Richard Drew/AP

Trader Michael Milano works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell as much as 500 points in early trading, bringing the index down 10 percent from the record high it reached on January 26. The DJIA quickly recovered much of that loss – and ended the day up 500 points.

Just when things were looking up, the world’s investors got scared again.

In the course of just two trading days, the US stock market lost 5.5 percent of its value – and most of the rest of the world followed: Japan (-7.2 percent), France (-3.8 percent), and Germany (-2.3 percent).

But the sky isn’t falling, at least, not yet, if history is any guide. Monday’s record fall in terms of points – 1,175 points on the Dow Jones Industrial Average – was far less damaging in percentage terms than the crash of 1987 or the market plunges in the run-up to the Great Recession. And on Tuesday the Dow regained almost half its prior-day loss.

Instead, world markets look headed toward a period of greater volatility and, quite possibly, what's called a correction. Japan’s Nikkei is already there, with shares declining just over 10 percent since their highs last month. The Standard and Poor’s 500, which is a broader market index than the Dow, was down nearly 8 percent after Monday’s rout.

Corrections are normal occurrences, happening on average about once a year. (A bear market, where prices fall at least 20 percent, is more rare.) The return of volatility, however, is more telling.

The past two days have jolted US investors out of a remarkable complacency – where stocks were expected to keep going up indefinitely – to a new appreciation of the rising risks to the world economy after one of history’s longest bull markets. Fear, in other words, is now competing with greed. 

The CBOE Volatility Index, known as the VIX or “fear index” for US stock investors, fell to record lows last year. But on Monday, it notched its biggest ever one-day rise, more than doubling to 37, at the market’s close. That’s the highest it’s been in 2-½ years, but hardly a record.

And so far, it’s not clear that hordes of panicked investors are calling their brokers or financial planners, telling them to sell their stocks.

“We’ve had nothing,” says Rick Miller, founder of Sensible Financial Planning in suburban Boston. “But just because people aren’t calling doesn’t mean that they’re not nervous.”

Reasons behind the sell-off

What are investors nervous about?

Inflation looms large. US stock markets began falling Friday after the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that average hourly earnings for private-sector workers saw their biggest wage gain in more than eight years. Big wage gains can fuel inflation, which central banks fight by raising interest rates. Higher interest rates, in turn, can make bonds more attractive to investors and stocks less attractive.

But wages only rose 2.9 percent year over year, much less than the wage increases before the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009.

“Markets have been addicted to low interest rates and global central banks pumping money into the financial system,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com, in a note to reporters. “As economies around the world are improving, this means higher interest rates and less stimulus from central banks. That’s why investors are throwing a hissy-fit. Not because anything is wrong.”

Another worry: China’s expanding private debt and soaring real estate prices. Analysts have warned for months that the bursting of those twin bubbles could trigger a worldwide crash. But Beijing is working hard to tamp down private borrowing, and the Shanghai Composite index is already down more than 25 percent from its 2015 highs.

Then there’s the run-up in stocks itself. In bourses around the world, share prices have set record after record. In the US, the second-longest bull market has led to a 32 reading on the Cyclically Adjusted Price Earnings ratio, a special stock price-to-earnings measure developed by Yale economist and Nobel laureate Robert Shiller and Harvard economist John Campbell. Only twice before has the index surpassed 30: right before the 1929 stock market crash (32.6) and the dot-com crash of 1999 (44.2)  

So are stocks in a bubble that means an inevitable crash? Stock bubbles are hard for economists to define. But the short answer appears to be: probably not.

The economy remains strong and is adding new jobs. Rising wages, which spooked investors momentarily, remain good news for consumer spending going forward. Although adjustments from the just-passed tax reform have muddled the picture a bit, quarterly earnings released by companies so far have been generally positive. So there are good reasons why stocks can go up without pushing into bubble territory.

New data on bubbles and crashes

Last year, three Harvard economists published a paper looking at stock bubbles. They found that if stocks in a particular sector rose 50 percent or more within a two-year period, the odds that they would crash (fall 40 percent or more) within the next two years were only about 1 in 5. If they rose 100 percent, the odds rose to about 1 in 2. If stocks climbed 150 percent or more, the odds of a crash were 4 in 5.

SOURCE:

National Bureau of Economic Research; “Bubbles for Fama,” by Robin Greenwood, Andrei Shleifer, and Yang You; Yahoo Finance; and Yardeni Research

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

So far, the best performing sector of this bull market has been the financial industry, which by late January’s peak had risen 89 percent in two years. And unlike either 1929 or 1999, “the stock market gains have been pretty even across industries,” Harvard economist Robin Greenwood, the lead researcher on the paper, writes in an email.

Thus, their data suggests that a crash of 40 percent is more unlikely than likely in major markets across the world, with China at the end of 2017 carrying some of the biggest odds with 26 percent. The United States was at 11 percent. (See chart accompanying this article.)

To see what a real bubble and crash look like, look at Bitcoin. Between April and December of last year, it rose an amazing 1,400 percent. Although Bitcoin is not a stock, the trends from the Harvard research suggest it was ripe for a huge fall. Sure enough, the cryptocurrency has now lost more than 60 percent from its December highs.

Timing any crash remains tricky. According to the Harvard researchers, it took on average six months before a sector identified as a bubble market actually peaked, and the average gain during that period was 30 percent.

Some other analysts say US stocks look pricey but not in bubble terrain. In a December market outlook, Vanguard strategist Joseph Davis predicted “a bit more volatility and … more muted equity returns” in 2018.

So what does volatility, of the kind now being experienced in markets around the world, signal for investors?

In his analysis, Mr. Davis said that, even with a more restrained outlook for stocks, average investors generally will be well served by staying the course and “maintaining a balanced and globally diversified portfolio.”

“What volatility tells us,” says Mr. Miller of Sensible Financial, “is that stocks are risky!”

