It was Dec. 25, 1991, when the USSR abruptly ceased to exist.

Just before midnight, the Soviet red hammer-and-sickle banner was pulled down from the Kremlin for the last time, and up fluttered an unfamiliar white-blue-red tricolor that proclaimed the birth – or rebirth – of Russia.

It was truly an inflection point. The Soviet Union, the communist behemoth that had defined one pole of a binary world order for decades, had simply evaporated. It had already abandoned its Eastern European empire and dissolved its military alliance. Now its rivalry with the United States, complete with a hostile anti-capitalist ideology, a costly nuclear arms race, and multiple proxy wars around the world, was gone.

Commentators hailed this not merely as an end to a divided world with its permanent threat of nuclear war, but as a chance to create an inclusive, ideology-free order that might improve the lot of all humankind.

It was a world that seemed within reach thanks to the discovery, as the walls crumbled and the Cold War stereotypes receded, that most Russians were surprisingly, enthusiastically pro-Western. Vladimir Pozner, an American-Russian who grew up in New York, then spent 30 years working in the bowels of the Soviet propaganda machine before becoming a TV personality in both the U.S. and Russia, recalls it as the most exhilarating moment of his life.

“There was this emotional upsurge in the country. People felt like they were coming out of a cocoon after a very long time,” he says. “Many of us thought, finally, we are going to become part of the world – as we always really wanted to be – be accepted, be participants. It was a really enthralling vision.”

Things have, conspicuously, not turned out that way. Tracking polls that showed Russians overwhelmingly pro-American in the 1990s now show majorities of Russians suspicious of the U.S. Even though today’s Russia is a capitalist country, without an empire or an antagonistic ideology, American attitudes toward Russia have turned as negative as they ever were toward the old USSR.

It’s difficult to hold a conversation with any Russian foreign policy specialist today without getting dragged into polemics: angry accusations, defensive responses, and the underlying assumption that the other side must change its behavior before a more constructive global order becomes feasible.

But most agree that, in a world facing common challenges like climate change, the persisting danger of nuclear conflict, and a relentless coronavirus pandemic, the replay of the Cold War is a serious obstacle to international efforts to stave off global disaster. Some even offer a few practical ideas for how Russia and the West might at least formulate some new priorities to minimize confrontation and maximize cooperation.

“I do believe that most of the issues between us can be solved, not by one vanquishing the other, but by finding new terms of mutual acceptance,” says Andrei Klimov, deputy chair of the foreign affairs committee of Russia’s upper house of parliament. “My dream is, maybe during my lifetime, that we will see normal politicians on both sides sit down together with a readiness to formulate pragmatic answers to the questions that vex our relationship.”

A Russia ignored

From the Russian perspective, the evolution of disillusionment with the West was a natural progression.

Alexei Gromyko, as director of the official Institute of Europe, often serves in an advisory role to today’s Russian leaders. On an overcast afternoon in mid-March, the institute, an ornate 19th-century building near the Kremlin, was empty amid the beginnings of Russia’s coronavirus shutdown. But Mr. Gromyko was in his office, willing to talk about how he sees East-West relations.

In his view, today’s inflamed geopolitical crisis was rooted in the post-Cold War failure to create a security system, primarily in Europe, that would fully include Russia. Western leaders gave Mikhail Gorbachev strong verbal assurances NATO would not be expanded into the former Soviet sphere but, as Mr. Gromyko ruefully notes, Mr. Gorbachev failed to get that in writing. Following the USSR’s demise, U.S. President Bill Clinton took office and adopted other plans. That lesson was not lost on the Russians.

“After the collapse of one pillar of the former bipolar world order, it became fashionable in the West to think that the world order could become unipolar, with the U.S. at the helm,” he says. “In the 1990s, Russia descended into its worst crisis since 1917. It not only ceased to be a superpower, it suffered political, economic, and social collapse as well. It was not even clear that Russia would survive physically. So, perhaps believing that Russian interests and views didn’t matter anymore, Clinton made the decision to enlarge NATO to the east.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File

Under Mikhail Gorbachev, Russians exercise their freedom of expression during a demonstration in Manyezh Square in Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union, in July 1990. The demo is anti-Communist, pro-democracy.

