Brendan McDermid/Reuters

Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, addresses a Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East at UN Headquarters in New York, Dec. 8, 2017, two days after President Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The scene at the United Nations Security Council last week was reminiscent of the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, when the international community balked at President George W. Bush’s “with us or against us” message to the world body concerning the coming war.

This time the impetus for the emergency Security Council meeting was President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel – a move in opposition to decades of US-backed council resolutions on the holy city’s status – and neither friend nor foe of the United States was having anything to do with it.

Bolivia’s United Nations ambassador fumed that if the Security Council did not stand up to the rogue US action, the Council would cease to be anything other than “an occupied territory.”

A group of America’s European allies, some of whose leaders had personally cautioned Mr. Trump against the move, issued a joint statement at the council session condemning the US action as contrary to established international policy on the issue and “unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace.”

But the Jerusalem decision was only the latest in a year of go-it-alone actions and retreat from international cooperation and commitments that have typified the “America First” president.

Trump came into office with two seemingly contradictory messages to the world: one a nationalist clarion call that the US would no longer be a tied-up Gulliver, but would break free of international strictures and put its own interests first; and the other, a commitment to restore “strong American leadership” in confronting the world’s pressing security challenges.

Nearly a year later those two messages have taken form through actions suggesting that under Trump, it’s hard power over soft power, national action over international cooperation, and immediate gains over what a business-mogul president sees as gauzy long-term pursuits.

The promotion of hard power and a nationalist vision of prosperity over values and soft-power pursuits is expected to gain further traction when Trump releases his first National Security Strategy Dec. 18.

Reemphasis on military power

Thus Trump’s first year has been marked by a stark withdrawal from international diplomacy and from the system of international institutions and governance that the US designed and led for over seven decades.

In ways large and small – from withdrawing from the Paris climate accords and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, to pulling out of an international migration pact and the UNESCO culture and education agency – Trump has shown his disdain for the system of international institutions the US built.

Yet at the same time, Trump has coupled a diplomatic retreat with a reemphasis on military power, which – under a long line of Republican and Democratic administrations alike – had increasingly shared the national-security stage with priorities like democracy and human rights promotion, development, and international trade expansion.

This week Trump signed a $700 billion defense authorization act he called the “first step in rebuilding our military.” He has stepped up US military action against ISIS in Iraq and Syria while dialing back the US role in Syria diplomacy, recommitted to a US military presence in Afghanistan, and pursued a hard-power posture toward North Korea – once quipping that diplomacy toward Pyongyang was a “waste of time.”

For some US foreign-policy hawks, like former ambassador to the UN John Bolton, Trump is pursuing bold leadership – the Jerusalem decision being just one example – after what they saw as two terms of namby-pamby interaction with the world under President Barack Obama.

Evan Vucci/AP

President Trump holds onto a box containing the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Dec. 12, 2017.

'Almost total abdication' of leadership

Yet while many in the foreign-policy community see Trump as a sharp deviation from the path followed by post-World-War-II presidents, few concur with the idea that a more muscular but inward-focused America will provide stronger global leadership.

“Trump represents a clean break with the last eight decades of American foreign policy – really going back to Pearl Harbor – and a dismissal of the liberal order of American-led institutions the US worked so hard to build,” says Charles Kupchan, senior director for European affairs on Mr. Obama’s National Security Council and now a professor at Georgetown University.

“There may have been differences over the years between Republicans and Democrats concerning the means,” he says, “but even George W. Bush, despite the Iraq War, was not interested in dismantling the US-led international order, but rather in advancing it.”

But Trump, Professor Kupchan adds, “sees that same order as a recipe for other countries to take advantage of the US. He wants to back away from the international institutions and agreements that [other presidents] saw advancing US security and prosperity, but which he sees as tying us up.”

Others are more categorical about the impact of Trump’s foreign policy.

“What we’ve seen over this first year of his presidency is very much in line with the nationalist vision from the campaign that promised a retreat from international diplomacy and governance and an end to the free-riding of others on the back of the United States,” says Stewart Patrick, director of the Council on Foreign Relations’ International Institutions and Global Governance Program. “What that has translated to in practice is an almost total abdication of American leadership.”

Dr. Patrick, who served in the State Department during George W. Bush’s first term, says the Trump era has echoes of the “interwar period” nearly a century ago that began with the US rejection of the stillborn League of Nations. An expert in the evolution of the concept of national sovereignty, Patrick says Trump is a “throwback” to an era of a rigid, nationalist sense of sovereignty that rejects the interdependence at the core of postwar internationalist policy.

