When American forces ousted the Taliban from power nearly 20 years ago in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, then-President George W. Bush vowed to break the curse of the so-called graveyard of empires.

The history of military conflicts in Afghanistan, Mr. Bush noted, was “one of initial success, followed by long years of floundering and ultimate failure.”

“We’re not going to repeat that mistake,” he said.

Yet today, just weeks away from an inherited May 1 deadline to withdraw U.S. troops, President Joe Biden is scrambling to avoid precisely that verdict, with plans to convene multilateral peace talks in Turkey meant to jump-start last-ditch diplomacy.

The president is torn between the desires to quickly end America’s longest-ever war, and also – in light of Taliban battlefield advances, and a recent Taliban-driven assassination campaign – to leave Afghanistan “responsibly,” preserving both U.S. strategic interests and Afghanistan’s hard-won civil society and democratic gains.

Yet pointedly, after a more than $2 trillion investment in the war and nation building that has cost thousands of American and tens of thousands of Afghan lives, the question remains: What, if anything, can Mr. Biden do now to avert catastrophe? Can this White House make its own peace with the Taliban?

The Taliban have been loudly declaring victory over a superpower, ever since agreeing to a deal with President Donald Trump in February 2020. That deal spelled out hard U.S. and NATO pullout deadlines, but imposed few restraints on Taliban attacks against other Afghans, which have continued unabated, or required few concrete moves toward peace.

The Taliban have promised a violent “reaction” if the 3,500 remaining American and roughly 8,000 NATO troops do not leave by May 1, a deadline that President Biden said would be “tough” to meet. At the same time, U.S. intelligence agencies also warn of a Taliban takeover and collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Kabul, if foreign forces leave precipitously.

Chances of a diplomatic success are so small that even U.S. officials liken to a “moonshot” their bid to jump-start intra-Afghan peace talks – starting with the conference in Turkey slated for later this month – that would lead to an interim “peace government” as laid out in an eight-page plan leaked last month.

Ibraheem al Omari/Reuters/File

Taliban delegates speak during talks between the Afghan government and Taliban insurgents in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 12, 2020.

“The administration has a moonshot idea, but it is also matching that moonshot idea with some major effort,” says Asfandyar Mir, an expert in political violence at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. “This plan is ambitious. Getting this intra-Afghan agreement is going to be very, very tough. But the good news is that they are literally throwing everything they can at the problem.”

“Everything has to work out”

As the United States plans to convene the Turkey meeting under United Nations auspices, it has called on the Russians, Iranians, and other regional stakeholders like India, and has “energized” communication with the Pakistanis, whose ISI intelligence service has significant influence over the Taliban, notes Mr. Mir.

“There are a lot of moving parts. For this to work out, everything has to work out,” he says. That means convincing the Taliban to agree to a temporary, monthslong extension of the foreign troop presence – a critical step the Islamist movement has so far rejected.

An initial power-sharing arrangement may also be possible, but the price of Taliban buy-in may be that the “final settlement will be extremely favorable to the Taliban,” says Mr. Mir.

“It’s not perfect. I’m not saying that this is fixable,” he adds. “We’re trying to window-dress a failed mission at this point. ... It should really go without saying that the main objective here is to ensure a U.S. withdrawal which is not embarrassing. Any grand goal of major peace, or victory for one side or the other, is just not realistic.”

Still, the White House is attempting to recalibrate a deal that in many ways left the Taliban in the driver’s seat.

In recent days, U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad presented both sides with a new set of nine principles reportedly meant to guide the upcoming Turkey conference. They include a permanent cease-fire – long an upfront demand of the government, but rejected by the Taliban – and commitments to equality, human rights, and free elections. The Americans also hope for a 90-day reduction in violence, aiming to prevent a Taliban spring offensive.

Hard lines

The Taliban, meanwhile, have not yet agreed to go to Turkey, much less accept measures that go far beyond their deal with Mr. Trump, who analysts say rushed to end America’s so-called forever war with little apparent regard for consequences.

And Afghan media report that the Taliban, in exchange for permitting U.S. forces to stay 45 to 90 days beyond May 1, are demanding the release of 7,000 more prisoners – on top of some 5,500 reluctantly set free by the government last year – and the removal of leaders’ names from a U.N. sanctions blacklist.