“But just because Russia couldn’t do anything about it at the time doesn’t mean that we accepted it. We never did. Since then the process of NATO expansion has been unstoppable, and so has the subsequent chain of events.”

The Western alliance has since taken in all of the former Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact allies, as well as the three former Soviet Baltic republics. Mr. Gromyko says the Russians signaled repeatedly to Western counterparts that inducting Ukraine or Georgia into the alliance would be a red line. At its 2008 Bucharest Summit, NATO shelved those countries’ applications, but issued a statement insisting they would eventually join.

A few months later Georgia attacked the Russian-backed statelet of South Ossetia, which belongs to Georgia but had de facto independence since the early ’90s. Russia staged a military intervention and drove Georgian forces back.

In early 2014, after a disorderly change of power in Kyiv brought pro-Western nationalists to power, Russia again intervened, seizing the Crimean Peninsula – where the main base for Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet is located – and orchestrating a referendum in which Crimeans voted to join Russia. Moscow subsequently stirred up, armed, and gave military support to anti-Kyiv separatists in Ukraine’s east.

Mr. Gromyko insists Russia has nothing to apologize for. The idea of Ukraine joining NATO is as unthinkable for Moscow as, say, Mexico joining a Chinese-led military alliance would be for Washington, he suggests.

“It’s not that we view NATO as an existential threat right now,” he says. “But Russia cannot accept that a country next door would be a member of a military alliance that is hostile to Russia,” he says. “We are not opposed to Ukraine being democratic. It’s fine with us if a neighbor has a different political and social system. But not a member of an adversarial bloc. Security is the central issue.”

He says that, at least in Europe, people have concluded that NATO expansion has reached its natural limit. If that can be formalized, he suggests, it might ease the standoff over Ukraine and lead to wider negotiations for a more stable security order in Europe.

But he is not optimistic about relations with the U.S. Only one of the Cold War-era networks of nuclear arms-control agreements remains in force, and it will soon expire. And the U.S. keeps ramping up sanctions.

“Even if we have a breakthrough on Ukraine tomorrow, we are quite sure that U.S. sanctions will not be lifted,” Mr. Gromyko says. “Sanctions have taken on a life of their own, and new ones have no direct connection with the situation between Ukraine and Russia.”

Sanctions have also hastened Russia’s drift into China’s strategic and economic embrace. But the pivot wasn’t just about the Kremlin’s desire to show the West it has alternatives, say Russian experts. “The process of strengthening ties with China has been going on since 1989,” says Mr. Klimov. “That ship sailed well before the current crisis.”

Watching the Western example

The public’s view of Russia’s standoff with the West is not well covered, and the story gets told in the voices of political leaders. But Russian experts note that Russians’ disenchantment with their system played a role in the USSR’s collapse, while the widespread perception of the West as a superior civilization conditioned the pro-American orientation of Boris Yeltsin’s post-Soviet government.

Yevgeny Bazhanov, now retired, was a longtime professor and for some years the rector of the Diplomatic Academy, which trains Russian diplomats. He recalls watching students over the years morph from admirers of the West into hardened critics. That tendency was informed by the examples they perceived the U.S. setting, he says.

“You can blame Putin, or some kind of Russian stubbornness, but that wasn’t the main thing,” he says. “In the early ’90s we wanted to be a prosperous, democratic country, and the West was the model for our development. But reforms enacted on Western advice produced economic disaster and mass misery. People started to believe that the West didn’t want Russia to succeed. It looked like the U.S. wanted Russia to become a junior partner, like Germany or the U.K. But most Russians wanted to follow an independent policy, to be friends and partners with the West, but to be ourselves.”

