China waged live-fire military exercises close to Taiwan this month aimed at punishing the self-ruled island – which Beijing claims as its territory – for perceived steps toward independence.

As the People’s Liberation Army mobilized hundreds of aircraft and dozens of warships in joint maneuvers Aug. 2-10, flexing a military that has expanded massively and steadily stepped up actions near Taiwan in recent years, experts in Washington and Taipei worry that they are rehearsals for a possible PLA invasion – an option Beijing has not ruled out should peaceful reunification fail or take too long. The drills marked a show of force in retaliation for a visit by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and could signal a new, threatening phase for the island, Asia’s most dangerous flashpoint, experts say. 

Beijing also issued a new white paper this month on Taiwan – the third since 2000 – in which it withdrew an earlier commitment not to deploy troops or base administrative personnel in Taiwan after reunification.

As the United States and Taiwan plan their next moves, experts say preserving the peace will require cleareyed and carefully calibrated actions to counter PLA advances without further escalating tensions in the Taiwan Strait.

“The stakes are enormous,” says Lyle Goldstein, director of Asia engagement at Defense Priorities, a think tank advocating both U.S. military strength and restraint.

Chiang Ying-ying/AP

People walk past a billboard welcoming U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in Taipei, Taiwan, Aug. 3, 2022. The Pelosi visit gave China a pretext, experts say, to engage in military exercises near the island.

Confidence-building exercises 

For the first time, China launched missiles over Taiwan to target areas in the waters east of the island – demonstrating a capability that could complicate Taiwan’s defenses, experts say.

“One of the big questions is, can they hit ships at sea on the eastern side of Taiwan?” says Dr. Goldstein, also a visiting professor of international affairs at Brown University. “That area arguably is one of the most critical parts of the campaign because if the U.S. was going to flow forces or resupply or maintain any support for Taiwan … the American fleet would be on eastern side.”

China also practiced launching salvos of long-range rockets into the Taiwan Strait, which is concerning because they are cheaper and can be used in large numbers. “I view that as a game changer,” he said. “Once China fields that system in numbers, it would be very hard for Taiwan to hold out under the severe barrage those rocket artillery systems entail.”

Meanwhile, the drills allowed the PLA to train near Taiwan using joint operations that coordinate action by naval, air, and ground forces, and to test its command capabilities. The exercises improved the armed forces’ “integrated combat ability” and readiness, said Senior Col. Shi Yi, a spokesperson for the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. 

PLA authorities say they intend to “normalize” such military exercises around Taiwan, which experts say could offer several benefits in preparing for war.

Practicing multi-service or “joint” operations is critical to build the PLA’s confidence in a Taiwan contingency, says Oriana Skylar Mastro, a fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the American Enterprise Institute. 

The latest exercises prove the PLA can mobilize a significant military force near Taiwan, she says. “Previously you might see two different aircraft operate and now you saw 100, that’s very impressive,” she says. But the degree of synchronization between China’s air, naval, and missile units was difficult to gauge. “That synchronization and communication between the air and amphibious element is what would be necessary” for a successful joint operation, she says.

More frequent deployment of ships and aircraft near Taiwan could also help the PLA gain an element of surprise in initiating an actual attack on the island, buying time before the arrival of U.S. forces. 

“China can now decide whether a future exercise will be seamlessly turned into actual combat,” wrote Chen Feng, a commentator for the nationalist Chinese website Guancha.

Regular PLA operations could also wear down Taiwan’s defense forces by placing them on more frequent alerts, raising fuel costs and putting more stress on pilots and aircraft. 

Still, experts say there are limits to what the PLA can learn from drills in which they face no real opponent. 

“There’s always an element of uncertainty about whether or not they can conduct those operations when the war breaks out,” says Dr. Mastro. China has not fought a war since a border clash with Vietnam in 1979.

Another uncertainty is how much difficulty Taiwan’s limited beaches, rugged geography, and popular resistance would pose to invading forces. “The PLA is preparing. Are they ready is another question,” says Drew Thompson, former director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia at the Pentagon.

