President Joe Biden’s much-anticipated address Tuesday on the war in Ukraine, one day after his unannounced visit to the wartime capital of Kyiv, was delivered in Warsaw.

The symbolism was important. Mr. Biden was affirming the growing importance of Poland and its neighbors as the center of gravity of both NATO and the European Union shifts decidedly eastward in the wake of the fierce war raging just across Poland’s borders.

“We’re seeing again today what the people of Poland, and the people across Europe, saw for decades: Appetites of the autocrat cannot be appeased – they must be opposed,” the president said.

At the same time, he added, the Herculean work the Western alliance faces in bolstering Ukraine and building the kind of world it wants encompasses “not just what we’re against – it’s what we’re for.”

Mr. Biden’s trip marks the first time an American president has ever visited Poland twice in one year. As the 6th biggest economy in Europe, the country has one of the largest armies in the European Union. It is host, too, to the Pentagon’s first permanent military presence in Eastern Europe.

Given their experience of Soviet domination, Poland and other Eastern European allies ramped up defense spending and pushed for more aggressive policies toward Moscow even before the war – moves that now seem prescient but were regarded by some in the West as a bit paranoid at the time.

“We woke up the West,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said last week. “We can’t let it fall asleep again.”

Jakub Szymczuk/KPRP/Reuters

President Joe Biden and Polish President Andrzej Duda participate in a bilateral meeting to discuss collective efforts to support Ukraine and bolster NATO's deterrence at the Presidential Palace in Warsaw, Poland, February 21, 2023.

While it’s clear that Western leaders still hold the purse strings and the big guns, Eastern European voices have emerged as spirited, spiritual leaders of the war effort.

In the process, internal struggles over the rule of law that Western leaders had routinely decried among their Eastern allies have been back-burnered. The European Commission has released billions in aid for Warsaw that had been blocked over concerns about its democratic trajectory.

It’s not lost on NATO and the EU that Poland is the critical bridge to Ukraine through which upwards of 85% of war supplies flow. But the freed-up funds are also a nod to the fact that neighbors to the east are facing attacks that are costing them dearly “because they stood up for us, for Europe and the West,” as one senior E.U. official put it at the security conference in Munich last week.

Any struggles to uphold democratic norms within their own borders, however, will ultimately limit the amount of influence Eastern members will exert in the Western Alliance, analysts say. The question is whether, in an effort to be seen as more credible partners, they internalize that perspective.

“You need to lead by example, and Eastern Europe has definitely been doing that in terms of the support they give to Ukraine,” says Mathieu Droin, who served as deputy head of the strategic affairs unit of the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, where his work focused on NATO. He is now a visiting fellow in the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“But they need to step up in terms of rule of law if they want to really be acknowledged as countries that can steer Europe.”

"Finding its way" 

Top Western European officials acknowledge that the war in Ukraine has pushed them to think differently about security. Today, France and Germany have gone from dismissing their Eastern neighbors’ concerns about Russian aggression to spearheading a robust call to arms that has surprised even themselves.

“People changed their minds, they changed their perspectives – I never would have expected that that would have been possible in Germany,” Boris Pistorius, the German defense minister, marveled last week at the Munich Security Conference, where European heads of state mingled with fellow heavy hitters, including Vice President Kamala Harris.

Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, February 18, 2023.

As a result, Central and Eastern European nations “feel vindicated, because they’ve been warning for a long time that we couldn’t trust Russia,” says Eoin Drea, senior researcher at the Wilfried Martens Center for European Studies, the official think tank of the center-right European People’s Party.

Yet even as Eastern nations gain the confidence to push their positions, the question remains whether that is enough to exercise leadership. A case in point: when Warsaw vowed to wrench tanks from what it saw as a foot-dragging Berlin.

“The quiet criticism that we see is that Poland has not really been concerned enough about the unity of the alliance – particularly in the way it criticizes Germany,” says Michal Baranowski, managing director for the German Marshall Fund East in Warsaw.

“Poland is still finding its way in leadership, and it’s about balance. Sometimes it’s worth it to ruffle some feathers, but the Western view is that this can be done with a little bit better style.”

Some Western leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, are concerned about Poland’s military ascendance reinforcing America’s NATO leadership role, even as Paris continues to push, ultimately, for more strategic autonomy for the continent.

“Warsaw is a very focused on its bilateral relationship with the U.S. – more so than ever before,” Mr. Baranowski says.

For its part, the U.S. particularly appreciates that Poland has vowed to boost its defense spending to 5% of its gross domestic product – more than double the minimum Washington has long lobbied its NATO partners to achieve. (In the wake of the war, Germany raised its defense spending to 2% of GDP, a level Berlin has now pledged to make permanent.)

A path to cultural change?

But there remain roadblocks to Eastern Europe being taken truly seriously by Western allies, analysts say – including failing to fully embrace democratic norms.

While Poland and Hungary have been sharply criticized by the E.U. for undermining the rule of law, media freedom, and the independence of the courts, other NATO member states including Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia have struggled with similar issues.

Olivier Matthys/AP

NATO defense ministers pose for a group photo at the alliance headquarters in Brussels, February 15, 2023.

Analysts are keeping a close eye on upcoming parliamentary elections in Poland, which could bring a more left-leaning opposition party to power that would likely avoid some of the tough rhetoric that has rankled Western allies.

In the meantime, the hope within NATO headquarters is that the military cooperation that war is fostering could create cultural change, and that Western partners can pull their Eastern counterparts along when it comes to internalizing democratic values, even as they fight mightily to defend them.

