Senate Television/AP

This image from Senate Television video shows the final vote of 86-11 as the Senate overwhelmingly approved a $40 billion infusion of military and economic aid for Ukraine and its allies, in Washington, May 19, 2022. President Joe Biden’s periodic military and civilian aid packages now total more than $65 billion, and the White House and some members of Congress reportedly are working on a large Ukraine aid bill – as much as $50 billion – to be taken up in the lame-duck session following the midterms.

As some chastened U.S. political leaders on both the right and the left have recently discovered, American public support for Ukraine – and for confronting Russia’s aggression – remains strong more than eight months into the war.

First, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s declaration two weeks ago that the “blank check” Washington has offered Kyiv would end under a Republican-led Congress got a Bronx cheer – notably from other prominent Republicans.

Then less than a week later, when a group of progressive House Democrats called in an open letter to the Biden administration for diplomacy with Russia to explore ways to end the war, the outcry was such that the letter was withdrawn even as the ink dried.

The conclusion widely drawn: With Ukraine garnering strong backing around the country and across the political spectrum, suggestions of anything other than full support in the run-up to contentious midterm elections is a losing proposition.

Yet while that appears to be broadly true, some political observers and foreign-policy experts say the rebuffed challenges to America’s full-throttle support for the war may yet turn out to be harbingers of deepening doubts – especially if the war is perceived to be turning into a multiyear slog.

Moreover, the United States may come to regret the rejection of any diplomacy with Russia, others say – especially if the war’s tide turns in Russia’s favor or if a desperate Vladimir Putin resorts to weapons of mass destruction.

“So far what we’re seeing are just small cracks in what overall has been very strong support for Ukraine,” says Rajan Menon, a national security and foreign-policy expert at Defense Priorities, a Washington think tank in the realist camp that promotes focusing on core U.S. national security interests. “But what these small cracks indicate is that we could see more fissures appearing next year,” he adds, “especially if it appears the war isn’t concluding anytime soon.”

What’s behind American doubts?

For right now, Mr. Menon says he sees two different reasons behind the doubts surfacing over U.S. Ukraine policy: One he calls the “price tag crack,” and the other he labels the “safety crack.”

Representative McCarthy’s comments flowed from the “price tag crack,” he says, reflecting growing hostility among some Republicans to President Joe Biden’s periodic military assistance and civilian aid packages that now total more than $65 billion.

Andrew Harnik/AP/File

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, seen here at a Capitol Hill press conference in Washington on July 29, 2022, warned in October that Republicans will not write a “blank check” for Ukraine if they win back the House majority.

The “safety crack” is coming from both experts and average Americans who worry that a drawn-out war, especially one going poorly for Russia, could prompt President Putin to use nuclear weapons or some other weapon of mass destruction, Mr. Menon says.

What continues to outweigh those two basic concerns about the war are two factors buoying support for Ukraine, others say. One is the sense Americans have that Ukraine – with U.S. military assistance – is actually winning the war; the other is a strong moral conviction that Russia has launched an unjust war and that supporting Ukraine’s resistance to that aggression is the right thing for America to do.

“There was such a strong natural rallying effect early on, I don’t think we should be surprised by a slight diminution in support as the war goes on. There will be ebb and flow,” says Peter Feaver, director of Duke University’s Program in American Grand Strategy and a former official on President George W. Bush’s National Security Council.

“But the way support for Ukraine has remained strong despite some emerging factors” like inflation and higher energy costs “tells me we aren’t going to see a collapse,” he adds.

Indeed, a survey last month from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs shows nearly three-quarters of Americans supporting continued military and economic aid to Ukraine – with 58% choosing to provide that aid “as long as it takes,” even if it means paying higher prices for gas and food.

But what the survey also reveals is a deep division among Republicans: While 50% favor supporting Ukraine “as long as it takes,” another 46% prefer urging Ukraine to “settle for peace as soon as possible so that costs aren’t so great for American households.” (Among Democrats the split is 70-30.)

It’s that split among Republicans that many in Washington are keeping an eye on.

In next week’s midterm elections, the number of Republican members of Congress siding with the “settle for peace to lower costs” minority is likely to grow, Professor Feaver says.