Limitations and restraint

While some military analysts believe China has the capabilities it needs to retake Taiwan by force, others disagree.

“An amphibious invasion of Taiwan is probably one of the most complex military operations since World War II,” says Mr. Thompson, now a visiting senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

“The Strait is fairly large … the seas are treacherous, the weather window for an invasion is fairly short, and the terrain in Taiwan itself is forbidding,” he says. “The PLA knows what a daunting military challenge it would be to invade Taiwan.”

China’s more threatening military actions may be backfiring in Taiwan, bolstering a spirit of resistance rather than intimidating the island’s people. 

“No threat of any kind can shake the Taiwanese people’s resolve to defend their nation – not in the past, not now, and not in the future,” Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen told a visiting American delegation in Taipei on Tuesday. 

In recent years, public opinion on Taiwan has cooled to the idea of reunification with China, polls show. Beijing’s call for incorporating Taiwan under the “one country, two systems” formula it used in Hong Kong has lost its appeal to many people in Taiwan, especially since China’s crackdown on free speech, assembly, and independent media in Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, Taiwan and the U.S. have shown encouraging restraint in response to China’s military exercises, experts say.

“The United States and Taiwan responded appropriately. There was no reason to escalate things,” says Dr. Mastro. “The United States military has the option to also increase military activity. Everyone knows that,” she says. “The Pelosi visit gave China a pretext to do this exercise, and enhance their readiness, and I think the goal was not to give them even more excuses to do things.”

Going forward, the U.S. Navy will continue to transit the Taiwan Strait and conduct freedom of navigation operations in the region, the Pentagon said. 

“Our forces in the region will continue to operate, to fly, to sail wherever international waters allows. That includes the Taiwan Strait,” Colin Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy, told a Pentagon briefing this month.

Experts say that, for its part, Taiwan needs to spend more on its own defense, balancing conventional forces needed to deter a Chinese invasion with small, maneuverable forces able to survive an onslaught and defend the island in the longer term.

Noah Berger/AP

A firetruck drives along state Route 96 as the McKinney Fire burns in California's Klamath National Forest on July 30, 2022. Investigators haven’t yet determined the cause of the fire. But extreme heat, climate-fueled drought, and wind enabled its rapid spread, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

Just days after fire sparked in Northern California’s Klamath National Forest in late July, search and rescue workers arrived to sift through piles of ash where homes once stood. The fire had exploded with disconcerting speed to become the state’s largest of the year at that point, killing two people and scorching more than 100 buildings in the rural region.

Investigators began searching properties for human remains. But, in an unusual turn of events, they had help. An ABC news crew had transported local resident Sherri Marchetti-Perrault to the wreckage and rolled the cameras as she searched for her missing uncle.

What happened next drew widespread condemnation: ABC national correspondent Matt Gutman reported from the site that Ms. Marchetti-Perrault had found the body of her uncle. Mr. Gutman identified the victim as John Cogan long before authorities officially did so. The fire’s death toll would later rise to four when investigators separately found the remains of former fire lookout volunteer Kathy Shoopman.

Local residents accused Mr. Gutman on social media of exploiting Ms. Marchetti-Perrault and breaking state law. And Kent Porter, a veteran California wildfire photojournalist with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, even said on Twitter that the ABC crew had “created their own news” by driving her to the site, which was only open to first responders and journalists.

The criticism amplified when local Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue of Siskiyou County announced criminal investigations into ABC and four other media outlets he accused of tampering with crime scenes and trespassing on private property in the burn scar of what became known as the McKinney Fire. 

“Moving forward, we hope the media will be more conscientious of the law and respect the dignity of fire victims and their families,” Mr. LaRue said on Facebook.

The debacle ignited a fresh debate about media ethics in coverage of California wildfires. Unlike many states in the Western United States, where wildfires have become increasingly destructive, reporters in California have wide latitude to enter cordoned-off burn zones before other members of the public, allowing journalists to witness the natural disasters firsthand. Those privileges have inspired a similar access law that goes into effect in Oregon early next year. But those privileges also carry considerable responsibility, and sometimes the presence of journalists has caused tensions with local residents and interfered with first responders. 