He says several events led many Russians to question not only the idea of U.S. leadership, but competence. The 1999 war over Kosovo illustrated to them that NATO was not simply a defensive alliance. The 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and subsequent Middle East misadventures, created the impression the U.S. was an aggressor, and one that didn’t seem to know what it was doing. The 2008 financial crash tarnished the U.S. economic model.

“When you wonder why Putin often opposes the West, and Russians tend to support him, you need to see that side of it,” says Mr. Bazhanov.

“Citizen diplomacy” might be the best antidote to the war of words, says Mr. Pozner. He may be uniquely qualified in that respect. For the past three years he has given lectures at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, in Monterey, California, addressing mainly Russia-studies students, but also holding events with wider audiences. He travels Russia to give public talks, and hosts one of the most popular public affairs shows on state TV.

“Sometimes Americans ask me, how can you live with your government when it does things like poisoning the Skripals, or interfering in our elections? I answer that, like most Russians, I have no idea what Russian secret services are doing, but I am dubious about these accusations,” Mr. Pozner says. “In Russia, people are long accustomed to our authorities blaming the ‘foreign hand’ when things go wrong. It’s convenient because it displaces blame and tars critics with enemy associations. I’m sorry, I just don’t believe that anything Russia did could have swayed an American election. It’s a bit depressing to hear Americans talking like this, as if they were in the Soviet Union, and uncritically believing something their secret services tell them.”

During the 1980s Mr. Pozner took part in “Space Bridge” programs that brought ordinary Americans together with Soviets over a satellite link, and let them converse.

“The whole Cold War mood simply evaporated as they started comparing their lives, their hopes, talking about their families, even emptying their handbags to show each other what kind of stuff they had. The real Cold War disappeared shortly thereafter. I am convinced that if you get people together to dialogue, they may not become friends but they will find terms of coexistence,” he says.

The “trust deficit”

It’s hard to guess at the future. Most Russian experts agree the coronavirus pandemic is an urgent global wake-up call, and fostering international cooperation an existential issue.

But before Russia and the West can establish areas of cooperation, it is probably necessary to address the gaping “trust deficit,” or the urge to see everything the other side does through a dark prism. An example is Russia’s efforts to provide coronavirus assistance to Italy, and the U.S., during the pandemic’s worst days. What might have been greeted as a good deed – albeit with the ulterior motives that usually apply with aid – was almost universally treated in Western media as a propaganda ploy and an attempt to disrupt European unity.

“During the old Cold War, the West was genuinely united and self-confident. They not only claimed to be right, they were fully convinced of it,” says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a Moscow-based foreign policy journal. “Today, many Western countries face deep internal discord and uncertainty. There are serious strains within the alliance.

“I believe this urge to disproportionately blame Russia comes from that new place of insecurity and lack of confidence. I doubt there is much we can do to change this atmosphere of acrimony and recrimination until they start to fix their own problems. Amid this crisis we all need to work on that, and Russia too will need to change itself to survive. Maybe after we come through this we can find modes of dialogue.”

John Locher/AP

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont (left) and former Vice President Joe Biden gesture during a Democratic presidential primary debate Feb. 19, 2020, in Las Vegas. Senator Sanders has endorsed Mr. Biden and urged his supporters to do everything they can to help elect him in the fall.

Ray Barkoski has something particular he wants from presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden: respect.

Sure, it would be good if Mr. Biden picks a running mate who reflects progressive values, says Mr. Barkoski, a dog rescue coordinator for Connecticut who supported Bernie Sanders in the 2020 primary race. He hopes the Biden platform will incorporate some of Mr. Sanders’ policy goals, such as universal health care and reining in Wall Street.

But if the Biden campaign truly wants to win over Mr. Sanders’ army of dedicated supporters and unite the Democrats, the candidate himself needs to signal that he values them and understands why they became Sanders activists in the first place, Mr. Barkoski says.

