Carolyn Kaster/AP

President Joe Biden walks across the tarmac to speak to the media before boarding Air Force One at Des Moines International Airport in Iowa, April 12, 2022. The president has been trying to emphasize his administration's accomplishments, such as the passage of the infrastructure bill.

If there’s one thing political analysts agree on, across the spectrum, it’s this: President Joe Biden is in a slump. Left, right, and center; with young voters, Hispanics, and African Americans, the president’s job approval numbers are in the doldrums – and among key Democratic-leaning voter blocs, some polls show a marked decline. 

The spike in gas prices and 40-year-high inflation are prime culprits. So, too, is the pandemic, grinding on into its third year. Russia’s brutal attack on Ukraine has not produced the kind of “rally around the flag” effect that American presidents often enjoy in the initial phases of an international crisis, despite early bipartisan praise for President Biden’s handling of the war. 

Political polarization has hardened, analysts say, making it well-nigh impossible for any president to unify the country – a Biden campaign promise that has failed to materialize.

“Mainly what we’re seeing is the strength of partisanship,” says Douglas Kriner, a professor of government at Cornell University. 

All of the above bodes ill for Democrats’ prospects in the November midterm elections, which would be an uphill battle even in less challenging times. Since World War II, almost without exception, the president’s party has lost seats in the midterms – sometimes a lot.

Democrats, currently with narrow control of both houses of Congress, face the possibility of an energized Republican opposition holding power at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue come January and thwarting all but the most essential legislation. 

That may explain the recent return of former President Barack Obama to the White House for the first time in five years. He was there to celebrate the 12th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, the landmark legislation that added millions of Americans to health care rolls. An unspoken goal may have been to sprinkle stardust on his struggling former vice president. In fact, the visit by the gray-haired but still charismatic former president may have only served to emphasize their contrasting styles. 

Still, Democratic strategists have far from given up on November.

Mr. Biden spent the “honeymoon phase” of his presidency with job approvals averaging just above 50%, a benchmark his predecessor, President Donald Trump, never reached. Now mired in the low 40s, there’s no reason Mr. Biden can’t do better going forward, Democrats say. 

When asked by reporters about the November elections at the recent White House event, former President Obama suggested a way forward: “We’ve got a story to tell. Just gotta tell it.” 

SOURCE:

Gallup, NBC News

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Matt Barreto, a Democratic pollster based in Los Angeles who does work for the Democratic National Committee, echoes that sentiment. “Democrats have to continue talking about what we have done, and reminding the American public that the Republicans don’t have a plan,” Mr. Barreto says. 

He ticks off what he considers the biggest accomplishments of Mr. Biden’s first 15 months in office: the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, major infrastructure legislation, the rollout of a historic mass-vaccination program against COVID-19.

“Democrats are demoralized”

Celinda Lake, a Washington-based Democratic pollster who does survey research for Democratic Party committees, sees the president’s slump in the polls as a sign that “people are just really unhappy with life.” 

“Of course they’re going to take it out on the president,” Ms. Lake says. 

“The biggest concern I have is that the Republicans are supercharged, and the Democrats are demoralized,” she adds. “And we always have more trouble getting out our vote in off-year elections.” 

She sees a forthcoming Supreme Court decision that may cut back on abortion rights, plus the House investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, as potentially galvanizing for Democrats. 

“Elections are a choice, not just an up-or-down referendum, and we need to start framing up the choice,” Ms. Lake says.

Perhaps most concerning for Democrats is Mr. Biden’s slumping approval among key demographics: young voters, Hispanics, and African Americans. The danger is that too many of these reliably Democratic voters will wind up staying home in November – not that they become Republicans.

Among younger voters, the decline in support for Mr. Biden has been especially marked. A Gallup Poll released last week showed that among Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2004), support for Mr. Biden has declined 21 percentage points since his first six months in office, from 60% to 39%. Among millennials (born between 1981 and 1996), the drop is 19 percentage points. Among Generation X (born between 1964 and 1980), it’s 15 points. 

“Younger voters will need to feel real improvement in the economy” for them to be motivated to vote, writes Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson in an email. Many have been hit hard, for example, by a steep increase in rents.

“There are things that could change that in the short run and create a burst of attention and engagement – for instance, if a Supreme Court ruling makes an issue like abortion more salient,” she says. But “without addressing the underlying economic strain younger voters are facing,” she adds, “they may remain reluctant to turn out.” 