To hear Marc Denhartog explain it, Dutch supremacy at Olympic speedskating is more logical than extraordinary.

“There is a lot of water here, and it’s cold in winter,” he says in a typical Dutch deadpan. “When kids are young, they learn two things: swimming, which is really mandatory because you can fall in every canal around you, and in winter time, it’s ice skating."

Yet Mr. Denhartog’s appearance belies his rather mundane analysis. He is at an ice rink with his 9-year-old, who is attending a speedskating camp during a school vacation. But Denhartog is not wearing a polar fleece and thumbing through stock quotes on his cellphone. He’s in a skinsuit taking a breather from doing laps on the 400-meter track himself.

Yes, the Netherlands’ canals make speedskating a natural national pastime. But the Jaap Eden skating oval here in the middle of Amsterdam, the camp for kids during winter break, and the skinsuit-wearing middle-aged parent speak to something much more – to a genuine sporting obsession.

MICHAEL KOOREN/REUTERS/FILE

Residents dressed in traditional Dutch costumes enjoy a popular winter activity in the Netherlands, skating on a frozen canal, this one in Hindeloopen.

Why are the Dutch so good at speedskating? Why do the Germans own luge? Why do the Norwegians look down on the rest of the world in cross-country skiing?

The Olympic Winter Games, which begin in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Feb. 9, are a collection of the obvious and the eclectic. America’s spirit of freewheeling individualism makes its dominance of snowboarding understandable, perhaps. But why are the South Koreans the lords of the short track speedskating rink?

The answers to why certain countries do so well in certain sports change by country and clime. South Korea’s K-pop culture loves celebrities and short track skaters are divas on switchblades – heroes or villains in the demolition derby of each hairpin corner. In Germany, the country of BMW and Porsche, the ceaseless quest to build the perfect luge sled takes on almost mystical proportions.

Olympic dominance is born of a kindling fire – a historical connection or cultural affinity for a sport that then builds on itself. A financial commitment from the national government can help. But true supremacy comes when sport and nation intertwine so closely that one becomes part of the identity of the other.

There are many examples. Hockey is a core constituent of the Canadian id. Austria justifiably sees itself as the home of Alpine skiing. The Scots were the first to glide curling “stanes” across frozen lochs. 

All of which leads to a fundamental question as the world prepares to watch the best athletes on earth bedazzle with their talents in the snow-gauzed mountains of South Korea: When it comes to sports – especially Olympic sports – is culture destiny?

 * * * 

The deepest connection between a country and a winter sport almost certainly is that between Norway and cross-country skiing. The biathlon – which combines cross-country skiing and riflery – evolved out of combat exercises in the late 1600s. To this day, Norwegian conscripts are still required to learn how to ski and shoot as part of mandatory military service.

MARTIN SCHUTT/PICTURE-ALLIANCE/DPA/AP/FILE

Norway’s Ole Einar Bjorndalen races toward the finish line during a biathlon event in Oberhof, Germany. Nicknamed ‘The King of Biathlon,’ Bjørndalen has won more medals (13) than any other athlete in Winter Olympic history.

But cross-country also defines something more in the Norwegian character. In the late 19th century, it was a prominent expression of Norwegian nationalism. As the country pressed for independence from Sweden, its explorers pushed northward toward the North Pole – conspicuously, on skis.

Fridtjof Nansen, who was the first to cross Greenland’s interior and at one point had traveled farther north than any human in recorded history, “was very conscious about using his skis physically and symbolically,” says Åslaug Midtdal of the Norwegian Ski Museum, the world’s oldest such institution, in Holmenkollen.

Cross-country skiing originated with the Vikings as a form of transport and a way to hunt. In 1206, amid the Norwegian civil war, legend has it that a group of rebels derided as being so poor that they wore birch bark on their feet – the Birkebeiners – carried an infant to safety over mountains by ski from Lillehammer to Trondheim. The infant would grow up to become King Haakon Haakonsson IV, who ended Norway’s civil war and became renowned across Northern Europe.

“Vikings were very good skiers,” says Ms. Midtdal. “The landscape made it impossible for them to travel without skis.”

This March, thousands of Norwegians will re-create the historical trek in the slightly shorter 54-kilometer Birkebeinrennet cross-country race from Rena to Lillehammer for the 80th time.

It is only one example of how deeply winter sports can be sewn into a nation’s history. For the Dutch, skating can be traced like a thread through the centuries. It is thought that the modern iron-bladed skate was first developed in the Low Countries in the 13th century – a revolutionary means of transporting both goods and people along the icy canals.

Four centuries later, Dutch rebels on ice skates so befuddled imperial Spanish forces during the Eighty Years’ War that the Spanish crown reportedly ordered 7,000 of its own pairs of ice skates and offered its soldiers skating lessons. “It was a thing never heard of before today to see a body of musketeers fighting like that on a frozen sea,” a Spanish duke said at the time.

Alas, Spain is still waiting for its first Olympic medal in long track speedskating. The Dutch have won 105 – a full 25 more than No. 2 Norway.

Marnix Koolhaas, a Dutch skating historian and former trainer, says skating took hold as a pastime after the Reformation. As Calvinism spread, the revelry associated with Carnival, an annual Christian celebration that lasted several days, diminished.  “It got transferred to the ice, as the place for joy and fun,” says Mr. Koolhaas.

Ice became a great equalizer. The strict divisions between class and religion didn’t apply. When Dutch skating clubs were founded, they were always neutral, unlike Roman Catholic soccer clubs. “If you were a poor guy but a good skater, you could ask an upper-class girl to skate with you and have fun during ice time,” he says.

Skating had its heyday in the 17th century, during the Dutch golden age, and was often captured in winter landscapes of the period. “In a way, foreigners look at the Dutch population and say they are so free in many ways,” says Koolhaas, noting the liberalism that defines Dutch society. “I think the root of that kind of freedom is based on what happened since the 17th century on the ice.”

