Kevin Lamarque/Reuters/File

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivers remarks to employees on his first day at the State Department in Washington, May 1, 2018, after succeeding Rex Tillerson.

Over recent years, “build back better” has become the mantra of reconstruction teams looking to rebuild communities devastated by natural disasters, from earthquakes to hurricanes, but in smarter, more sustainable ways.

Now the transition team for President-elect Joe Biden is applying the guiding slogan of disaster recovery, which he employed during his campaign in reference to the entire United States economy, to the rebuilding of federal government agencies and departments.

And, say U.S. diplomats, former ambassadors, and foreign policy experts, perhaps in no case is the “rebuild, but better” concept more pertinent and urgent than with the State Department.

Hollowed out, demoralized, sidelined, politicized, even mortally damaged – all are among the descriptions that have been used to sound the alarm over the foundering and deteriorating conditions of the nation’s diplomatic infrastructure.

Calls for significant reform and revitalization of the State Department have been around for at least a decade, but the alarm bells have rung louder and sharper after what many have seen as President Donald Trump’s assault on federal institutions and disdain for what he considers the “deep state.”

At the State Department, large numbers of key senior positions and ambassadors’ chairs have gone unfilled, while junior and mid-level career officers – particularly women and minorities – have left the department in an unprecedented wave that has weakened the U.S. presence abroad.

Moreover, in recent years positions that have been filled have increasingly gone to political appointees, weakening the draw of a nonpartisan foreign service career.

“Not just a reset”

But even as a new team prepares to take the reins in Washington, there is wide recognition that just returning to where the State Department was before Mr. Trump is not the answer to the woes.

“The State Department is like a town that gets hit by a strong earthquake, and you realize it didn’t take long to destroy it,” says Barbara Bodine, a former ambassador to Yemen who is now director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. “But then you use that [realization] to ask, ‘How do we come back better, and stronger?’”

Referring to a Council on Foreign Relations report issued this month that lays out a path for rebuilding the State Department, Ambassador Bodine adds: “As the CFR report concluded, it’s about transformation, not just a reset. We need an organization and diplomats to meet the global challenges of this century.”

The CFR report is just one of the guides being used by the group within the Biden transition team that is focused on the State Department and revitalizing American diplomacy more broadly, sources close to the team say.

Other resources include a string of commentaries by former Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns and a bipartisan congressional working group promoting a transformation of American diplomacy. Mr. Burns recently declared the damage at the State Department “worse” than many people thought, even as he deemed the low state of State an “opportunity” to build a 21st-century diplomatic service.

What won’t work, some former officials say, is a kind of knee-jerk reaction that focuses simply on reversing actions taken under President Trump while ignoring longstanding problems. Those range from a stagnant bureaucracy and an organization tailored to the 20th century, to a “pale, male, and Yale” culture that fails to value the advantage that America’s diversity provides in a globalizing world.

“This can be the moment for much-needed reform, but it won’t be successful unless it includes an honest evaluation of the problems that preceded Trump,” says Bruce Jentleson, a former State Department senior adviser for policy planning who is now a professor of political science at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. “There needs to be a mix that addresses both the long-standing problems and the Trumpian impact.”

An inviting career path

For example, some of the factors that have taken the shine off a diplomatic career – bureaucratic lethargy, a sense that one can have a more impactful career in the private sector or nongovernmental organization world, a failure to adapt the foreign service to two-career families – have hobbled the State Department for well over a decade, Professor Jentleson says.

Others agree, but underscore that special attention must be given to problems that increasingly discourage young people aspiring to a career in global affairs from considering the foreign service in the first place.

Noting that the number of candidates taking the foreign service exam has fallen by half over the last decade, Rachel Kyte, dean of Fletcher, The Graduate School of Global Affairs at Tufts University, says the State Department’s growing politicization and falling diversity are turning off “young people who want to make a difference in the world.”