Another X-factor in the midterms is whether “negative partisanship” – voting more in opposition to one party than in favor of the other – will play a big role. That could depend largely on how big a role former President Trump plays. In the 2020 election, he spurred high levels of voting not just among supporters, but also among opponents, who might otherwise have not been motivated to turn out for Mr. Biden.

The prospect of a comeback attempt by Mr. Trump in the 2024 presidential race looms large over the 2022 midterms. 

“The question is how salient Trump or the threat of success by Trump-aligned candidates is for the average Democratic voter,” says John Sides, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University. 

“Part of what the Democrats have to do is define the election in those terms,” he adds. “As always, it’s not just a referendum on Biden; it’s a choice between Biden and a Republican Party or Republican candidates that raise the risk of a return of Trump.”

Biden-Harris outreach

Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have been traveling the country, highlighting infrastructure projects, and efforts to lower consumer costs and create jobs. Recently the administration has been reaching out to rural America, which has swung away from Democrats in recent years. 

But looking overall at the decline in the president’s support, Mr. Sides isn’t sure how much Mr. Biden can do on his own to win it back. 

“The culprit is, as always, things outside of Biden’s control much more than things under Biden’s control,” he says, pointing to the continuing pandemic, inflation, and fallout from the bungled U.S. pullout from Afghanistan last summer. Mr. Biden, he acknowledges, is responsible in part for inflation because of the American Rescue Plan’s size, and for what happened in Afghanistan.

On the other hand, Republican pollster Whit Ayres sees Mr. Biden’s challenges as mostly a self-inflicted wound. “He’s squandered the majority [support] he had a little over a year ago by the decisions he’s made and the way he has governed,” Mr. Ayres says.

He highlights what he sees as a premature declaration of victory over COVID-19, the initial dismissal of inflation as temporary, the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the lengthy negotiating over the Build Back Better legislation, which has yet to produce results. 

The foreign policy decisions made him look incompetent to the larger public, Mr. Ayres says, while the domestic policy negotiations harmed his standings among both liberal and moderate Democrats. 

“It raised expectations of liberals before dashing them. So the left is demoralized,” he says. And “it made people who voted for him as a center-left moderate feel like they’d been sold a bill of goods – that he ran for president one way and governed another.”

Increasing numbers of Russians appear to be backing their government’s rationale for waging its “special military operation” in Ukraine. That seems to include the notion that Russia is presently fighting against the same enemy that it did during World War II: “Nazis.”

It must seem baffling to Western audiences that Ukrainians, who democratically elected a Jewish president barely three years ago, could in any way be referred to as “Nazis,” as Russian media reports routinely describe its enemies.

Editor’s note: This article was edited in order to conform with Russian legislation criminalizing references to Russia’s current action in Ukraine as anything other than a “special military operation.”

The answer appears to lie in the very different ways that Russia and the West experienced WWII – still known in Russia as the “Great Patriotic War” – and digested its lessons. In particular, the two sides take divergent views on what crimes against humanity the Nazis committed that define their monstrosity.

The Monitor spoke to two Russian and two Ukrainian thinkers in an attempt to understand the domestic appeal of the Russian narrative, which a host of new polls indicate has consolidated public opinion behind the Kremlin. This support is coming despite the obvious fact that Russia initiated the “special military operation” that continues to inflict vast destruction upon Ukraine, including immense devastation in cities like Mariupol, and serious costs upon Russia, like the sinking of its flagship cruiser Moskva.

“A person who thinks one nation is above all others”

In the official Russian telling, neo-Nazis and Nazi-influenced groups infiltrated Ukraine’s government and military establishments during and after the 2014 Maidan revolt, which changed power in Kyiv from a Russian-friendly to pro-Western government.

When Russian-speaking separatists in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine raised a Russian-backed rebellion, the Kyiv government launched a war against them that continues to this day. Ultranationalist paramilitary units with neo-Nazi ties, such as the Azov, Aidar, and Dnipro-1 and -2 battalions, which were later incorporated into Ukraine’s National Guard, spearheaded that war.

Hence, the official Russian narrative claims the present “special military operation” is a struggle to liberate the Russian-speaking population of Donbas from external occupation, which they insist includes actual Nazis as well as regular Ukrainian forces who are fulfilling a Nazi-inspired agenda.