“Barring some shock on the battlefield that profoundly changes current trends, the next Congress is going to be less supportive of Ukraine than the current one,” he says, pointing to the loss of a number of “national security types” (he cites Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney) and the likely addition of more domestic-focused Republicans from the party’s “America First” wing.

Evan Vucci/AP

President Joe Biden addresses the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly, at U.N. headquarters in New York, Sept. 21, 2022. He promised a “consequential” response if Russia were to use nuclear weapons in its war against Ukraine. Some experts say Russian use of a weapon of mass destruction could lessen some Americans' support for the Ukraine war effort.

Indeed, it is the prospect of a Congress next year that is less supportive of Ukraine, and more focused on China than on Russia as America’s primary adversary, that reportedly has the Biden administration and a bipartisan group in Congress working on a large Ukraine aid bill – as much as $50 billion – to be taken up in the post-election lame-duck session.

“Getting one big aid package passed seems like a pretty smart move, in part because as we see in our survey, support for Ukraine remains so high,” says Dina Smeltz, senior fellow in public opinion and foreign policy at the Chicago Council.

“But that split among Republicans is also real,” she adds, “and when you combine that with the fact that a lot of the Republican candidates [for Congress] are of the Trump-leaning, less internationalist line of thought, it would seem to strengthen the argument for acting before seeing how things play out next year.”

When to negotiate?

The outcry that accompanied the progressive Democrats’ “give peace a chance” letter scalded not just the members of Congress who signed it, but foreign policy experts and officials who for months have been calling for a diplomatic channel with Russia.

Detractors say now is not the time for diplomacy, especially in light of Ukraine’s advances on the battlefield and the growing sense (also reflected in public opinion surveys) that Ukraine could win – meaning it could succeed in pushing Russia out of Ukrainian territory it now occupies.

Some experts argue that negotiating now with Mr. Putin would be tantamount to condemning millions of Ukrainians to living under Russian occupation.

On the other hand, proponents of diplomacy say that both Americans and Ukrainians have to consider the possibility that another year of war, with the accompanying death and destruction, won’t alter current battlefield positions much – or might even lead to a reversal of Ukraine’s fortunes.

Moreover, some say that even if Mr. Putin is pushed out of Ukraine, he could still continue a devastating air war, one that even now has impeded the delivery of electricity and water to millions of Ukrainians. And if he feels cornered, he might follow through on threats to use nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction – a horror some say would make the price of negotiations seem paltry by comparison.

No one would win that war. And nothing would shift public opinion faster, some add, than a sense that supporting Ukraine was a lost cause or had made America’s European allies more vulnerable and less safe by leading to nuclear warfare.

“The more Americans see Ukraine winning, the stronger their support will be and the longer it will remain strong,” says the Chicago Council’s Ms. Smeltz. “But the longer the war drags on, and especially if our side is not seen as winning, we certainly could see public opinion bottom out.”

There’s a steady stream of voters filing into the former Sam’s Club in Stonecrest, Georgia, by the time Dele Lowman Smith arrives at 10 a.m. and greets the poll workers.

Overall, early voting is going smoothly, with numbers almost as high as in the 2020 presidential election – virtually unheard of for a midterm. It hasn’t been as easy as it looks. 

As chair of the Board of Registration and Elections in DeKalb County, a majority-Black area that includes part of the Atlanta metro area, Ms. Lowman Smith has had to scramble to implement changes required by a 2021 state voting law that sparked controversy across the United States.

She sees Georgia as a microcosm of the entire country right now – a newly nonwhite-majority state, in which voters of color are shifting the state’s longtime political leanings and leading to what Ms. Lowman Smith describes as a “partisan power struggle” over voting.

During the 2020 election, at the height of the pandemic, DeKalb installed more than 30 drop boxes to increase access for voters and ease pressure on poll workers. Now the county is only allowed half a dozen, with the rest sitting in storage. DeKalb’s elections board recently met to consider a challenge to 412 voters on the rolls – the new law allows unlimited challenges, with some 65,000 brought statewide so far – and it’s hearing chatter about more in the works. Ms. Lowman Smith and her team are also bracing for people who show up at the wrong polling place on Election Day, since the new law limits the use of provisional ballots. 

Christa Case Bryant/The Christian Science Monitor

Dele Lowman Smith, chair of the Board of Registration and Elections in DeKalb County, visits an advance voting site two weeks before Election Day, Oct. 25, 2022. The repurposed former Sam's Club in Stonecrest, Georgia, is one of 16 advance voting sites in the county.