All five outlets named by Mr. LaRue, including ABC and the Los Angeles Times, defended their coverage as lawful and ethical. David Loy, legal director for the California-based First Amendment Coalition, which supports journalists, tells the Monitor he doubts Mr. LaRue’s investigations will result in any charges, but he says Mr. LaRue has succeeded in making a dangerous job even more dangerous by whipping up resentment for journalists.

Repeated requests for comment to the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office were not returned. 

Reporters as “partners”

The McKinney Fire had scorched more than 50,000 acres just three days after ignition on July 29. Investigators haven’t yet determined what sparked the fire. But extreme heat, climate-fueled drought, and wind enabled its rapid spread, according to the U.S. Forest Service. As of Aug. 26, the fire was 99% contained after burning about 60,000 acres.

The blaze quickly scorched small communities dotting state Route 96. On Aug. 2, firefighters also had to contend with flash flooding that threatened operations and sent burned soil and debris into the Klamath River, likely killing thousands of fish, according to local tribal ecologists.

From Redding, about 90 miles away, Silas Lyons watched the fire progress. The executive editor for a slew of newspapers in the Gannett network, Mr. Lyons decided to dispatch three trained reporters, including a photojournalist who traveled hours from Eugene, Oregon.

The team delivered “heartbreaking” dispatches of leveled community centers and homes in the fire’s hardest-hit regions for Redding’s Record Searchlight, Mr. Lyons says, while the newspaper published authorities’ evacuation orders online. That’s information locals are “desperate to know,” he says. All of the newspaper’s McKinney Fire coverage was free to readers.

“Journalists are the eyes and ears for people who can’t get out there properly,” he adds. “They can go where other people obviously can’t.”

That work is possible thanks to an exception in California’s penal code that specifically carves out privileges for journalists to cross fire lines. Reporters in other Western states have coveted that access. Across the border in Oregon, officials have typically restricted media access to wildfires, says Nathan Howard, a photojournalist who freelances for The Associated Press and Getty Images and has long covered blazes in the Pacific Northwest.

Mr. Howard says authorities mostly prevented him from covering the “massive” Bootleg Fire in the southern part of the state last year, which burned about 413,000 acres over more than a month. At its peak, the fire consumed 1,000 acres per hour. He says he had to rely on guided tours of already-burned areas, in which agency spokespersons provided a “highly sanitized version of the fire.”

In an effort to avoid experiences like that, Rachel Alexander, a member of the Greater Oregon Society of Professional Journalists and managing editor at the Salem Reporter, helped advocate for a new law, signed by Gov. Kate Brown in March, that will give journalists more access to fire zones beginning in January. Ms. Alexander says she consistently hears that, without that access, journalists throughout the state feel they can’t “really tell the public what is happening in fires.” 

By contrast, authorities in California generally share Mr. Lyons’ view, including those at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire. Isaac Sanchez, a Cal Fire battalion chief based in Sacramento, calls reporters “partners” in the agency’s education efforts. Cal Fire runs a popular training program where journalists learn basic factors influencing fire behavior and strategies to keep themselves safe – and avoid interfering with first responders and firefighters, Mr. Sanchez says. Gannett also provides similar training to all reporters in the West, according to Mr. Lyons.

“This is not something to be taken lightly by any stretch of the imagination,” Mr. Sanchez says.

Noah Berger/AP

Sheriff's deputies leave a home where a McKinney Fire victim was found on Aug. 1, 2022. A reporter's participation in the announcement of one of the four people who died in the fire sparked an investigation.

Battle lines between residents and reporters

No journalists have died while covering wildfires in California. But, on occasion, local residents in burn zones can themselves be a source of danger to reporters. It’s common for residents to ignore evacuation orders and stay home to protect their property and animals, according to Mr. Lyons. And those residents sometimes view journalists – the only other civilians in the evacuation zone – with suspicion.

