The unprecedented prisoner exchange that freed Americans Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan from Russian imprisonment early Thursday marks the culmination of years of complex, on-and-off negotiations amid steadily worsening U.S.-Russia relations.

Mr. Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, and Mr. Whelan, an ex-U.S. Marine in Russian custody since 2018, were among 26 prisoners from the United States, Russia, Belarus, Germany, Poland, Norway, and Slovenia who were freed in the exchange facilitated by Turkey.

It was the largest East-West prisoner exchange since the end of the Cold War, and the first since Russia and the U.S. exchanged basketball star Brittney Griner for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in December 2022.

From the State Dining Room and surrounded by family members of the released Americans Thursday afternoon, President Joe Biden hailed the prisoner exchange as a “feat of diplomacy,” underscoring the “friendship” of “many countries” that played key roles in the painstaking negotiations.

The exchange offered a glimmer of hope for tundra-cold East-West relations – in particular the frigid links between Washington and Moscow – demonstrating that diplomacy between the two sides can still advance when both see it in their interest.

“That’s very hopeful, since there is a long list of urgent problems that might benefit from more constructive diplomacy between Russia and the U.S.,” including Ukraine and arms control, says Russian political analyst Alexey Mukhin, director of the independent Center for Political Information in Moscow.

Moreover, a swap that returns to Russian soil a number of operatives and intelligence officers convicted on a variety of charges in the West underscores the price Russian President Vladimir Putin is willing to pay to repatriate jailed Russian agents. In particular, Mr. Putin got back from Germany Vadim Krasikov, a professional hit man he was keen to see back in the fold.

“That’s key to sustaining the morale of their operatives,” former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt wrote on the social platform X Thursday.

A prickly but successful negotiation

That the exchange was mediated by Turkey made it reminiscent of Turkish-led diplomacy in 2022 that led to a Black Sea grain deal between Russia and Ukraine, just months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. As with the prisoner swap, the grain deal worked because both sides keenly wanted it.

U.S. Government/Reuters

Evan Gershkovich (left), Paul Whelan (second from right), and Alsu Kurmasheva (right) pose with others aboard an aircraft after they were released from Russia.

That deal allowed Ukrainian grains to transit safely through Turkish ports to global markets, while Russia was guaranteed market access for its fertilizers and grains.

Just before Mr. Biden’s statement, Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed in a midday statement that three “wrongfully detained” Americans – Mr. Whelan, Mr. Gershkovich, and Radio Free Europe journalist Alsu Kurmasheva – were on their way back to the U.S.

He thanked officials across the U.S. government, European allies, and specifically Turkey for paving the way to the swap. The Americans are expected to be back in the U.S. with their families by Friday.

The White House had hinted Wednesday that something was in the works when press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in response to a question about a rumored deal, “We do not negotiate in public. We cannot negotiate in public because we want to make sure we can get the job done.”

If nothing else, that suggested negotiations were indeed ongoing – a positive sign in otherwise desultory U.S.-Russian relations.

Indeed, diplomatic contacts between Russia and the U.S. have been tenuous at best in recent years, deteriorating to new post-Cold War lows in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

President Biden and Mr. Putin last met in Geneva in June 2021, but since the invasion of Ukraine, White House officials have suggested every effort was being made to avoid direct contact between the two leaders at international meetings that both were attending.

“Not Russia’s problem anymore”

But carrying out a complex exchange such as this one suggests that reliable back channels are still working. “If this is true, it means that Russia is not completely isolated and is still able to conduct serious negotiations with Western countries,” says Mr. Mukhin, the Russian political analyst. “It also sends a positive message to the Russian public, that the Kremlin is able to deal with the West and bring home Russians who were imprisoned abroad.”

Mr. Mukhin says it’s a plus for the Kremlin to release high-profile political prisoners like Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin, whose imprisonment has been a constant source of bad publicity.

“The death of Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison earlier this year attracted so much negative attention in the midst of Putin’s reelection campaign, and was seen as a big problem for the Kremlin,” he says. “Sending these people out to the West just reduces the complications.”

Noting for example that Mr. Kara-Murza is known to be quite ill, he says, “If he were to die in a Russian prison, it would be another bad story. Letting them go means they are not Russia’s problem anymore.”