“You can engage with the world and build a global career in many different ways now, and the diplomatic corps is not going to be the first choice if young people see the politicization of more and more posts reaching farther and farther down into the ranks,” says Dean Kyte. “The impact will be to rob diplomacy of the professional depth you need as the political winds blow in different directions.”

What critics call the “hollowing out” of the State Department got going with a 2017 hiring freeze imposed by President Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson. He also moved to remake top management with his own team, causing more than 100 of about 900 senior foreign service officers to be fired, quit, or retire.

Mr. Tillerson’s replacement, Mike Pompeo, was greeted with sighs of relief when he lifted the hiring freeze in 2018. But critics say Secretary Pompeo doubled down on the department’s politicization, favoring political appointments over career foreign-service officers for senior positions and ambassadorial appointments, and notably failing to support career personnel in the context of President Trump’s impeachment.

A successful reform will include “recognizing once again that diplomacy is a profession, not a doggie treat you give to your major donors,” says Ambassador Bodine.

A signal on diversity

Another problem is the dwindling diversity at the State Department in recent years, even as the U.S. population has only grown more diverse. The number of U.S. ambassadors who are Black has fallen from 20 to 5, to cite one example, while currently no senior positions, like assistant secretary, are held by Black office holders.

“I’ve had students and alumni tell me they were concerned that the foreign service wasn’t a career where they would be fully welcomed, and so they turned elsewhere,” says Dean Kyte. “That’s not how you make the State Department a place where the brightest want to go.”

One development convincing some that Mr. Biden is serious about addressing the diversity deficit is that former career diplomat Linda Thomas-Greenfield is heading up the transition team’s State Department group. As assistant secretary for the Bureau of African Affairs, Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield was the department’s highest ranking Black official when she retired in 2017.

She has remained vocal on diversity’s role in revitalizing U.S. diplomacy ever since.

Building a better State Department will mean beefing up its expertise in the 21st century’s key “transnational” challenges, including climate change and cybersecurity, says Ambassador Bodine. Innovative and independent thinking about solutions to global challenges “has been submerged out of a fear of being seen as not with the program,” she says. “That really has to change.”

In Congress, Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas has led the charge on State Department reform – concurring that today’s global challenges like climate change must be part of U.S. diplomacy’s refurbishment, but adding that opportunities in diplomatic careers for training and remaining abreast of global issues must be expanded.

Yet as important as internal reform will be, some emphasize that a successful rebuild of the State Department will ultimately hinge on an all-of-society support for diplomacy and recognition of its vital role in addressing the transnational issues the U.S. faces.

“We’ve ended up at a place where we undervalue diplomacy, even though, if you think about it, our greatest successes over the last 30 to 40 years have been through diplomacy,” says Professor Jentleson. “We need to recognize that and build from that foundation.”

This is a story about seesaws. But not the kind you find in your neighborhood playground.

It’s about policy seesaws, now playing out in a pandemic-fraught Europe, as governments have swung from strict lockdowns to relaxed tolerance and now back again. And their example has implications an ocean away, as U.S. President-elect Joe Biden prepares to assume office in January.

With the pandemic at the top of his inbox, Europe’s frenzied response to a new surge in COVID-19 cases across the continent carries potentially key lessons about the scale of the challenge, the policy options for meeting it, and – perhaps most importantly – the costs of getting things wrong.

One lesson may seem obvious, but it still matters hugely. The pandemic hasn’t gone away and it’s not likely to do so soon. Despite encouraging news about vaccine trials, one of the scientists behind the new Pfizer vaccine told Britain’s BBC he did not expect vaccines to allow a return to “normal” life until next winter – a full year from now.

Or, as the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, put it this week, “We might be tired of COVID-19. But it’s not tired of us.”

That’s why the policy lessons from Europe bear watching, especially across the Atlantic. European governments lack Chinese-style autocratic command and control of their societies. They can’t call on the deeply ingrained sense of community, or the widely recalled experience of other recent epidemics, that have helped Asian states like South Korea or Taiwan cope so effectively.

Neither can Washington. So it’s worth understanding Europe’s COVID-19 seesaw.

