As President Joe Biden sought this week to defend his chaotic and much-criticized withdrawal from Afghanistan, he underscored how America must turn away from “forever wars” and yesterday’s foreign policy if it is to meet the “new challenges in the competition for the 21st  century.”

Out are nation building of the massive variety the United States pursued in Afghanistan for two decades, large-scale boots-on-the-ground missions to tackle a continuing but evolved terrorism threat, and neglecting needs at home to improve lives abroad, Mr. Biden said in an address Tuesday.

In, on the other hand, are confronting a rising China and a revanchist Russia “on multiple fronts,” addressing complex cyberattacks and nuclear proliferation, and acting to “shore up America’s competitiveness” to meet those new challenges.

To which the president could have added “strengthening democracy to challenge rising authoritarianism and refurbishing America’s moral leadership” – key themes he has long included in his foreign policy to-do list for “a changing world,” but which have lost some of their resonance amid a wave of global doubts.

Few disagree with Mr. Biden over the need to reorient U.S. foreign policy toward the Indo-Pacific region and to address this century’s challenges. Indeed, his two predecessors saw ending the Afghanistan War as a crucial part of shifting to confront a rising China.

But at the same time, the barrage of criticism the president has come under over the course of a tumultuous and mission-not-accomplished Afghanistan withdrawal reflects deepening concerns about the administration’s – and indeed America’s – ability to address those challenges, and to organize and lead the world in taking them on.

For some foreign policy experts, the chaotic withdrawal should not obscure the larger reality that getting out of Afghanistan was a necessary part of reorienting America to today’s big challenges. In the long run, they say, President Biden will be proved right, and both the U.S. and its allies will be the beneficiaries of the departure, despite how messy it was.

Not the what, but the how

But for others, the botched departure has only deepened doubts about the U.S. as a global power that aren’t going away anytime soon.

“The problem is not the withdrawal from Afghanistan but how we did it – and what that says to our allies and adversaries alike about our capabilities and credibility going forward,” says Heather Conley, director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“There’s a pervading sense in the administration that if we just clear out the old to-do list, then we can turn to what really counts, China and the Indo-Pacific,” says Ms. Conley, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for Eurasian affairs under the George W.  Bush administration. “But that is a serious misreading and is not the way the world works.”

America’s allies – in particular those like the NATO partners that followed the U.S. lead into Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks – had greeted Mr. Biden’s 2020 victory with “great hope and expectation” after “the four bruising years of the Trump administration,” Ms. Conley says.

But she says what she is now hearing from European allies and above all the British – “with whom we were supposed to have a ‘special relationship’” – is a “sense of betrayal and humiliation really much stronger than anything I’ve heard before.” 

Reminders of “America First”

Moreover, the deep doubts the precipitous withdrawal has sown among allies are all the more troubling, she says, given President Biden’s pledges as recently as his June trip to Europe to consult allies and strengthen ties with them in order to tackle together challenges like China, Russia, and spreading authoritarianism.

The European allies “have been surprised that despite the rhetoric they are hearing, they are not seeing great differences from the ‘America First’ of the previous administration,” she says. The lack of consultation and disregard for allies’ concerns over the withdrawal “come on top of things like ‘foreign policy for the middle class’ and ‘buy American’ policies,” Ms. Conley adds, “and it starts to sound to them like in fact there’s going to be a lot of continuity.”

For years public opinion polls have shown Americans’ preference for ending the post-9/11 wars and redirecting attention to domestic issues. And as a Washington Post-ABC poll underscored this week, Americans remain very supportive of leaving Afghanistan – even as they disapprove strongly of the way the withdrawal was carried out.

Rahmat Gul/AP

A member of the Afghan security forces walks in the sprawling Bagram Airfield after the U.S. military's sudden departure, in Parwan province north of Kabul, Afghanistan, July 5, 2021. The chaotic U.S. withdrawal and subsequent collapse of the government in Kabul led to criticism from American allies.

Still, other analysts are adamant that, once the fog of the withdrawal lifts, the clear view will be of an America able to focus on today’s issues – and to lead allies and partners in meeting them.