Mr. LaRue, the sheriff, posted his first criticism on Aug. 2, when he accused reporters of “unlawful abuse of press privileges.” Originally, Mr. LaRue didn’t name a reporter or outlet with his claims.

But social media users quickly connected his allegations with ABC’s report, since, at the beginning of the segment, Mr. Gutman says he traveled to the burn site with Ms. Marchetti-Perrault, who is shown riding in the backseat of a news van with the reporter.

Mr. LaRue’s posts received thousands of likes and hundreds of comments overwhelmingly supporting the sheriff. One commenter, Rose Elizabeth Leigh, said reporters were only interested in “getting the dead body shot.”

“This has to be the grossest demonstration of contempt by the liberal media that they would go into a rural community with such reprehensible disrespect and disregard,” Ms. Leigh said. Another commenter accused Mr. Gutman of seeking “15 minutes of fame.”

Some journalists also criticized the media report. Mr. Porter, the photojournalist with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, called ABC’s behavior “very unethical and against California state law.” Noah Berger, a photojournalist who covered the McKinney Fire for The Associated Press, said it was a “bad move.”

ABC, through its spokesman Van Scott Jr., denies any wrongdoing. In an emailed statement to the Monitor, Mr. Scott says the network’s news crew had received permission from authorities and residents to visit property in the burn scar, adding that once the body was discovered, “our team notified law enforcement.”

Ms. Marchetti-Perrault, meanwhile, apologized to authorities in a local news report.

Mr. Howard, the photojournalist covering Oregon wildfires, says he was “shocked” by the sheriff’s attacks, which struck a nerve.

“I saw that and I thought, ‘You’re putting a target on people’s backs,’” he says.

While covering devastating fires near Portland in 2020, Mr. Howard says a local resident pointed a rifle at him and accused him of looting burned homes.

That’s a risk for reporters entering cordoned-off areas where misinformation can flourish, Mr. Howard says. While covering that fire and others, he sometimes heard residents accuse fire authorities of setting blazes themselves or refusing to battle a megafire. In the instance when he was accused of looting, Mr. Howard says some residents were convinced leftist activists in Portland had set the fires, a baseless accusation. 

Mr. Lyons says his reporters covering other fires have also had “tense conversations” with local residents, but no violence has erupted.

Mr. LaRue didn’t condemn any of the newspapers overseen by Mr. Lyons. When asked about the sheriff’s investigations, Mr. Lyons cautions that he isn’t familiar with the conduct of other news crews in the McKinney Fire. Still, he says the sheriff’s comments were counterproductive and “unnecessarily hostile.”

The answer, according to Mr. Lyons: ensuring journalists who cross the fire line are trained to cover wildfires safely and legally – “and not because a sheriff tried to shame them” into training.

In the latest escalation of his self-declared “revolution” against Iraq’s political system, including a push for new elections, firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his followers Tuesday to occupy judicial offices.

They hoped to repeat their success at shutting down Iraq’s parliament, where Sadrists have camped outside for weeks to prevent the formation of a new government by political opponents. The Sadrist bloc in parliament had failed to do so itself, despite winning the largest number of seats in October 2021 elections.

But Tuesday, Sadr loyalists did not even get inside the gates of the Supreme Judicial Council building, amid a flurry of immediate negative reactions – including from top Iraqi judicial officials, Iran-backed Shiite militia leaders, and the United Nations – that warned of the further erosion of Iraqi state legitimacy.

By nightfall, Mr. Sadr’s supporters effectively had been called off, ordered by their leaders to depart judicial offices but leave their tents standing, in a show of continued “pressure.”

“What we are seeing is that the nascent democratic institutions of Iraq are being tested, in their limits and their ability to withstand these shocks,” says a political analyst and former government official in Baghdad, who asked not to be named due to the restrictions of his current job.