“Like many of the voters that we work on behalf of, we are motivated to work harder by barriers that are erected that could prevent our citizens from voting,” says Ms. Lowman Smith, as voters cycle through the turquoise voting booths.

For the past two years, Georgia has been ground zero for a national debate about how best to ensure election integrity while safeguarding the rights of eligible voters. According to the GOP-run state legislature, its package of new voting rules was designed to restore confidence across the political spectrum, with outside advocates holding it up as a model for other states. But critics have assailed the bill as a partisan effort to suppress the rising multiracial tide that put Georgia in Joe Biden’s column in 2020 and sent two Democrats to the U.S. Senate in January 2021. 

Some see this cycle’s record turnout as proof that concerns about voter suppression were unfounded. As of Nov. 1, a total of 1,947,191 voters had cast a ballot, just under the 1,979,963 who had done so at this point in the 2020 presidential election and nearly 750,000 higher than in 2018, according to the Georgia secretary of state’s office.

“All these claims that these reforms will somehow keep people from voting have turned out to be totally false,” says Hans von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission who now runs the Election Law Reform Initiative at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. 

Others see the high turnout as a measure of determination by people who feel their rights are being threatened and are voting early in case any problems arise with their registration or ballots. 

“The fact that people are voting is in spite of S.B. 202, not because of it,” said voting rights advocate and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams in her final debate with Republican Gov. Brian Kemp on Oct. 30. 

Ms. Abrams, through her organization Fair Fight Action, brought a lawsuit against the state after narrowly losing the 2018 election to Mr. Kemp, claiming “serious and unconstitutional flaws in Georgia’s elections process.” Fair Fight, which was joined by several faith-based organizations including Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, alleged violations of due process, equal protection, the right to vote, and the ban on racial discrimination in voting.

This fall, an Obama-appointed judge ruled against Fair Fight’s claims that a number of barriers in the 2018 election were racially discriminatory – including absentee ballot rules and the “exact match” verification requirement for voter applications. 

“Although Georgia’s election system is not perfect, the challenged practices violate neither the constitution nor the [Voting Rights Act],” wrote U.S. District Judge Steve Jones in his 288-page decision.  

Ben Gray/AP

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp (left) and Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams face off in a televised debate, in Atlanta, Oct. 30, 2022. “In Georgia, it’s easy to vote and hard to cheat,” said Governor Kemp.

Fallout from the 2020 election

In 2020, amid concerns about in-person voting during the COVID-19 pandemic, many states rapidly scaled up their use of mail-in ballots and relaxed protocols around absentee voting. To some, that raised concerns about the security of the voting process. 

Republican Michael Cogan, the former chair of the Maryland Board of Elections who oversaw the 2020 vote and has since moved to Georgia, says he gives tremendous credit to the administrators, local boards, and staff for all they did to pull off Maryland’s first election held primarily by mail. But he admits he still has questions about some of his decisions, such as using drop boxes, even with 24/7 surveillance.

“Anytime you’re working in an emergency situation, you’re always worried you cut one corner too short,”  says Mr. Cogan. “In order to make it more possible to vote, did I, by trying to solve this problem, just open up the door to another problem?”

Then-President Donald Trump stoked and exploited those fears, claiming there had been widespread fraud despite repeatedly being told by members of his own inner circle that there was no evidence of it. In a secretly recorded phone call that was later made public, he pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes – one more than the margin by which he had lost the state to Mr. Biden. Secretary Raffensperger refused. But many Republicans in Georgia and elsewhere believed Mr. Trump’s claim that 2020 election was fraudulent, leading to an unprecedented civilian assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, that interrupted the ceremonial tallying of the electoral count. 

Two months later, Georgia’s legislature passed the Election Integrity Act of 2021, known as S.B. 202, which placed new guardrails on the absentee and mail-in voting process. Among other things, the law prohibits election officials from automatically mailing absentee ballot applications to all voters, requires those voting absentee to provide photo ID, effectively limits both the number and hours of access to drop boxes in urban areas, and gives the state legislature – currently controlled by Republicans – more influence over both state and local election authorities. 