TOBIAS HASE/DPA/AP/FILE

Felix Loch, a decorated German luger, speeds down a track at a World Cup competition in Koenigssee, Germany. Germans have dominated the luge since it became an Olympic sport in 1964

It’s a dreary day in the central German town of Winterberg. Snow is falling thickly, roads are slippery, and visibility is poor. So, of course, the luge track is packed.

For the states of Hessen and North Rhine-Westphalia, today is the day scouts will be looking for new talent. And more than anywhere else in the world, the talent has come out in numbers appropriate for a country captivated by careening on a small sled down a serpentine, iced trough. 

“A lot more children came than expected,” says Caroline Theelke, the luge youth coach for the two states. “At first, we talked about 20 [coming]. Then a lot more signed up and we set the limit at 50. Now it’s even more, despite the difficult weather conditions.”

At the Olympics, luge is completely, utterly German. And this day in Winterberg is proof. Since the addition of luge to the Winter Games in 1964, Germans have won 31 of 44 gold medals, and 75 of the total 129 medals. Put another way, Germany has won more medals than the rest of the world combined – and it’s not particularly close.

Take Robin Geueke and David Gamm. The two young men won bronze at last year’s doubles World Cup race in Pyeongchang, regarded as a major test for the coming Games. But they won’t be competing at the Olympics. The Germans can only take two teams, and, even though Geueke and Gamm are ranked No. 4 in the world, they are No. 3 on the German team.

Perhaps it’s the German penchant for velocity. There’s a poetry to one of the Olympics’ fastest sports – with sleds skimming 90 miles per hour down the track – being dominated by a country that has no speed limits on many highways.

Or perhaps it’s German engineering, dedicated to its mantra of Vorsprung durch Technik, “advancement through technology.” When luge legend Georg Hackl was preparing for the Games in Salt Lake City in 2002, where he hoped to win his fourth straight gold medal in the men’s singles, Porsche designed his sled. Outside Berlin, the German government funds a semi-secret Soviet-era research institute dedicated to honing and improving the equipment of Germany’s Olympic athletes.

“Yes, it’s all very German,” Harald Schaale, the institute’s director, told Reuters in 2014. “Engineers everywhere look at how science can improve how things work. It’s possible Germans are a bit more obsessed about it than others.”

Or maybe all these things just came together at a unique time and place to create something new – a luge tradition that didn’t exist before the 1960s. After all, only 16 luge tracks exist in the world, four of which are in Germany.

“The different locations in Germany also compete against each other,” says Gamm, the doubles luger who will miss out on Pyeongchang. “Material and new training principles are tested and new talents can be scouted at four sites simultaneously. And in the end, only the best prevail.” 

This is the power of the Olympic Games to create a winter sports tradition, and it will also be on display this year in the host nation, South Korea.

Four years before short track speedskating officially entered the Olympics, Korea was hardly a superpower. In 1988, when short track was just a demonstration sport, the country finished on the podium only twice. Since 1992, however, South Korea has been on the short track podium more than any other country – 42 times, compared with No. 2 China’s 30.

ALEXANDER DEMIANCHUK/REUTERS/FILE

Short track speedskaters lean into a turn with Cho Ha-ri, of South Korea, leading the women’s heat at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games.

In short, Korea saw an opportunity, and state planners seized it. After 1988, “Koreans ... were determined to make it their own,” wrote the Chosun Ilbo, a Korean newspaper, in 2006, noting that Koreans, “with their relatively small figures,” were perfectly suited for the small oval track. 

Zealous government planning is hardly new to Seoul. “Physical fitness is national power” was a mantra of Park Chung-hee, South Korea’s dictator from 1961 to 1979. His government, and the administrations that succeeded it, saw their role as selecting national champions in business, the arts, and sports.

Cho Ha-ri, a 2014 Olympian, was in first grade when an instructor spotted her. She was admitted to the Taereung Training Center – a pipeline for elite athletes set up by the government in northeastern Seoul – where she lived 11 months a year for 23 years. “I’d wake up at around 4:30 a.m., skate from 6 to 8, and have breakfast,” she says. “From 10 to 12, I’d weight train. After lunch and a short break, from 1:30 or 2, I’d train more until 6 and then have dinner. And there’s a night training for about an hour.”

Her road to success, far from glamorous, was a journey through peril and hardship toward single-minded mastery. There’s a Korean appeal there, she says. “It’s the type of sport that requires one to persevere until the very end,” she adds. “I think there’s a sense of perseverance unique to South Koreans.”

Yet at the end, for the very best, there is also glamour. “In Korea, it’s personality driven,” says Olympic historian David Wallechinsky. “The people become role models, and it’s a self-perpetuating thing.”

This in a nation where sport is tied to ethnic pride – where a belief lingers that all Koreans, whether from the North or South, come from a superior bloodline called the minjok. “I think South Koreans generally have better, quicker reflexes than Westerners,” says Kwon Sung-ho, professor of physical education at Seoul National University.

 * * *

Domination in a sport often confirms national characteristics that a people cherish in themselves. For the United States, think freedom, individualism, and innovation. In other words, think snowboarding. 

In truth, the Winter Olympics’ entire freestyle revolution – turning from austere timed events to those judged by tricks – has heightened American influence on the Games. The US was generally a Winter Olympic also-ran until the 2000s, when the explosion of X Games-style sports gave it a medal table jolt.

“What drew me to halfpipe and aerials more than anything else was the fact that there weren’t any rules – you could do it however you wanted, and as long as you made it look good, it would get the respect of both competitors and the judges,” said David Wise, a freestyle skier, at an Olympics media event late last year.

Others take a more conservative approach, doing the same tried-and-true runs in a quest for wins. “I want to win, but I want to do something new more,” he noted. 