He says he drove by judiciary offices Tuesday night and confirmed, “the tents were there, but Sadr’s followers were not.”

Mr. Sadr “doesn’t like to play by the rules,” the analyst says.

“Our parliament doesn’t exist, because it’s being blocked by the Sadrists. Our judiciary has decided to close up shop, because of the attempt to enter by the Sadrists. And you have an interim caretaker outgoing government in the executive,” he says.

“So you’ve got the three branches of government either paralyzed or completely lacking any authority,” the analyst adds. “This is as weak as a state can get without collapsing. ... We are in uncharted territory.”

System checks seem to have worked

On the one hand, Iraq’s current political crisis reveals how vulnerable the country remains to the whims of a single, disgruntled, unelected player like Mr. Sadr. The scion of an important religious family, he commands a significant number of followers who are often likened to a cult.

Indeed, the mid-ranking Shiite cleric triggered the current stand-off himself, by abruptly ordering the 73 elected parliamentarians loyal to him – the largest single bloc – to resign en masse in June, after he failed to form a government by allying with a key Kurdish party and smaller Sunni groups.

On the other hand, institutional checks seem to have worked to a degree, preventing Mr. Sadr from completely dismantling Iraq’s nascent democracy. Despite widespread corruption, manifest imperfections, and lengthy episodes of gridlock, the system has served as political glue to Iraq’s disparate sectarian branches since American troops toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters

Supporters of charismatic Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr gather for a sit-in, in front of parliament, amid an ongoing political crisis in Baghdad, Aug. 24, 2022.

Adding to Iraq’s volatility is that Mr. Sadr, whose legions of followers spearheaded opposition to the American military occupation, and who raised the Mahdi Army militia for that purpose, is locked in an intra-Shiite political battle. On the other side is a host of rival militias and parties, many backed by Iran, that led the fight against the Islamic State beginning in 2014.

When Mr. Sadr ordered the mass resignation from parliament, his loyalists were replaced – according to a new 2021 law – by the runner-up candidates, who often were from the rival Shiite groups, called the Coordination Framework.

“They turned Iraq into a runaway train”

Abbas Kadhim, director of the Iraq Initiative at the Atlantic Council in Washington, says a “lack of strategy” fed Mr. Sadr’s decision to withdraw his followers from parliament. Putting pressure on the judiciary as a path to new elections “is a lost battle for them,” since the judiciary can’t legally dissolve parliament, he says.

“They handed their seats to their rivals, and … wrote themselves completely out of any political participation in government,” says Dr. Kadhim. “Had they used any system of advisers, someone could have told them, ‘You are committing political suicide here,’ but nobody could step up and say this is wrong.

“And now that they are out, they want to be back,” he says. “No Iraqi political bloc can afford being out of government for three and half or four years. … They turned Iraq into a runaway train right now, with no parliament, no judiciary, and only a caretaker government whose powers are severely truncated.”

While the only remedy for Iraq’s current political dysfunction may be another election, rival Shiite parties “are using the letter of the law to the fullest extent they can to teach their opponents a lesson: ‘You made a mistake, and that is not without a price,’” says Dr. Kadhim. “It’s not a bad thing,” he adds, “otherwise, any person with 2,000 or 3,000 people can go and occupy the parliament and put Iraq into a crisis again.”

Mr. Sadr’s demand for new elections, meanwhile, is raising questions among Iraqis about why another vote is necessary after the October 2021 round in which Mr. Sadr’s supporters performed so well. Reflecting Iraqis’ growing disenchantment with their political system, that round saw the lowest turnout in the post-Saddam era, at just 43%, compared with some 70% in the legislative election of 2005.

Last October’s election was itself conducted early – and largely freely and fairly, according to U.N. and other observers – thanks to massive 2019-2021 civil society protests against corruption, lack of job prospects, and electricity shortages, as well as the outsized influence of Iran-backed Shiite militias on politics. 

What will satisfy the Sadrists?