“Our alliances make our people safer”

Mr. Whelan’s liberation is particularly sweet for Mr. Biden, since he has cited his case as a priority since taking office. Even amid the euphoria of the exchange that freed Ms. Griner, Mr. Biden said his one regret was that the deal did not include Mr. Whelan.

On Thursday, Mr. Biden also took the opportunity to point out how the prisoner exchange underscores the value of America’s alliances – and to allow himself a subtle dig at those who denigrate those alliances as a burden.

The truth, Mr. Biden said, is that the exchange “would not have been possible without our allies.”

Presumably alluding to former President Donald Trump, who often questions U.S. alliances as expensive one-way streets, Mr. Biden said, “If anyone would question if allies matter, they do. Our alliances make our people safer.” He added, “We saw that again today.”

Mr. Biden offered a special shoutout to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who had to make the difficult decision to free Mr. Krasikov, convicted of a high-profile hit in Germany, in order for the deal to work for Russia.

In his statement confirming the prisoner release, Secretary Blinken joined Mr. Biden in noting amid the jubilation that more work remains to be done.

“My pledge to the families of those still separated from their families is the same that I made to those returning home today,” he said. “We will not forget you, and we will not rest until you see your loved ones again.” 

Special correspondent Fred Weir reported from Moscow.

Editor's note: The original version misstated where in the White House President Biden spoke about the negotiations.

Former President Donald Trump was confronted with a laundry list of his past racially incendiary remarks on Wednesday – and immediately added another one.

In a contentious interview at the National Association of Black Journalists, Mr. Trump was asked if he believed Vice President Kamala Harris was “only on the ticket because she is a Black woman,” and he responded by questioning her heritage.

“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know – is she Indian, or is she Black?” Mr. Trump said, to astonished gasps and scattered boos from the crowd of Black journalists. “She was Indian all the way. And then all of a sudden she made a turn, and she went [and] she became a Black person.” 

Mr. Trump’s comments caused an immediate firestorm. Ms. Harris has always identified as biracial – her mother was an immigrant from India, and her father is a Black immigrant from Jamaica. She attended Howard University, a Historically Black University, and remains an active member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, a prominent Black sorority.

It’s just the latest example of the former president attacking his political foes with incendiary rhetoric about their race, cultural background, or gender. Mr. Trump has questioned the racial backgrounds of former GOP 2024 rival Nikki Haley and former President Barack Obama. His entry into politics in many ways began with his championing the false “birther” conspiracy theory that Mr. Obama wasn’t born in the United States. He suggested that four congresswomen of color, all American citizens, should “go back where [they] came from.” He’s used words like “animal” and “rabid” to describe the Black district attorneys who led criminal investigations against him. And those are just the examples that ABC News’ Rachel Scott laid out to begin the interview, before Mr. Trump called her question “very nasty.”

His recent comments suggest that the message discipline Mr. Trump had shown for much of the past year may have been a reflection of his lead in the polls over President Joe Biden, who seemed headed for a disastrous loss. Now that he’s in a close fight, that discipline may be slipping. Vice President Harris would be the first woman, the first Indian-American, and the first Black woman to win the presidency. Her candidacy has galvanized Democrats, and erased Mr. Trump’s surprising polling strength with young and Black voters in many recent surveys.

Vincent Alban/Reuters

Attendees react as former President Donald Trump speaks on a panel at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago, July 31, 2024.

Mr. Trump’s habit for inflammatory rhetoric hasn’t changed. The bigger question is how such rhetoric may play in the America of 2024.

Trump’s history of divisive remarks 

Mr. Trump ran from the start on a bevy of racially charged issues and divisive rhetoric about women. In his 2016 campaign launch, he said most Mexican immigrants coming to the U.S. were “rapists” bringing drugs and crime. He proposed banning all Muslims from entering the country. He insinuated that then-Fox News host Megyn Kelly had asked him tough questions because she was on her period. He insulted the appearance of another rival, former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, saying: “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?”

Facing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the first woman to lead a major-party presidential ticket in U.S. history, he attacked her as “unhinged” and “unbalanced,” and repeatedly questioned her “strength.”

Mr. Trump won that election, in spite of a historically large gender gap in the vote. And his victory set off a wave of social protest movements that roiled the country.