“Certainly the photos out of Kabul were heartbreaking, and the very serious shortfalls in the withdrawal were disappointing,” says Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow in transatlantic issues and security alliances at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. “But in the long run, I think we’ll come to see that Biden made a tough choice that will leave the U.S. better positioned to [pursue] domestic and global well-being and prosperity.”

What the withdrawal finally does is to free up the U.S. “for more focus on great-power rivalry,” he adds, “and more focus on the domestic renewal that will be necessary to rebuilding Americans’ support for the country’s global engagement.”

Lessons of post-Vietnam era

Mr. Kupchan points out that today’s “overheated rhetoric” of America’s lost credibility and retreat as a global power echoes similar sentiments expressed in the wake of the U.S. evacuation from Saigon in 1975. Many at the time declared America’s international decline “irreversible,” he says, but in fact quitting a “losing war” allowed the U.S. to refocus on big-power rivalries and to remove a source of domestic conflict.

Within two decades, he adds, the Soviet Union had collapsed and the Cold War was over.

America’s allies are clearly “rattled” by how the Kabul evacuation was carried out, and Europeans in particular are worried about the potential for large refugee flows out of Afghanistan, says Mr. Kupchan, who served as senior director for European affairs in the Obama National Security Council.

But he deems “erroneous” the widespread conclusion that “because the U.S. is leaving Afghanistan, the Japanese and the Koreans and the Estonians should quake in their boots – that’s to say, the withdrawal demonstrates American unreliability and abandonment of allies.”

On the contrary, he says, “what we are seeing is the U.S. turning away from secondary problems to focus on the primary ones – and that means those allies are coming back into the strategic limelight.”

Even some critics who worry about the lingering repercussions of the Kabul evacuation say there were also aspects of American character on display that should be reassuring to both Americans and America’s friends.

“We also saw the best of America this week,” said Robert O’Brien, President Donald Trump’s last national security adviser, in an online conversation Tuesday sponsored by the Center for the National Interest in Washington.

The efforts of service members, diplomats, and individuals from the private sector who joined together to evacuate more than 100,000 Americans and endangered Afghans were a testament to American resolve that the world should also keep in mind, he said.

Shift in spending

But in Ambassador O’Brien’s view, the U.S. must now move quickly to put meat on the bones of a strategic shift to confronting China.

“We should take the $3 billion our military was spending in Afghanistan and rebuild the U.S. Navy,” he says. Other recommendations: Reposition troops pulled out of Afghanistan into the Indo-Pacific region, and expedite arms sales to Taiwan and to Poland.

“We need to show that America is still a leader, that we’re still in the game,” he says.

On the other hand, Mr. Kupchan says President Biden needs to make good first on rebuilding America if he wants Americans to again look outward with confidence and to support America’s global leadership role.

“Americans want to see schools being built in Kansas rather than in Kandahar,” he says. “If Biden really is committed to delivering a foreign policy for the middle class, that will mean responding to the electorate’s desire for spending time and money fixing problems at home over fixing problems abroad.”

For others, the shortfalls in American leadership exposed over recent weeks call for a period of humility and assessment that will include some hard discussions with allies and friends.

“Yes, we need to shift to a diplomatic response, as President Biden says, but to me that means really listening to our allies and working to reestablish trust,” says Ms. Conley. “If we don’t do better at demonstrating leadership,” she adds, “they won’t believe in our moral leadership.”

Ron Flores has had it with California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom. So he put up a gigantic sign on the corner of Beach Boulevard and Katella Avenue in the Southern California city of Stanton, where about half the population is Hispanic. “¡BASTA!” reads the first line, followed by a translation, “(Enough is Enough) Recall Newsom.”

On Tuesday evening, about 18 people rallied with Mr. Flores on this busy corner in the greater Los Angeles area, waving “Recall” flags and signs as cars streamed past, some honking approval. The clutch of supporters, several of them Hispanic Republicans like Mr. Flores, aired a long list of grievances: mask and vaccine mandates; schools, businesses, and churches closed by the pandemic; high taxes; unaffordable gasoline; rising crime.