Unlike those protests, which had the backing of a broad swath of angry Iraqis, the current power play on the street is being carried out exclusively by followers of Mr. Sadr. It’s not clear if a fresh election – which in any event would take at least a year to organize, and require new funding – would be enough to satisfy the expectations Mr. Sadr has raised among his followers of a “revolution.”

“He’s made such a show, going into the Green Zone and occupying parliament,” says Hamzeh Hadad, a Baghdad-based fellow of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

He notes that when Mr. Sadr first played that card in 2016, his followers stormed parliament and achieved a broad cabinet reshuffle that brought in a number of technocrat ministers. “He was able to say, ‘Look, I took you into parliament, this is the result we achieved, this is what we wanted,’” says Mr. Hadad.

The bar is much higher now, he says, because Sadrists had so many seats to start with; because of the unprecedented length of time they have blocked parliament; and because Mr. Sadr has shifted from his usual nationalistic rhetoric to invoke a Shiite religious framework.

“You can’t talk about revolution in those terms, and not have something to give,” says Mr. Hadad. “Yes, he has a very cult-like following, but they, too, want results.”

Mr. Sadr is banking that a new election will be enough to qualify as a “revolution,” while also being acceptable to his Kurdish and Sunni allies, says Mr. Hadad.

Yet the demand for a new election, even if it becomes feasible, is prompting concerns for Iraqi democracy.

“It’s one of the flaws in the system,” says the Baghdad analyst who asked not to be named. “Yes, we do hold elections, and we do have people represent us in parliament. But what good is that if they take their orders from their political party leaders?”

“This is the biggest thing that is going to hurt Iraq in the long run,” says Mr. Hadad. “Many think, day-to-day short-term, ‘We please everyone, we hold them together, we hold new elections, everyone is happy,’” he says.

“The issue is going to be Iraq’s democratization, which has been progressing over the long term,” he adds. “[Early elections] could be a big hindrance. ... In the public eye, it is decreasing its legitimacy.”

As a child, I was a slow learner when it came to physical skills. It took many flops and wobbles before I could comfortably ride a bike. When it came to swinging a bat, I had no problem with the swing, but locating a pitched ball in midair was another thing altogether. Learning to swim was my greatest challenge. As an 8-year-old attending a Y day camp, I looked on forlornly as the other boys in my group sailed off like schooners while I remained behind, clinging to the side of the pool.

Perhaps this is why I bridled when a friend suggested, in an offhand manner, that I try stand-up paddleboarding. My fear was that my ability to snap up a new physical skill had not improved with the passing decades.

In truth, stand-up paddleboarding had already caught my eye. During visits to Maine lakes, I had seen its practitioners float by like ethereal beings, statuesque, paddling languidly under a warm sun. It looked so easy, as the only thing it entailed was the ability to stand up, right?

In a burst of optimism, I bought an inflatable paddleboard and, with my friend Mike in tow, headed for a lake deep in the Maine woods, out of sight of potential critics. After inflating the craft and setting it on the water, athletic Mike generously offered to test it out. In one smooth bound he was atop the thing, paddling about with the confidence of the physically adept.

Then it was my turn. I began by kneeling upon the wobbly platform, looking as if I were making an offering to whatever celestial forces guided the efforts of would-be paddleboarders. Slowly, laboriously, I tried to stand – and immediately flew into the drink. I mounted it again, and again I flipped. 

They say that it is the sense of smell that most powerfully elicits distant memories. I disagree. It’s the act of falling that reminds one that learning is an energy-intensive endeavor: falling from my bike, falling after swinging a bat with all my might through empty air, and falling through – instead of floating on – the water at the Y. 

And yet I believe that the adult has an advantage over the child: New physical skills may seem to be more difficult to acquire later in life, but the effort – and the built-in understanding that falling is part of the process – is accompanied by faith born of experience. I did learn how to ride a bike, I did learn to swim, and, after a seemingly infinite number of practice swings, I did learn to, in my father’s words, “get that bat on the ball.”