Mstyslav Chernov/AP/File

Fighters of the Azov Battalion observe enemy lines from their base in Shyrokyne, Ukraine, March 22, 2015. The Azov Battalion was a far-right militia in the early days of fighting in the Donbas, but has since been made an official part of the Ukrainian military. Its neo-Nazi ties, past and present, remain controversial.

It is a narrative that has considerable traction among average Russians. A recent VTISOM poll found that 88% of Russians believe that there are organizations in Ukraine that profess the ideology of Nazism, and 76% believe that Ukrainian Nazi organizations pose a threat to Russia and Russian citizens.

And there is much discussion about the Nazi threat in Ukraine among Russian commentators. Unlike Soviet times, the fighting there does not take place amid a news blackout or completely made-up information and imagery. Indeed, many embedded Russian war correspondents broadcast visually jarring daily reports from the front lines, and make no effort to disguise the devastation in places like Mariupol.

Instead, the emphasis of Russian authorities is on controlling the narrative, the psychological framework within which Russians view these events. That is where the Nazi metaphor for the Ukrainian enemy becomes potent.

Key to understanding the metaphor’s power in Russia is understanding the Soviet world’s very different experience of WWII and the Nazis, says Masha Lipman, a senior associate at the PONARS Eurasia program at George Washington University.

“In the West, WWII is in large part about the Holocaust, the ultimate evil of the ‘Final Solution,’ and this defined the development of the West after the war,” she says. “In Russia, the Great Patriotic War is connected with the assault on the USSR, the terrible losses among Soviet citizens [of all nationalities], and the great victory over Nazi Germany.

“Official rhetoric makes no reference to the Holocaust. Rather it was a victory over the evil force that tried to destroy the Soviet Union, not a force that was devoted to exterminating the Jews,” she says. “Broadly speaking, the symbolism is different. That has become much more graphic and distinct in recent years as Russia got involved in memory wars with the West.”

That can be seen in public understanding. Nina, a Moscow pensioner who follows the news, says she believes a Nazi is “a person who thinks one nation is above all others and the rest should be killed. It is difficult to figure out exactly what exactly is happening in Ukraine right now. I don’t follow it closely, but there were definitely Nazis in Ukraine. Not the whole population of course, but some squads.”

Not everyone thinks the same. Irina, a municipal worker nearing retirement age, says, “I think what’s going on in Ukraine has nothing to do with Nazis, no matter what we are told by our authorities. The aim perhaps is to demonstrate that we are good, but I think this is an attempt to pit us against one other. I suffer a lot about it all.”

Efrem Lukatsky/AP/File

Activists of various nationalist parties carry torches, Ukrainian national flags, and a portrait of Stepan Bandera during a rally in Kyiv, Ukraine, Jan. 1, 2019. Bandera collaborated with the Nazis against the Soviets during World War II until he attempted to declare an independent Ukrainian state, at which point they sent him to a concentration camp.

“A gift to Russian propaganda”

Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser and strong supporter of the military operation, claims that Ukrainian leaders, though mostly not Nazis themselves, allowed themselves to become hostages to a right-wing nationalist agenda that exalted WWII-era Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera, and allowed actual neo-Nazis to occupy key positions in military and government institutions.

“This Ukrainian regime is infiltrated by Nazis, and it needs them to survive,” he says. “It’s not about whether [President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy is Jewish or not. He is their hostage. I am sure he hates the Nazis, but he is afraid of them. And just because the Ukrainian Nazis don’t pursue anti-Semitic goals – at least for now – doesn’t make them less Nazi. They channel their chauvinism and xenophobia into Russophobia” and turn it against not only Russia, but also that big part of the Ukrainian population that speaks Russian and wants good relations with Russia, he says.

Ivan Katchanovski, a Ukrainian political scientist at the University of Ottawa, says that there are neo-Nazi elements in Ukraine, and though they are a tiny proportion of the population, they have played an “outsized role” in political and military affairs. That has led to confusion and played a prominent part in Russian media coverage of the operation.

As Russian and separatist forces occupy former Azov Regiment premises in the embattled city of Mariupol, they have showcased reams of neo-Nazi paraphernalia they have found there, displayed Azov prisoners festooned with swastikas and other right-wing tattoos, and filmed local citizens recounting what they say are their unpleasant experiences with the group, which has been the main force defending Mariupol for the past eight years.