People are frustrated, says Mr. Flores – and not just Republicans. At a Friday night football game last week, he says, a number of Hispanic Democrats told him they’ll vote to boot the governor in a special recall election Sept. 14. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a Republican or Democrat,” he says. “They are upset.”

As California speeds toward its second gubernatorial recall election in history, the outcome may hinge on just how deeply these frustrations run among its largest ethnic group – for years an important and loyal voting bloc for Democrats. Latinos have suffered disproportionately from pandemic job losses and deaths, as front-line health care and service workers living in underserved communities. They are the largest group of parents in the state, and thus have been widely affected by school closures. At the same time, the governor is a Democrat who has expanded health care to unauthorized immigrants and is now sending out $600 stimulus checks to residents who earn up to $75,000. 

“Latinos in California, specifically in working-class neighborhoods, have really borne the brunt of the pandemic and are very much at a crossroads when it comes to determining what is a priority for their own state, [and] also their own future,” says Steven Almazan, who spent Sunday volunteering at a voter registration table along with other young Democrats in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights. Mr. Almazan grew up in this Latino enclave and served on the neighborhood council.

Latino turnout is typically low in off-year elections, and with this one coming unusually early, Democrats worry they don’t have enough time to make the case. Mail-in ballots, which have been sent to every voter, are already being filled out and returned. The Hispanic electorate here also skews young – in 2020, many voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders, who won the California Democratic primary and just days ago began showing up in an anti-recall ad.

A statewide California poll this week shows 58% of likely voters favor the governor in this deep blue state, though other earlier polls had been far tighter. Even a narrow win would suggest Democratic vulnerability; a sacking would be a political earthquake. Both parties view the special election as a barometer for the 2022 midterms, when the president’s party usually loses seats in Congress.

Nationally, former President Donald Trump made real inroads with this population, and not just among Cuban Americans in South Florida, says Mark Hugo Lopez, director of race and ethnicity research at the Pew Research Center. Mr. Trump won over Hispanic voters along the Texas border and at the precinct level in cities as diverse as New York, Philadelphia, Orlando, and Dallas. The majority of Hispanics still went for Joe Biden, but Mr. Trump picked up more Hispanic voters than any Republican presidential candidate since at least George W. Bush in 2004, says Mr. Lopez. He adds: “Perhaps Latino voters are a group that may be more up for grabs than either political party is aware.”

Poor outreach and a confusing ballot

Latino community leaders in California cite poor outreach by all of the campaigns and a confusing ballot with 46 replacement candidates. Christian Arana, vice president of policy at the Latino Community Foundation in San Francisco, says voting is not top of mind for many Latino voters because they have so much else to contend with. “Why would I rush to turn in my ballot when I need to rush to turn in my rent relief application [because] I might get evicted two weeks after the recall?” He’s concerned that some Latinos might not even know about the election.

“If Democrats can’t mobilize Latino voters to save a Democratic governor, how on earth can you ask them to save a Democratic Congress, and thus the Biden agenda next year? It’s that serious,” says Mr. Arana, whose group builds philanthropy and political participation. “You can’t continue to have conversations with us around elections. This conversation has to be every single day.”

Things looked particularly dicey for Democrats last month when the FiveThirtyEight average of polls showed voters statistically tied on the recall question. A few polls showed either half of Hispanic voters or a majority supported kicking out the governor – a big surprise, given that Latinos have heavily favored Democrats in the Golden State ever since former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson pushed anti-immigrant measures nearly three decades ago.

But Mike Madrid, a Republican consultant with expertise in the Latino vote, discounts those polls for their small sub-sample size, and predicts the recall will follow traditional voting patterns.

“Gavin Newsom will do just fine with the Latino vote. There’s just too much toxicity in the Republican brand,” he says. Hispanics who have lost jobs, family members, and friends to the pandemic will side with the governor’s approach to fighting COVID-19, he says, which includes vaccine mandates or regular testing for state employees and health care workers. It’s a “difficult choice,” he says, but Latinos will choose health over jobs in this election. 