And so, for the umpteenth time, I mounted the paddleboard, first slithering upon my belly, then up on my knees, and ending with the slow, unsteady ascent onto my feet until – yes! – I was standing upright. I even paddled four or five strokes before flipping into the water again. But I had never been so happy about the simple act of standing up.

When I got home later that day, I made a full report of my partial success to my 20-something son, who in return threw me a dubious look. After all, his efforts to learn to ride a bike, to swim, and to ride a skateboard were in more recent memory. He must have assumed that such potential sputtered out once one reached my age.

But it doesn’t matter. I’m not learning to paddleboard for him or for anyone else. I’m learning because it’s fun, because hope springs eternal, and because I, too, want to be one of those statuesque figures languidly plowing their way across a placid lake under a brilliant sky. And maybe someone on the shore will point at me and remark, “How does he do that?”

I already have my response: Practice may not always make perfect, but it certainly makes possible. 

AP

French President Emmanuel Macron visits the Saint-Eugene Cemetery in Algiers, Algeria, Aug. 26.

When French President Emmanuel Macron landed in Algeria yesterday at the start of a three-day visit, his agenda weighed heavy with geopolitical concerns: energy security, illegal immigration between North Africa and Europe, and the spread of violent jihadism in Africa.

Yet Mr. Macron has been careful to insist that this is not a “state visit,” but rather an opportunity to heal the strained relations of two countries that hold divided memories of a shared colonial past and the war that ended it. The time has come, he said shortly after arriving in the capital, Algiers, to “look back at the past with humility.”

One measure that the world may be making somewhat unheralded progress against war and inequality is an increasing recognition that societies, like individuals, deserve freedom from harmful pasts. Dozens of countries have wrestled with historical grievances through truth commissions. Some have sought models of financial restitution, others the grace to express remorse. Those processes of restorative justice often hinge on an acknowledgment that people on opposing sides of a conflict understand it differently.

France imposed its rule over Algeria for 132 years until a brutal, eight-year war finally broke them apart. And in 60 years since, leaders and intellectuals on both sides have used memory as a cudgel and an excuse for division.

It took France more than 40 years to admit that “the events of North Africa constituted a war.” The two sides still cannot agree on the toll. Algerians claim as many as 1.5 million of their own were killed during the fighting; French historians put that number at about 400,000.

Mr. Macron seems aware of the power of memory to divide – but also to heal. Two years ago he commissioned a report on “the memory of the colonization of Algeria and the Algerian war.” He has reiterated a pledge to open the national archives on colonialism and create a commission of historians “allowing us to look at the whole of this historical period ... without taboos.”

His trip was motivated to a degree by the need for atonement. In a fit of frustration over illegal immigration last year, he described the Algerian government as a “politico-military system” that derived its legitimacy through false memories of the liberation war. Although he recanted, it was evidence enough to critics in Algeria that France maintains a paternalistic attitude toward its former colonies.

“The imperative of reconciliation is problematic both in principle and in its probable political uses,” wrote Algerian historian Noureddine in a critique of the commission report in the Algerian newspaper Liberte. “For me there is good in conflict. Mastered, it is a force of questioning more powerful than reconciliation in the renewal of our respective historiographies…. It is not memory that regulates the relations between states, but interests.” Algeria needs investment from France, Arab analysts say, not friendship.

Yet as France’s first president born after the war, Mr. Macron has sought to align with a new generation of French people and Algerians who view the war as a reference point for peace. Last year he formed a dialogue among youth whose parents and grandparents had fought in or been displaced by the conflict.

“We are all driven by the same desire,” they wrote afterward, “to appease these memories [of war], to recognize them in their singularity, to heal the wounds still present in our society and to work for reconciliation and the construction of a shared future for the new generations.” Among their proposals were new art residencies for young French and Algerian artists to “create works that embody new places of positive memory.”

To see “truth as the widest possible compilation of people’s perceptions, stories, myths, and experiences,” observed Antjie Krog, a South African writer, is “to restore memory and foster a new humanity, and perhaps that is justice in its deepest sense.”