“That is a gift to Russian propaganda, that these groups were not dealt with before,” says Professor Katchanovski. “Neo-Nazis are a relatively small segment of Ukraine, but the fact that they are integrated in the Ukrainian armed forces and tolerated by Zelenskyy is a problem. ... These right-wing groups are real enough, but the [Kremlin] claim about Nazis in the Ukrainian government and army as a pretext for this illegal invasion of Ukraine is basically false.”

Volodymyr Ishchenko, a Ukrainian sociologist and expert at the Institute of East European Studies, Free University of Berlin, says that the Kremlin’s fixation on the WWII metaphor for the current military operation is more than just a convenient pretext, but it is rooted in the Russian regime’s lack of post-Soviet legitimacy.

Soviet achievements like the victory over Nazi Germany are “fundamental for Russians to understand who they are,” he says. “Nazis are absolute enemies. You can’t do anything with Nazis other than defeat them. This Soviet frame is very powerful; indeed, no other one would work [to rationalize the military operation against Ukraine].”

Stepping away from his lectern in the White House Rose Garden, April 11, President Joe Biden walked to a nearby display and picked up two parts of a handgun. 

“It’s not hard to put together,” he said. With a drill, at home, “it doesn’t take very long. Anyone can order it in the mail. Anyone.”

The president was holding two pieces of a “ghost gun,” a firearm manufactured without a serial number. Without a background check and for about $150, Americans can order those parts online as a kit and then put them together like a ballistic Lego set. Mr. Biden’s event at the Rose Garden was an attempt to end that. There, he announced a new rule from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that will regulate those gun kits like any other gun. Experts say the rule, taking effect this August, will close a huge loophole in existing gun laws. 

What is a ghost gun?

It’s “a gun that is impossible or difficult to trace because it lacks a serial number or other identifying markings,” says Alex McCourt, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Gun Violence Solutions. 

The ATF requires gun manufacturers to mark their weapons, like auto companies leave vehicle identification numbers on cars. These numbers are often etched onto the lower receiver – the part of the gun that holds the trigger, hammer, and slot for the magazine. 

Ghost guns are manufactured without these numbers. Most commonly, they come in the form of unmarked kits sold online with all the components of a firearm – almost always a handgun – that customers  put together at home. It just takes the included directions, basic tools, and about half an hour.  

Until now, in certain circumstances, that was legal. That’s because those kits weren’t actual firearms, in the eyes of the ATF. For decades, the bureau’s standard for what makes a gun a gun has been whether an object can be “readily” converted into a firearm. Around 2005, the agency published its criteria for that standard, and manufacturers started selling products just below the threshold, says Garen Wintemute, a violence prevention expert at the University of California, Davis.

“These guns are made entirely outside any sort of regulatory framework or oversight,” he says. “That’s the point.”  

Carolyn Kaster/AP

A 9mm pistol built from parts that come in a do-it-yourself kit was displayed April 11, 2022, at the White House when President Joe Biden and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced new rules that treat these firearms as regular guns that must be traceable by serial numbers.

Why are they dangerous?

Increasingly, ghost guns are showing up in crime scenes. 

Reliable data are hard to find for weapons designed not to be tracked. But in California, Professor Wintemute says, these weapons are recovered in 30% to 50% of gun-related crime scenes. The Department of Justice (DOJ) says law enforcement collected more than 20,000 “suspected ghost guns” during investigations last year. That’s 10 times more than they collected in 2016.

That increase presents two policy problems, says Professor McCourt. Law enforcement traces weapons recovered at crime scenes back to their owners through a background check database. That system is, in part, how police apprehended the lead suspect in the recent Brooklyn subway shooting in New York City. No serial numbers mean no tracing. 

Because ghost gun kits aren’t regulated like regular guns, they also don’t require background checks. That meant a massive legal loophole for children or people with mental illnesses or criminal records that bar them from gun ownership.

“If these kits are available to them, then the law loses some of its teeth,” says Professor McCourt. 

How are they now regulated?

A new “final rule” announced by the ATF and DOJ now treats gun kits as guns, requiring serial numbers and background checks. It also requires any company, such as a gunsmith or gun shop, that comes across a ghost gun, to serialize it, and for federally licensed gun dealers to keep permanent purchasing records – previously only required for 20 years. The regulations go into effect this August. 