This week’s poll by the Public Policy Institute of California supports Mr. Madrid’s assessment, with 66% of Latinos opposing the recall, and a similar percentage supporting requirements of proof of COVID-19 vaccination to enter certain spaces. 

And yet, “Latinos are not a lock” for Democrats, says Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the University of Southern California in Sacramento. They are not monolithic, she reminds, explaining that before California’s Republicans pushed a 1994 anti-immigrant ballot measure that galvanized Latinos, the group was closer to an even split between the parties. She has long held that Republicans have an opportunity with Latinos but have failed to capitalize on it.

Mr. Flores agrees, saying the GOP in California is “stuck” in the 1950s and ’60s, when winning was easy in Orange County, where he lives. He has twice read “Tío Bernie,” a book by Chuck Rocha about the candidate’s groundbreaking Latino outreach. Mr. Flores formed “¡BASTA!” in April to register people of color, especially Hispanics, as Republicans and to run for office – and to vote out Governor Newsom. They are starting soccer leagues, holding Spanish-language town halls, registering folks at supermarkets, and operating phone banks. The group particularly objects to changes in schools around transgender rights and critical race theory, and favors school choice.

Francine Kiefer/The Christian Science Monitor

Ron Flores rallies on Aug. 31, 2021, in Stanton, California, for the recall of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. His group "BASTA!" aims to register people of color as Republicans, especially the state's many Hispanics, and to encourage them to run for political office.

Three former Democrats waving signs with Mr. Flores on Tuesday said the party had moved too far left. “You grow up in it,” says José Arturo Robles, speaking of the Democratic Party. “I’m still basically a liberal, but I don’t believe in government’s desire to be a Big Brother.” For instance, public health care is OK, but he doesn’t believe in mandates. He just moved from San Francisco, which he described as overrun by crime and homelessness – he himself has experienced homelessness. “That city is over.” Last year, he voted for Mr. Trump.

“The anger is at the Republicans”

Governor Newsom has tied the recall to Trump supporters and emphasized the dangers of rolling back mask and vaccine mandates. He has a foil in the leading GOP candidate, conservative radio host Larry Elder, a Black Trump supporter who makes frequent appearances on Fox News.

Latinos “are so angry, upset, and sad” about the toll of the pandemic, but “the anger is not at Governor Newsom. The anger is at the Republicans behind the recall,” says Angelica Sales, director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, whose political action group has launched a get-out-the-vote effort called “Defendio Mi CA” – Defending My California. The recall petition, which is printed in the voter guide, is clearly anti-immigrant, she says, suggesting that unauthorized foreign nationals are favored over citizens and cost the state in taxes, homelessness, and quality of life.

That hits “close to home” for Democratic voter Gabi Trujillo, who is home for the summer in Menlo Park in Silicon Valley. She comes from an immigrant family – her mother sought asylum from El Salvador and is now a U.S. citizen. Ms. Trujillo, who teaches English in Spain, says the governor is on the right track by addressing “subsistence needs” for everyone, regardless of immigration status, because “it keeps a population productive and contributing.”

As for the pandemic, “no year in history” has been like the last one, she says, and no governor had a playbook on how to handle it. Mistakes were made. But a vaccine mandate is not one of them. “We have vaccines in school. I consider this just another one.”

She, her brother, and her mother all plan to vote against the recall.

Ghaith Alsayed/AP

Members of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a Sunni Islamist militant group, wave Taliban flags as they celebrate the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, in the Syrian city of Idlib, Aug. 20, 2021. America's exit from Afghanistan is seen by radical Islamic groups from Syria and the Gaza Strip to Pakistan and West Africa as an opportunity to reassert their ideology.

The departure of the U.S. military from Afghanistan leaves behind multiple jihadist militant groups who once fought the international coalition vying for control and influence. While the Taliban secure control over Afghanistan’s capital and borders, other jihadis are opposing the Taliban’s rule – a conflict that may pose a threat to Afghanistan and its neighbors.