His inauguration was immediately followed by the Women’s March. An estimated 4 million people turned out to protest the new president in cities across the nation, the largest protest in U.S. history. The #MeToo movement, where women openly discussed their own experiences with sexual harassment and assault, came soon after. The 2018 midterms swept a crowd of female Democrats into office. 

Ms. Harris launched her first presidential campaign on Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2019, and leaned into the history-making potential of her candidacy. Her campaign’s red, purple, and yellow color scheme and logo were an homage to the 1972 presidential campaign of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to serve in Congress and to win delegates as a major-party presidential candidate. The high moment of Ms. Harris’ campaign came when she blasted then-candidate Joe Biden for his efforts to end busing programs aimed at desegregating public schools. But she quickly faded in the race, dropping out before a single vote was cast. Mr. Biden won the nomination, and picked her as his running mate.

Erin Schaff/The New York Times/AP

Vice President Kamala Harris visits Paschal's, a historic Black-owned restaurant in Atlanta, July 30, 2024.

The 2020 election between two older, white men didn’t set up the kind of contrast in race or gender embodied in former President Obama’s and Secretary Clinton’s earlier campaigns. But the murder that summer of George Floyd at the hands of police set off a wave of Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality and racism. Most were peaceful, but some turned violent, and became a core argument for Mr. Trump’s campaign. Some Democrats’ support for calls to “defund the police” also undercut Mr. Biden, even as he rejected them.

Mr. Trump also dipped back into birtherism conspiracy theories – this time directed at Mr. Biden’s running mate. “I heard today that she doesn’t meet the requirements” to be president, he said, referencing an op-ed debunked by legal experts that questioned whether Ms. Harris, who was born in the U.S. and is therefore a natural-born U.S. citizen eligible to serve as president, was actually allowed to do so.

Focusing on the future – or identity politics?

On Wednesday night, Ms. Harris responded to Mr. Trump’s newest attack by calling it “the same old show – the dismissiveness, the disrespect.” But she was quick to pivot back to her core message.

“The American people deserve better,” she said. “We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us. They are an essential source of our strength.”

Ms. Harris is trying to frame the race as a broad contrast rather than a personal battle with Mr. Trump. “This campaign is about two different visions for our nation. Ours is focused on the future. Donald Trump’s is focused on the past. We’re not going back,” she posted on the social media site X on Thursday.

But that doesn’t mean she isn’t engaging in what her critics deride as identity politics. Ms. Harris has raised a huge amount of cash from identity group-based fundraisers like “White Dudes for Kamala Harris.” Her campaign merchandise includes sticker packs showing her in different-colored pantsuits arranged to represent the pride flag. A hip hop fan, Ms. Harris has heavily featured work from Black women artists in her campaign. Her Tuesday rally in Atlanta included a performance from hip hop star Megan Thee Stallion, and her rally theme song is Beyonce’s “Freedom.”

California Sen. Laphonza Butler is the only Black woman currently in the Senate, and only the third in the history of the U.S. She’s also a close ally of Vice President Harris who worked on her 2020 presidential campaign. In an interview last week, before Mr. Trump’s most recent comments, she said that Mrs. Clinton’s experience had taught Democrats that they can’t get “distracted” by Mr. Trump’s rhetoric and must stay focused on their own message.

“The bullying tactics that former President Trump has used consistently since he was winning in 2016 – the name calling, the leering – we’ve seen it,” she says. “Let’s move on.”

“The more time you spend trying to counteract crazy, the less time you spend talking with the American people” about issues they actually care about, Senator Butler adds.

Dustin Chambers/Reuters

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris meets supporters during a campaign event in Atlanta, July 30, 2024.

But other Harris allies see a necessity in pushing back. Bakari Sellers, who served as Ms. Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign national co-chairman, says Mr. Trump’s latest remarks made it clear who he was. “Everyone who votes for Donald Trump is not a racist – but Donald Trump is a racist,” he says. “He is the one who’s injecting the race card. It’s funny that they always accuse Democrats of playing identity politics and injecting race. He’s the one who literally is. He questioned her identity as a Black woman.”

Mr. Sellers was a surrogate for Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 campaign, when first lady Michelle Obama famously coined the line, “When they go low, we go high.” It quickly became a mantra for Mrs. Clinton and her campaign. But Mr. Sellers says things have changed since then. 