“It’s not Trumpers who are saying ‘Oh you Bernie people are all losers.’ That’s all coming from our own party,” says Mr. Barkoski, who has cast his ballot for Democratic presidential nominees since he became old enough to vote in 1972. “This party has no interest in me or what I stand for, unless it’s courting my vote.”

As it readies for what promises to be a pugilistic general election contest with President Donald Trump, the Democratic Party – for once – doesn’t seem to be in disarray. Former Vice President Biden came from behind to wrap up the nomination relatively easily, with his former competitors quickly endorsing him – including his last rival standing, Senator Sanders.

Many of the Vermont lawmaker’s loyal supporters, sometimes dubbed “Bernie Bros,” may eventually follow. A USA Today/Suffolk poll from last week found that 77 percent of Sanders supporters say they will back Mr. Biden, and among dozens recently interviewed by the Monitor, only a handful said they won’t.

But tensions between the progressive wing and the rest of the party haven’t dissipated, either. Many on the left were outraged when New York decided this week to cancel its presidential primary in June, likely denying Mr. Sanders delegates that could have given him more clout at the party convention. And some Sanders supporters have been advancing charges that Mr. Biden sexually assaulted a former staffer, Tara Reade, in the mid-’90s. (Mr. Biden’s campaign has denied the allegation.)    

Many say there are policy and personnel concessions that Mr. Biden still must make to unite the party in coming months – most prominently, his selection of a running mate.

“Biden needs to unite the left by not being in the center,” says Kittee Hayes, a hairstylist from Eugene, Oregon. “That is the bottom line.” 

Concessions to the left

To be sure, the request for respect cuts both ways.

Senator Sanders’ grassroots army is notoriously active – and biting – on social media. A previous Monitor analysis of Sanders supporters on Twitter, for example, found their negative replies to other candidates’ tweets far outnumbered those of any other Democrats’ supporters.

And Mr. Biden has already moved left on key issues. Last year he unveiled a plan to reduce U.S. net carbon emissions to zero by 2050, at a cost of $1.7 trillion in federal investments. He has proposed a health care budget that, over 10 years, is more than five times larger than the one proposed by Hillary Clinton in her 2016 presidential campaign. In early March Mr. Biden endorsed Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s bankruptcy plan, which he had previously opposed.

The day after Mr. Sanders dropped out of the presidential race, Mr. Biden announced two more policy shifts: a proposal to lower the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 60, and a pledge to forgive federal student loan debt for graduates of public universities or historically black colleges making less than $125,000.

“Senator Sanders and his supporters can take pride in their work in laying the groundwork for these ideas,” wrote Mr. Biden in a blog post, “and I’m proud to adopt them as part of my campaign.”

Still, some of Senator Sanders’ most vocal supporters, such as New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, say Mr. Biden has further to go.

Mr. Biden has already committed to selecting a woman as his vice president, and Sanders supporters hope his choice will be a nod to the left. They throw out a bunch of names, but the most common suggestion is Senator Warren.

“Many Bernie supporters are eagerly awaiting his VP candidate announcement,” says Ms. Hayes. “Who that woman is will determine a huge percentage of who will vote for him.”

A key question is how much political power Senator Sanders and his followers actually possess. After all, their candidate did lose, and with a smaller share of the vote than in 2016.

“After running for president twice and losing worse the second time, maybe [Mr. Sanders] is not the wave of the future at all for the party,” says Matthew Dickinson, a political science professor at Middlebury College. 

But if Mr. Biden wants to attract young voters, he needs to recognize what drew many of them to Senator Sanders, says Carmel Pryor, communications director for the Alliance for Youth Action, one of several activist groups that recently penned a letter to the former vice president outlining how he might win their support.

It’s more than just policies, she says – it’s a willingness to listen. “We shouldn’t be treated as children who are just complaining,” says Ms. Pryor. “We are trying to find solutions and looking for someone to take us seriously.”