While each European government has chosen its own level of lockdown, the new restrictions all have something in common: They were imposed suddenly after months of relative official insouciance.

Matthias Schrader/AP

An employee of German airline Lufthansa waits for passengers beside the check-in counter at the deserted airport in Munich, Germany, Nov. 12, 2020. Bavaria has been in a partial lockdown for over a week due to the coronavirus crisis.

Over the summer, Europeans lulled themselves into an assumption that after the COVID-19 onslaught in the spring, the worst of the pandemic was over, that with reasonable precautions economies could safely reopen, and that life could resume pretty much as before. Things, they thought, were under control.

Their governments knew this was unlikely to be true; their public health experts had warned them to expect a resurgence.

But European leaders faced a political problem: how to convince citizens who were reveling in a return to their familiar lives that COVID-19 was “not tired” of them. And, critically, how to persuade them to behave accordingly – to do without bars and cinemas and restaurants, for example, or to stop throwing and going to parties – not just for a few days or weeks, but until the pandemic was truly under control.

If they had succeeded in doing that, they could perhaps have relied on what their health experts were advising was the simplest and most effective way of combating the coronavirus: mask-wearing and physical distancing to keep cases low, along with widespread testing and tracking, allowing for more limited, targeted restrictions on everyday life.

But by the time the new COVID-19 wave began to hit Europe last month, it was too late. That explains the policy seesaw, the sudden move to much tighter restrictions, even lockdowns, much like those earlier this year.

The key question now – one that the incoming American president and his team will no doubt be asking, too – is about the future: how to avert yet another exercise in policy seesawing a few months from now.

In Europe, the answer still hangs in the balance.

Michel Euler/AP

A man and his daughter wearing face masks cross the river Seine in Paris. France's health minister says the country is "progressively getting back in control" of its resurgent coronavirus epidemic but warns that it will quickly flare again if people start ignoring lockdown rules.

With health systems under obvious pressure, most European citizens are complying with the new regulations, and seem newly aware, at least for now, of the importance of masks and physical distancing. But, especially because of the economic hardship caused by the reimposed restrictions, they also remain “tired of COVID-19.”

Some European leaders are selling the new crackdown in much the same way as they explained the one in the spring: Just do this and, before long, we’ll get things under control. In some countries, the carrot being held out is the prospect of something resembling a normal, family Christmas.

Others are voicing more caution, warning, for instance, that large-scale holiday gatherings won’t be possible.

But none has yet dared to proclaim what might be called an explicit anti-seesaw message – that however difficult it sounds, Christmas and much else in people’s lives may have to be abnormal this year, with fewer loved ones present, more masks, more distancing. Politically, that is still a hard prospect to raise. Even though the likely alternative is another seesaw – more lockdowns, more lives and businesses lost – sometime in the new year.

For President-elect Biden, facing the likelihood that the pandemic will still be raging in the U.S. when he takes office, the current picture across the Atlantic provides a stark reminder of the challenge he’ll be up against.

But if Europe does turn out to have learned the policy perils of the seesaw, if its citizens do accept the need for a more measured reopening after this round of lockdowns, the Biden administration will be able to point to a more encouraging example.

Yet the next president’s ultimate challenge may well be to tackle a very American phenomenon – the politicization of the pandemic, which colors attitudes about everything from masking and distancing to treatments and vaccines.

Putting Europe’s lessons to practical effect will be more than a matter of policy choices. Rather, it is likely to depend on how successful Mr. Biden is at achieving the dauntingly ambitious commitment at the heart of his presidential campaign: to begin to dampen America’s partisan rancor and to heal its divisions.

Federico La Hoz had an inkling he was going to be a part of history on Nov. 9.

That was the day legislators rushed to install the speaker of Peru’s Congress as president, after his predecessor was hastily impeached. Mr. La Hoz, 24, met up with friends and headed to downtown Lima, a sea of government buildings. They were surprised to join a swelling crowd of demonstrators, the vast majority young, opposed to what they saw as a power grab by newly installed President Manuel Merino and his congressional clique.