The Kabul government is also hewing to a hard line. Afghanistan’s first vice president, Amrullah Saleh, said Sunday that the Turkey agenda affirms civil society “achievements” since the Taliban were ousted in 2001, emphasizing that the Taliban “must accept that Afghanistan will not become Taliban.”

Are “the Taliban seeking to come and lash people and we will stay silent? Never,” he said.

Presidential Palace/AP

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin (center) and acting Afghan Minister of Defense Yasin Zia review an honor guard at the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, March 21, 2021. During Secretary Austin's visit, questions swirled about how long American troops will remain in the country.

But getting the Taliban to make any new compromises won’t be easy, after they gave up so little in negotiations with Mr. Trump, says Rahmatullah Amiri, an independent analyst based in Kabul.

“It’s wishful thinking that this Turkey conference will produce something,” says Mr. Amiri. “The Taliban will be there, if they are wanted. They will sit there, but it won’t produce anything. The Taliban want nothing less or more than complete power.

“They know that the golden era of Trump is never coming back. It is like, at this crucial moment, God revealed this gift [Mr. Trump] to them, and the guy gave them literally every key to the padlock,” he says. “What can Biden do? It’s too late, because now the Taliban already tasted victory.”

The result is a series of bad choices for the Biden administration, as it tries to weigh the risks and benefits of delaying the withdrawal of U.S. forces. The draft U.S. peace agreement points to American aspirations of preserving gains in women’s rights, free speech, and elections to choose leaders, all to be enshrined in a new constitution.

But it also ambitiously calls for creation of a new “transitional Peace Government” at the start of the process, jointly formed by the Taliban and the U.S.-backed government of President Ashraf Ghani, who would have to step down.

In addition to the cease-fire, it calls for the Taliban moving “military structures” from neighboring countries, such as Pakistan – also unacceptable to the Taliban so far.

After the U.S. leaves, then what?

Yet analysts note that, even if agreement is reached, it might not last beyond a U.S. departure.

“It’s highly unlikely that a peace process will survive an American military withdrawal,” Laurel Miller, a former top State Department official in charge of Afghanistan and Pakistan diplomacy, who is now director of the Asia program at the International Crisis Group, said in a recent webinar. “Therefore, to protect American interests, you would have to consider what it is you want to leave behind when you pull out.”

Creating a joint transitional government first puts both Afghanistan and the U.S. “in a much worse position,” she said, “because that weak, fragile, power-sharing artifact would perish with the peace process and you’d be left with nothing.”

Mr. Biden must be “very careful” further thinning the low current level of U.S. and NATO troops, says Mr. Mir at Stanford, noting that the “best case” for the Taliban is a “political meltdown, a total fragmentation of the Afghan security forces and Afghan government.”

Western forces are “not putting any meaningful pressure on the Taliban, [but] once you pull these troops out, then you are likely to see things like defections, wholesale splintering, a total collapse of command and control, and that’s the situation you want to avoid,” he says.

“Given that the American empire has survived, we gloss over the fact that the U.S. war in Afghanistan has been a failure,” he says. “For now, the U.S. strategy has to be to make sure the Afghan government stays in the fight.”

Patrik Jonsson/The Christian Science Monitor

Brunswick News Publisher Buff Leavy, whose great-grandfather founded the newspaper in 1902, sits at his desk on March 25, 2021. Mr. Leavy hopes that his pledge of more local coverage will boost subscriptions to his struggling newspaper.

There was something about the item on the police blotter that puzzled Larry Hobbs, a former farmhand and store clerk turned local newspaper reporter.

A young Black man out for a jog had been shot and killed in a quiet subdivision on a Sunday afternoon. The police went quiet. There were no arrests.

“Something didn’t add up,” says Mr. Hobbs, who speaks in a country drawl and wears his blond hair long. “The question just hung out there: Why?”

The killing of Ahmaud Arbery and the county’s hesitation to arrest the three white men allegedly involved led to local and national protests and, eventually, to the arrest of the suspects. And, for some at least, it put the spotlight on the importance of a low-key stalwart of democracy: the local newspaper reporter.

The murder “didn’t paint the community in a good light,” says Mr. Hobbs. “But we also covered how the community redeemed itself with loud, angry protests that left all the cars sitting on four tires. We showed the world how change works. We didn’t flinch. That’s why what happens in local news is real journalism.”

None of that means Mr. Hobbs will have a job going forward at the six-days-a-week Brunswick News. Like many other local newspapers, it’s struggling to stay afloat as revenues decline and readers drift away. 