The country’s current struggle with COVID-19 will only hasten the party’s leftward shift, she suggests.

“COVID-19 is exposing the social ills of our nation,” such as an unstable economy and inadequate health care, says Ms. Pryor. “It’s unearthing things that progressives have been yelling from the mountaintop this entire time.”

Not 2016

Others say the left should perhaps cut Mr. Biden some slack.

This primary contest ended on a far less acrimonious note than four years ago. In 2016, Senator Sanders did not endorse Mrs. Clinton until two weeks before the party’s nominating convention; this year, he endorsed Mr. Biden just five days after dropping out. It’s clear the two septuagenarian grandfathers have a friendly relationship.

And of course, the stakes appear very different to many Democrats.

“The elephant in the room is that, if not Biden, Trump,” says John Landosky, a city employee for Little Rock, Arkansas, and a Sanders backer.

Many Sanders supporters didn’t expect Mr. Trump to win in 2016, so they felt safe not voting for Mrs. Clinton. Now, that’s not the case. 

“The majority of people I’ve talked to so far have said, ‘Yes, I will vote for Biden because the other choice is so much worse,’” says Robin Chesnut-Tangerman, a state representative from Middletown Springs, Vermont.

“I’d vote for the devil before I voted for Trump,” says Lisa Geiger, a Sanders supporter and substitute teacher from Arkansas. 

This either-or decision is clearly on the mind of Senator Sanders himself. “Do we be as active as we can in electing Joe Biden and doing everything we can to move Joe and his campaign in a more progressive direction?” he said to The Associated Press. “Or do we choose to sit it out and allow the most dangerous president in modern American history to get reelected?”

But some, like Massachusetts substitute teacher Kasey Rogers, say the movement Senator Sanders built is more important than one election.

A few years ago, Ms. Rogers’ husband got sick, lost his job, and died. She was suddenly a single mom trying – and failing – to pay all of her bills.

“When I had to go to the grocery store with food stamps and people looked at me like a criminal...” Ms. Rogers trails off, crying. “It really changed my perspective on life. I suddenly became one of those people that Bernie fights for.”

Ms. Rogers says she’ll vote for the Green Party nominee this November, just as she did in 2016, seeing Mr. Biden as little better than Mr. Trump. And she hopes the Sanders movement goes on fighting for change.

“We remind each other that Martin Luther King, Susan B. Anthony – they were never president,” says Ms. Rogers. “Transformational things in our country have been done by non-presidents.”

Earlier this month, health care experts from across the United States gathered to address hundreds of journalists and policymakers by webinar. But their focus was not testing, nor vaccines, nor “herd immunity.” It was not even COVID-19, really. Instead, their focus was climate change. 

“While many see issues like climate change and biodiversity loss as far from what’s going on right now … I see this as the time to talk about it,” said Aaron Bernstein, a pediatrician at Boston Children’s Hospital and a professor at Harvard Medical School. “Climate solutions are, in fact, pandemic solutions.” 

A few days later, economists and policy experts with the World Resources Institute held their own panel discussion. The message was similar, and the audience one of the largest in the organization’s history. The experience of and response to COVID-19, proclaimed expert after expert, was intricately tied to climate.

Indeed, increasing numbers of researchers and policymakers, scientists and health care practitioners, are looking at the coronavirus through an ecological lens. Whether they are focused on consumer behavioral shifts, changes in emission outputs, or policy decisions that might help or hurt long-term goals for green infrastructure, they are seeing in this moment a pivotal chance to address climate change. 

“As we respond to the very imminent economic and health crisis, can we also tackle the climate and sustainability crisis?” asked Manish Bapna, WRI’s managing director and executive vice president.

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There have been a number of short-term environmental shifts connected with how the world is coping with the pandemic. China’s carbon emissions dropped 18% between the beginning of February and mid-March, according to data compiled by the website CarbonBrief. Pollution over India has decreased dramatically, according to satellite images from NASA’s Earth Observatory. And in the U.S., a dramatic decrease in air travel, as well as a drop in vehicular travel, has also lowered emissions. 