By Nov. 15, two protesters had died, intensifying demands for change.

As the crowd grew, so did the use of virtual networks – from Facebook to TikTok – to spread the word that people were organizing against Mr. Merino.

“We were saying ‘no’ to politics as usual,” says Mr. La Hoz. “[A] new generation that had not been interested in politics taking to the streets to stop what was happening.”

The protests grew in size, and by Nov. 14 they were deemed the largest street demonstrations in Peru in more than two decades. Mr. Merino stepped down and Congress selected a replacement Francisco Sagasti – a newcomer to electoral politics and thus further removed from the corruption charges plaguing many elected officials – the following day.

That’s three presidents in the span of a week.

Rodrigo Abd/AP

People who refused to recognize Peru's new government gathered to protest in Lima, Peru, on Nov. 14, 2020. Peru's Congress voted overwhelmingly to remove now ex-President Marín Vizcarra on Monday.

The young people protesting not only forced a change in leadership, but may have permanently altered the way politics will play out in Peru. That could mean a greater dependence on social media than the dictates of political leaders as the country prepares for general elections in April.

“The citizen movement today belongs to the young,” President Sagasti said in his inaugural address yesterday. “These young people have become protagonists, they demand representation and political participation. Young people are necessary for politics to change.”

Social media vs. classic politics

Virtual networks stepped in to fill the vacuum created by Peru’s weak political parties over the past week, says Miguel Morachimo, executive director of digital rights organization, Hiperderecho.

“Social media networks took on the role of classic political and social organizing. There were no leaders, which is why the marches were so diverse, with people coming out for the first time to take part in a protest,” says Mr. Morachimo, whose organization shared tips for protesters on how to protect their devices, ward off digital trolls, and ensure their digital rights.

Luis Nunes, a political scientist who has studied Peruvian politics since the 1990s, says a sea change is underway as emerging generations of Peruvians refuse to accept politics as usual.

“The majority of the protests were coordinated through [digital] platforms and not parties,” he says. “The upcoming election is going to depend heavily on social media because everything is transmitted quickly.”

The political crisis that led first to former President Martín Vizcarra’s impeachment and then Mr. Merino’s resignation has been years in the making. Congress and different administrations have been at loggerheads over policies, particularly how to deal with corruption.

History of corruption

While Mr. Vizcarra was popular, with an approval rating near 60%, his removal was not the only impetus behind the protests. The spark was the fear that Mr. Merino would attempt to roll back anti-corruption reforms and possibly stop the scheduled elections from taking place.

It was a final straw in a country where polls show that corruption is considered an even bigger problem than the pandemic or the economic crisis it has created. Peru has the third highest per capita death rate from COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University, and its economy contracted by 14.5% in the first nine months of the year compared to 2019, according to data from the national statistics agency.

These numbers, however, coexist with a dismal political track record. Corruption cost the country around $6.5 billion in 2019, according to the Comptroller General’s office.

Rodrigo Abd/AP

People hold photos of Jack Bryan Pintado Sánchez, who died during weekend protests against lawmakers' removal of President Martín Vizcarra, in Lima, Peru, on Nov. 16, 2020. A new crop of political leaders, preparing for April elections, is increasingly aware of the power of a young generation and digital platforms in the nation's politics.

With the exception of an interim president in 2001, every president since the mid-1980s has had serious legal trouble. Many are either in jail or inching closer to it. One president, Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), is in prison serving a 25-year sentence for human rights violations. He already finished serving time for convictions in several corruption cases. Two former presidents are under house arrest, and another committed suicide in 2018 to avoid arrest.

Mr. Vizcarra was impeached on allegations, so far without evidence, of corruption. He is under investigation for allegedly receiving around $625,000 in kickbacks when he was governor of a small state nearly a decade ago. He denies the allegations.