Patrik Jonsson/The Christian Science Monitor

Brunswick News reporter Larry Hobbs chats with a source at the pier on St. Simons Island, Georgia, on March 25, 2021. As his paper struggles for survival, Mr. Hobbs has had a banner year of breaking national stories.

The U.S. has lost roughly 2,400 newspapers in the last 15 years, about a quarter of the total. Fat city broadsheets now offer slender pickings, infilled with newswire copy. The pandemic only accelerated the trend, with over 30,000 jobs lost, many permanently, in the last year. Even as TV and digital media jobs have grown, print positions have been halved in the past two decades.

Laid-off beat reporters aren’t the only victims. So, too, is civic trust in local and national news as building blocks of democracy. And the crisis in a once-thriving private industry has become a public crisis that, some say, necessitates a political response, though what form that should take is contested. Nobody thinks Washington is about to bail out local newspapers whose business model has imploded. But they might give them a helping hand.

“There was a sort of happy accident that newspapers took on an important civic function in the 20th century, and for a while many of them could afford to pay for that. But now they can’t,” says Columbia Journalism School dean emeritus Nicholas Lemann. “So, what do we do to preserve that civic function? We’re finally having that discussion.”  

Blank pages, hard times

Last month, the Kansas City Northeast News framed the issue in graphic form by publishing a possible future: a blank front page. The drastic move generated publicity and donations, and the weekly newspaper has since resumed its community coverage. 

Chances of massive relief for the newspaper industry are slim. But hundreds of lawmakers have raised concerns about the issue, indicating that there is support for helping the industry, according to a University of North Carolina report on local “news deserts.”

In Congress, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is a co-sponsor on a bill that would allow newspapers to join forces in order to negotiate more favorable deals with digital platforms like Google. For his part, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has thrown his support behind a bill that would allow family-owned community newspapers to restructure how they fund their pension commitments.

There is also movement to lift IRS restrictions to make it easier for newspapers to convert to nonprofit status while still selling advertising.

And there has been concrete action as well. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting received an extra $20 million on top of a $75 million stimulus supplement last year; some of that money went to support local broadcast reporters. Some are urging Congress to include local newspapers in future funding.

The Northeast News/AP

Publisher Michael Bushnell (left) and Managing Editor Abby Hoover pose in the offices of The Northeast News, a community paper in Kansas City, Missouri, on March 31, 2021. The paper chose to leave the front page of their March 24 issue blank to show community members what they'd miss if the newspaper folded.

Even before the pandemic, New Jersey lawmakers had set up a modest fund to subsidize local newspaper operations.

The momentum is a recognition that “when you lose a local newspaper, you’re losing the person who covers the school board and town council,” says Penelope Muse Abernathy, a visiting journalism professor at Northwestern University who studies the economics of digital media and news deserts. “In other words, you’re losing the reporter who is going to tell you how you share the same problems and possibilities with your neighbor.”

Behind this debate is a sobering fact: The newspaper biz has shed jobs at the same rate as the coal industry.

The mining analogy is apt. Local papers, after all, provide the raw ore of information that filters up to regional and national media organizations. Taking them away leaves a news void that is filled by social media that is overwhelmingly driven by national trends. Attempts by companies like Facebook to provide local channels are hampered by a lack of content and timeliness. Last year, one such feed in North Carolina posted a story about preparations for a hurricane that had crossed the area days before.

“An increased reliance on national news sources causes people to lose touch with their community, especially as national news has become highly partisan and more manipulative than informative. That’s something that happens as a result of this vacuum,” says Duke University professor Philip Napoli, author of “Social Media and Public Interest: Media Regulation in the Disinformation Age.”

At the same time, many Americans seem unaware – or perhaps don’t care. A 2018 Pew survey of 35,000 people found that over half mentioned they had seen less local news, but most weren’t aware that their local newspapers were in danger of going out of business.

A short goodbye

Sometimes a newspaper dies quietly, its readers long gone. Other times it ends with tragedy.

Waycross, Georgia, a prosperous old railroad town, lies an hour west of Brunswick, not far from the Okefenokee Swamp. In 2019, the Waycross Journal-Herald, its newsroom shrunk from 15 to 4 reporters, shut down. Not long after, the paper’s publisher, whose grandfather had acquired the paper in 1916, walked into his office and took his own life.

Only minutes before, Rick Head, the paper’s sports editor who was preparing to relaunch the title as a weekly, had said goodbye to his old boss.