Mike Blake/Reuters

In Encinitas, California, April 2, 2020, about 100 miles south of Los Angeles, residents are experiencing air quality that one study says is about 20% better than normal in the southern part of the state. Gov. Gavin Newsom on March 19 restricted nonessential activity for nearly 40 million people.

But many of these changes are temporary, researchers say, and may barely register on any long-term analysis of global carbon emissions. The drop in China’s carbon output, for instance, came alongside a lockdown over much of the country and a related plunge in factory operations. As the country reopens, says Fang Li, chief representative of the World Resources Institute in Beijing, emissions are expected to rebound along with the economy. After the global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, Dr. Fang and others point out, global emissions grew rapidly.  

Renewing a focus

For many climate advocates, this is a reason to push green initiatives now. Environmentalists worry that unless policymakers focus on climate as part of their economic packages, the pandemic could lead to policy shifts that would undermine years of hard-won climate victories. Indeed, the Trump administration in late March announced that it would weaken Obama-era fuel standards that mandate increased fuel efficiencies for automobiles. It also announced last month that the Environmental Protection Agency will not enforce environmental regulations during the pandemic. 

“What we have to worry about is whether ... policy changes are going to be long term or short term,” says Christopher Jones, director of the CoolClimate Network at the University of California, Berkeley. “If we roll back standards and they remain in place when the economy comes back, we are going to have a real problem.” 

Researchers say that a green economic stimulus package could both help the U.S. ensure long-term sustainability and rebound from the crushing economic impact of the pandemic. (More than 26 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits since March 15, according to the U.S. Labor Department.) Many environmentalists look at the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the stimulus package signed by President Barack Obama in 2009, as an example of how government initiatives can spur climate-friendly industry. That bill, which earmarked some $90 billion to promote green energy, is widely credited with launching the widespread renewable energy sector in the U.S. 

“Economic measures should focus on climate as well as jobs and livelihood,” Mr. Bapna said during the WRI panel.

But as Kenneth Gillingham, a professor at Yale University and a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economics Research, points out, the pandemic itself has slowed renewable energy efforts.

“There’s a slowing down of building new solar farms, of new wind facilities,” he says. “Some projects are hitting the pause button. Other projects may not happen for a long time.” 

And while there is hope for a green renewal, he suspects the future will be a good deal more nuanced.

“Entirely rebuilding our economy as a green economy? It’s a wonderful vision, but I don’t believe that’s what we’ll likely see,” he says.

Inequality, exacerbated

But a move toward environmental sustainability, says Dr. Bernstein, is going to be crucial not only for combatting a climate crisis, but for helping some of the people most impacted by the coronavirus. As he points out, both the pandemic and the impacts from climate change disproportionately affect people of color and other marginalized groups. 

There is, he and others say, a hopeful lesson to be taken from the massive lifestyle and economic shifts seen across the globe in response to COVID-19.  For years, popular wisdom has said that people simply would not engage in the sort of behavior changes necessary to fight climate change; that they wouldn’t stop traveling, wouldn’t stop consuming, wouldn’t sacrifice material comforts and help save others who are most immediately at risk from climate change. Now, the response to the pandemic suggests otherwise. 

“We are able to mobilize the entire global economy and population for an imminent threat,” says Dr. Jones. “Both climate change and this pandemic both affect the most vulnerable. But everybody is willing to make personal sacrifices to protect the most vulnerable. I think that’s quite new.”

The question, he and others say, is whether people will be able to see climate change as a similarly “imminent threat,” deserving of action. While climate researchers look at the world’s increasingly frequent and severe natural disasters and see a direct connection to human behavior, research shows that most everyday people still feel disconnected from both the impacts and causes of climate change. 

“We don’t experience risk properly,” says Katharine Hayhoe, professor and director of the Texas Tech University Climate Science Center.   