This doesn’t spell a total end to ghost guns, says Professor Wintemute. With milling machines or 3D printers equipped with the right code, criminals and people skeptical of government regulation – the two main markets for ghost guns – can still make their own, unmarked firearms. But those machines are expensive and inaccessible to much of the public, says Professor Wintemute. 

The rule “really throws a monkey wrench into the ghost gun market,” he says. 

Organizations like Gun Owners of America have already said they will challenge the rule in court, arguing that it ends the online sale of gun parts. But the ATF is likely within its authority to make the change, says Rafiq Ahmad, a former bureau special agent. 

“It’s not government overreach,” he says. “It’s proper oversight.”

Riddhima Dave/The Christian Science Monitor

A typical daily meal in Riddhima Dave’s house, prepared by her and her mother, consisting of bread, lentils, rice, flavored vegetables, and pickled chiles. Ms. Dave prepares recipes like these in Boston to feel connected to her home.

The yoga class seemed calm and serene on the outside. Like any other, it started with “Namaste,” a traditional greeting in Hindi and Sanskrit. Except no one there spoke either. A woman next to me had a large lotus tattoo. I wondered if she knew what it meant. 

Soon, the asanas (exercises) started. I had a difficult time doing them because I couldn’t catch up with the English names, and they were not using the Sanskrit ones. Then why did they start with ... doesn’t matter. The instructor ended the session after Vrikshasana (tree pose). What, no breathing? She just exhaled and said, ”Namaste.” The session ended without any meditation. We were asked to leave before we could gather our senses. 

Afterward, I thought long about why this session bothered me so much. Then I realized it was the same reason that turmeric lattes, chai tea, and yogurt rice bother me. It wasn’t yoga – it was colonized yoga. 

Ever since I arrived in the United States in 2018, I have heard Americans tell me the benefits of asafoetida, an ingredient that Indians have used for centuries. Influencers on my Instagram and TikTok pages are constantly “introducing” recipes I have been eating since I was a child. I see luxury brands champion marigold and turmeric for skin care, and cafes emulate drinks from my culture to sell as their own concoctions. All this felt to me like being colonized. 

A difficult dichotomy

The easiest way to describe colonization is that an entity in power inserts itself into another’s space, dispossessing them of it, enforcing rules that marginalize them, and diminishing their identity. While historically the possession taken over has been land, in modern society the definition can be extended to culture, language, and identity. Cultural appropriation occurs when a power takes something from a marginalized culture and positions it in its own image, often profiting from it. 

For people from formerly colonized countries, this cultural dynamic rests in a difficult dichotomy, but the end result is usually some form of cultural erosion. On the inside, we often have our own leftover obsession with light skin and preoccupation with learning English over our mother tongues. Although English was the third language I learned to speak, after Gujarati and Hindi, it was the first I was taught to read and write. And I have experienced a range of privileges because I am light-skinned. 

All the while, on the outside, fragments of our culture are taken out of context and commercialized by culturally powerful Western nations like the U.S. When that happens, the item – a practice (yoga), spice (turmeric), or drink (chai latte) –  becomes popularized worldwide through an American eye that ignores and alters its original identity. Cultural exchange is a beautiful thing, but when that exchange happens between entities with stark power imbalances, oftentimes the one in the weaker position gets overlooked.

Seeking refuge in my kitchen

One day after seeing “ginger tea milk” offered in a cafe, I felt unusually uncomfortable. The cafe credited it as “our house special,” but when I tried it, it was adrak waali chai (chai with ginger) – an extremely popular form of chai that millions of people across India enjoy.

Riddhima Dave/The Christian Science Monitor

On the left is an Indian-style preparation of beans and rice known as rajma-chawal, a popular north Indian dish, prepared in Riddhima Dave’s Boston apartment. On the right is a staple meal from Ms. Dave's home state of Gujarat, consisting of thepla (bread), kadhi (yogurt and chickpea flour), and spiced gherkin.

In response, I went straight to an Indian grocery store and bought $70 worth of spices. Then I went home and began to cook. I really wanted sev tameta, a tomato-based dish that has always given me comfort. The smell after Mom tempers spices filled my apartment as I followed her instructions. I felt as though I had reclaimed my food, my culture. 