“I think it all just got to him when he walked into that office where his dad and granddad had run the paper for so long,” says Mr. Head, who now runs the Journal-Herald from a new office around the corner.

“A lot of people felt sad that the paper closed,” says resident Barbara King, a former reader. “That’s how we kept track of what was going on, including obituaries.”

But a younger resident, Shannon Fleming, says the city of 13,000 didn’t generate enough news to justify a daily paper. Now, he relies on lawyers and city officials who drop by his clothing store for news from city hall. “The fact is, I’m not willing to pay for local news,” he says.

Sitting in a plain office with only a box of crackers on a shelf, Mr. Head says he understands the road ahead will be difficult. Some locals don’t even know the weekly paper exists. Mr. Head is used to multitasking: He recently had bylines on 35 stories and briefs in one edition. “I often pass myself on the road,” he says, barely joking.

Patrik Jonsson/The Christian Science Monitor

The Waycross Journal-Herald building stands empty in Waycross, Georgia, on March 25, 2021. The daily newspaper closed in 2019 after years of financial difficulties. It has since been relaunched as a weekly.

Show me the money

Such stories point to the biggest problem: money. Pew found that between 2008 and 2018, advertising revenues fell by 62% in the newspaper industry. Google and Facebook now gobble up 77% of revenues in local ad markets.

But the growth of news deserts can also be attributed to aggressive cost-cutting by large newspaper chains that control more than half of all papers. Job cuts leave the remaining reporters trying to do more with less, and readership continues to shrink.

That charge is leveled at Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund that is trying to take full control of Tribune Publishing Co., which owns the Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, and a string of other newspapers. Last week, a rival $680 million offer was made for the titles by two wealthy individuals, raising hopes that reinvestment could stave off the cycle of cutbacks and declines.

Analysts say not all newspapers are likely to find a rich benefactor, so they made need other ways to survive, whether from government support or nonprofit ownership. But the clock is ticking.

“We’re not adjusting fast enough to rethink local journalism as a public good, which brings so much fundamental benefit to democracy and society,” says Viktorya Vilk, director of digital safety and free expression programs at PEN America, a national nonprofit that champions writers. While the crisis has led to innovation, it hasn’t replaced the financing that has been lost, she adds. “We have incredible ideas and outlets. But there’s not enough money in the system to feed them and keep them going.”

A promise of local bylines

Buff Leavy is the middle-aged publisher of the family-owned Brunswick News, covering a town of 16,000. He is the fourth owner in his family, and he knows that he may be the last.

He’s keeping an eye on possible relief from Washington, including efforts to reduce the burden of turning papers into nonprofits while still selling ads, he says.

But for now, his main mission is to remind readers of why the news is not just informative, but critical. He will soon begin running a “pledge banner” that promises at least 10 local bylines per day, and he says going hard on local news is already bringing in more digital subscribers.

“We are increasingly acknowledging the fact that local newspapers are, in fact, important to democracy,” he says. “I think our readers are, too.”

He is being helped by the efforts of Mr. Hobbs, who covered two big national stories this year: The Arbery murder and the salvage of the Golden Ray, a ship that capsized in St. Simons Sound in late 2019 with thousands of cars aboard.

Mr. Hobbs writes several columns on top of his daily story load, including a lighthearted look at local misdemeanors, names withheld. He lets creativity fly. “A jerk went berserk,” he recently wrote.

More serious crimes, of course, get harder coverage. He recently interviewed Mr. Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, for an anniversary story about her son’s shooting. The three men charged with his murder are set to go on trial later this year.

As the interview wound down, Ms. Cooper-Jones smiled at Mr. Hobbs and told him, “Thank God for the Brunswick News.” And then she said, in a quote that didn’t make the paper: “And thank God for you.”

The military offensive in Ethiopia’s Tigray region has dragged on for nearly six agonizing months, forcing more than 2 million people out of their homes. Despite government attempts to keep journalists out, and information in, reports have emerged of mass atrocities by both Ethiopian and Tigrayan fighters.

Ethiopia has long been a bulwark of regional stability in the Horn of Africa. How did it get here? And what would it take to bring the fighting to an end?

What led to the conflict?

Tigray is the northernmost region in Ethiopia, home largely to an ethnic group of the same name. For nearly 30 years following Ethiopia’s civil war, which ended in 1991, Tigrayans led the country’s ruling coalition, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. But Tigrayans account for only about 6% of the country’s population, and their political dominance was a constant source of tension. After protests over the EPRDF’s repressive rule in 2018, the party appointed a new leader, Abiy Ahmed, who is not Tigrayan.