Georgia House Speaker David Ralston said the measures were geared toward “making sure the same level of security you have when you go to vote in person is the level of security when you vote by mail.”

Critics of voter ID laws say they disproportionately affect voters of color and other traditionally disadvantaged groups, who are less likely to have driver’s licenses or other forms of photo ID. But Heritage’s Mr. von Spakovsky points to a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research that compared voter turnout from 2008 to 2018 in all 50 states and found that voter ID laws had “no negative effect on registration or turnout, overall or for any group defined by race, gender, age, or party affiliation.”

The study also found that the requirements had no effect on fraud, a key reason cited by advocates of voter ID. While proven instances of voter fraud are low – one study put it at less than 0.00000013% of ballots cast in federal elections – a Heritage database of just under 1,400 proven fraud cases shows the different ways it can happen. They mainly involve local elections, and include two dozen cases that resulted in the election being overturned.

Concerns about voter fraud are just one factor that Republican legislators in Georgia cited as rationale for the new provisions. The law’s authors also argued it would reduce the burden on election officials, in part by shortening the window for absentee ballots, and promote uniformity in voting across the state, including by banning outside grant funding that was unevenly distributed and by giving the state more power to address persistent dysfunction at the county level that in the past led to long lines and problems processing absentee ballots. 

“In Georgia, it’s easy to vote and hard to cheat, and I’m committed to keeping it that way,” said Governor Kemp in the Oct. 30 debate with Ms. Abrams. 

“A redux of Jim Crow”

Part of the reason the debate is so heated is that higher Black turnout in Georgia is likely to help Democrats – still overwhelmingly the party of choice for Black voters, although that support has been softening at the margins in recent years.

In Swainsboro, a city of 7,500 several hours east of Atlanta, Black residents make up more than half the population, but persistently low voter turnout means white Republican candidates tend to win – by a lot. 

“You don’t feel like your issues are being looked after,” says Shayna Boston, an entrepreneur who ran for mayor last year and lost, 520 to 868. She and other local Democrats are pushing hard to boost registration and turnout this year, following Ms. Abrams’ model.

While the October ruling was a blow to Ms. Abrams, she maintains that her legal challenges and advocacy have already resulted in substantial changes that opened the way for more voters of color to register and vote, including the reinstatement of more than 22,000 voters removed from the rolls. 

She also continues to assert racial discrimination and voter suppression, contrary to the judge’s ruling. 

An Associated Press investigation found that nearly 70% of the 53,000 applications flagged in 2018 because a voter’s name did not match that on his or her government ID belonged to Black voters – roughly twice the share of Georgia’s Black population. 

Ms. Abrams, who says her father was arrested as a teenager for helping Black people to register to vote, called the 2021 bill “a redux of Jim Crow in a suit and tie.” 

Critics of S.B. 202 also fault the law for giving the legislature more control over the state elections board as well as giving it power to suspend county officials. As a result of the law, Mr. Raffensperger, the secretary of state who stood up to Mr. Trump, was removed from the state elections board. 

Perhaps the most infamous measure in the bill bans people from handing out food and water within 25 feet of voters waiting in line, or 150 feet of a polling place. Often left out is the context: The ban is part of a broader prohibition on soliciting votes through gifts or other means.

There are also concerns about the toll the law’s provisions is taking on those tasked with enforcing it. Ms. Lowman Smith admits it can be challenging to face persistent resistance after all the “clear evidence and arguments” that citizen representatives, attorneys, and election officials have presented.

“It is tiresome, it is frustrating, and at points it is angering,” says Ms. Lowman Smith, who is nevertheless determined to press on. “I hope we are setting the example in DeKalb County for the ways that election officials and ordinary, everyday citizens need to fight everywhere in the country to preserve this democracy.”

Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to Donald Trump when he was president, expects him to announce “soon” that he’s running again for the White House. And while she demurred on whether she’d manage another Trump campaign, she acknowledged that she’d be willing to serve in another Trump White House.

Speaking to reporters Thursday at a Monitor Breakfast, Ms. Conway said she and the former president speak “often,” and that she had advised him not to launch a 2024 campaign before the midterm elections were over. 

“I give him a ton of credit for not announcing this year, for not stepping in the way of the midterm candidates,” said Ms. Conway, who made history in 2016 as the first woman to run a victorious presidential campaign in the United States.