Whether the war will help or hurt this effort is another matter. Depending on whether the Polish conservative incumbents retain power or the more progressive party wins autumn elections, “I could see the president shifting his stand on rule-of-law questions to be seen as a more credible partner for his counterparts,” Mr. Baranowski says.

“On the other hand, as the war continues it could create fear,” he adds, “and with fear people tend to rally around the flag.”

Yet democratic reform will be necessary should Warsaw and other Eastern European nations want to see the “full bloom” of their leadership potential, he notes.

“The truth is, the democratic challenges mean we’re not being invited to sit at the highest table – even though Western allies are not emphasizing it for the moment.”

Dmitry Astakhov/Sputnik/AP

Russian President Vladimir Putin gives his annual state of the nation address in Moscow, Feb. 21, 2023. He said that because Russians are fighting against the united West and not just Ukraine, they must consolidate behind the war effort for the sake of national survival.

It’s been almost a year since Russia invaded Ukraine, and many of the original rationales for the attack put forward by the Kremlin, such as “de-Nazification,” are no longer even mentioned.

Instead, the key appeal Russian President Vladimir Putin offered Tuesday in his first state of the nation address in almost two years was that, since Russians are fighting against the united West and not just Ukraine, they must consolidate behind the war effort for the sake of national survival. “The goal of the West is to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, to end us once and for all,” he said. “We will respond accordingly, because we are talking about the existence of our country.”

And, in a demonstrative final break with the post-Cold War arms control regime – which has been tenuous for years – Mr. Putin announced that Russia will suspend its participation in New START, the last of the nuclear arms treaties that limited arsenals and provided channels for verification and crisis management.

It’s hard to gauge the effectiveness of Mr. Putin’s case for uncompromising struggle with the Russian public. As Russia faces receding horizons for victory, the so-called existential threat has become the core of the Kremlin’s case for staying the course, even if it requires a painful new mobilization of manpower and more economic burdens for an indefinite period.

But while Mr. Putin’s framing may be persuading the Russian public that the war is one of defense against NATO rather than of offense against Ukraine, it seems less likely that he is stirring their enthusiasm for the conflict. While support for the war remains high, there appears to be increasing desire among Russians, whether they favor the war or not, that it be resolved with peace talks soon. And while the possibility of defeat is not being entertained, the civic mood seems to be resignation rather than resolution.

“I don’t see consolidation of mass support for the war,” says Boris Kagarlitsky, a Moscow-based veteran left-winger and anti-war activist, who contributes to Russian Dissent, an English-language portal for critical Russian voices, “but there is no groundswell of support for the opposition either.”

“People have returned to a state of detachment”

Russian state-funded pollsters stopped asking explicit questions about war support after some surveys late last year found a softening in public backing, and a sharp rise in a desire for peace talks. The data is thin and, in any case, sociologists warn that wartime polls are inherently unreliable, especially in the current Russian atmosphere where anti-war sentiments or expressions deemed defeatist could result in jail time.

But the sketchy data available indicates that personal support for Mr. Putin remains high, and at least a reduced majority of Russians think the war effort must continue until some kind of victory. Interviews with a few Kremlin-skeptical political experts who remain inside Russia suggest that early hopes of a public anti-war groundswell have been thoroughly dashed and, although most average Russians seem deeply unwilling to talk with a foreign journalist, those who do express ambivalence about the war at best.

Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

A billboard shows a Russian soldier awarded with a medal for his action in Ukraine in Moscow, Dec. 15, 2022. Though Russians generally support the war, they increasingly seem interested in peace talks beginning soon, rather than defeat of Ukraine.

“Russian society is multi-layered, and the views we find can be quite contradictory,” says Andrei Kolesnikov, a fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who, despite his outspoken anti-war opinions, remains in Moscow. “Some want peace, but support Putin. Some don’t want Putin, but back the war. The middle part of society is composed of conformists, most of whom are passive but some are active.

“I have noticed that those active supporters of the war are becoming more aggressive. It’s actually new and unexpected to see so many people who not only feel the war must be continued, but that it must be prosecuted to total victory,” says Mr. Kolesnikov. “I would not have believed that there could be so much dormant instinct for totalitarianism in our society, which Putin is now awakening.”

Mr. Putin’s contention that Russia is defending itself against the concerted forces of the West does appear to get considerable traction among Russians.

“Judging by what I see around me, and sociological data, I see that the idea that ‘it’s us against NATO’ does seem to work,” says Mr. Kolesnikov. “It helps people see this not as a war against little Ukraine, but as a defensive struggle against a really big enemy.”

The only organization still asking Russians flatly whether they support the “special military operation” is the independent Levada Center, and its latest report in January found that 75% of respondents supported the war to some degree, while 21% said they were opposed to some extent. The numbers who believe the war will end in Russian victory declined slightly between April and January from 73% to 71%, while those who think the war will last more than another year more than doubled, from 21% to 43%.

But secret polls allegedly commissioned by the Kremlin last fall, and cited by The Moscow Times and Meduza, found that the number of people who believed that starting the war was the right thing to do was declining precipitously, from over 70% to under 60% by last November, while those who thought the war was not going according to plan had reached a high point of 42%, and just 22% thought it was basically on track.

“By now people who support the operation say that too much has already been invested in it to think of stopping,” says Denis Volkov, head of Levada. “But both supporters and opponents say they wish it would end as soon as possible with peace talks.” After the chaos and shock brought on by the partial mobilization last fall, things have settled down. “Some people left the country, others realized they weren’t subject to mobilization. By early 2023, people have returned to a state of detachment, thinking that none of this depends on them.”