Mr. Abiy vowed to unite Ethiopians regardless of ethnicity and centralize power away from the regions. Many Tigrayans feared his ascent would force them to the margins of Ethiopian society. The rift widened when Tigray went ahead with elections last year, flouting a national directive that they be postponed until after the pandemic.  

The conflict turned violent in November. Tigrayan forces attacked an Ethiopian army base in the region, and the government retaliated with a major military offensive. Neighboring Eritrea, with whom Mr. Abiy had recently reconciled, joined on the side of the Ethiopian army. Militias from Ethiopia’s Amhara region have also joined in against Tigray. Six months later, massacres, rapes, and massive displacements of civilians have become weapons of war, with both sides accused of atrocities.

What is at stake for Ethiopia?

Ethiopia’s stability has long been its calling card. Strategically located in the Horn of Africa, and sandwiched between volatile countries like Somalia, Sudan, and South Sudan, Addis Ababa has earned powerful allies with its peace and economic growth. For countries like the United States, it is a bulwark against the spread of Al Qaeda-linked terror groups in the region.

That stability is now under existential threat. “The idea of Ethiopia as a united community of people, which has always been fragile,” has taken a hit, says Yonatan Fessha, a professor at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa who studies the rule of law in Ethiopia. And the longer the fighting continues, the more likely it is to polarize and radicalize both sides. “The country as it exists now is at stake,” he adds.

For people living in the region, meanwhile, what is at stake is nothing less than life as they know it. According to the United Nations, 4.5 million of the region’s residents currently “need lifesaving assistance.” More than 60,000 have crossed the border into neighboring Sudan, and the U.N. high commissioner for human rights has asked for access to Tigray to investigate possible war crimes.

Those suffering most are not the Tigrayans who wielded outsize power in the Ethiopian government for the past 30 years, Dr. Fessha notes. Rather, they are the people who are often hit hardest by war: poor people.

What would it take to end the conflict?

It is hard to say. Much of the region remains in a telecom blackout, and journalists and aid groups have struggled to access areas outside major cities and towns.

But what is known has rattled even Ethiopia’s friends. The African Union, which is based in Addis Ababa, has received the government’s permission to participate in investigating possible human rights abuses. Mr. Abiy has criticized Western critics’ approach, calling in a March speech for “African solutions to African problems.”

Meanwhile in March, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for the Ethiopian government to protect civilians, prevent violence, and cooperate on independent investigations, according to the department’s spokesperson. The U.S. has alleged there has been ethnic cleansing in Tigray, which Ethiopia’s government denies.

Because Ethiopia has always relied heavily on international allies for aid and other assistance, Dr. Fessha says, they might be able to apply pressure for diplomatic solutions. “We need to break the cycle of this problem being solved by violence, and a military victory will not deliver that,” he says.

Xander Peters

Brothers Willis (left) and Adrian Nelson survey one of their family's corn fields on April 8, 2021, in Sondheimer, Louisiana. They were unable to sow this season's crop until late March due to a lag in the loan allocation process. Their corn's growth is behind other corn in the region as a result of not having the funds to plant earlier in the season.

Willis and Adrian Nelson never saw their father struggle when they were children. He wouldn’t let them. Not when their father Willie would put in 20-hour days working their land near the Mississippi Delta. Not when he’d take on an extra job farming their neighbors’ land, or when he’d pick up a bus driving shift to help make ends meet. 

Some days, Willie didn’t have enough time to make it home in time to have a good night’s rest. Instead, he’d take a nap in their truck.

The brothers are grown men now. Willis is 33 years old; Adrian, 29. For three generations on their property outside small-town Tallulah, Louisiana, the sweat from the Nelson family’s brows has salted the earth beneath them. 

The family’s small-business story began in 1960, when their grandfather invested in what would eventually grow into a 240-acre farm that their family owns outright. The 40-acre plot on which their homes and equipment sit was part of the Henderson Project, which allocated land to formerly enslaved people here after the Civil War. This season, they’re also leasing up to 2,500 acres as part of their corn and soybean operations. 

On paper, farming nearly 3,000 acres seems like a successful feat. But the Nelson family’s odyssey reveals the obstacles and prejudices America’s Black farmers have long faced, and which remain to this day. This year, for example, their crop loan has come through, but with a delay that has postponed getting seeds into the soil.