Mr. Trump, she predicts, will come out a “big winner” in this election cycle, with many Trump endorsees – counted out by some political observers as unelectable – in fact ending up in office. 

And what about Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who is expected to win reelection next Tuesday by a wide margin and then pivot toward a presidential campaign of his own? Only in his mid-40s and a one-time Trump protégé, Governor DeSantis is widely seen as a potential heir to the “America First” Trump legacy. The possibility of the two going head-to-head for the 2024 GOP nomination does not please party regulars.

Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis, once allies, are now on different wave lengths. On Sunday, Mr. Trump is holding a rally in Miami for Sen. Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican running for reelection to the Senate who lost to Mr. Trump in the 2016 GOP presidential primary. Mr. DeSantis was not invited to the Miami rally, and will campaign elsewhere that day. 

Ms. Conway suggests a way out. 

“If I’m Ron DeSantis, sure, I can think about running, but why not go be the best two-term governor of the third-largest state in modern history, if not ever, and then walk into the presidency in 2028?” she says. 

Ms. Conway speaks fondly of Mr. Trump. “Yes, he calls me honey. And I’ve been called much worse” by others, she says with a smile. 

But she also has a close relationship with Mr. Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, who is estranged from the former president over the Jan. 6, 2021, siege of the Capitol by Trump supporters – some of whom erected a gallows and chanted “Hang Mike Pence.” 

Ms. Conway pointed out that she still talks to former Vice President Pence, once a client of her polling firm when he was a member of Congress and then governor of Indiana. She also has a family connection to Mr. Pence: Her cousin is married to his nephew. 

But more consequentially, Mr. Pence has been behaving like a 2024 presidential candidate, giving speeches around the country and speaking out against what he calls “unprincipled populism,” a thinly veiled attack on Mr. Trump. Even if a Pence candidacy would be a long shot, the more evidently religious and mild-mannered former No. 2 could sow division within the GOP. 

“It was a nasty divorce in the end,” Ms. Conway says. “But they need to find a responsible way to co-parent the future of the party and the conservative movement.”

The C-SPAN video of our breakfast can be viewed here. Following are more excerpts from the breakfast with Ms. Conway, lightly edited for clarity.

As a pollster, what strikes you most about voter sentiment on issues? 

The most important polling number on a significant issue in the last year has been the migration of voters toward the Republican Party everywhere on the issue of education. This was an issue that for decades the Democrats dominated by 18 points, 20 points, sometimes 22 points. That has dissipated. On a good day, the Democrats are plus six, on a great day for my party, it’s tied, as some of these polls have shown, and that is a direct result of the last couple of years.

Last night, President Joe Biden gave a speech saying “Democracy is on the ballot” next Tuesday. How do you feel, specifically, about people who deny election results? To what degree do you feel that weakens democracy? 

Election denying is a bipartisan problem. You have Democratic members of the House of Representatives, as we sit here, who have never, ever legitimized a Republican presidential election this century.

When you talk about election deniers and you’re only talking about 2020, you’re losing a large swath of the country, because they are looking at the Democrats now, and saying, “You are inflation deniers. You are crime deniers. You are recession deniers. You are lost-learning and test-score-decline deniers. You are Putin-in-Ukraine deniers. You are, of course, open-border deniers.” And that’s a big problem for this party right now in this White House.

What’s it like working with Mr. Trump? 

Look, I wouldn’t have had that job – first the campaign manager, let alone senior counselor – and stayed there that long [until August 2020] if I weren’t listened to and respected by my boss. That is a situation that I think a number of people have with Donald Trump.

I think that the reason I do talk to him regularly and the reason that we have a good relationship, even though we disagree fundamentally on certain things, is because we disagree fundamentally on certain things. And he likes people who deliver news – good, bad, or ugly – respectfully, and in my case, deferentially.

I think one of the dumbest things ever said about him is that he only wants “yes men” around him, he wants people who are obsequious. No, he doesn’t, because then he doesn’t know where he stands.

If asked, would you be willing to manage another Trump presidential campaign?

I’ll let President Trump make his decisions on personnel. I certainly am with the majority of this country and a majority of Democrats in this country. I don’t want Joe Biden in 2024, either.

​Take a look inside the operations at Spaceport Cornwall, and the focus on precision​ and innovation​ is clear. 