“They will carry on”

Marina Volkova, a working Muscovite, expresses the fairly typical view that “Russia has no way out but to continue this to the bitter end. I think it will win. But I am so surprised that there aren’t more efforts to bring peace, make the sides sit down and find a solution. I have many friends with sons and grandsons on the front line, and I feel for them. I really wish it were over.”

AP/File

Riot police detain demonstrators at a protest in Moscow, Sept. 21, 2022, after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial mobilization of reservists. Though the mobilization stirred public unrest, that mood appears to have dissipated and been replaced with resignation and apathy toward the war.

Pensioner Yevgenia Vasilyeva says the war is a horror that has kept her awake every night for a year. “I don’t know whether it will end in victory or defeat, but it should end. I dream of peace and normal relations with Ukraine.”

The prospect of Russian defeat is seldom discussed, even though some like Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser and Putin supporter, insist that most Russians believe the war has become an existential struggle for survival.

“Of course rational people have to consider the possibility of defeat,” he says. “But we know that it would mean that Russia would disappear as a united country. The disaster would be much worse than after the collapse of the USSR. That’s why, if Russia loses during the upcoming spring fighting, there will be mass mobilization and the entire society will be put onto a war footing. ...

“Every Russian schoolchild knows that the West has tried to destroy Russia in each century for a long time. Now it’s happening under the leadership of the U.S. But it’s the same thing, they are trying to break up Russia, and people are realizing that it’s an existential battle. Russia is just beginning to gear up for the fight.”

But critics note that the discussion of the possibility of defeat is a deeply unpopular idea, and could court legal consequences.

“Admitting defeat would be a political disaster for the authorities, so they will carry on no matter how much worse things get,” says Mr. Kagarlitsky, the anti-war activist. “Apathy and despair seem to be the order of the day [among the public]. This is a very atomized society. People are mostly concerned about themselves and their families.”

Even as Bertha Cox’s memory was dimming and she didn’t recognize her son when he visited her in the nursing home, Michael Cox’s mother did recognize his blue Boston police officer’s uniform and what it meant. She told fellow residents she believed that the man wearing it would always protect her. 

For her, a police officer was a trusted figure – in spite of it all.

While on duty as a plainclothes officer with the Boston Police Department (BPD) in 1995, Mr. Cox – who is Black – was mistaken for a gang member by a group of fellow officers chasing a suspect. He was thrown to the ground and brutally beaten. And when the officers realized their mistake, they left him lying seriously injured in the icy January night.

The episode spooled out into a reckoning of the city’s racist tensions and history of forced desegregation – at the heart of which is the police department charged with serving and protecting neighborhoods from the tony lanes of Beacon Hill to some of the dangerous streets of Roxbury and Dorchester. 

Mr. Cox – with his mother and large extended family supporting him – fought the institution’s “blue wall of silence,” that unwritten cop-protecting-cop code, to win a $1.3 million settlement. And, despite his fight against the department, he was able to salvage his career and rise in rank, managing various divisions before moving on in 2019 to lead the Ann Arbor, Michigan, Police Department.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Boston’s new police commissioner, Michael Cox, wears his new badge.

His professional trajectory was a quiet epic of resilience and trust for the son of a Black family who fled the racist violence and poverty of the Jim Crow South in the Great Migration, staking claim to a middle-class life in the relative safety of Boston. Mr. Cox was born in 1965 at the height of the civil rights movement and was raised in a family that respected and trusted the law enforcement community.

That trust took an almost unbelievable turn in Mr. Cox’s selection last August to lead the very police department he fought for justice. It says as much about the character of the man as the character of this pivotal national era of violent policing – as seen last month in the Memphis, Tennessee, beating death of Tyre Nichols – and the pressure to reform law enforcement.

Boston police Commissioner Cox insists that the ugly history he has with the department does not define him. 

But the truth is that people can’t help but watch him through that lens. 

Mayor Michelle Wu called her appointment of Mr. Cox a “homecoming.” One prominent Black pastor called it “poetic justice.” Others, like Tom Nolan, a former Boston police officer who writes on criminal justice issues, call it remarkable that Mr. Cox “stayed the course” and came back.

Mr. Cox knows the “darker side” of policing intimately – but it will also be a “test,” says David Harris, former managing director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice at Harvard Law School. That’s because ahead of the new commissioner lie challenging leadership tasks that, civil rights experts say, are often conflicting: building bridges with communities of color, preventing young people from entering the world of crime, and boosting morale among police officers.

Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe/Getty Images/File

Boston police Sgt. Detective Michael Cox (right) leaves federal court in 1998 after the civil trial of four fellow officers who brutally beat him when he was working in plainclothes.

“While there is hope he can do it,” says Mr. Harris, “what we need to hear are the actions designed to address the policing practices that have been oppressive – that is the measure people are going to use.”

A quiet power 

Six months into his BPD leadership, Mr. Cox has offered few of those actions – instead striking a quiet, listening profile. That’s in contrast to his boss, Mayor Wu, who bounded into office last year promising to bring order to a police department that hadn’t had a permanent leader for over a year. Her bold checklist of police reform priorities – such as diversity hiring, fixing racially discriminatory practices, and eliminating excessive overtime in favor of new hiring – immediately put the department on edge.

“We’re not going back to the days where the police just come in and just start doing what they think is best without input from the public,” Mr. Cox told The Boston Globe in December. “We need to actually hear from the people who live here, so we can formulate a plan that’s going to address all those concerns.”

Though his protective family worked hard to keep Mr. Cox, the youngest of seven children, off the streets of their tough Roxbury neighborhood – sending him to private local schools and later a boarding school in Connecticut – his connection to that world is at the heart of his community policing philosophy.