“It’s an American thing. The pioneer. And that’s why I love to use the term pioneer. Because America is about pioneering,” he added. “And honestly I think that’s why our team has been traditionally so successful in free skiing and snowboard....” 

He’s certainly right about the success: America has won 24 medals in snowboarding – twice as many as second-place Switzerland. And there are 10 snowboarding events on the program for Pyeongchang, as the program keeps growing.

PHIL LINDEMAN/SUMMIT DAILY NEWS/AP/FILE

A US snowboarder does an aerial move out of the superpipe during a practice at Copper Mountain in Colorado.

It’s been 20 years since a brash band of Americans in baggy pants first invaded the Olympic slopes at Nagano, Japan. Those inaugural riders, distinguished by their free spirits and irreverent attitudes, did more than captivate crowds at the Games. They helped breathe youthful vitality into a Winter Olympic movement that for years has struggled to grow its geographic appeal and relevance.

“Snowboarding is not a team sport,” says DJ Jenson, a former Burton Snowboards senior vice president. “These athletes have unique personalities and train in different locations rather than one place like members of other teams do. They take pride in competing for their country but so much is about self-expression, individuality, and creativity. That’s what makes it so much fun to watch.”

Even snowboarding’s origins are quintessentially American. Depending on whom you believe, the first snowboard was either a “snurfer” (snow surfer) invented by a Michigan man in his garage on Christmas Day 1965, or a “bunker” board patented by a Minnesotan in 1937.

While Americans may brandish their individuality in the halfpipe and big air, Russians showcase a different national characteristic every four years in another realm – on ice. The sense of grace evident in the Bolshoi and Mariinsky is manifested in the country’s figure skaters. Russia has not necessarily dominated the sport: The 55 total medals of the Soviet Union, Russia, and 1992’s Unified Team just barely top America’s 49. Yet the success the country has had in figure skating is rooted in elements of Russian culture and cunning – the beauty of ballet allied with the might of a state sports machine.

Since pairs figure skating was introduced in 1964, Russian or Soviet skaters have won gold an astonishing 13 of 14 times. Their record in ice dancing is only slightly less impressive, having won seven of the 11 gold medals since the event began in 1976. Between the two events, the Russian/Soviet team accounts for 38 of 75 medals awarded.

Now with Adelina Sotnikova’s gold in the women’s singles in Sochi – remarkably, the first for Russia in the event – the country is beginning to expand its footprint. “In Moscow, figure skating is so popular that parents stand in lines, sometimes overnight, to register their children with a top trainer,” says Olga Ermolina of the Russian Federation of Figure Skating.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, Russian sports foundered. The nation’s legendary figure skating trainers fanned out across the world, where they made a living teaching others. But after Vladimir Putin came to power, resources began to flow back into national sports.

Three-time Olympic pairs champion Irina Rodnina, for example, returned to Russia from the US and was elected to successive terms in the State Duma, where she currently oversees sports policy for the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. “There was a time when trainers were leaving Russia en masse, but not anymore,” says Oleg Shamanayev, deputy editor of the Moscow newspaper Sport-Express. “Now trainers are spoiled for choice: We have really good schools, and are strongest in female skating.”

Russia’s Olympic collapse reached its nadir at the 2010 Vancouver Games, where Russian figure skaters didn’t win a single gold medal, managing just one silver and one bronze. With Russia set to host the next Winter Games in Sochi, the Kremlin was determined to turn things around.

That effort has become notorious, involving an unprecedented doping operation that has seen Russia banned from the Pyeongchang Games. But Russian athletes who prove they are clean can compete under the Olympic flag, and that could include Team Russia’s figure skaters.

“There are very few cases of doping in this sport, if only because there are no drugs that can help achieve better results in figure skating,” says Mr. Shamanayev.

 * * *

One thing that can be said for certain – from Sweden to Saskatchewan – is that success breeds success.

The recipe for Winter Olympics domination is the scene in Amsterdam – a parent passing a passion on to a child – repeated countless times across a country. “Around 4 we start them on ice hockey skates,” says Denhartog. “But we like to have them start early with the longer skates. Because that’s for us the real skating.”

And despite all the Dutch ice skating ovals, nothing quickens the pulse like seeing ice on the canals. “In the winter, we get crazy around it. We follow the news, follow the ice thickness,” he says. “When it’s a good night, you will take the morning off with your friend for ice skating.” (He is adamant that any Dutch boss would understand.) The holy grail is the Elfstedentocht, a 120-mile canal race that connects 11 cities in the northern province of Friesland when conditions are cold enough.

The scene repeats itself by the luge tracks of Germany. A mother from Schmallenberg has just watched her 8-year-old son race down the track at 34 m.p.h. “Well, I’m a bit worried about the constant driving, but if he wants to pursue it, we will support him,” she says. “I mean, if you’re from the region, you automatically foster an affection for the sport.”

Other Germans agree. “Our youngest start at the age of 5,” says Ms. Theelke, the youth coach. “This means if they make it all the way to the top they already have a lot of experience, a lead of hundreds or maybe even thousands of races.”

In Norway, cross-country skiing is ingrained in everyday life. Many Norwegians have access to a family ski cabin in the mountains. Urban dwellers in Oslo have only a short train ride to get to free prepared trails just outside the city. Norwegian youth are exposed to cross-country skiing at day care and primary school and through 1,150 local ski clubs.

“I went to and from school on skis,” says Pål Rise, a cross-country education consultant with the Norwegian Ski Federation. “That culture still lives in Norwegians.”

In the end, as the Winter Olympics unfold in South Korea, the world will be watching more than a clash of extraordinary athletes. It will be witnessing a collision of cultures and histories: German precision and Russian elegance, American individualism and Korean perseverance, the legacy of skating musketeers and Norwegians in birch bark boots.