A constituency that felt cheated

Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Washington, says Trump’s “foreign-entanglement objections” have roots that go back to the Founding Fathers. But he says Trump has found support for his views in a constituency that felt cheated and left behind by the US-built international system.

“Trump represents a part of the population to whom the international order the US built has not been kind,” he says. “It’s the swath of the population that feels disadvantaged by globalization, that sees the US championing trade deals that led to the disappearance of their jobs, and that does not recognize a country that is more and more diverse.”

Still, Kupchan says that when it comes to a US “withdrawal” from the world, “the bark has been much more pronounced than the bite” – largely because of Trump’s pumping-up of global hard-power pursuits. He points to reinforced military alliances in East Asia, higher force levels in Afghanistan, and an increased pace of overt and covert counterterrorist operations.

Others go further, contending that reports of Trump’s isolationist and unilateral tendencies are overblown.

The Trump administration, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in particular, have had early successes mounting an escalating pressure campaign against North Korea and with efforts to thwart Iran’s rising influence, in part by fostering renewed ties between Iraq and Saudi Arabia, according to John Hannah, a senior counselor at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington.

Both portfolios have flummoxed US diplomats for years, and the attention and priority the two issues are getting do not suggest an inward-turned and globally cavalier administration, says Mr. Hannah, who was a senior national security adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

'A post-American era'

What is happening, however, is that the void left by the US retreat from its traditional role of global leader is being quickly filled by others, international affairs experts say.

“Where Trump is pulling back, we’re seeing other countries move in to take advantage of that at every turn,” says Kupchan, pointing to China advancing its own regional trade initiatives as TPP has faltered, or France moving to fill the vacuum left by the US retreat from a lead role in climate policy and from the Middle East.

“America’s main allies are increasingly talking about a post-American era where they’re going on with life without the US as a reliable partner,” he says.

The Council on Foreign Relations’ Patrick says that whereas the international debate during the Bush and Obama years “was whether it was preferable to have America leading from out front or leading from behind, today the question out there is what happens when there’s no leading at all, what does a world without American leadership portend?”

The quick answer seems to be a growing tendency of countries once aligned with the US to “hedge their bets by turning increasingly to China,” he says. Another trend is what appears to be a widening field of operation for expansive regional powers – along the lines of what Iran has done in the wake of a US pullback from the Middle East.

Patrick says it has yet to be determined if the US retreat from its postwar global role will be a Trump “parenthesis” or the acceleration of an ending American-led era.

But he says what is clearly not coming to an end is an era of global challenges requiring global answers and international leadership.

“Interdependence is not going to go away,” Patrick says, “but what may go away is the certainty and authority of the US as a relatively enlightened global leader. If the US retreats to become just another cynical ‘great power’ pursuing its own nationalist advantages,” he adds, “it’s not going to serve the world and it’s not ultimately going to enhance US security and prosperity.”

When protests first exploded here in the days following Honduras’ hotly contested presidential vote, residents like Luis Carlos Hernández were swept up in the action.

The young lawyer’s home is just a block away from the national vote-counting center, at the heart of the at times violent demonstrations. Amid volleys of rocks and tear gas outside his front door, Mr. Hernández ushered his 11-year-old brother and four-year-old nephew into the bathroom, covering their faces with vinegar-soaked rags to protect them from the chemicals seeping in from the street.

“People want to take out these corrupt politicians, they want another system,” Hernández says of the protests that boiled over across the country, demanding more transparency about how votes have been tallied.

Nearly three weeks later, his street is largely back to normal, with late-afternoon traffic jams and vendors hawking avocados and cell phone covers. But it’s clear the country as a whole – which is still awaiting the announcement of its next president – won’t bounce back so quickly.

The ballot count was officially completed earlier this week, with sitting President Juan Orlando Hernández in the lead by roughly 1.6 percentage points. But, under international pressure, the electoral commission (TSE) has been recounting votes from contested polling stations and reviewing evidence of fraud alleged by the Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship party before officially announcing a victor.

As protests simmer down and Hondurans have a moment to catch their breath, many here are coming to the realization that no matter who is declared winner of this historic election, the country has a lot of work ahead. The election put front and center a deep-seated lack of trust in political leaders, democratic institutions, and fellow citizens. Rebuilding a path forward will require big changes from all sectors of society, analysts say. 