Of half a dozen colleagues interviewed by the Monitor, none could point to how they think his “community policing” philosophy will translate into policy for the troubled police department. But all point to what they see as his real power: “gravitas,” “kindness,” “decency,” and “sincerity.”

When Kathleen O’Toole, a former BPD commissioner, promoted Mr. Cox to the post of deputy superintendent in 2013, she fully “expected to meet someone who harbored resentment,” she says. But she was struck by his “genuine” explanation that he did not. 

“Out of the hundreds of new police officers I’ve managed, only a handful will remain with you,” says Mr. Nolan, who supervised Mr. Cox in the late 1980s. “And Cox was one of those. He was assertive without being aggressive.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Boston police officers watch their new police commissioner, Michael Cox, being sworn into office last August.

But being “soft-spoken” and “tenderhearted,” points out Mr. Nolan, are the sort of qualities often dismissed and berated in a “policing subculture of aggression and domination.” 

However, he adds, they’re also the qualities that can help police officers build meaningful relationships with the community.

At least one critic takes issue with that soft-spoken temperament. 

“He’s the smartest commissioner we’ve had ... and he gives me confidence,” says Jamarhl Crawford, an activist who served on the mayor’s 2020 Boston Police Reform Task Force. But he says Mr. Cox didn’t speak up on police brutality when he was in charge of BPD internal affairs. “If I was an officer who got beat up, I would have raised holy hell.” 

Roots in the community

The strong Cox family network is a window on the authenticity of Mr. Cox’s sensitivity.

His parents, Bertha and David Cox, fled Tennessee for a more hopeful future. But, as Mr. Cox said on the day of his swearing-
in last August, they endured racism in the largely white Roxbury of the 1950s while his father, a landscaper with just an eighth grade education, started one of the first Black-owned businesses in Boston.

“Those were my role models,” he said of the lessons in resilience he got from his mother’s firm spiritual grounding and his father’s integrity. “They supported us and relied on each other.”

Following the riots during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, white families moved out. The neighborhood and its commercial centers changed rapidly and had a dangerous reputation. If a Black person was involved in a crime anywhere, explains Mr. Cox’s sister Cora Davis, it was automatically assumed they had to be from Roxbury.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

After his swearing-in last August, Commissioner Michael Cox (center) and his wife, Kimberly Cox (with flowers at left), are surrounded by the close-knit family that has supported his professional rise and challenges.

While the Coxes worked hard, they expected their children to do their best at school and devote all their energies to learning. Mr. Cox got scholarships to mostly white, private schools during Boston’s years of court-mandated busing to desegregate schools. He then graduated from a prestigious boarding school in Danbury, Connecticut. His family was always around to help and support as Mr. Cox navigated the challenges of private schooling. 

The baby of the family, Mr. Cox is described in angelic terms by his sister Barbara Cox Wooten. She recounts the family’s go-to legend of Michael as a boy of 8 when he found a bird injured in a fall from a tree. He nursed it with cracker crumbs and droplets of water. When it died, he was distraught and prayed over the bird, built a casket, and buried it in a backyard funeral service.

The grit of the family’s patriarch, David Cox, is a powerful family theme, says Vanessa Sumpter, Mr. Cox’s niece: “He was about integrity. Character [he would say] would get you further than education. Your character would open doors for you.”

It may have contributed to idealistic miscalculation, writes journalist Dick Lehr in an exhaustive 2009 book about Mr. Cox’s life and infamous assault, “The Fence: A Police Cover-up Along Boston’s Racial Divide.” “He was the young man from a middle-class black family who believed character and hard work meant more than race. In many ways he was color-blind,” wrote Mr. Lehr. 

Mr. Cox told Mr. Lehr: “When I first came on the job, I never really considered myself just a black police officer. I just considered myself a police officer. It was the way I was brought up.”

Mr. Cox said in a recent Boston Black News radio interview that he was seen as a disloyal “troublemaker” at the BPD after the assault, which he always refers to formally as “unconstitutional policing.” It was an unfamiliar position for a man whose family expectations channeled him into good behavior throughout his youth.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Commissioner Michael Cox, who once oversaw the Boston Police Academy on his rise through the ranks, poses with police cadets after his swearing-in.

Mr. Cox rebelled once. He was 16 and away at boarding school when his father died. Each time he called home, he was told that his dad was too sick to come to the phone. “We wanted to protect him,” Ms. Davis says, justifying the familial deception.

But the teenage Mr. Cox felt differently. His rage of disillusionment was deep, and he refused to go back to school in the wake of his father’s death. His mother, also grieving, would have none of it and packed him up and drove him back to the Connecticut boarding school herself. 

That firm motherly hand directed the family in matters of faith, too, say the Cox siblings. She took them to church every Sunday and infused forgiveness in them all. 

“Each of us holds it differently,” says Ms. Davis, “but we do try to understand what circumstances might have led someone to behave in a certain way. We are humans.” She clarifies that all Mr. Cox wanted after his assault was an apology – and he sued the city only when that did not come. 

Indeed, the “troublemaking” lawsuit – which brought Mr. Cox hundreds of harassing phone calls, death threats, slashed tires, and vandalization of his home – may have been the only route he could have taken to stay in the police force and make a difference. Mr. Nolan emphasizes how tough it would have been for Mr. Cox to sue and expect to stay in the force: “[At the time of the assault] he was on the lowest rung of the order and he also had a family to support.”

To fight anything in such a hierarchical organization as the police department, with a few dozen superintendents and deputies and a few dozen more captains, would “be met by stiff resistance,” says Mr. Nolan, suggesting the lawsuit itself was activism. “Because of the blue wall of silence, criminal prosecution wasn’t going to happen. Redressal was going to happen only through civil court. Suing the city was an activist role.” 