But with the coronavirus, researchers say, there is a chance to shift.

“It can make people feel that what was previously unthinkable is plausible,” Dr. Jones says. “They know what the experience feels like.”

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The city appears deserted. No cars in the streets, no pedestrians on the sidewalks. Shops closed up, restaurants shut down. The absence of motion surrounds me.

Walking past a storefront, I notice a cluster of men staring out from behind its metal security gate. They range in age from early teens to about 50, and when I offer a smile, a few respond in kind. Their calmness defies the not-so-distant echoes of gunfire and grenade explosions.

As the novel coronavirus forces much of America to hole up indoors, my mind keeps returning to that silent, fleeting exchange seven years ago in Kabul, Afghanistan. People had disappeared into buildings seeking cover during an insurgent attack. Yet four or five blocks from the fighting, the group of men reacted to their captivity with placid resolve, inured to war’s chaos.

The memory of that moment from the longest war in United States history surfaces when I stroll through my neighborhood in Northern California. Stillness has muffled the streets in Sacramento as people hibernate in their homes and wait for the threat of COVID-19 to subside. Here and there, I glimpse someone peering out a window, as if checking whether our old way of life has come back.

Editor’s note: As a public service, all our coronavirus coverage is free. No paywall.

Flaws abound in the comparison of pandemic to war. But it is true that each form of calamity brings suffering and death, provokes anxiety and grief, and requires collective effort and sacrifice to repel an invading force. Both reshape the order of life, disrupting cultural and social rituals and altering perspective on external and interior worlds.

In our new age of uncertainty, the example of Afghans adapting to the constant presence of war – finding purpose, meaning, and joy within the confines of mutual hardship – holds useful lessons. As we confront economic insecurity, food shortages, and loss of personal freedom, as we worry about the danger of stepping outside our homes, we can take cues from a nation that has coped with those burdens for decades.

A sense of possibility

I covered the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan for three years, traveling to half the country’s 34 provinces. The attack in Kabul on May 24, 2013, fit a recurring pattern in large cities and remote villages alike.

The assault began when a suicide bomber detonated explosives near a Western aid agency. The hourslong firefight that followed between militants and Afghan security forces claimed four victims, including a 6-year-old girl. A plume of gray smoke swirled over the city of 4 million people as its public spaces emptied out and its daily bustle ceased.

Afghans have honed their shelter-in-place reflexes during multiple wars over the past 40 years. They know to stay inside at the sound of explosions and gunfire. They also know that, after the smoke dissipates, a pall of dread will linger.

The unease hovers for hours or days, weeks or months. But in time, by degrees, people reassert a measure of control as shops reopen, workers return to their jobs, and children again play in the streets. Life regains its normal rhythms – with the caveat that “normal” remains at once relative and fragile in war.

The willingness of Afghans to repair the social fabric whenever violence tears open their lives reveals a patience born of experience. They spurn cynicism to attend college, get married, and raise families. They cast off self-pity to gather in cafes, hold public celebrations, and worship together. They search for light in the shadow of war.

These acts of rebellion against despair and loss reflect an ability to acclimate to chronic turmoil. Even after generations of bloodshed, Afghans continue to nurture a sense of possibility, bearing their country’s privations with an enviable strength of spirit.

The day after the attack, Kabul’s residents started to emerge from hiding. In the afternoon, I rode by taxi to a university to watch its graduation ceremony, passing the store where I had seen the group of men. The security gate was up, and inside there were customers.

“We live each day”

The coronavirus has engulfed America. Hospitals struggle with patient overflow and equipment shortages. Demand at food banks soars in tandem with millions of people losing jobs or income. Stay-at-home orders cut us off from public spaces and one another. We tend to feel connected only in our shared isolation.

War splinters a nation, and in their distress, people turn to each other for solace and hope. By contrast, preventing the spread of COVID-19 requires us to stay apart, a concept at odds with human impulse and one that, in aiding the greater good, denies us the comfort of coming together.