“This crisis has to be seen as an opportunity for growth,” says Carlos Hernández Martinez, executive director of the Association for a More Just Society (ASJ), the local Transparency International chapter here. He points to concrete steps that will need to be made by whomever is named president, including the construction of a national dialogue; scrapping the TSE, which lost credibility over the past several weeks; and inviting international involvement in for a reconciliation process.

But, he adds, it’s not just politicians who will need to buckle down. “Society needs to change, too,” he says. 

'Power is not enough'

Close elections and public scrutiny of them have become a common occurrence in Latin America over the past few years. Slim victories in Peru and Ecuador recently put under the microscope the importance of strong institutions and trust, says Roberto Izurieta, the director of Latin American programs at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management and a former political campaign consultant in Mexico, Ecuador, Paraguay, and other countries across the region. 

“In Peru, there was an even smaller margin of victory and people waited, candidates complained, many said the election wasn’t fair,” Mr. Izurieta says. “But the process moved forward. Why? Because there were strong institutions; there was trust that they could do their job.”

Although Latin America has a long history of authoritarian leaders successfully holding on to power, that isn’t a plausible model anymore, Izurieta says. “In current times, power is just opportunity,” he says, explaining that you may have been elected to office, but that doesn’t mean you can do whatever you please. “It’s a starting point. You need to find common ground, bring people to the table. 

“The main lesson I hope everybody learns from [Honduras’] experience is that power is not enough. A leader has to build trust.”

Napoleon Morillo, the owner of a coffee stand in a bustling Tegucigalpa mall, agrees.

“To move forward from all of this, the next government has to prove it will take a stand against corruption. That’s what’s on the mind of Hondurans,” he says.

“No matter who wins, he has to impose justice on members of his own party [who] are linked to corruption. He has to prove that he’s governing for the people. Then [we] will believe in him, whoever he is.”

Shared responsibility

Social divisions and mistrust in Honduras started long before this presidential election. After the 2009 coup that ousted then-President Manuel Zelaya, there was a crackdown on independent journalism and civil society, citizens were polarized over the changing of the political guard, and current President Hernández’s National Party consolidated power. The Supreme Court was stacked with judges sympathetic to the National Party, and even the fact that Hernández ran in this election is seen as the result of his party’s vast influence and the weakening of democratic institutions. Running for a second consecutive term is barred under the constitution, but was deemed legal last year by the Supreme Court.

After the coup, there were some steps to move society forward, like a truth commission. In retrospect, however, they were quite surface-level efforts, says Mr. Hernández from ASJ.

“It’s become clear that the same divisions that existed after the coup are still present, only now there’s a stronger element of hate,” which concerns him, he says. Some fear whoever wins the election will simply try to condense power and punish the losing party. And this environment of suspicion and mistrust isn’t helped by the emphasis many here seem to put on the negative, he adds.

“We need to learn to denounce wrongdoing with substance and evidence, but we also need to recognize the positives in order to generate a little bit of hope for the country,” Hernández says, pointing to the decrease in homicide rates between 2016 and 2017 as an example.

When the presidential winner is announced, “there needs to be a big social pact, a national dialogue with outside mediation by an international actor” who is seen as neutral, he says of a path forward. From his perspective, that should include groups that were excluded after the coup, like human rights defenders, and the discourse should be public – not hidden behind closed doors.

“There need to be profound political reforms, including on the theme of reelection. We need to decompress the situation, and involve society in these government changes,” he says. “The people have to feel a part of this.”

But the onus for change and building trust doesn’t fall entirely on the political elite. Civil society, church leaders, and citizens all have a role to play, observers say.

“Hondurans need to take initiative to start paying attention to politics, vote, and hold politicians accountable,” says Hernández, the lawyer whose home was caught up in the protests. Demonstrations after the election were widespread, but only about 55 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in this election.

Corruption isn’t just a problem in the government: Change can start at home or within communities, adds Mr. Morillo, the coffee shop owner. “At the very least, every person must live correctly – be a good father, be a good citizen, don’t run that stoplight, pay your taxes,” he says.

“We have to start with ourselves. One day we will have a good president, but the question [will still be] how we as a culture behave.”

Alexei Nikolsky/Sputnik/AP

Russian President Vladimir Putin gestures as he looks at his spokesman Dmitry Peskov during an annual news conference in Moscow on Dec. 14, 2017.

Vladimir Putin, a politician at the height of his powers and now launching his bid for an unprecedented fourth presidential term, met the world media in the Kremlin today. As usual, he came off as poised, magisterial, and even a bit jovial. 