Expectations of reform

Expectations of the new commissioner are high at this moment when calls for reform in the policing system are louder than ever.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Michael Cox, who was the victim of a racist police assault, now leads the Boston Police Department.

“I’ve worked to change policing since [the assault] occurred,” Mr. Cox said during his swearing-in, “and I will continue to do all I can to make sure that no Black or brown person, or any individual, no matter their gender identity or race, is a victim of any kind of unconstitutional policing.” 

But observers and activists point to systemic racial biases in the police force. 

Boston has a high rate of stop and frisk of young men of color. And a test that activists see for Mr. Cox is what tinkering he does with the Boston database of offenders. The American Civil Liberties Union found that 90% of the more than 4,700 names in the database in 2019 were those of Black or Latino individuals. And Mr. Harris, the scholar, says that young people can be listed for all sorts of reasons, including “bizarre” ones such as the way they dress.

Fraught relationships between the BPD and communities of color are urgently in need of repair. But in pursuing that, Mr. Cox has to strike a delicate balance, mindful of the tattered morale in the 1,600-member force. It has high attrition, personnel shortages, and a difficult time attracting women, who account for only 12% of current staff.

Senior police officials point out how it is difficult to terminate erring officers due to binding arbitration agreements. 

In other words, explains a former BPD commissioner, Ed Davis, Mr. Cox needs to bring change both culturally and administratively – he’ll need to keep the public and his own people happy.

A few believe that Commissioner Cox’s recent difficult experience as police chief in Ann Arbor is instructive. Though later cleared, he was placed on brief administrative leave over allegations he created a hostile work environment and used undue influence during an investigation into officers improperly voiding parking tickets.

When she discovered that the Ann Arbor Police Department was redacting the names of police officers from complaints about them, says Lisa Jackson, chair of Ann Arbor’s oversight commission, Chief Cox was reluctant to cooperate in stopping the practice because of likely department pushback. The City Council had to force him to release the names. Likewise, Ms. Jackson’s commission had to fight the department to release its data on traffic stops. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

The "oath book," signed by Michael Cox when he was sworn in as Boston police commissioner last August.

No anger, just “inner strength”

Mr. Cox is not angry, embittered, or cynical, but a figure of dependability, say his family and colleagues.

He has a prodigious ability to juggle stressful work and act as the rock of his sprawling family. He’s been father not just to his own three children, but also to his niece who lost her father when she was young. His sister Ms. Wooten recalls that when she needed emergency help in dealing with her distraught daughter, Mr. Cox rushed to her home with his own small children in the car and had a two-hour-long conversation with his niece.

“What they talked about is unknown to me, even to this day, and Michael has remained that father figure for my children for their whole lives,” she wrote in an email. 

There is deep admiration within his family for how he has been able to address his trauma and still fulfill all his obligations. 

“My brother has an inner strength, which I call dignity, ... a commitment to his family, and to the police department,” says Ms. Davis.

For some of his former colleagues, he is the perfect role model for how officers ought to relate with people – listening and caring for their communities without being aggressive or dominating. 

Matt Stone/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald/Getty Images

U.S. District Attorney Rachel Rollins (far left), with Michael Cox (far right), announces the arrest of a suspect for staging a hoax explosion at Northeastern University, October 2022.

Former Boston police Commissioner Bill Evans, who conducted “peace walks” as a way of connecting with different communities, was impressed with Mr. Cox’s engagement during those walks. He had the “right perspective on community engagement” and “was a gentleman all the time.”

Mr. Cox’s humility and a dignified, calm demeanor – qualities that Mr. Nolan says can often be seen as “inimical to police practice” – are exactly what make him effective as a police officer and helped him build great contacts with the community. Musing further, he says that “if we had more people like Cox” back in the late 1980s when Mr. Cox joined the BPD, “then our police department would have been very, very different.”

For the past six months Mr. Cox has been holding meetings and listening to members of the Boston community. There is an expectation that he will bring much-needed change. Communities of color are looking to Mr. Cox’s leadership for healing; Black clergy working to prevent young people from entering the world of crime are looking for support; and justice activists are asking whether he can provide hope to a 15-year-old who is stopped by cops every day.

It may take weeks or even months before Mr. Cox unveils his vision, but for now he is working to build trust – perhaps the kind of trust that Bertha Cox held in the police.

Ron Cockerille/The Augusta Chronicle/AP/File

An emergency worker escorts people for decontamination early Jan. 7, 2005, at the University of South Carolina Aiken campus in Aiken, South Carolina. Two Norfolk Southern freight trains collided near Graniteville, South Carolina, leading to the release of hazardous chemicals and nine deaths.

The descriptions that accompanied pictures of the dark cloud which hung over East Palestine, Ohio, earlier this month were apocalyptic. A train derailment on Feb. 3 released hazardous chemicals into the air, water, and soil. Residents were evacuated. Dead fish littered the streams. Ohio national guard members walked around in hazmat suits.

My heart broke for those living in East Palestine, and then I found out the name of the railroad company responsible for the wreckage: Norfolk Southern. It’s a name that still shakes a town practically in my backyard, Graniteville, South Carolina.

Nearly 20 years ago, in January 2005, two Norfolk Southern trains collided near the Avondale Mills plant in Graniteville. The wreckage released 11,500 gallons of toxic chlorine gas into the air and claimed the lives of nine people. More than 500 people sought treatment for chlorine exposure, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At the time, I was a sports reporter at The Aiken Standard, and the only track I thought about involved track and field events. But Mike Gibbons, who was then an editor at the Standard and part of the team covering the tragedy, remembers the literal and figurative cloud that hung over Graniteville.