(Contributing to this report were Sara Miller Llana in Amsterdam; Valeria Criscione in Oslo; Felix Franz in Winterberg, Germany; Geoffrey Cain with Jieun Choi in Seoul, South Korea; Fred Weir in Moscow; Todd Wilkinson in Bozeman, Mont.; and Christa Case Bryant in Park City, Utah.) 

Republican Sen. John McCain may be thousands of miles from Washington, receiving cancer treatment at home in Arizona. But his influence in the nation’s capital has hardly diminished.

This week, Senator McCain, along with fellow Sen. Chris Coons (D) of Delaware, unveiled a new bipartisan attempt at an immigration compromise that would protect so-called “Dreamers” from being deported while beefing up border security.

Last week, as Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee prepared to release a memo detailing alleged abuses in the surveillance of a Trump campaign official, McCain weighed in with a sharply critical statement, saying: “The latest attacks on the FBI and the Department of Justice serve no American interests – no party’s, no president’s, only Putin’s.”

And when it comes to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Chairman McCain is still very much in control. As Sen. James Inhofe (R) of Oklahoma, who is running committee meetings in McCain’s absence, told C-SPAN: “He’s calling the shots.”

Even without all this activity from afar, however, McCain’s presence would be strongly felt – because of his profound influence on many of his colleagues. In recent years, the Arizona senator has purposefully mentored a new squadron of defense hawks on the Hill, most notably from the large Republican class of senators that took office in 2015, when he assumed the committee chairmanship. Seven of them landed on Armed Services.

“All these senators come in, and in a sense, they’re their own independent island. But John McCain has spent a lot of time – and this is the sign of a great leader – trying to mentor people,” says Sen. Dan Sullivan (R) of Alaska, elected in 2014. “He went out of his way to work with a lot of members of my class.”

During a time when the Republican party has been pulled in a notably more isolationist direction, McCain has remained a staunch advocate for US influence in the world – and his committee has embraced that worldview. The annual National Defense Authorization Act, which sets the military budget, passed unanimously out of McCain’s committee last year with a significant increase in military spending (Congress is now tussling over appropriating those funds).

As one Capitol Hill staffer puts it, McCain has helped a new generation of senators appreciate “the importance of American leadership – and American military strength as part of that leadership.”

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Known as a "defense hawk," Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee – and has played an active role in mentoring many of its newest members.

“Mentor” is not a word one might readily associate with the fiercely independent, blunt, and at times hot-tempered McCain. But it comes up again and again in interviews with committee members.

“Literally, my first month in the Senate, he reached out,” says Senator Sullivan. McCain approached him and asked whether the lieutenant colonel in the Marine Reserves would like to focus on security in Asia. “He came up to me [and said], ‘You know Dan, we don’t really have the next generation of senators focusing on foreign policy and national security in Asia-Pacific. If you’re interested, I want to help you with that.’ ” The freshman senator jumped at the offer, especially given Alaska’s proximity to the region.

Demanding accountability

Like McCain, many committee members had military experience before they got to the Senate. But they say they’ve learned things from him – such as the importance of demanding accountability from officials in public and private settings.

Last October, for instance, at a hearing on Afghanistan, McCain minced no words when Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford appeared before the panel. In August, President Trump had announced that he would send a few thousand more US troops to Afghanistan, but held back on details.

“In the six weeks since the president made his announcement, this committee – and the Congress, more broadly – still does not know many of the crucial details of this strategy,” McCain chided. “This is totally unacceptable. I repeat: This is totally unacceptable.”

And he readily put the squeeze on the administration by holding up Pentagon nominees to get more information on strategy and other issues, such as four American troops killed in Niger last year. He has since lifted those holds.

“John is able to ... focus real passion, and communicate that passion to people so that they get it done,” says Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the Democratic ranking member on the committee. “It’s not like, ‘Well, there’s another request, we’ll put that on the list.’ It’s like, ‘We better get this done. Senator McCain is passionate about this.’ ”

Senator Reed notes that McCain runs his committee in a “profoundly bipartisan” way, letting everyone have their say – which has often helped members reach a consensus.

On overseas trips that often have a reputation for being a bit of a forced march, McCain’s heavyweight status has helped open doors for many of his colleagues.

“When you travel with Senator McCain, you see the best and you get to meet the best. It’s a real learning experience,” says McCain’s best friend in Congress, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) of South Carolina.

Every minute on these trips is put to use. While lawmakers on other congressional delegation tours – or “codels” – may sit back during flights overseas with earbuds on, McCain sees it as a time to debate the issues: What to do about the Israelis and Palestinians, or Syria?

“He goes from dawn to dusk,” says Sen. David Perdue (R) of Georgia, a former Fortune 500 chief executive officer who traveled with McCain to Afghanistan and Pakistan to visit troops over a July 4 break.

Visiting the ‘Hanoi Hilton’

Sen. Joni Ernst (R) of Iowa recalls a trip with McCain to Vietnam that included Sullivan and Reed. They visited the “Hanoi Hilton,” the prison-turned-museum where McCain was held captive and tortured.

Sitting on the sofa in her Senate office, the former lieutenant colonel and Iraq War veteran had to briefly gather her composure when talking about the trip – and the man.

“It’s hard,” she says, “to see him go back there.” To ease the emotion, she recalls, McCain employed some “dark” humor. Passing photos of former prisoners playing volleyball and standing in front of a Christmas tree, McCain quipped: “It was just like a vacation.”

Later that evening, at one of his favorite restaurants, the former Navy fighter pilot shared stories from his captivity that Senator Ernst had never heard before. “It ... just demonstrates his ability to overcome adversity that most of us cannot even begin to imagine,” she says. He was “able to come out from that and forgive the people that did so many bad things to him.”

Sharing McCain's worldview does not mean sharing all of his political views. Sen. Tom Cotton (R) of Arkansas, a combat veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, might side with the chairman on issues like Iran and military spending, but he’s firmly in Mr. Trump’s camp on immigration. Sullivan has differed with McCain on healthcare.