“Democrats have gotten a lot more savvy. So when they go low, we just go to hell with them,” Mr. Sellers says. “Kamala’s going to stay above the fray. That doesn’t mean the rest of us are.”

Patrick Gaspard, who now heads the Center for American Progress Action Fund, was Mr. Obama’s political director in 2008 and helped him navigate the choppy waters of being the first Black major-party nominee for president before taking on senior roles in the Obama White House and Democratic National Committee. He says in some ways, it’s become harder for Democrats and Republicans to have a common conversation.

“We’re having a more difficult time talking across differences because of social media than we ever have before,” he says. “There’s a sense that we don’t have a common language.”

But he also thinks that the attacks from Mr. Trump and his allies that resonated so well in the past with some voters aren’t going to work as well this time around.

“In 2016, Donald Trump’s whole message had the vulgarity, had the racial animus, had the misogyny, but there was this core reassurance that ‘something had been lost to you, I’m going to help get that thing back for you,’” Mr. Gaspard says. “It is a different moment. And Donald Trump has not evolved in a way to respond.”

The “DEI hire” attack

Even before his remarks on Wednesday, Mr. Trump had begun honing his attacks against his new opponent. He has consistently mispronounced her name, while mocking her as “Crazy Kamala.” He’s asserted on multiple occasions that Ms. Harris “doesn’t like Jewish people,” despite the fact that her husband, Doug Emhoff, is Jewish.

And Mr. Trump now appears to be doubling down on questioning Ms. Harris’ biracial heritage.

“Crazy Kamala is saying she’s Indian, not Black. This is a big deal. Stone cold phony. She uses everybody, including her racial identity!” he posted on his social media page Wednesday evening. 

This line of attack has been building for weeks. Soon after Ms. Harris emerged as the Democratic nominee, multiple House Republicans accused her of being a “DEI hire” – short for “diversity, equity and inclusion,” though they seemed to be swapping in the trendy term for a more traditional accusation that she was an “affirmative action” hire.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, warned his caucus against using that DEI attack. And some seemed to take the memo. Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman, one of the first Republicans to call Ms. Harris a “DEI hire,” refused to answer multiple questions on whether she stood behind her previous comments. “I think we need to focus on her record, which has been a failure from top to bottom,” she said last week.

Go Nakamura/Reuters

People attend a rally held by Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, now the running mate of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, in Glendale, Arizona, July 31, 2024.

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, a close Trump ally, also disputed in a conversation last week that Republicans were the ones focused on race and gender. “Democrats are playing racial politics, not us. We’re not the ones that are into critical race theory and identity politics,” he said. But he warned that Republicans should focus on the issues, not character attacks on Ms. Harris: “It’s their policy that’s destroying this country. Don’t make it personal.”

During his 2012 presidential campaign against President Obama, Mitt Romney, now a senator from Utah, assiduously avoided any personal attacks on Mr. Obama’s heritage. He said last week that he thought calling Vice President Harris a “DEI hire” was a “huge mistake.”

“It denigrates the person who levels a charge like that, and frankly elevates the person at whom it’s leveled,” Senator Romney said. “It backfires enormously, to call out people’s physical differences in a campaign. There are differences on policy and experience and vision for the future. That’s what a campaign ought to be about.”

Many Democrats believe Mr. Trump’s political ascendence was a reaction to the Obama era. And recent right-wing politics has been fueled by backlashes against the Black Lives Matter movement, fury over DEI requirements in schools and corporate America, a broader societal acceptance of transgender people, and further shifting in gender roles in society.

Senator Butler, Ms. Harris’ former staffer, laughs when asked if she sees the current political environment as the last gasp of counter-reaction against a changing culture.

“We’ll have to have this conversation again in November,” she says. “I think the election will let us know. Are we as aspirational and as racially tolerant and as colorblind as we say that we are? I’ll meet you back here at the [Senate] elevators Nov. 6, and we can figure it out.”

Repercussions from the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, for which all fingers were pointed at Israel, reverberated Thursday, throwing into doubt when and how diplomats could end the war in Gaza.  

Israel has not yet commented on or accepted responsibility for the assassination early Wednesday in Tehran, which heightened the risk of all-out war between Israel and Iran and its proxies. It said Thursday it had killed Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif in a July airstrike in Gaza.