“Once it started to become clear what happened, most everyone knew the death toll would be high, and based on the chlorine cloud, we had no idea how widespread the damage was going to be,” Mr. Gibbons says, recalling the 2005 collision.

“It reeked of chlorine … [a mile] away, so I could imagine what it was like closer,” he says. “I had a pool at the time, and I remember thinking I had never smelled that concentration of chlorine, even when putting it in my pool.”

The wreck also effectively forced Avondale Mills, a textile plant, to shut down operations in two states, which left some 4,000 people out of work. Norfolk Southern settled with Avondale Mills and numerous families, and the rail company paid a $4 million penalty levied by the Department of Justice. To many, those settlements feel insufficient in the wake of lives lost and more than a decade’s worth of persistent health issues.

As someone who worked in manufacturing years later in Graniteville, I often thought about the idea of the social contract. In terms of business ethics, the social contract suggests that big business should make decisions that positively affect society. I question how corporations, and specifically modern-day railroad barons such as Norfolk Southern, can suggest, as they do on the community page of their website, that they are acting in good faith when it comes to a social contract. It’s not enough for a corporation to produce jobs and support local events and charities as a trade-off for environmental calamity and insufficient infrastructure.

On Tuesday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg suggested as much when he recommended rail reforms and an increase in fines for safety violations in response to the East Palestine derailment. “Profit and expediency must never outweigh the safety of the American people,” he said in a statement.

Norfolk Southern’s CEO visited East Palestine on Saturday, but at a town hall meeting earlier in the week, where the residents of East Palestine were seeking answers for what happened, representatives from Norfolk Southern were notably absent. Does this suggest that working-class people, both on the job and otherwise, are collateral damage instead of community partners? Infrastructure concerns shouldn’t speak just to upgrading crumbling rails. They should also speak to favorable policy when it comes to paid sick leave, which, if provided to railway workers, could strengthen the bonds between workers, their families, and their communities. Those bonds should be the crux of the social contract.

It’s also worth mentioning that railroad tracks are a reminder of perpetual racial discrimination. Enslaved laborers built much of the country’s railway infrastructure during the 19th century – a fact that has rightfully resulted in calls for reparations. Further, Black people were denied upward mobility in the railroad industry into the 21st century, with Norfolk Southern paying a $28 million settlement in 2001 for a class action suit brought by Black employees alleging discriminatory promotion practices.

The dark clouds that hang over places like Graniteville and East Palestine are remnants of a failed relationship between corporations and everyday people. That deteriorating infrastructure is particularly ironic because local municipalities are always longing for big business to come to town. It is time we look at how much those partnerships cost, not just in terms of creating jobs, but in terms of environmental, racial, and labor justice.

In 1952, the United States military needed leaders for a new kind of mission. It involved a treacherous journey into unexplored territory, with danger a certainty.

But 28-year-old Navy Lt. James Earl Carter Jr. answered the call.

“Unexplored territory,” in this case, was the aftermath of one of the world’s first serious nuclear accidents. On Dec. 12, 1962, the NRX research reactor at Chalk River, Ontario, in Canada had suffered a partial meltdown. Ruptured radioactive fuel rods were stuck inside the reactor core. Radioactive water filled the reactor building’s basement.

Lieutenant Carter was an officer in the Navy’s nuclear submarine program and thus an expert on reactors and nuclear physics. He led a 23-person Navy crew charged with helping in the Chalk River cleanup. They were told that due to exposure to radioactivity, it was possible they would never have children.

He brought to the task precision, intelligence, and dedication – qualities that would later make him, if not a great president, perhaps the most consequential ex-president in American history. His famously demanding Navy boss, nuclear sub pioneer Adm. Hyman G. Rickover, later praised the work Lieutenant Carter did and said it laid the ground for his larger understanding of atomic science.

“He did an outstanding job,” said Admiral Rickover at the 1977 commissioning of a nuclear-powered cruiser. “In the process, he learned much about the practical aspects of nuclear power.”

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

On Dec. 12, 1952, two human errors in quick succession led to an uncontrolled chain reaction at the Chalk River nuclear plant north of Ontario, Canada – causing cooling water to boil, fracturing the control rods and causing an explosion. A quick release of more water flooded the building and prevented a full meltdown at the first reactor to operate outside the U.S.

The area where the Chalk River accident took place is in remote northern Ontario, 120 miles north of Ottawa. The site was chosen during World War II because of its access to cooling water from the Ottawa River and the stability of the region’s granite rock base.

Officials also felt the isolation of the place meant that spies would stand out immediately.

Following the war, it continued as an important nuclear research facility. Great minds of physics, such as Enrico Fermi, came to visit. The first highly enriched uranium used to power U.S. nuclear subs came from Chalk River.

Then on Dec. 12, 1952, two human errors in quick succession led to an uncontrolled chain reaction, which caused cooling water to boil, fracturing the control rods and causing an explosion. A quick release of more water flooded the building and prevented a full meltdown.

But 66 pounds of radioactive gas had already escaped from reactor building chimneys. Radiation alarms in town rang for 16 hours. Fortunately, no one died as a result of the accident.

At the time, the future 39th president of the United States was living in Schenectady, New York, and working at a submarine research facility. After graduating from the Naval Academy in 1946, he had applied to the new nuclear-powered submarine program, been interviewed by then-Captain Rickover, and been accepted.