Two of the top presidential candidates in the upcoming race are accused of receiving illegal campaign contributions during a previous hard-fought election. Added to the lists of potential inmates are governors, mayors, and former cabinet ministers: More than 60 of the current 130 members in the single chamber Congress face corruption investigations. 

Trials for many of these former politicians and candidates have not started, and the protests over the past week stemmed from fears that Mr. Merino’s temporary government would make sure they never began. Many thought anti-corruption reforms, even if imperfect, would come to a screeching halt.

Congress was badgered by former President Vizcarra and faced public pressure to approve legislation that prohibits people convicted of a crime from running for or holding office. Even though Congress passed the change, it is still looking for ways to interpret how the new law is applied.

“New awakening”

The swift reaction of Peru’s younger generations via protests is a sign that politics here are already shifting, says Mr. Morachimo.

He sees it as similar to the role virtual communities have played in organizing pro-democracy marches in Hong Kong or protests for racial justice in the United States.

“We are seeing a new awakening of young people, and it is something that was needed,” he says.

A new crop of political leaders getting ready to run in the April elections is already convinced virtual platforms are the way to get new generations engaged. Luis Terán, who is running for Congress with the Podemos Peru party, says the pandemic has helped facilitate how politics are done in the country. He says the upcoming campaign requires creativity: Traditional methods are no longer effective.

Mr. Terán, a millennial, has been tapping into the online platform TikTok.

“TikTok is a way for me to promote labor rights with short, one-minute clips. It is a way to get young people interested, because until now, my generation and people younger than us had turned our backs on politics,” he says.

So far, Peru has 24 registered parties – a historic high – ready to run in 2021.

Newly inaugurated President Sagasti promised a government based on science, technology, and innovation, saying this is what the future of Peru requires. He promised to close the country’s digital gap, saying it’s unacceptable that only 40% of households in Peru have access to the internet. Smartphones, which are prevalent and typically have internet access, may be a great tool for connecting in a protest, but they are not as helpful for distance learning. The president wants to remedy that divide.

Mr. La Hoz, the young man who went out to protest with his friends, says he is certain that young people are not going to forget what happened this month when they cast their ballots in the April elections.

“Things have changed,” he says. “My generation and people even younger, who are just finishing school, will not forgive these parties for what they have done” to Peru.

Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters/File

Congressional staff open cases containing electoral votes during a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 6, 2017.

Debates over the effectiveness of the United States Electoral College have been happening for 200 years. Abolishing the Electoral College has become a popular topic in recent years, but would require a constitutional amendment. 

Some reformers, however, are proposing to use the Electoral College against itself. That’s the goal of the multistate National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC).

Q: How does the NPVIC work?

Under the current system, the presidential candidate who wins the most popular votes within a state is typically awarded all of that state’s electoral votes. But states are allowed to award their electoral votes using whatever system they enact into law. 

Under the NPVIC, a state would hold off on giving its electoral votes to the popular winner of the state, and instead award those votes to the popular winner of the entire country. And to avoid strange outcomes, states joining the NPVIC only begin awarding votes this way when a threshold of states representing 270 Electoral College votes has passed it. 

It’s a concept that’s beginning to draw support. The NPVIC legislation has already been passed in 15 states and the District of Columbia, representing 196 Electoral College votes, according to National Popular Vote, the organization that wrote the model legislation for the NPVIC and advocates for its passage in statehouses. In the November elections, Colorado voters rejected a ballot measure to overturn their state’s NPVIC bill.

The NPVIC “is a really elegant way of working within the current system of the Electoral College to still achieve a national popular vote,” says Emily Sirota, the co-prime sponsor of the legislation in the Colorado House of Representatives.

Q: What is the NPVIC meant to fix?

Critics of the Electoral College say it’s an antiquated system and forces campaigns to compete in only a select number of swing states. Data collected by National Popular Vote shows 96% of major-party presidential campaign events from Aug. 28 to Nov. 3, 2020, were in only 12 states.

Additionally, they say, the Electoral College makes it possible for a president to be elected despite more people voting for his or her opponent – this has happened five times, most recently in 2000 and 2016. 