The tough question facing mediators and observers: How can talks continue if one side kills the main negotiator for the other side?

Mr. Haniyeh, who was given a state funeral in Tehran Thursday, was viewed by Israel as a terrorist and a planner of the Oct. 7 attack that killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 hostage.

He was also the subject of an arrest warrant request, along with other Hamas and Israeli officials, submitted by the International Criminal Court prosecutor.

Yet to Palestinian rivals, Middle East governments, and many European diplomats, Hamas’ politiburo chief was a pragmatic moderate within Hamas, a figure with whom they could negotiate and prod the movement’s more hard-line factions.

At the time of Mr. Haniyeh’s assassination, talks seeking a Hamas-Israel cease-fire, most recently held Sunday in Rome, were at an impasse.

An Arab diplomat who requested anonymity confirms to the Monitor that talks are “essentially suspended” as of Wednesday evening and that relations between Arab mediators and Israel have been “severely strained” by the killing, hurting communications.

Vahid Salemi/AP

Hours before his assassination, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh claps as newly elected Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian speaks at his swearing-in ceremony at Iran's parliament, in Tehran, July 30, 2024.

Adds the diplomat: The assassination “shattered the trust between Hamas and the mediators and between the mediators and Israel.”

Hostages’ families protest

The main elements of the proposed Israel-Hamas deal have remained unchanged for months: Hamas’ release of the estimated 115 remaining Israeli hostages in exchange for Israel’s release of hundreds of jailed Palestinians and a full cease-fire.

Earlier this week Israel reportedly added new conditions to a deal it had proposed with the United States; mediators had expected a response from Hamas by the end of this week.

Now, with a lead Hamas negotiator killed, mediators and families of the hostages worry that the talks may be derailed, or suspended indefinitely. 

Hours after the assassination, the Israeli hostage families’ forum said in statements that “true achievement can only be realized with the release of all 115 hostages still in captivity. … We call upon Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli government: Sign the deal you proposed and that was endorsed by President Biden.”

Hostage families shut down traffic in Tel Aviv Thursday as part of ongoing protests pressing the Israeli government to strike a deal.

“I can’t understand the strategy of assassinating someone who is in the negotiations,” says Daniel Lifshitz, a hostage family activist whose grandfather Oded is still believed to be held by Hamas in Gaza.

“On the other hand, this is a terrorist responsible for Oct. 7 and the killing of women and children. [His killing] does not help negotiations, but this shouldn’t stop a deal that releases the hostages and the people of Gaza from their suffering.”

Mr. Lifshitz and other hostage families are now pinning their hopes on Hamas bucking expectations and providing a positive response to the amended deal “to push the Israeli government into a corner.”

Ricardo Moraes/Reuters

Demonstrators wave Israeli flags and carry placards during a rally demanding the immediate release of hostages seized during Hamas' Oct. 7 attack, in Tel Aviv, Israel, July 27, 2024.

Mediators “undercut”

But Qatar, a key mediator and intermediary with Hamas, has openly questioned whether negotiations can continue at all.

“How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said in a statement on X Wednesday.

Egypt, another mediator, said in a statement that Mr. Haniyeh’s assassination “undercuts the strenuous efforts made by Egypt and its partners to stop the war in the Gaza Strip and put an end to the human suffering of the Palestinian people.” It “increases the complexity of the situation,” and showed a lack of “Israeli political will to calm it down.”

Fatah’s Democratic Reformist Faction, a subsection of the West Bank-ruling Fatah party, a Hamas rival, accused the Israeli government of “a calculated effort to derail the ongoing negotiations.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in Mongolia Thursday, urged “all parties to talk, to stop taking any escalatory actions,” and “find reasons to come to an agreement.”

Axios reported that the Biden administration was “very concerned” the killing would upend talks.

Palestinian leadership

Noting previous Israeli assassination of Hamas leaders, Hamas sources say the movement will swiftly name Mr. Haniyeh’s replacement and focus on its war with Israel, in which more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza.

“The movement has not given up on its principles, be it in the war on the ground or in the negotiations,” one Hamas official in the West Bank, who wished to remain unnamed for security reasons, writes in a text to The Monitor. “As long as the war continues, so will we.”