In just under four hours Mr. Putin answered scores of questions, some of them quite minute and detailed, about domestic and foreign policy. It’s a familiar format for Russians, who see Putin onstage taking questions twice a year: once in a meet-the-media presser like today, and once in a marathon electronic town hall spectacle in which he interfaces with people around the country.

Though Russians are used to it by now, millions watch both events attentively, especially as he often addresses issues like housing, taxes, public transportation, pensions and other economic data that intimately concerns them.

But analysts say he has yet to answer the key question of this political moment in Russia: What comes after Putin?

Opinion surveys suggest that he will walk to victory in presidential polls slated for March – not much of a cliffhanger, since he faces no serious opponent – and be duly ensconced in the Kremlin for another six-year term.

Yet many believe this will be his last turn in this particular role. Russia’s constitution, which he has previously honored – after a fashion – limits a president to two consecutive terms. Yet after nearly 18 years in power, including a four-year hiatus (when he occupied the job of prime minister) while his place-holder Dmitry Medvedev held the office, no obvious successor has been groomed. Nor has any reliable mechanism been established, democratic or otherwise, that would guarantee a stable transition if Putin were to exit the stage.

Though Putin took the opportunity of today’s presser to warn that Russia’s largely sidelined opposition would bring only “chaos” if they came to power, he offered not a single clue about what a Russia after Putin might look like.

“This version of the Russian state is totally centered around Putin, and could not survive without him,” says Boris Kagarlitsky, director of the left-wing Institute of Globalization and Social Movements in Moscow. “Putin stays, not because he wants to but because he cannot be replaced without undermining the system. Nobody wants to see a chaotic transition, but over many years of talking about it they have failed utterly to find a formula for an orderly one.”

2018 contenders

Presidential elections in Russia are generally a predictable affair. The incumbent, Putin, faces an array of old party leaders whose constituencies are already well-defined, such as Communist Gennady Zyuganov, ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and liberal Grigory Yavlinsky.

Often there is a tame “wild card” option, to make things interesting. This time that role falls to liberal celebrity Ksenia Sobchak, who actually came face-to-face with Putin in today's presser.

“Everyone knows that being an opposition politician in Russia means being killed, jailed. Why is this the case? Are the authorities afraid of real competition?” Ms. Sobchak asked him, representing the independent Dozhd TV channel, where she hosts a news show. She also wondered aloud why Alexei Navalny, the real leader of Russia’s beleaguered opposition, remains barred from running due to what many regard as a politically-motivated criminal conviction.

Putin responded, without even mentioning Mr. Navalny’s name, by suggesting the opposition represents an insurrectionist alternative, referencing the Maidan revolt that overthrew President Viktor Yanukovych in Kiev almost 4 years ago. “We don't want a second edition of today’s Ukraine for Russia, do we?” Putin said.

“He didn’t answer Sobchak’s question,” says Gleb Pavlovsky, a former Putin adviser turned critic. “In the past he usually had an answer to the questions of the opposition, at least for propaganda purposes. Now, he's not even embarrassed by such things.”

At the outset of Thursday’s press conference, Putin announced that he will be running as an independent, not nominated by any political party. That suggests he now feels confident separating himself from the political system he has created, and need not feel beholden to any political forces once he has achieved reelection.

Next step: reform?

It seems likely that Putin does have a plan, experts say, but it is not necessarily one that involves handing his undisputed presidential powers to anyone else.

Putin has in the past spoken of evolving Russia’s existing political system, perhaps to invest more power in the parliament. Some analysts believe that he will introduce sweeping constitutional reform early in his new term, but few think it will be aimed at broadening the democratic process.

“At the moment, what happens in six years is not of interest to the public,” says Alexei Makarkin, deputy director of the independent Center for Political Technologies in Moscow.

With the country painfully emerging from a two-year economic recession, most Russians seem immersed in daily struggles. Putin has been a fact of life for almost two decades, during which he has ensured stability, brought a measure of economic prosperity, and even restored Russia's international power. Analysts agree that inner-Kremlin strategists may be thinking about the future shape of Russian governance, but most Russians probably are not.

“There are a lot of different ideas floating around,” Mr. Makarkin adds. “But Putin’s decision, announced today, to run as an independent candidate shows that he does not intend to lean on [the pro-Kremlin party] United Russia in the future. It seems likely that his next term will focus on constructing a new system of power in Russia.”

A new setup would sidestep the problem of succession by keeping Putin in the Kremlin, perhaps in a reduced role, but as a reassurance to elites and public alike that no radical upsets can occur. It would also block opposition hopefuls from imagining that they might one day capture the all-powerful presidency that presently exists at the ballot box.