Ernst remembers a disagreement she had with McCain over funding. “He had words with me,” she laughs. Ernst persisted in trying to clear the air, and eventually he came around saying, “‘Joni, I can’t stay mad at you.’” While they don’t always agree, Ernst says they “typically do.”

Senators like Cotton, Sullivan, and Ernst “will be in the McCain camp for years to come as far as national security is concerned,” says Senator Graham, strolling through the Senate’s underground passageway on the way to his office. “John has opened doors for them, and mentored them, like he’s mentored me – and it will pay dividends.”

Grigory Dukor/Reuters/File

A man reads a newspaper at Baumanskaya metro station in Moscow, in March 2017.

The cramped editorial offices of the weekly tabloid Moyaw invoke sharp contradictions to several widely held stereotypes of what the media in Vladimir Putin’s Russia must look like.

For one thing, it’s a privately owned and operated newspaper, and has been since it started up in 1994. For another, it’s the most popular paper of its type in the city. It works from a downtown Voronezh building called “Press Freedom House,” and it consistently maintains its edge despite having a state-owned competitor that’s distributed free of charge.

And though it’s not overtly political in its focus, it does often break stories that seem to go against the official grain. For instance, one week in December, Moyaw (Mine) published a ground-breaking front-page feature spread about transgender people in the Voronezh region, with sympathetic first-person coverage of a local man who explains in detail his feelings, choices, and the steps he took to transition to becoming a woman.

“We try to connect big, national themes to what is happening here in Voronezh,” says Dmitry Yeriskin, Moyaw’s deputy editor. “It’s senseless to ask if we are ‘opposition’ press, because whether we support the Kremlin or not just doesn't come up on any given day. We mostly choose our own stories, according to what we think needs to be done. We don’t have the authorities threatening to close us down or anything like that. That would be impossible.”

But that’s not the same thing as saying it’s easy to be the only independent newspaper in a medium-sized Russian city like Voronezh. The post-Soviet media jungle is a complicated place.

The biggest animals tend to be state-owned or backed publications with deep pockets, but also display a very un-Soviet desire to be perceived as serving the public and fulfilling the classical role of the Fourth Estate. The main challenges faced by private newspapers like Moyaw are financial, the difficulty of surviving amid a sparse advertising market, and the constant, seductive lure of state support and the hidden strings that attach to it.

The oversized, whale-like presence of government in the media pool is to some extent a legacy of Soviet times. But it’s also the result of creative engineering by Putin-era authorities, aimed at stimulating the growth of a broad spectrum of media voices while also keeping them all on a leash. Here in Voronezh, there is a vigorous debate over whether the self-declared “nurturing” role of the state is a positive one, or whether it’s just a more sophisticated, neo-Soviet means of smothering free expression.

The journalists at Moyaw have a clear opinion about that.

“We live under very tough conditions. The authorities always say it’s great that independent media exists, and insist that it’s good for them too,” says Mr. Yeriskin. “But then they create a state-funded competitor – a weekly tabloid called 7 Semerochka [7 Days] – that covers many of the same issues we do, goes head-to-head with us in our advertising market, yet can afford to be distributed for free. This is not a competitor, this is a spoiler.”

Russia’s media spectrum

A relatively liberal region, Voronezh illustrates how far Russian media has evolved from the Soviet model, where the Communist Party effectively controlled every publication through direct censorship.

Even in Soviet times there was a spectrum of opinion in the press, largely engineered by the Party to cater to different sectors of the population. Today’s Russian media is a mixture of old Soviet products – which have evolved but often retain dependency on the support of the state or Kremlin-friendly oligarchs – and a few independent ones that answer to business or politically minded owners.

Throughout the country (including Voronezh), most information about national and foreign affairs comes from the three big Moscow-based TV networks and national-scale newspapers like Izestia, Komsomolskaya Pravda, and the government organ Rossiyskaya Gazeta. People here also read Western-style Moscow-based press like the business dailies Kommersant and Vedomosti, as well as the liberal opposition outlet Novaya Gazeta. And there is also the internet, a vast and largely unregulated space, with immensely popular social media platforms like Facebook and VKontakte, where almost anything can be found.

“Most of our major newspapers, both national and local, don’t express clear political opinions. It’s not like the Soviet Union. They are in principle independent,” says Vladimir Kireyev, an independent expert in Voronezh. “Nobody micromanages their content, telling them what to write. But there are rules of the game, which are observed by everyone.”

These rules concern off-limits criticisms – such as rejection of the annexation of Crimea; or Russian intervention in Syria; or the revival of “Christian values” currently underway; or the Putin-era idea of “national sovereignty” that defines Russia's foreign policy path separate from, and sometimes in opposition to, the West. “You can criticize the authorities in all sorts of ways, say almost anything, but you put yourself beyond the pale if you attack these ‘consensual values’ ” that under-gird the current system of power in Russia, he says.

But why would anyone want to challenge those basic concepts, retorts Boris Podgayny, editor of the city’s largest daily, Voronezh Kurier, which is owned by the city government. The vast majority of Russians subscribe to these ideas, he insists.

“Annexation of Crimea? We try to meet our readers’ interests, and no one would be interested in this,” he says. “We can talk about life in Crimea, how is it going, this and that. But we are a state newspaper holding. We all share our country’s positions. If we didn’t, we’d go and work on some opposition newspaper.”

Today there are about 70 internet news sites in Voronezh, only one of which is state-funded, and several of which self-identify as “opposition.” Many of those are run by local businessmen who use them to promote their own interests, political and commercial, but some also try to cover local politics and business from an independent stance.

“I’ve often thought about changing my profession, but always seem to return to journalism,” says German Poltayev, a veteran political reporter who took part in liberating the Voronezh Kurier from Communist Party control amid the Soviet twilight. He rose to become deputy editor, but had a falling out with management a couple of years ago.