According to sources close to Hamas’ thinking, the likely successor to Mr. Haniyeh as political chief is Khaled Meshaal, a fellow moderate who previously served in the role from 1996-2017.

Yet observers say Mr. Haniyeh’s killing may only strengthen more hard-line elements within Hamas, such as Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar and the military wing in Gaza – creating new obstacles for cease-fire talks and political reconciliation between Palestinian factions.

Pedro Pardo/AP

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (center) hosts an event for Mahmoud al-Aloul (left), vice chairman of Fatah, and Mussa Abu Marzuk, a senior member of Hamas, in Beijing, July 23, 2024.

Despite bitter ideological divisions, many Palestinian faction leaders had good working relationships with Mr. Haniyeh. Last week he helped broker a cross-faction agreement in Beijing to form a new Palestinian national unity government.

“Haniyeh had very tight personal relationships with many of the Palestinian leadership, especially in Gaza; in many cases, friendship,” says Dimitri Diliani of the Fatah Reformist Faction, a “number-one enemy” of Hamas that worked with Mr. Haniyeh to bring humanitarian aid into the besieged Strip the past few years. “This helped Haniyeh forge meetings, understandings, and cooperation with many of the leaders of other factions.”

The assassination, Mr. Diliani says, served the Israeli government’s goal of fuelling “separation, confusion, and disarray in the Palestinian political system.”

“This assassination should push everybody to be unified,” says Mustapha Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative party, who took part in recent Palestinian reconciliation talks.

Warning that the killing was an attempt by Mr. Netanyahu to “blow up the possibility of a cease-fire,” he urged Palestinian factions to seize the Beijing agreement as “a practical road-map for unity” and present an alternative for Gaza before “time runs out.”

Insiders say Mr. Sinwar’s increased sway may harden Hamas’ position both in cease-fire negotiations and talks over a new Palestinian entity to govern Gaza, which, combined with Mr. Netanyahu’s hard line, would prolong the war.

“If it was in the hands of Haniyeh and Hamas’ political side in Doha, they would have closed the deal a long time ago,” notes Mr. Lifshitz, the hostage family activist. “Now it is in the hands of Sinwar and Netanyahu.”

Basilio Sepe/AP

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (at center) greets U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (at left) and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin after their meeting at the Malacañang presidential palace in Manila, Philippines, July 30, 2024.

Their boss had just abandoned his presidential campaign. Violence was raging in the Middle East. Russia’s invasion forces were making fresh advances in eastern Ukraine.

Yet U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin went ahead with overlapping visits this week to the other side of the world, underscoring the importance of what’s become an urgent foreign policy priority for Joe Biden’s presidency.

The focus is Asia.

The aim: to assemble the strongest possible regional bulwark against an increasingly ambitious and assertive China and a nuclear-armed North Korea that has been drawing closer to Russia.

There’s also been an emphasis on building up a range of diplomatic, economic, and security partnerships robust enough to outlast President Biden’s time in office. That’s in recognition of the fitful progress of the Obama administration’s high-profile “pivot toward Asia” before it was disowned by President Donald Trump a few years later.

Mr. Biden seems hopeful his “Indo-Pacific strategy” will have greater staying power, even if Mr. Trump regains the White House.

Both the reach of his administration’s regional partnerships, and the reasons for his confidence, have been on display during this week’s travels by secretaries Blinken and Austin.

Kimimasa Mayama/Reuters

Japanese Foreign Minister Kamikawa Yōko, Japanese Defense Minister Kihara Minoru, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin attend the Japan-U.S. Extended Deterrence Dialogue at the Foreign Ministry's Iikura Guest House in Tokyo, July 28, 2024.

They’ve held meetings with counterparts from close allies Japan and South Korea, where U.S. troops have been based for decades, and the Philippines. Mr. Blinken also joined a meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or the Quad, including the U.S., Japan, Australia, and assertively nonaligned India. He visited Communist-ruled Vietnam, with which Washington has also been forging closer ties.

They are among a number of countries in the region with their own reasons to share U.S. security concerns. Those include the prospect of Russia helping North Korea with more powerful missiles; and China acting on its determination to “reunify” the island democracy of Taiwan, by force if necessary, and taking further aggressive action to press its widely contested claim to most of the vast South China Sea.

Key U.S. allies also seem increasingly ready to take steps to put safeguards in place.