Our retreat from the outside world, aside from complicating our economic and emotional recovery, conflicts with American notions of personal freedom and the desire to impose control over the future. We can look to Afghans for guidance in navigating our new reality.

Decades of war in Afghanistan have inflicted profound tragedies and social ills on its people. At the same time, their acceptance of uncertainty as the status quo serves as a wellspring of resilience. Rather than dwell on the unrest and surrender to a siege mentality, Afghans attempt to create a semblance of stability by devoting their attention to the day at hand.

The insurgent attack in Kabul in 2013 inflicted minor damage on a shoe store run by Samiullah Safi. When I visited him two days later, he was sweeping up bits of glass and plaster from the shop floor.

He had reopened that morning, and I asked how he endured in the face of endless war. His answer echoed what I heard from Afghans across the country during my years there.

“We know violence is always possible,” he told me. “But we cannot live thinking this way. We live each day until the next one.”

The West tends to view Afghanistan as medieval, a place with nothing to teach us about surviving our modern moment. Yet as the coronavirus blurs the future and magnifies the present, we might emulate the persistence of Afghans, who even under the yoke of war regard each day as its own reward, its own triumph.

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AP

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern holds up a card showing a new alert system for COVID-19 on March 21. She set a goal to eliminate the coronavirus altogether.

Unlike most other world leaders, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has generally avoided war metaphors in uniting her country against COVID-19. She tends not to refer to the coronavirus as “the enemy” or her fellow citizens as “soldiers.” Instead, she speaks of a “team of 5 million,” the population of her nation. When asked if she was afraid of the virus, she responded, “No. Because we have a plan.”

On Monday, that “plan” resulted in Ms. Ardern announcing that New Zealand had effectively eliminated the virus, reducing the number of known cases to single digits. Instead of a war image, she used the language of a tsunami: “We have stopped a wave of devastation.” Her government, in fact, has relied on a phone alert system for tsunamis to send out messages during this crisis.

Early on, New Zealand took swift, strict, and decisive steps, such as closing its borders to foreigners by March 19. Perhaps just as effective was the tone of her language. The prime minister rarely framed the pandemic in military terms, which can cause fear and panic by evoking images of violence and “the other.”

Ms. Ardern focused on the mental well-being of her citizens as much as elimination of the virus. She encouraged people to contact new mothers, for example, to lessen their isolation. Special apps were provided to deal with mental health.

She asked people to “be kind” in uniting against COVID-19 as they were forced to stay at home. She cut government salaries to help create a closeness between officials and idled workers. She suggested people rely on the “creative, practical, country-minded” culture of New Zealand.

She brought humor to her role, such as telling children that the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy were “essential workers.” She was open and transparent, not secretive like a military commander.

Her metaphors were those that inspired selflessness during the necessary self-isolation. The country’s efforts, wrote the Weekend Herald newspaper, will be remembered for “the acts of humanity which rose to the occasion.”

The “vicious virus has sparked a revival of kindness,” the paper added. “Watch out, it’s contagious.”

For sure, other leaders around the world have used a similar approach. For instance, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg went on television to talk directly to children, who perhaps easily pick up the fears of adults.

Something like this approach was made famous in the 19th century by Florence Nightingale. In her many reforms of the nursing profession, she advised that nurses deal as much with a patient’s feelings of apprehension and uncertainty as a disease. She wrote:

“Remember, he is face to face with his enemy all the time, internally wrestling with him, having long imaginary conversations with him. You are thinking of something else. ‘Rid him of his adversary quickly’ is a first rule with the sick.”

When faced with biological threats, leaders must be careful in using metaphors of war, Lisa Keranen, a medical rhetorician, told Vox news. Such images make us “focus on fighting and not on caring.” New Zealand’s initial success against COVID-19 may prove the point. Kindness, starting at the top, can be a mental vaccine for an entire country.