People are dressed in pristine white lab coats, their hair tucked into blue caps, faces obscured by masks and goggles. The space is spotless, devoid of almost any furnishings or clutter. The workers huddle round a table, intent on the task before them, while in the background looms a huge cage, shaped like the nose of a rocket.

Here in southwest England, this clean room is where satellites are integrated into their dispenser – the piece of a launch system that will spit them out into space when they reach the necessary orbit. It’s part of a brand-new facility paving the way for the United Kingdom’s first-ever orbital space launch. 

The launch, expected later this month, will also be the first commercial launch from anywhere in Western Europe. It represents a wider rise of spaceports coming online in Europe, from other parts of the U.K. to Norway and Italy. The moves underscore the growing importance of space globally as a commercial, scientific, and military domain – and the determination of European nations including Britain to participate.

“I think this launch is incredibly important for the U.K.,” says Juliana Suess, research analyst and policy lead on space security at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based defense and security think tank. “Among the few real tangible milestones I would pick out from the government’s recent national space strategy was the sovereign launch capability in 2022.”

Shifting geopolitics of space

Some analysts even see a new space race underway, with powers such as the United States, China, and the European Union committing huge sums of money, and myriad moon missions planned over the coming decade.

More recently, the war in Ukraine has reinforced the critical nature of space technologies, with companies streaming down satellite imagery to bolster intelligence and SpaceX’s Starlink satellites providing crucial telecommunications services to the Ukrainian military. In addition, 36 satellites of OneWeb – an entity partially owned by the British and French governments – lie stranded in Kazakhstan, after Moscow refused to allow their launch without guarantees they would not be used against Russia.

In this increasingly fraught geopolitical climate, and with the importance of space ramping up, developing that sovereign launch capability is surely a boon. Yet it’s also just one piece of a much larger endeavor. 

“U.K. space launch is not the holy grail of U.K. space power,” says Gabriel Elefteriu, director of strategy and space policy at Policy Exchange, another London-based think tank. “It’s a very important and useful addition to our space offering, especially from a commercial perspective ... but we should realize there is much more to do and our ambition needs to go much further.”

The Cornwall launch hints at the current limitations as well as the aspirations.

This will be the maiden launch from U.K. soil of Virgin Orbit’s launch system called Cosmic Girl. Instead of a rocket lifting off vertically from a launchpad, this is a modified Boeing 747. Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket system will be carried by jet to an altitude of 35,000 feet, where it will be dropped and then ignite its own engine to head into space. 

Jason Thomson

Antennas at Goonhilly Earth Station, Cornwall, England, the world's only commercial deep-space communications facility, on Aug. 23, 2022. Goonhilly, which sits some 40 miles from Spaceport Cornwall, will be involved in tracking Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne rocket system, as well as the satellites it subsequently delivers into orbit.

LauncherOne is able to send up to about half a ton of satellites into space. Some of the other spaceports planned for the U.K. will be able to accommodate heavier payloads. SaxaVord, for example, based on the Shetland Islands, hopes to lift up to 1.5 tons, utilizing the more traditional vertical rocket launch. But compare that with SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, which can carry nearly 64 tons, and the difference in scale becomes apparent.

A British focus on satellites

Yet many analysts say the British approach makes sense, as the U.K. alone can never hope to compete with space superpowers such as the U.S. Rather, the emergence of Spaceport Cornwall reflects a decision to focus on partnerships and on an area that the U.K. already does well, namely small satellites. (Many are already built in the U.K., with Glasgow alone manufacturing more of them than any other location in Europe.)

“I think the U.K. has the possibility of becoming a hub ... globally, not just within Europe” for satellite microlaunchers, says Gabriele Redigonda, the research fellow in charge of U.K.-Europe relations in space at the European Space Policy Institute in Vienna. “I’m not saying it will; I’m saying it has a chance.”

The British space push is fueled substantially by private industry. Measured by private funding of space startups, Britain is by far Europe’s biggest player. Yet its government also plays a role. For example, the agency Innovate UK is seeking to nurture promising businesses (one of which is behind a satellite for the coming Cornwall launch) through an effort called Satellite Applications Catapult.

Still, for all the explosive growth of the small-satellite industry, the business case for numerous Europe-based spaceports is unclear. 