He was in line to be a top officer on the Navy’s second nuclear sub, the USS Seawolf, and was designing a training program for enlisted members of the new nuclear effort. For Captain Rickover, Lieutenant Carter was a logical choice to send to Chalk River to help the Canadians clean up after their accident.

The rising young officer would gain valuable firsthand experience. At the same time, he could help the reactor get back online – something important to the U.S., as Chalk River was a source of fuel for its burgeoning nuclear Navy.

Courtesy of Kieran Murphy

Workers at the Chalk River nuclear facility in Deep River, Ontario, wore red underwear, now on display at the Canadian Nuclear Heritage Museum, in areas of high radioactivity. The color was meant to remind them not to wear potentially contaminated clothing home.

A dangerous mission

So, Lieutenant Carter led a team of 22 other U.S. servicemen to the remote Ontario outpost. Their role was to dismantle some parts of the reactor.

Each man could only stay in the reactor for a very brief period of time. They had particular nuts and bolts they were assigned to remove. An exact model of the NRX was constructed on a tennis court adjacent to the reactor building, and under Lieutenant Carter’s supervision the team members rehearsed over and over until they were economical in their movements and understood their task precisely.

They were then lowered onto the reactor dome for 90 seconds at a time, gradually removing the layers of shielding to allow access to the reactor core.

“Each time our men managed to remove a bolt or fitting from the core, the equivalent piece was removed on the mock-up,” writes Mr. Carter in his presidential campaign biography, “Why Not the Best?”

Lieutenant Carter and his team received perhaps 1,000 times the dose of radiation now allowable. They wore red undergarments with white cotton boiler suits and steel-tipped boots with orange-painted toe tips – clothes that were distinctive so they couldn’t be worn outside the area and possibly spread contamination. 

“For about six months after that, I had radioactivity in my urine,” Mr. Carter told Canadian journalist Arthur Milnes in 2011.

Three Mile Island

Due to the heroic efforts of hundreds of workers, including the U.S. Navy contingent, the NRX reactor was restarted only 14 months after its accident. 

Despite the dire predictions, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter went on to have children. 

But he never served as a top officer on the USS Seawolf. Mr. Carter left the U.S. Navy in 1953, after his father died, to take over the family farm. Eventually he turned his ambitions to politics, rising to governor of Georgia and then president of the United States.

Still, Mr. Carter’s experience with nuclear reactors in the Navy and at Chalk River may well have informed his management of the Three Mile Island reactor accident in Pennsylvania in 1979 – a partial meltdown that remains the worst nuclear incident in the U.S.

After the accident, he publicly expressed confidence that the situation was under control. Behind the scenes he received regular updates from the then-chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Harold Denton.

President Carter would ask detailed and technical questions during these briefings. At one point, no one seemed to have answers for the U.S. chief executive.

“Do you think there is anyone there [at Three Mile Island] who knows what’s going on?” he said, dryly, according to a later account in The Washington Post.

As soon as the grass sprouts, the grass-hoppers are off: grabbing the cushions, polishing the coffeepots, checking the GPS coordinates, and starting up the car.

It’s springtime in the Saudi desert, and the clock is ticking.

This year, timely winter rains are leading to desert blooms across the kingdom, transforming patches of arid landscape into spring wonderlands that last just a couple of weeks.

These oases of color offer a rare green respite that delights Saudi city-dwellers and people flocking here from Arab states around the Gulf.

For these grass-hoppers starved of greenery – often referred to in Saudi Arabia as “greenery tourists” – a picnic amid these fleeting desert blooms is more than an outing. It’s therapy for the soul.

Driving from his native Qatar, Fahed al-Muri, accompanied by cousins and friends, crossed 750 miles to picnic on Hail’s grass.

“Springtime greenery like this is a rare beauty for us,” says Mr. Muri, motioning from the driver-side window of his 4x4 to the hills of green sands beyond. 

“It won’t last long. We have to catch it to enjoy it.”

Viral spring

The images took Saudi Twitter by storm: Thousands of purple wall rocket flowers poke from the rocks, a velvet blanket enveloping the black mountains; bright new green grass sprouts from the red sands below like some mystical ocean.

“If you go to the north,” a Riyadh resident says, holding up the image on his phone, “you have got to find this place.”

Taylor Luck

Purple blooming diplotaxis acris, or wall rocket, sprout up across the rocky desert fields in the King Salman Nature Reserve in Hail, Saudi Arabia, Feb. 10, 2023. Images that went viral sparked thousands of people to flock this area in northern Saudi Arabia.

On a Friday in mid-February, two dozen SUVs and 4x4s crisscross these very mountains in the King Salman Nature Reserve, kicking up dust clouds as families search for a picture-perfect area to lay down their blankets and start up the grill.

“Everyone is coming here looking for this one spot to enjoy the spring,” reserve ranger Hamoud al-Jameel says with a smile, “but there are hundreds more they don’t even know about.”

While many arid sites in Saudi Arabia are witnessing green blooms this winter, perhaps none are as dramatic as those here in the Hail region. The collection of black and red rocky mountains, deep orange sands, and hidden palm-lined valleys 385 miles northwest of Riyadh lies at the edge of the northern Saudi desert, which stretches on another 435 miles into Jordan.

Here fertile soil and cooler winter temperatures allow green vegetation and flowery blossoms to burst to life – if the rains come just right.

And 2023 is one of those years. Thousands of people from across the region are rejoicing in it.

“The topography here is different. It is greener, there are mountains, valleys, springs,” says Dari – he gave only his first name – who flew into Hail directly from Kuwait City with his friends to experience the spring they saw on social media.

“We are all looking for a nice place just to sit and enjoy the spring outdoors before the long summer months and heat.”