But Don Wilson, mayor of Monument, Colorado, and co-sponsor of the state’s referendum against NPVIC, says a national popular vote would leave Coloradans behind as campaigns focus on big population centers to get the most votes out of their limited campaign cash.

Larger cities and states don’t always understand the perspectives of smaller locales, says Mr. Wilson. “So it’s important that each state maintains that sovereignty and that state voice on who is going to be in charge of our nation.”

In recent years, however, as Colorado has voted more consistently Democratic, and therefore become less attractive to national campaigns, the NPVIC would help ensure Colorado votes and interests remained relevant, says Ms. Sirota, who is a Democrat.

“Republicans in Colorado haven’t had a vote count for president for quite some time at this point,” due to Democratic wins in the state, she says. A system based on the national popular vote would ensure that votes by all Coloradans matter.

Q: Is the NPVIC likely to come into effect?

That may depend on how often the presidency changes hands. John Koza, chairman of National Popular Vote, says that typically whichever political party doesn’t hold the White House is more responsive to reforming the Electoral College. 

For instance, when the organization started pushing the legislation in 2006, Republican state legislators were hard to get on board, but then started warming to the idea during the Obama presidency. 

That oscillation means that while target states change depending on who is president and which party controls which statehouses, there are always a couple of states whose legislators will be interested in the idea, says Mr. Koza.

Still, getting Republicans on board going forward could get harder, as the country’s current urban-rural divide has given Republicans an Electoral College advantage. Democrats increasingly need to win the popular vote by larger margins to secure a majority in the Electoral College.

While the nation was transfixed by the presidential election, Coloradans had something else to howl about. 

Five days before the election, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced that, on Jan. 4, 2021, the gray wolf will be removed from its list of endangered species. At the same time, Coloradans were locked in a fierce debate over a ballot question asking if the state should reintroduce gray wolves.

The Colorado ballot initiative, Proposition 114, passed by just 2 percentage points, making history as the first time a state’s voters, rather than the federal government, called for wolf reintroduction. 

The narrow vote in Colorado highlights how divisive this issue can be. But advocates on both sides hope that moving the dialogue from the federal level to the state level sets the stage for everyone’s voice to be heard. Perhaps, they say, Colorado might offer a model for other states. 

“Colorado is useful almost as a laboratory,” says Ya-Wei Li, director for biodiversity at the Environmental Policy Innovation Center, a conservation nonprofit. “If it can balance the trade-offs, it might then signal a path for other Western states to deal with similar situations where there is quite a bit of human-wildlife conflict.”

Wolves at the door

Conservationists have lauded the reintroduction of gray wolves to the American West. In Yellowstone National Park, wolves were reintroduced in the mid-1990s and are credited with changing the food chain there in a way that restored and stabilized the entire ecosystem. 

The wolves have also been reintroduced to central Idaho, and they have spread out from both places and are currently established in parts of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. They’ve also been spotted in Northern California and northwest Colorado.

To wolf advocates and conservationists, these successes are justification to bring wolves back to Colorado, too. Eric Washburn, campaign manager for Proposition 114, argues that the wolves’ predation might strengthen ecosystems by reducing elk and deer populations that have overgrazed on vegetation. 

“We want these ecosystems to be as strong and resilient and biodiverse as possible,” particularly in the face of climate change, Mr. Washburn says. And, as has been seen in Yellowstone, he says, “We believe that wolves will help contribute to that.”

But in the areas where the wolves have returned to the landscape, the endeavor has also fueled tension. Ranchers worry about their livestock being attacked, and hunters worry about the welfare of wolves’ prey – and their game.

Blake Henning, chief conservation officer for the pro-hunting Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, which opposed Proposition 114, says that deliberately reintroducing wolves to Colorado, instead of letting them migrate from other states, would leave too little time for humans and other wildlife to acclimate to their presence. 