President Joe Biden’s far-reaching $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, while aimed at addressing the nationwide challenges of the coronavirus pandemic, made a pointed effort to address basic and persistent questions of fairness in agricultural policy. Of some $10.4 billion in aid targeted at the nation’s agricultural sector, nearly half will go to historically disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, according to an estimate by the American Farm Bureau Federation, an agriculture advocacy group. 

The funding may be the closest the federal government has come to reparations for Black Americans in farming since the Civil War era, when Union Army Gen. William T. Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15 in January 1865, raising hopes for formerly enslaved people to receive “40 acres and a mule.” Despite that, the funds are too little, too late, some farmers say.

“It’s another drop in the bucket,” Willis Nelson says. 

In fact, only a sliver of today’s American farmers and ranchers identify as Black, U.S. Department of Agriculture figures show. Out of 3.4 million farmers countrywide, about 45,000 are African American. That’s down from roughly 1 million a century ago, largely because of Jim Crow policies and a predatory loan process. In 1910, Black farmland ownership hit its peak at 16 million to 19 million acres, representing about a 14% chunk of U.S. agricultural land, according to the Census of Agriculture. Today, Black farmers own less than 1% of functionable U.S. farmland, with more losses accruing annually. 

Scholars at the Harvard Law School’s Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation have estimated that Black farmers lost $250 billion to $350 billion in wealth and income due to policy over the last century. That loss is equal to 10% of total Black wealth, the researchers estimate.

The hurdles that Black farmers have faced have ranged from the risks of racist violence to being largely shut out of a growing trend toward corporate-scale farming. Another factor has been limited access to estate planning, in a line of work where it can be vital to maintain a clear title and to prevent parcels of land from being split up.

Losing a farm

“Everything is a little too late,” says Angie Provost. In 2014, she and her husband, June, lost their 5,000-acre sugar cane farm in New Iberia, Louisiana, in part because federal loans arrived late. Like the Nelson family, the Provosts have found themselves asking their fellow white farmers if they received their loans late in the season. “Those are the things that I think Black farmers have been dealing with for decades, for centuries, for generations. It’s been recognized of late because of the grassroots network that are being created right now through our stories.” 

The degree of systemic inequity seems to hang over their heads, Ms. Provost says. In some ways, it’s everywhere. She lives five miles from the family descended from people who once enslaved her own family’s forebears.

Alex Brandon/AP/File

John W. Boyd Jr., founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association, speaks at a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 23, 2010, asking the Senate to pass $1.15 billion in funding for Black farmers related to a discrimination case settlement.

“It’s a known fact that we get our loans later than most people,” Willis Nelson says of how many Black farmers experience the loan process.

Most American farmers operate on thin margins. They depend on loans, whether they’re applying through the USDA or a bank. The sooner they get credit during the growing season, the better the chances of eventually paying the loan back, which improves their credit for the next growing season.

Last year, the Nelson family had their entire crop loan paid off by November. In December, they applied for a loan for the next growing season. Weeks turned into months and still no word came from the loan officer. The process dragged on until late March – into planting season. 

Their white counterparts’ corn is close to knee-high at this point in the season. Meanwhile, the Nelson family’s corn is just beginning to sprout. They’ve yet to finish putting in their crop.  

“I was always going to get approved,” Willis Nelson says of the annual loan application process. “The other guys we know, they’ve already got their loan, seed, chemicals, stuff like that.” 

He shakes his head wearily. 

The promised relief is welcome, to be sure. An estimated $4 billion of the American Rescue Plan money will be used to cover up to 120% of disadvantaged farmers and ranchers’ outstanding debt. Another $1 billion is intended to be used for technical assistance, grants, training, education, and access in helping farmers and ranchers acquire land. This relief will encompass Native American, Hispanic, and Asian American as well as Black farmers.

The initiative will be run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, dubbed the “last plantation” in a critique by the National Black Chamber of Commerce as then-President Barack Obama nominated Tom Vilsack to lead the federal agency in December 2008. Mr. Vilsack was confirmed, again, in February 2021 to lead the USDA during the Biden administration. 

“Should have been done a long time ago”

The American Rescue Plan’s farm relief “is something that should have been done a long time ago, based on the fact that we’ve lost so much land,” says Howard Gunn Jr., the former president of the Florida Black Growers and Agriculturalists Association. He also thinks it’s an opportunity to mend old wounds. 