Caravan from Qatar

Mr. Muri and his crew made the trip from Qatar in two SUVs. Along the way across Saudi Arabia they hopped from green patch to green patch, camping in spots they’d seen on social media: Qassim, Hafr al Butn, and finally Hail.

“This is the best place to experience spring in the Gulf, and the locals are hospitable, driving up was a no-brainer,” says Mr. Muri. “By the way,” he asks Mr. Jameel, the park ranger, “do you know of a really good green spot?”

Taylor Luck

Camels graze on rare desert grasses amid desert blooms in the King Salman Nature Reserve in Hail, in northern Saudi Arabia, Feb. 10, 2023.

Soon they are following the ranger deeper into the reserve, swerving between acacia trees and dipping down and up from ravines, in search of the perfect oasis for the night.

After a left turn, the wide expanse narrows into a secluded valley nestled between pink rocks, lined for more than a mile with 20-foot-tall trees creating a rare canopy over the thick grass.

As they set up camp half a mile away, Riyadh residents Mohammed and his friends sip black tea and lounge on a colorful camping carpet spread over a particularly thick circle of grass behind jagged rock formations.

The night before they had driven six hours from dusty and dry Riyadh to spend four days away from the capital’s beige urban landscape.

“Just one day here and all the stress from the city dissipates,” Mohammed says, leaning against a pillow. “Being among trees and grass is therapeutic. It relaxes your mind and body.”

“Being in the green outdoors is a spiritual refresher,” his friend says as he snaps photos of a flower a few feet from their blanket. “It feels like it strengthens your soul.”

The rain’s timing is everything

But not all winters yield green springs.

The timing of winter rainfall is a critical factor for desert blooms. If the rains come too early, the grass will not grow; too late, and the shrubs and grass will burn in the April heat.

Gulf nationals monitor rainfall carefully. As December saw good rains in Saudi Arabia, they knew that a February bloom was likely in store.

“We knew there were good rains this winter and that we should plan a camping trip to Saudi Arabia,” says Dari, the Kuwaiti camper. “Once we saw the photos circulate, we booked.”

Taylor Luck

Nayef al-Kaim holds up a widely circulated photo of spring in Hail on his mobile phone at his camping store in Hail, Saudi Arabia, Feb. 11, 2023.

In downtown Hail, Nayef al-Kaim’s store is buzzing; several out-of-towners browse this one-stop shop for picnicking and camping needs, one of several in town.

Camping is a regular pastime for Saudis, but this is prime time.

Winter is Mr. Kaim’s high season. In addition to locals and hunters, dozens of visitors from across Saudi Arabia and the Gulf come each day and browse the oriental-carpet-patterned insulated blankets, carpeted mats, tents, sleeping bags, lights, grills, and – for those going further afield in their pursuit of the perfect patch of grass – walkie-talkies and GPS devices.

“Camping is in our roots and our genes,” Mr. Kaim says as he attends to a customer feeling the thickness of a sleeping bag with his hands. “Bedouins are the original green tourists.”

Some of those original green tourists are out and about: Camel and sheep herders in sputtering pickup trucks across the kingdom are looking for long stretches of green pasture, seeking to take advantage of the few weeks out of the year in which their livestock can eat for free.

“Just like in the days of our forefathers, spring is a blessing,” Mr. Kaim says. “And all of us – humans and animals – must savor it before it disappears.”

AP

Teens listen to Ukraine's national anthem during a Feb. 15 funeral for a military volunteer killed during a rocket attack in Lyman, a city in the Donetsk region.

In a surprise visit to Ukraine on Monday, President Joe Biden promised more support in weapons and money to the country. Yet he also pointed to a core strength that Ukraine already possesses – and to a big weakness in Russia’s military. Both may determine the war.

“Young, talented Russians are fleeing by the tens of thousands, not wanting to come back to Russia. Not just fleeing from the military, fleeing from Russia itself, because they see no future in their country,” Mr. Biden said. An estimated 500,000 or more people have left since the invasion a year ago, a majority of them men of fighting age. In December, the government reported that 10% of information technology workers had left in the past year. On the battlefield, a shortage of soldiers have led to severe losses for Russia.

In Ukraine, by contrast, “it’s astounding who stood up,” said Mr. Biden. “Everybody – women, young children – trying to do something.” Young Ukrainian men are eager to be drafted for military service in defense of democratic values and Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

Their morale in war zones is also high. “As long as Russian soldiers occupy their country, Ukrainians will fight,” writes a former United States ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, in Foreign Affairs. “They will fight with or without new advanced weapons, with or without harsher sanctions, with or without money to help them run their country.”

For young Ukrainians who cannot fight, many are volunteering in various ways to protect their country. One initiative, Repair Together, takes urban kids to liberated towns to build new houses and clear the wreckage left by Russian forces. Others join groups that provide counseling for children traumatized by the war.

Only 40% of Russians age 18 to 45 say Russia was correct in starting the war, according to a Kremlin-controlled poll in November. For people over 45, support for the war stood at 76%. One reason for the large disparity is that young Russians are more eager to find the truth about the war from the internet than from official propaganda on Russian media.

While Russia does have millions of men under 50 with some military experience, another mass conscription like one last November could “trigger new waves of panic and mass migration,” according to the Financial Times.

In this war, motives matter as much as munitions and money. “Each of us is a fighter,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told his people in January. “Each of us is a front. Each of us is the basis of the defense.” Ukraine may have fewer young people than its giant neighbor. But it is relying on young people’s embrace of freedom to win. A visit to Ukraine by an American president only helps reinforce Ukraine’s hidden strength.