I have since learned to cook many more items. I also made my personal space as familiar as possible. On one trip back to India, I got agarbattis (incense sticks) in flavors of Indian flowers. I also got a pair of ghungroos (ankle bells) that I keep on my dresser to remind me of my dancing days, along with a Natraja (dancing god) bust. I have listened to a lot more Indian music since I left India. I also practice yog (known in English as yoga) by myself, following the method I learned at home. 

But I am not an island in America. 

I drink Starbucks’ chai tea latte, even though the name exasperates me. Chai is milk tea, so they’re actually advertising “Milk tea tea latte.” And the recipe is not very authentic, but it tastes OK. 

Sometimes the Indian-style things that people sell aren’t bad in themselves. The problem arises when there is no acknowledgment of the product’s origin. They are named improperly and taken out of context, and often their source is not credited. Any company that takes from a culture should understand the original context of the product and what people call it. Then they should consider how to integrate that information into their business. 

Companies might ask themselves whether their actions are socially responsible. Are they doing anything to empower the communities they are taking from? Are they elevating the culture they’re appropriating or diluting it? Are they rebranding the cultural products in their own name? 

Even a little acknowledgment of the culture of origin would make a world of difference to someone like me. I would feel as though my identity, which is so closely tied to my culture, was being seen and valued. 

But until that happens, I have the ability to create my own space filled with the scents and sounds of my culture. And I can always get to work in my kitchen when I need to feel more grounded in my identity. 

It’s a feeling I like to share. When I invite people into my space, I always ask, “Would you like something to eat?” 

U.S. Forces Korea via AP

South Korean President-elect Yoon Suk Yeol, center, shares meal with South Korean and U.S. military officials during his visit to Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, April 7.

In a fiery speech on Feb. 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin took issue with Ukraine’s version of its own history. “Modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia,” he claimed. Three days later, Russian tanks rolled into a country with a record of independence and democratic identity. It was yet another example of what can happen when two nations don’t share the truth about their shared history.

Now two other neighbors, Japan and South Korea, have an opportunity to avoid a similar confrontation. On May 10, South Korea’s president-elect, Yoon Suk-yeol, takes office with a pledge to offer a hand of reconciliation toward Japan. He seeks to resolve disputed accounts over the colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula by imperial Japan from 1910 to 1945 – along with the related issues of wartime laborers and sexual servitude of Korean women.

“The more important thing is that we look toward the future,” Mr. Yoon told The Washington Post. “I firmly believe that South Korea should not seek domestic political gains when looking to engage Japan diplomatically for the future. Our relationship with Japan has hit rock bottom, but that is not what the South Korean public wants.”

Indeed, polls show South Koreans now hold more negative views of China than Japan. And Russia’s invasion of Ukraine might have further emboldened South Koreans to see Japan as a necessary democratic ally against an autocratic China threatening Taiwan.

“When I am president, South Korea-Japan relations will go well,” Mr. Yoon added. “I will change our attitudes and systems toward a normal diplomatic relationship.”

He has already held a phone call with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. And in a symbol of his intentions, a high-level South Korean delegation will be in Japan April 24-28 to explore the difficult and complex differences over their shared history and what to do about them. The mission is the second one dispatched by the incoming president after a delegation sent to Washington.

Mr. Yoon is also exploring ways for South Korea to work with Japan, India, Australia, and the United States in the so-called Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad. That alliance of Indo-Pacific democracies is seen as deterrence against Chinese aggression. “Good alliances are necessary to prevent wars,” Mr. Yoon said last month as a candidate in the March 9 presidential election.

Since 1965, when the two countries normalized relations in a treaty, they have grappled with what happened under Japanese rule of Korea along with how to compensate for it and whether official Japanese statements of remorse are adequate. The election of Mr. Yoon, a conservative former prosecutor who won by a slim margin, may reflect a shift in South Korea to work more closely with Japan.

“During the process of seeking cooperation between South Korea and Japan, it will be needed to investigate the truth of the past and put our heads together over the problems that should be solved,” Mr. Yoon told reporters after his election.

Perhaps the Russian people will take note and demand the truth about Ukraine from Mr. Putin. Recognizing historical truths does have a way of dampening old resentments, opening the space for making amends, and most of all, avoiding war.