He went to work for a small online newspaper, Vremya Voronezh, owned by a local businessman, which engages in local investigative journalism.

“I find and write about various events, conflicts, and contradictions that are triggered by decisions of local authorities or big business,” including corruption scandals and construction boondoggles, he says. “About 80 percent of what I do is what I consider right and necessary; maybe 20 percent is the requirements of advertising and the demands of my boss.”

His readership is small, he says, maybe a few hundred people on any given week. “Sometimes I suspect we have more writers than readers. But it’s not our fault, or the fault of the authorities either. The public is just not engaged, as it was at some points in the past. Maybe it will be again, but the mood right now is very apathetic.”

Media and the state

The regional governor’s emissary to the media is Ilya Sakharov, a man whose job does not exist in any Western country. A former journalist, he says a special contact person between authorities and the press is necessary because Russia’s media architecture is a work-in-progress.

The state inherited many publications from the Soviet Union, he says, and few can survive without government assistance in various forms. Even Moyaw, the one completely private newspaper in Mr. Sakharov’s stable, depends upon occasional state grants. He insists his function is not to tell them what they may publish, but to help them better define their role as mediators between authorities and public.

“The state sometimes can’t manage industries well, and that is not what we want to do with the media,” he says. “My task is to make state-owned media less dependent on the government budget.

“We don’t need a place to print press releases,” Sakharov says. “We need to see the press regain the trust of readers and become an effective forum for public opinion. Authorities need to know what the people are thinking. The media stands between us and the public. They should be in a position to explain certain things to us, and help us explain certain things to them. We are only halfway to finding such a model.”

The new instrument that has taken shape under Sakharov’s tenure is a large state holding company, RIA-Voronezh, which brings together 32 regional publications under one roof. This includes several small district papers serving just a few thousand readers, the mainstay Kurier, and some new publications such as 7 Semerochka – the one that’s pressuring Moyaw – and a slick monthly magazine called Slovo (Word) that’s aimed at educated youth.

Natalya Teslenko, director of the holding company, says it’s created a lot of synergies that are increasing the reach and pubic authority of regional media. She argues that many small Soviet-era district papers, serving distinct local communities, would never survive without state support.

“They report the news people are interested in. What are their neighbors doing? What are the outside trends that are going to affect their town? These papers are a vital connection for people, and if they are lost, people would find themselves in a vacuum,” she says.

Some experts support this model, arguing that you can’t expect internet bloggers or other ad hoc sources to replace established media institutions that are staffed by professionals, and if the state has to step in and support it, then so be it.

“We used to believe that if it’s private, it’s better. But sometimes the opposite is true,” says Vladimir Tulupov, journalism professor at Voronezh State University. “The media everywhere is under pressure, either financial or political. In Russia we are not ready for a media that can survive entirely without state support. So our focus should be to try and make state officials see their task as creating conditions for the media to thrive and fulfill the role it should in a healthy society.

“There are a lot of ideas under discussion, but so far there is no clear direction,” he adds. “In some regions, like Voronezh, officials are trying to do it in a better way. In many other regions, they are not.”

‘It’s all changing’

But some argue the direction is all wrong.

“RIA-Voronezh is not the worst state media in the country but, being a state holding, they still cannot write about issues that are sensitive for their owner,” says Galina Arapova, head of the Voronezh-based Mass Media Defence Centre, a nongovernmental organization that was declared a “foreign agent” by the Kremlin two years ago due to its receipt of foreign funding. It may be a hopeful indication of the complexity and tentative pluralism in today’s Russia that the local governor called the Moscow decision a “mistake” and continues to consult with the group on media issues. Ms. Arapova says it’s probably the only example like that in the country today.

“The problem with this state model is that it’s a bit like conditions in a good prison, where the prisoners are well fed and clothed,” she says. “Of course they are better off now, but they’ve lost their freedom to decide any issues beginning with finances and ending with what they can cover. There are no prospects to develop this model.”

But Professor Tulupov says the main thing at this point is to keep the profession of journalism alive.

“We’re lucky people. We’ve lived through several epoch, and we can compare. We definitely know the wrong way to do things,” he says. “At least we have choices today. The print media will soon be gone, and everything will go online. It’s all changing, and some things are getting better. That’s not an answer to any of these fiercely debated questions, but I find it quite hopeful.”

Gerald Herbert/AP

In a sign of the digital times, one of the last newsstands in metro New Orleans closed in 2015. The owners say the newsstand has been losing money because people aren't buying as many newspapers and magazines. The country's alt-weekly newspapers' fortunes also have faded along with newsstands over the previous decade.

In a news landscape filled with layoffs and closings, the alt-weekly may be perhaps the most precarious form of journalism.

Lisa Snowden-McCray has started one anyway.

And, bucking conventional wisdom about digital platforms, it’s in print. But then, bucking convention has always been part of the alt-weekly ethos.

The veteran journalist launched the Baltimore Beat after her old newsroom, the Baltimore City Paper, shuttered operations in November after 40 years.

While the business model for alt-weeklies – the scrappy, unapologetic siblings to more staid print journalism – may be unclear, the need for vigilant reporters intensely focused on local news and political leaders is not, Ms. Snowden-McCray and other alt-weekly supporters say.

“We help push the conversation forward,” says Snowden-McCray.

It's been a rough time for the country’s remaining alt-weeklies. Besides the demise of the Baltimore City paper, the LA Weekly cut 9 of its 13 editorial staff, and the storied Village Voice moved exclusively online. Just last week, Nashville's The Scene shuttered. The staff of the Washington City Paper were facing salary cuts of 40 percent, until a last-minute rescue by venture capitalist Mark Ein.