Japan and South Korea

Nowhere has that been more evident than in Japan, where the U.S. Cabinet secretaries formalized a major upgrade in military coordination.

In the shadow of World War II, Japan adopted a pacifist constitution limiting its military to a modestly funded self-defense force. Yet 18 months ago, the government unveiled plans to strengthen its armed forces and ramp up defense spending to 2% of its gross domestic product within the next five years.

That figure, given the size of the country’s economy, would give Japan the world’s third-largest defense budget, behind only the U.S. and China.

In Tokyo this week, the U.S. envoys announced plans to expand U.S. military headquarters in Japan, and place it under a three-star general, in order to coordinate with Japan’s own recently unified military command. They also discussed plans for possible coproduction of weapons.

The Tokyo visit also showcased a dramatic change involving another key ally, South Korea.

Seoul’s relations with Japan have long been scarred by Japan’s harsh colonial occupation of Korea. But last summer, at a three-way summit at Camp David, Mr. Biden presided over a rapprochement between Korea and Japan that includes a framework of regular military consultations and joint exercises.

Alex Brandon/AP/File

President Joe Biden (at center) arrives with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol (at left) and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio, for a joint news conference Aug. 18, 2023, at Camp David.

South Korea’s defense minister joined this week’s talks in Tokyo, the first such official visit in some 15 years, and met with Japan’s defense minister and Mr. Austin.

The Philippines

Political change was evident, too, on a Blinken-Austin visit to the Philippines.

There, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, had distanced himself from the U.S. in favor of closer ties with China. Yet since assuming office two years ago, Mr. Marcos has reinforced his country’s alliance with Washington, a move bolstered this week by the announcement of $500 million in new U.S. military assistance.

None of this necessarily means the U.S. strategy will achieve its ultimate aim: to deter Chinese or North Korean aggression without the need for direct military confrontation, something both Washington and its regional partners want to avoid.

But this week’s diplomacy will have reinforced confidence among U.S. regional partners that America’s heightened emphasis on potential security threats in Asia will prove lasting.

That’s partly because of a rare bipartisan consensus in Washington that China has become America’s main 21st-century rival power.

And it’s partly because of the way Mr. Biden’s Indo-Pacific partnerships have developed, making them less vulnerable to Mr. Trump’s criticism, as president, of allies he believed weren’t pulling their weight.

But the fact Mr. Blinken and Mr. Austin jetted off to Asia also answered another important question that bedeviled the Obama administration’s Asian pivot: whether it risked abandoning important, long-standing U.S. commitments elsewhere.

That’s inevitably going to be an issue, if only because even the U.S. lacks the military reach and diplomatic bandwidth to be fully engaged everywhere, all at once.

But with major military conflicts in both Europe and the Middle East, the political significance of America’s top foreign policy and security ministers traveling to Asia will not have been lost on its partners in the Indo-Pacific.

Nor, they’ll hope, on China and North Korea.

Boris Roessler/Picture-Alliance/DPA/AP/File

A steep alley leads to a medieval neighborhood in Siena, Italy, September 2005.

A friend recently treated me to a preview of her planned trip to Italy. As we hovered over our cups of tea, she laid out the itinerary in military order – the Colosseum, the Sistine Chapel, Pompeii, Venice, the Appian Way ... By the time she was done I was exhausted, and I hadn’t even set foot outside the house.

I do wish her bon voyage. It’s just that my method of travel is very different. The extent of my planning is generally to identify a destination and then go there, casting fortune to the wind. This may not be for everybody, but leaping into the unknown, for me, has paid its share of dividends. I attribute it to the thrill of not knowing what lies around the next bend in the road.

The examples are legion. There was Greenland, where I wound up in a small settlement (population 40) without a place to stay. The locals took me in, and I had the singular pleasure of eating supper – fresh salmon from the nearby fjord – with three generations of an Inuit family while they regaled me with fantastic stories one would not find in any guidebook.

A few years back, driving through Iceland on a windswept day, I noticed an older woman sitting by herself at a picnic table by a waterfall. I stopped, approached her, and asked if I could sit with her. She turned out to be a fount of knowledge about the area, which we had all to ourselves, without a tourist in sight.