Who is ISIS-K?

ISIS-K, or the ISIS-Khorosan movement, is a local branch of the ultraviolent Islamic State group that formed in northeastern Afghanistan in 2015 with the intent of creating a state within an ISIS caliphate comprising territory in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Central Asia.

ISIS-K attracted the most extreme Afghan and Pakistani Taliban fighters and Central Asia jihadis, swelling its ranks to a high of 5,000. While U.S. airstrikes are thought to have cut its fighters by half, some 8,000 jihadis have flooded into Afghanistan since June, according to the United Nations, some of whom may have joined ISIS-K.  

Why are ISIS-K and the Taliban fighting?

ISIS-K and the Taliban are both Sunni jihadist movements that believe in Islamic governance and enforcement of sharia. However, their interpretation of Islamic law, and ambitions, differ. The Taliban intend to rule Afghanistan as a multiethnic Islamic emirate, have no operations outside its borders, and have pledged “not to interfere in the internal affairs of others.”

ISIS-K sees jihad as a global movement and wishes to wage war against the West, Muslim states, and the nation-state system writ large. It seeks to impose an Islamic caliphate. It therefore views the Taliban’s pragmatism and willingness to negotiate and work with other governments as a betrayal to the jihadist cause.

While the Taliban seek to portray themselves as having moderated since their previous rule over Afghanistan in the 1990s, ISIS has denounced the Taliban for “going soft,” criticizing them for not wiping out the Shiite Hazara minority, and for promising amnesty to Afghans who worked with coalition forces and the previous Afghan government.

ISIS-K has highlighted the Taliban’s recent pledges to uphold minority and women’s rights as proof the movement has abandoned the strict, extreme form of Islamic law it wishes to impose. It has declared the Taliban murtadeen, or apostates who must be killed. The Taliban, meanwhile, see ISIS-K as a threat to Afghanistan’s stability and have engaged in more than 200 battles with the movement since 2016.

With the withdrawal of Western forces, their mutual enemies, the two movements are on a collision course.

“The exit of the Americans is leading to more escalations between Taliban and ISIS-K,” says Hassan Abu Haniya, a Jordanian expert in jihadist movements. “ISIS-K is trying to embarrass the Taliban and challenge its hold on security.”

Where does Al Qaeda fit into this?

Al Qaeda, once harbored by the Taliban, retains a presence in Afghanistan that experts say has increased in recent weeks with an influx of militants and the emptying of Afghanistan’s jails. The Taliban and Al Qaeda share very similar Sunni Salafi interpretations of Islam and sharia; hard-line Taliban factions are intertwined with Al Qaeda through comradeship and marriage. This week Al Qaeda issued a statement congratulating the Taliban for its “humiliating defeat” of America.

Yet its status in a post-U.S. Afghanistan is far from clear. The Taliban’s relations with the group are a liability in their relationship with the West and the international community and may deny them the international recognition they seek. ISIS, an Al Qaeda spinoff, sees Al Qaeda as a direct competitor for the global jihadist mantle.

Who backs whom?

Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence has provided support, training, and a safe haven for the Taliban for decades and is supportive today. With the U.S. exit and reemerging ISIS-K threat, experts say neighboring countries will rely more on the Taliban to keep ISIS at bay and prevent instability from spilling over their borders.

Iran and China see ISIS-K’s international reach and violence toward Shiites and the Chinese Communist Party, respectively, as a direct threat to their own internal security, and have already opened channels with the Taliban.

“Neighboring states see ISIS-K as a much graver threat with an international agenda,” says Mr. Abu Haniya. “To maintain stability, the Taliban is viewed as the lesser of two evils. More states are coming to terms with this reality.”

Glenn Hening has surfed the perfect wave many times.

There’s a moment of warped relativity in the tunnel. He’s standing on his board, flying along the surface of the wave, just keeping up momentum. Something shifts, and the end of the barrel is moving faster and farther away. From his board, Mr. Hening feels as if he’s moving backward.