“Every thriving community needs strong local news, and Washington City Paper has been a critical part of the fabric of our city, and a great incubator of journalistic talent, for decades,” Mr. Ein said in a statement in December.

Sweeping changes in the media landscape over the past decade have hit alt-weeklies, along with small-town newspapers and other forms of community journalism, especially hard. Bloggers, social media, and the rise of online niche publications have led to the collapse of the financial model that allowed alt-weeklies to flourish. The Association for Alternative Newsmedia had 135 members in 2009. Nine years later, that number has fallen to 110. The top 20 alt-weeklies lost 11 percent of their subscribers in both 2014 and 2015, according to the Pew Research Center.

“In a moment when The New York Times has a special section called ‘Wealth’ (actual headline: ‘I’m Rich, and That Makes Me Anxious’) alt-weeklies remain the official papers of the vulnerable, invisible, and underserved,” wrote Philip Eil in the Columbia Journalism Review on Jan. 25. “They’re an extra set of eyes on legislators, local officials, and law enforcement. They’re often the ombudsman for the local media, monitoring daily newspapers and airwaves the same way government environmental agencies track water and air quality. And, in many cases, they’re an all-too-rare source of original investigative – or, at least, in-depth – reporting on a range of topics.”

Rising from the counterculture movement of the 1970s, alt-weeklies created a space for young reporters who chafed at the strictures of traditional journalism. Profanity, liberal politics, and discussions on local bands filled the pages. As an alternative source of news, alt-weeklies believed it was their duty to provide information that detailed the happenings in their communities. The papers have been the training ground for some of today’s leading journalists and writers, including CNN’s Jake Tapper, MSNBC host Chris Hayes, and authors such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, Katherine Boo, and Susan Orlean.

The alt-weekly provided “deep coverage on an almost neighborhood level,” says Dan Kennedy, an associate professor of journalism at Northeastern University in Boston and a former media columnist at the now-defunct Boston Phoenix. They were “digging in much more than The Washington Post can do on a daily basis.”

Without the size and budget of the large dailies, alt-weekly newsrooms make up for the lack of staff with determination and obsessiveness. For example, The Willamette Week in Oregon famously went through elected officials’ trash, after Portland law enforcement determined they had a right to search residents’ trash without a warrant.

Tim Keck, founder and publisher of the Seattle alt-weekly The Stranger, describes an “all hands on deck” mentality – whether it’s having book editors jumping into real-time election coverage or huddling at a staff member’s house to cover a nearby manhunt.

As alt-weekly newsrooms continue to shrink, their tradition of long form, on-the-ground reporting has become increasingly difficult and expensive.

Alt-weeklies have typically been slower to adopt new business models, according to Mr. Keck. But for his part, he does believe that there is opportunity to continue producing solid journalism and have a profitable online revenue stream. Some publications have considered paywalls to help generate capital, while others have decided to go down the nonprofit route and cut out the print product to cut costs.

“The landscape is ever-changing, and my view is that unless you are entrenched with a very strong digital platform and a full digital agency service it will be a tough road ahead,” says Scott Tobias, CEO of the Voice Media Group.

The Baltimore Beat has two reporters, in addition to Snowden-McCray. She occasionally helps deliver the paper, and personally identifies neighborhoods that still crave hyper-local news in a city that has captured the national spotlight, from stories on police brutality and poverty to other social justice issues.

When it comes to the best way to serve underserved neighborhoods, she says there is no substitute for print.

“A lot of people don’t have the luxury of having a smart phone,” Snowden-McCray says. “We should strive to continue to have a paper in hand.”

AP Photo

Inter-Korea's players walk into the ice during the women's hockey friendly game between Koreas' combined team and Sweden, at Seonhak International Ice Rink in Incheon, South Korea, Feb. 4.

When South Korea was chosen in 2011 to host this year’s Winter Olympics, one big hope was that North Koreans would participate with their fellow Koreans in the sporting events. The two peoples, after all, share an ethnic bond and an ancient culture despite decades of separation and conflict. Achieving peace on the divided peninsula might be made easier.

That assumption, however, has been openly challenged in recent weeks as North Koreans have indeed joined the Olympics. The best evidence is the widespread resentment and protests after players on South Korea’s women’s ice hockey team – who practiced hard for the Olympics – had to give up 12 places for North Korean athletes just for the political purpose of showing kinship and to promote a temporary peace.

The forced unity was seen as unfair and violating the norms of decency in South Korea. The popularity of South Korean President Moon Jae-in fell. The move was even more unpopular after it became clear that the two sets of players differ in their use of the Korean language. To communicate, they often have to use English.

Young South Koreans are moving past the idea that ethnic nationalism and a belief in common bloodlines could someday drive the two Koreas to unite. After three decades of democracy and an embrace of a globalized world, they display a civic nationalism built on universal values. Nearly three-quarters of South Koreans in their 20s, for example, now oppose reunification with the North. In contrast, for those over 60, about half say reunification is necessary because North Koreans “belong to the same nation.”

Young South Koreans also display a cultural affinity with many other nations, such as China, Japan, and the United States. And their own cultural exports, such as K-pop and soap operas, have helped shape a broader identity.

South Korea really began to lose interest in reunification after it saw the high cost to West Germany of absorbing East Germany in the 1990s. The much-poorer North would take years to achieve South Korea’s economic standards. In addition, the two drifted further apart after violent attacks by the North on South Korean civilians and service members in recent years.

Over time, the people of North Korea might begin to appreciate this shift in identity among their southern cousins. The regime of dictator Kim Jong-un has tried to build a North Korean identity based on the notion that only it can reunite the peninsula, relying on atomic weapons and authoritarian rule by one family – and all for the purpose of “Korean purity.”

This Olympics has served as a window on what really might bring peace to the two Koreas. It lies in honoring the norms of fairness and rules demanded by young people in South Korea’s democracy. Bloodlines are not thicker than that larger and universal identity.