Wandering in Trinidad, I happened upon a coastal steamer, so I climbed aboard. En route, a young woman noticed the book on my lap and struck up a conversation with me. I was rewarded with a tip I would not have found on my own: a trip to an out-of-the way eatery that catered to the locals – good food at an affordable price, where I was surrounded by the musical patois of the islanders. 

For me, travel, especially international travel, reflects the way I apprehend my own environment here in Maine. Once winter abates and the ice clears from the waterways, I seek out a pond, lake, or river heretofore unknown to me. That’s where I set my canoe, and I begin to paddle with my eyes and ears open, anticipating the hidden cove, the tiny islet, the inviting bend in the river. I don’t want to know anything in advance about popular “highlights” or “must-sees.” Invariably, the highlight turns out to be the unexpected, like the pocket beach I discovered at a remote Maine lake. It was not listed on any map, but the sand was white and the water warm, and I had it all to myself. 

As a teacher, I encourage my students to exercise wanderlust (what a beautiful word). Most of them have never ventured outside the United States, others have not been beyond the borders of New England, and there’s the occasional student who has never left Maine. Sometimes the reason is practical: the expense. But in many cases they express a sense of fear, of going someplace where they won’t know anybody. I try to assuage their anxieties by regaling them with my own travel tales, and the message that there are good people everywhere, and friendships waiting to be kindled. 

Robert Frost’s seminal poem, “The Road Not Taken,” offers timeless wisdom on veering from the beaten path. But I don’t need literary guidance to inspire my travels. I have learned from experience that traveling without a map affords me something no guidebook ever could: the element of surprise, and all the sights, sounds, tastes, and personalities that emerge when one’s obligation is not to check off attractions on a list, but simply to put one foot in front of the other and lean forward.

I once read a piece about regrets that people expressed later in their lives. One that struck me above all others was, “I wish I had taken more chances.” Setting off into the wild blue yonder, with a minimum of planning, does entail taking a chance, but the payoff, for me, has been immense. I align with something British explorer Richard Burton once said: “The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.”

AP

People in Lagos, Nigeria, protest against economic hardship, Aug. 1.

By 2035, more young Africans will enter the workforce each year than in the rest of the world combined, according to the World Economic Forum. This youth bulge represents a wellspring for boundless innovation and enterprise. In recent weeks, it has also shown itself to be something else – a force for integrity.

In Nigeria, protesters on Thursday launched a weeklong campaign across Africa’s most populous nation to “end bad governance.” The spark is economic misery. Prices for basic goods have reached a 30-year high in real terms. One in 6 children face acute malnutrition, up 25% from a year ago.

Yet as the name of the marches indicates, Nigerians are looking deeper than their immediate needs. “The integrity of our institutions is in question, and it is imperative to restore trust and confidence so that citizens can once again believe in their country,” Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, executive director of the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, told the Daily Independent.

What are known as Nigeria’s Generation Z protests follow similar youth-led demands elsewhere in Africa. Last week, anti-corruption demonstrations in Uganda resulted in scores of arrests. Those came after June protests in Kenya over a proposed tax hike to fund debt payments; the government backed down, promising to address the debt through spending cuts instead. “The biggest grievance is the conspicuous consumption of the [President William] Ruto regime,” John Githongo, a former anti-corruption czar in Kenya, told The Economist.

The push for honest governance reflects an attitudinal shift across the continent as better-educated Africans demand more from elected leaders. That is the conclusion in the latest survey by Afrobarometer. It found that “Africans want more democratic governance than they are getting, and the evidence suggests that nurturing support for democracy will require strengthening integrity in local government and official accountability.”

The 55-nation African Union devoted this year’s African Anti-Corruption Day, on July 11, to protecting whistleblowers. It urged member states to “promote the exposure of corruption offenders.” One anti-corruption program in Nigeria run by the London-based think tank Chatham House, however, shows why citizens hold the key to more honest governance.

“Anti-corruption efforts are far more likely to succeed when they’re driven by the community itself rather than being imposed from the top,” says Raj Navanit Patel, a lead researcher on the project. When ordinary citizens insist on honesty and accountability, he told a panel discussion last month, they “see integrity and ethical behavior as the kind of norm, and corruption as socially unacceptable. That leads to a more enduring kind of social change.”

Across Africa, from Nigeria to Kenya, citizens are telling officials to take note. Their expectations for integrity in public service have changed.