“There’s an experience of time standing still,” says the lifelong surfer, ocean activist, and math teacher. He’s sitting outside his apartment in Oxnard, California, but his eyes gaze through the tube of the wave that he shapes with his hands in the air.

It’s a mesmerizing pursuit, but it drives many surfers to localism, says Mr. Hening. Put bluntly, “Surfers are primarily selfish.” It’s in the nature of the sport, he says, where surfers are plenty and good waves are few.

“Who deserves the wave?” he asks. In answer to his own question, Mr. Hening has spent nearly 40 years trying to build a spirit of generosity among inherent competitors. He has advocated a better environment for the sport, for both the health of the ocean and fellowship among surfers in the often insular community.

He started two influential organizations: Surfrider Foundation, a nationally recognized ocean ecology advocacy group; and Groundswell Society, a group promoting surfer camaraderie through competitions.

“Glenn is like this riptide that rips us along in a positive direction,” says Shaun Tomson, 1977 World Surf League champion and a good friend of Mr. Hening since he got Mr. Tomson involved in saving Southern California’s Rincon Beach from sewage leakage in the ’90s.

Jules Struck

Glenn Hening reflects on what’s been important to him as a surfer. Over time his focus expanded to include encouraging a culture of care for the natural environment and surfers as a community.

“You can’t see this energy moving, but you can see the effects of the energy,” says Mr. Tomson, who first wrote his Surfer’s Code, a list of life lessons famous in the surfing community, for the Rincon Beach campaign. “He’s one of these, I think, mavericks in the way he approaches surfing and also the way he thinks about the world.”

Mr. Hening established Surfrider Foundation in 1984. The organization has mushroomed from a scrappy group of West Coast surfers into a sleek national organization with 81 chapters and over 100 high school and college clubs from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The younger and more under-the-radar Groundswell Society encourages surfers to share the joy of surfing with their peers, regardless of skill level.

“If Surfrider is about surfers getting sick from the ocean” and the harmful effects of pollution, “the Groundswell Society is about surfers getting sick of each other,” he says.

Mr. Hening credits volunteers like 14-year-old Olivia LaRiccia in Fairfield, Connecticut, for picking up the mantle of his legacy after he left the group in 1986.

Olivia was unhappy with the mounds of plastic trash she collected at a 2019 Surfrider beach cleanup, so when the Connecticut chapter asked her if she would speak at a local community forum in support of a bill to limit plastic straw use in Norwalk, Connecticut, she said yes.

“When I got there, I was freaking out a lot,” says Olivia. But then she stood at the podium. “I wasn’t as nervous, and I realized that I was changing opinions of other people and helping the town.”

Volunteers beget action

Mr. Hening recalls Surfrider’s first success, a story that mirrors Olivia’s advocacy.

In 1984, state officials planned to drain part of Malibu Lagoon State Beach, also known as Surfrider Beach. Mr. Hening talked legendary surfer Lance Carson into speaking out against the plan at a public forum.

That speech, says Mr. Hening, along with the throngs of beachgoers who showed up in protest, halted the dredging.

“Most surfers actually love the ocean,” says Chad Nelsen, Surfrider Foundation’s CEO. “They’re super in touch with what’s going on because they’re out there all the time.”

The parking lot at the organization’s offices in San Clemente, California, is empty on a Saturday afternoon, except for Mr. Nelsen’s car, which is rigged on top with a paddleboard.

Mr. Nelsen grew up mucking around in the touch tanks at his father’s work at the Orange County Marine Institute. Recently he has steered such projects as halting a toll road through Trestles Beach in San Clemente, and researching the economic value of surf spots to their communities. In 2004, he helped establish a marine reserve in Puerto Rico.

Courtesy of Surfrider Foundation

Near Imperial Beach, California, debris overwhelms the Tijuana River Watershed catch basin, one target of the Surfrider Foundation’s San Diego chapter and its Clean Border Water Now campaign.

The foundation is an institution on the West Coast, where Surfrider Foundation beach clean-ups are ubiquitous and cars zoom down the highway sporting Surfrider bumper stickers.

