

Baghdadi, who wears the headscarf of an observant Muslim woman, is one of a small cadre of often secular Iraqi artists intent on finding inspiration in a homeland torn apart by decades of sanctions and war. Today they confront a creeping social conservatism and religiosity that seems to many practicing artists like just one more reason to feel restricted.

“We are a forgotten tribe, sir,” says Qasim Sabti, head of the Iraqi Plastic Artists Society, a renowned painter who has been a pillar of Iraq’s art scene for decades. He has run the society since the Saddam era, when the gallery building and its bar – built on land given by King Faisal in 1956 – was a hangout for Baath Party officials.

A critical challenge came in 2003, when criminals took over the building, stole the air conditioners, broke all the windows, and damaged much of the art. Mr. Sabti and a dozen other art society members arrived with knives and clubs to kick them out, and carried key archives to a nearby American military post for safekeeping.

Scott Peterson/The Christian Science Monitor/Getty Images

Iraqi painter Qasim Sabti (left), director of the Iraqi Plastic Arts Society, shows visitors sculptures by Iraqi artists at the society gallery in Baghdad, Nov. 8, 2017. Gifted to the society in 1956 and with a long history of hosting all different visual arts, the gallery is the center of a bid to restore Iraqi art and the motivation of young Iraqi artists after decades of hardship.

Sabti had to start rebuilding the art community again from zero. But the violent sectarian civil war and insurgency shriveled the art market. The wealthy and middle-class Iraqis who once bought art moved away; Western diplomats who also bought local works disappeared behind the walls of the Green Zone; and nearly all of the Saddam-era galleries closed their doors for good.

Bursting with talent

Nevertheless, Iraq’s artists are stubbornly productive, and submissions for gallery shows and personal requests for support pile up. The challenge for years has been a test of resilience and survival, but with the crushing of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) here, Iraqis – and the artists among them – are aiming to finally experience a degree of normalcy.

Iraqi artists mourned in 2003 when the National Museum in Baghdad was largely looted, with priceless ancient artifacts finding their way onto the global market. And they mourned again as ISIS destroyed – one bomb and one sledgehammer blow at a time – ancient works and shrines they found in areas under their control.

Sabti still mounts 10 exhibitions a year for the society, including a stunning if varied array of sculptures now on show – from large bronzes to delicate carved wood – with partial funding from Western embassies. One traveling exhibit of Iraqi artists was scheduled to last two weeks at the Metz Museum in France, but was so popular it stayed up for four months.

“There is more and more interest in art; we need only safety,” says Sabti, letting out a sigh as he strolls around the renovated gallery space, with its white-washed modernist interior lines and sculptures set on white plinths. “This jack-in-the-box will burst open, because we have talented people.”

Need for support

But the obstacles to reviving the art market in Iraq are immense, even though the Plastic Arts Society and the Academy of Fine Arts, founded in 1968, boast thousands of members and students nationwide.

“What annoys us and makes us tired, is there is a big distance between us and the government and [Shiite] religious groups, which lead people to the caves and to darkness,” says Sabti. Government support is negligible for art, he says, though it finds millions to support “foolish [Shiite] religious ceremonies.”

Proceeds from the long-popular bar enable the society to help the families of poor artists, even with medical bills, and provide gifts of oil paints, canvas, and brushes “to encourage young people to continue,” he says.

Sabti’s own sculptures have generated enough sales during exhibits in New York, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and elsewhere so that he also helps young artists stay in the business. He owns the Hawar Art Gallery, which he has kept open since the 1990s, where he still showcases new talent.

“I am so happy to find those who need help,” says Sabti, whose shock of white hair is combed back, in an avant-garde style. “I teach high art, and feel an ethical responsibility to the next generation.”

Among them is Sabti’s own son Ahmed, a 28-year-old surreal artist and graphic designer.

“Before the war we had foreigners interested in art because they saw something different, and it was so cheap,” says Ahmed, sipping tea in the garden at Hawar Gallery. “After the war artists were not targeted, but artists had a problem to be inspired.”

To stay, or to go

At first, Ahmed wanted to move to the US, and traveled to Jordan to put in his paperwork. But he got depressed there, unable to focus on art outside of Iraq, and heard stories of how many years the process of approval to move to the US could take and how hard it was to make ends meet.

“I just had to change my mind,” says Ahmed, who has returned to Iraq “to give it a try for five or 10 years.”

“Technology is improving, life is improving. Art can move people. The movement to be open-minded, to be free, is spreading,” he says. “The bad news is everyone is so grumpy about everything, it is bad for my health.”

But overcoming those concerns is what Baghdadi does every day. She says she was blessed with “good luck” with the constant support of her family, who once traded in antiques and are “very interested in all kinds of arts.”

But the war to topple the Iraqi dictator and the violent aftermath “affected my work,” says Baghdadi, who was a teenager at the time.

Tears well up in her eyes as she remembers: “I heard stories I will never forget. I saw many destroyed places.”

A month spent in Syria to visit relatives in 2010 taught her how much she loved the broken Iraqi capital. She told her family she would return to Baghdad, even if alone. Her parents returned with her.

“Marketing here in Iraq is not so good, so I depend on myself to sell my paintings,” says Baghdadi. “We are always working for the future, but we have a dark vision of that.”

Even if she one day departs her beloved hometown, she says, “in our minds, we won’t leave.”

Reuters

UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura (left) and head of the Syrian Negotiation Commission (SNC) Nasr al-Hariri shake hands prior to the start of a new round of Syria's peace talks at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland Nov. 28.

One fallacy about the long war in Syria has been that it is simply a contest for military dominance – between groups of Syrians, between foreign powers such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, and between all of them and the terrorist group Islamic State. But with peace talks due to open Nov. 29, the United Nations envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, offers an alternative narrative.

He says “a moment of truth” has now arrived for the “real” contest, a political solution that could possibly play out next year in UN-supervised elections under a new Syrian constitution.

The reason such a view is credible lies in the fact that the war began in 2011 out of resistance to a similar “truth.” Liberated in their thinking by the Arab Spring, millions of Syrians rose up in peaceful protest to demand democracy. Since then, the anti-democratic forces, led by Russia, have largely prevailed on the battlefield. Now exhausted by war and unable to pay for the rebuilding of Syria, they have opened a door to a negotiated settlement leading to elections under UN supervision.

The foreign powers backing Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad must face a simple truth. Only the democratic countries in Europe as well as the United States can afford to rebuild Syria or revive its economy. For that reason and because of domestic pressure at home, Russian President Vladimir Putin went along with a Security Council demand for the Geneva talks to focus on a new constitution and elections.

Or as Mr. de Mistura put it, any peace process must enable “Syrians to determine their own future freely.”

Dictatorships like the Assad regime are inherently unstable because they rely on physical threats to stay in control rather than tolerating an open contest of political ideas in elections. The arc of history still bends toward democracy, or a respect for individual rights and equality before the law. Over time, those values can be as powerful as bullets.

These talks are the eighth attempt over many years to end a war that has claimed more than 400,000 lives. This time, however, the outside powers appear ready to force a deal on the Syrians. A total military victory seems out of reach.

The fallacy that power lies in guns has been exposed. This leaves Syrians on all sides at a “moment of truth,” or the need for an agreement that defines power by democratic means.