Nikolai Petrov, an expert at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, predicts that Putin will opt for a president-for-life setup that keeps the leader in place but devolves powers to parliament or a special new body that will be set up, perhaps similar to the constitutional changes enacted this year in neighboring Kazakhstan, to keep in place President Nursultan Nazarbayev, first elected in 1991.

“There is lots of room to redesign the system, and there is nobody to resist whatever changes Putin decides upon,” Mr. Petrov says. “Perhaps he will opt for a weaker presidency, but don’t expect him to ever leave.”

Lucasfilm/AP

Daisy Ridley as Rey in 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi,' in theaters on Dec. 15.

“Star Wars: The Last Jedi” is the eighth movie in the series and one of the better ones. I’d rank it behind “The Empire Strikes Back” (still by far the best) and the first film, but it’s about on par with the enjoyable last episode, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which also awakened the long-moribund franchise.

Writer-director Rian Johnson steps into the franchise fray and does a creditable, if uninspired, job. At about 2-1/2 hours, it’s a long sit – at least it was for this non-fanatic of the series. I can’t get overly nostalgic about the return of Luke Skywalker, even if Mark Hamill does by far the best acting of his career here. As Leia Organa, the late Carrie Fisher, like Hamill, appears to be drawing on a deep fund of nostalgic rue. As for the rest of the cast, they are spirited and youngish enough to bode well for future installments, which will no doubt stretch unto eternity. (Technically, “The Last Jedi” is the second in a projected trilogy that began with “The Force Awakens.”)

I have no wish to turn this review into a minefield of spoiler alerts, so suffice to say “The Last Jedi” pits the weakened Resistance against the First Order meanies; it’s darker in tone than any of the films since “Empire,” which it occasionally references; and there are two welcome new additions to the series – a spunky rebel fighter named Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) and a bevy of cute critters called porgs, who resemble benign, big-eyed gremlins and no doubt will be doing double duty as stocking stuffers.

Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren is in full brood here. (Has Driver ever played Hamlet?) Daisy Ridley’s Rey, in attempting to lure the equally brooding Luke out of retirement, is pretty broody herself. As returning action-hero Resistance fighters, Oscar Isaac and John Boyega are less introspective. This is all for the best. Let’s us not forget that, for all the hardware and hoo-ha, this franchise is essentially a soap opera in space, with cliffhangers as neatly timed as anything in “The Perils of Pauline.” Fanatics will love it; for the rest of us, it’s a tolerably good time. Grade: B (Rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action and violence.)

Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP

This image provided by the North Korean government Nov. 30 shows leader Kim Jong Un, third from left, and what the government calls the Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile.

As it has done many times, the United Nations Security Council will again take up the issue of North Korea’s nuclear threat on Dec. 15. The meeting comes less than three weeks after North Korea fired a rocket that seems capable of striking the mainland United States. If past were prologue, not much might come of this latest gathering.

Yet, instead of an atmosphere of more threats and counter-threats, diplomats are speculating that the US and North Korea may be ready to trade brinkmanship for “blinkmanship.” They might be ready to negotiate after years of estrangement, if only to “talk about talks”?

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson hinted at such a possibility a few days ago by saying the US is open to unconditional talks. “Let’s just meet. We can talk about the weather if you want,” he said. And Jeffrey Feltman, the UN political affairs chief, returned from a trip to Pyongyang saying, “I think we’ve left the door ajar” to a negotiated solution.

The reasons for such hope keep piling up. The US appears satisfied that it has arranged very tough sanctions against the regime of Kim Jong-un and that its allies, along with China, have formed a solid front. At the same time, Mr. Kim declared that the latest missile test marked the completion of his country’s nuclear arms program – even though it has not demonstrated all technical aspects of a nuclear and missile capability.

In addition, both sides may have a face-saving opportunity coming up that will allow them to show they are open to compromise.

The US and South Korea are considering delaying a scheduled joint military exercise scheduled for February during the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea. Such a delay, while only a gesture, may be enough for North Korea to reciprocate with a temporary freeze on its nuclear program. If that happens, then this “freeze for a freeze” trade could be an initial step in creating enough trust for serious talks.

While such a scenario seems far-fetched given the rhetoric on both sides, it is necessary for the world to support it. Fears of a war in Northeast Asia keep rising.

Both sides may now realize that not talking will no longer serve as a form of pressure or punishment. And that more sanctions or more military enhancements will do little. Blinking together and opening talks could be the right course.