Among the foundation’s ambassadors are Shaun Tomson and Tokyo Olympics shortboard gold-medal winner Carissa Moore.

Mr. Hening co-founded Groundswell Society in 2000 with pioneering surfer Jericho Poppler, the winner of the first women’s World Pro Tour in 1976; and entrepreneur Matt Meyerson. The group fundraises college scholarships and holds a yearly team competition for which judges are picked based on their public service record rather than on how many medals they’ve racked up. Longboard Magazine called the group “surfing’s new voice of conscience” in 2002. Their motto: “Sharing the stoke of surfing.”

“We just decided that, hey, we’ve got to get to the core of who we really are” as surfers, says Ms. Poppler. Taking care of the ocean means “a lot more than just showing up in certain clothing and having a snazzy surfboard to look the part,” she says.

The waves can be an unfriendly place for new or inexperienced surfers when locals stake their claims, says Mr. Hening, but surfers can “flip that on its head” and turn the waves into a welcoming place instead of an aggressive arena. “If they’re lucky enough to be a surfer,” says Mr. Hening, “they should also accept some responsibility for the environmental conditions of the surf zone.”

“Besides yourself”

Anyone can be a steward of nature, adds Ms. Poppler. Those who have never experienced the euphoria of speeding along an indigo swell can think of waves like they think of Yosemite or Yellowstone, she says. “Just go into nature,” she says. “That’s what we’re preserving – to go into our nature.”

Mr. Hening is as skilled a surfer now as he’s ever been, he says. But being good means something different to him now than when he was in his 20s and catching perfect waves every day off the coast of El Salvador, where he lived for five years.

The surf world still needs to improve, he says: Most professional surfers and sports brands have fallen short of substantively supporting the environment – ecological or community – of surfing.

With surfing as an event in the Olympics for the first time, Mr. Hening watched closely. He says he has heard of Olympians of all sports facing a moment of “absolute panic” after earning a gold medal. Sometimes their first reaction is to be lost about what to do with the rest of their lives.

He proposes a solution to that existential crisis: “Bring all of that that the ocean taught you, and gave you, that improved you, and bring that back to the other side of the coast highway, and bring it to the benefit of people besides yourself.”

Reuters

FIFA's logo is seen in front of its headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland.

Six years ago, the world’s most popular game, soccer, saw its governing body, known as FIFA, suffer the biggest scandal the sport had ever seen. Dozens of FIFA officials as well as marketing executives were charged by the United States with various forms of corruption, from bribery to kickbacks, in relation to deals involving the World Cup and other competitions. Two people were convicted, most defendants pleaded guilty, and at least $200 million in ill-gotten gains was confiscated. U.S. prosecutors are still at work.

Now FIFA, which has since tried hard to clean up its worldwide operations, could become known as a leader in a global trend – helping victims of corruption feel whole again through remediation.

This month, FIFA will start working with the U.S. Justice Department to distribute some of that stolen money through a new charity arm and in other ways. The money will support such projects as developing girls’ soccer, or building up clubs in what is called “community restitution.”

The aim is to restore FIFA’s relationship with the billions of fans who enjoy “the beautiful game” and were harmed by the scandal in either direct or indirect ways. “I am delighted to see that money which was illegally siphoned out of football is now coming back to be used for its proper purposes, as it should have been in the first place,” said Gianni Infantino, an Italian chosen in 2016 to overhaul FIFA and make it transparent and accountable.

This type of justice for victims is still rare after successful prosecutions for graft. Typically, governments pocket money clawed back from the criminally corrupt. It is difficult to calculate all the damage inflicted on society from corruption or to pinpoint all its victims.

Since 1999, as more countries have prosecuted foreign bribery, an estimated $15 billion has been collected in confiscated proceeds, mainly by the U.S. and the United Kingdom. Now the U.S. decision to work with FIFA on remediation “can help us push for the introduction of victims’ compensation as standard practice in foreign bribery and money laundering cases,” according to corruption watchdog Transparency International.

One of history’s biggest sports scandal has created a strong precedent for restorative justice in the global fight against corruption.