The Biden plan isn’t the first attempt at righting slavery’s wrongs via agriculture. But it is, minority farmer advocates say, the most cleareyed attempt in recent memory. In 1997, the USDA settled Pigford v. Glickman, the largest class-action civil rights lawsuit in American history. It alleged that the USDA discriminated against Black farmers and ranchers from 1981 to 1996 by denying them access to loans and credit solely on the basis of race. A mere 371 Black farmers at the time of the settlement received payment. 

In the Nelson family’s case, their father Willie received $50,000 three years after the settlement. 

With the promised new aid, June Provost sees an opportunity to hold the administration’s feet to the fire for equitable treatment. In his mind, part of that idea would mean replacing loan officers at the USDA, many of whom were involved with the discrimination exposed by the Pigford lawsuit. The next step, Mr. Provost continues, would be passing the Justice for Black Farmers Act, a recently proposed piece of legislation that would create a land grant program as a means of encouraging young farmers like the Nelson brothers to either enter the industry or maintain their own operations. 

For the time being, though, “there’s an opportunity with this bill – the opportunity to give us a chance to get on equal ground,” says Adrian Nelson of the Biden stimulus for disadvantaged farmers. But he admits “it ain’t really the push that’s needed to level the playing field.” 

Angie Provost seconds that sentiment. As she says, the USDA is often referred to as the “people’s department.” If she were provided the opportunity to speak in front of the department secretary, there’s one question she hopes to have the chance to ask: “Who do you consider as people?”

Tyrone Siu/REUTERS

A pro-democracy activist in Hong Kong April 4 prays for those killed during the military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters at Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Memos penned by bureaucrats can sometimes alter history.

In 1946, George Kennan sent a telegram from Moscow back to his bosses at the U.S. State Department. The now-famous “long telegram” warned that the Soviet Union, an ally in defeating Nazi Germany, would be looking to expand its influence and its communist system. The 8,000-word missive resulted in a decadeslong U.S. policy of wielding its economic and military might to contain the Soviets. The so-called Cold War had begun.

Government analysts, no matter how well informed, never possess crystal-clear views of the future. Inevitably, unknowns lurk in the shadows. The data always has holes. 

But the process can help leaders make better decisions, and suggest a better future and how the world might get there.

Every four years since 1979, analysts at the National Intelligence Council (NIC) have peered ahead and delivered their nonpartisan findings to the president and other U.S. leaders. In one sense, their Global Trends 2040, issued earlier in April, can be seen as yet another litany of familiar and disturbing challenges confronting the United States and the world. 

The document explores five potential scenarios for the next two decades. Four aren’t very encouraging. Climate change ravages the world and disrupts economic progress, contributing to a slowing or even a reversal of progress against disease and poverty. 

The lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic provide an additional burden, marking “the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political and security implications that will ripple for years to come,” the report concludes.

In one scenario, the U.S. and China compete for world dominance, rather than cooperate to solve problems. In another, no country or group is strong enough to lead, and a chaotic world ensues.

But one vision is brighter. In a scenario called “Renaissance of Democracies,” NIC analysts foresee that a resurgence of democracies around the world may be led by the U.S. and its like-minded allies. “Open, democratic systems proved better able to foster scientific research and technological innovation, catalyzing an economic boom,” the scenario envisions, “improving the quality of life for millions around the globe.” 

A crackdown on corruption and increasing transparency helps “restore a sense of civic nationalism.” The result: Public discourse improves, creating a “culture of vigorous but civil debate over values, goals, and policies.”

And what of China? It’s playing a hot hand right now as a rapidly growing economic superpower. It promotes a vision that says democracy isn’t needed to provide a better life of material comfort for citizens. In many ways it’s backing up its claim, so long as a better life doesn’t acknowledge the rights of minorities nor the power of free thought and expression, which can be brutally suppressed. 

In this scenario, China’s system falters because it stifles innovation. Its crackdowns on Hong Kong and elsewhere lead to ever-tighter limits on free expression. It struggles with an aging population and an “inefficient state-directed economic model” that blocks “the country’s transition to a consumer economy.” 

China’s failure to allow freedom of thought and innovation works against its own success.

How can the next decades actually become a renaissance for the world’s democracies? That must be the work of these democratic systems, to prove their value and efficacy. 

What the analysts offer is a brighter vision of a future that could be achieved. That provides a starting point.

As the proverb warns, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”