“I think it will come down to domestic political drive, wanting the U.K. to have space launch capability,” says Mike Curtis-Rouse, head of access to space at the Satellite Applications Catapult. “Will it be economic? I’m not entirely convinced.”

Building space ties with Europe?

But in a nod to the international ambitions of Britain’s nascent spaceport industry, the first launch will carry not only various British satellites – including the first Welsh one ever to be put into orbit – but also Oman’s first satellite, one from Poland, and a U.S.-British joint mission. 

The Polish one is perhaps most pertinent, as an emblem of continued cooperation between the U.K. and the EU, post-Brexit. Since withdrawing from the European Union, Britain has lost access to the EU’s Galileo global-positioning satellite system, and its participation in another EU program, Copernicus, hangs in doubt.

Yet the U.K. remains part of the European Space Agency, a body separate from the EU. Moreover, the recent merger between OneWeb (a company partly owned by the British government) and Eutelsat (partly French government-owned) proceeded with little difficulty, suggesting that the commercial space sector can continue functioning smoothly, perhaps even lending a boost to cooperation in space relations more widely.

“Certainly the people in the industry want to get the job done,” says Ian Jones, CEO of Goonhilly Earth Station, the world’s only commercial deep-space communications facility, situated some 40 miles farther into Cornwall than the spaceport and set to be involved in tracking the Virgin Orbit launch. “So from that point of view, I think space has a strong ability to bring people together.”

“You know,” continues Mr. Jones, “the astronauts that go into space talk about the overview effect of seeing the Earth without political boundaries. ... Space has always been an area of endeavor that transcends political differences.”

Editor's note: One sentence has been updated to reflect the likely launch timing more accurately.

Reuters

In Pretoria, South Africa, Nov. 2, former Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta applauds Ethiopian government representative Redwan Hussien and Tigray delegate Getachew Reda after signing an agreement to resolve the conflict in northern Ethiopia,

On paper at least, an African war ended yesterday. The government of Ethiopia and a rebellious faction in the northern state of Tigray signed a peace agreement exactly two years after taking up arms against each other. If the agreement holds, it will mark a turning point in what the World Health Organization has called “the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.”

From its outset, the conflict was a heart-wrenching contradiction: a war waged with seemingly gratuitous inhumanity to preserve, as Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed described it, a vision of Ethiopia as “Africa’s bastion of peace ... founded on love, shared concerns, and benefits.” The fighting has claimed half a million lives, displaced more than 3 million people, and left 5 million on the edge of starvation, according to the United Nations. It drew in a neighboring foreign army and other armed factions from within Ethiopia at a time of acute regional drought.

That tragic urgency, however, may yet prove to be a crucible of African peace and democracy. The accord, reached after 10 days of closed-door diplomacy in South Africa, affirms the core tenets of justice that African peacemakers have honed gradually over the past three decades: patience, humility, and reconciliation. The starting point, as former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan once said, is a conviction that agreements forged by enemies are “more likely than those imposed from outside to secure sustainable justice.”

The agreement itself is predictable in its practical measures. It calls for an immediate end of hostilities (which had yet to be confirmed a day later); disarmament of Tigray forces and their integration into the Ethiopian defense forces; and the free flow of humanitarian aid to Tigray, which has been isolated by government blockades for most of the last two years.

But it also contains a quintessential African trade-off: a declaration of Ethiopia’s territorial integrity and “restoration of Constitutional order in the Tigray region,” on one hand, and a “Transitional Justice Policy Framework to ensure accountability, truth, reconciliation, and healing” on the other. Those provisions seek a balance between Mr. Abiy’s desire to move Ethiopia beyond a restive collection of ethnic identities and a fear among groups like the Tigrayans that they would lose the rights and self-determination they claim under the current federal system.

“Political reconciliation ... is a process that requires perpetrators, victims, and bystanders to be drawn into a society committed to the rule of law, political participation, social stability, and economic development,” wrote Charles Villa-Vicencio, a member of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in his book “Walk With Us and Listen: Political Reconciliation in Africa.” 

Two years of fighting and 10 days of dialogue under the patient coaxing of African Union mediators have reset Ethiopia’s pursuit of an identity based on shared values rather than ethnic division. That reset came at a terrible cost. What happens next has the opportunity to bolster trust in democracy across Africa.