Hunters eradicated gray wolves from Colorado by the 1940s. When they were federally listed as an endangered species in 1978, there were only about 1,000 wolves remaining in the lower 48 states, all in Minnesota. 

Colorado had considered wolf reintroduction before, but Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) rejected the proposals as recently as 2016, instead focusing its management plans on wolves that might migrate into the state on their own.

Indeed, wolves have been spotted in northern Colorado since they were reintroduced in Yellowstone and Idaho. It has mostly been lone wolves that crossed the border, but earlier this year, a small pack ventured into Colorado, too. 

Some members of the pack were killed when they crossed back into Wyoming, however. While Colorado does not allow any hunting of wolves, Wyoming does, something that Delia Malone, ecologist and wildlife chair for the Colorado Chapter of the Sierra Club, points to as a reason to reintroduce wolves directly to Colorado. “The political landscape in Wyoming is a gauntlet of guns and traps to wolves,” Ms. Malone says. “What that does is make Colorado more essential than ever for restoration. It turns Colorado into a kind of sanctuary.”

Who decides?

To Proposition 114’s opponents, like Shawn Martini, vice president of advocacy for the Colorado Farm Bureau, it wasn’t a question of “do I like wolves or not?” Rather, Mr. Martini says, it comes down to who should decide. The strongest opposition to the measure, he points out, came from Colorado’s less-populous Western Slope, where the wolves would be reintroduced. 

With the next steps in the state’s hands rather than federal agencies, Mr. Henning is hopeful. “Yeah, I didn’t like the process,” he says, “but, given that the decision is made, I certainly feel better about the state’s ability to handle it. … They know the lay of the land, they have local relationships on the ground, and they can respond to things when ranchers, hunters have concerns.”

Mr. Washburn is also optimistic that CPW will come up with a plan using significant input from the ranching and hunting communities. “Maybe at the end of the day they’re not going to be thrilled with the plan,” the Proposition 114 campaign manager says. “But I think they’ll see that it’s fair, that it addresses their concerns appropriately.”

Robert Fischman, a professor of law and public and environmental affairs at Indiana University, says Colorado’s move might herald something of a rejuvenation for conservation at the state level.

When the Endangered Species Act passed in 1973, says Dr. Fischman, the states, which had historically led conservation efforts, became “junior partners” to the federal government.

“So I think this is a story of a revival for states taking the lead in managing not just their game populations, which they have continued to do through the 1970s, but now to have a renaissance of conservation efforts, and a renaissance of local extinction reversal efforts,” he says.

Having relationships locally is key, says Jason Shogren, chair of natural resource conservation and management at the University of Wyoming, and it can work well in less-populated states like Wyoming. “Everybody knows everybody” there, he says. “So there can be lots of exchange and interaction, and all of the players that need to be involved can get involved.”

In a much more populated state like Colorado, Dr. Shogren cautions, “getting all the key players together is probably the biggest trick.”

Mr. Li of the Environmental Policy Innovation Center says Proposition 114 could suggest how to strike a balance between federal and state conservation endeavors. The Endangered Species Act was designed to keep imperiled species from going extinct, he points out.

“To some degree, it’s taking where the federal government left off under the ESA,” Mr. Li says. Gray wolves are no longer about to blink out of existence, he says, but they probably still need some kind of management. “I think states are precisely where it’s appropriate to continue moving conservation progress forward for wolves.”

Reuters

Trucks enter Iraq from Saudi Arabia at the Arar transit point Nov. 18.

A key desert crossing at the heart of the Middle East reopened on Wednesday, three decades after being closed to regular traffic. At the Arar transit point, Saudi Arabia finally began to allow vehicles and people from Iraq to cross the 505-mile border. It was a tangible sign of a growing tolerance between Shiite-dominated Iraq and Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia – and a counterpoint to Iran’s religious aggression in the region.

Just days before the opening, leaders of the two Arab nations issued a statement citing “the need to keep the region away from tensions.” That is quite a contrast to Saudi Arabia writing off Iraq as a “lost cause” in 2003 after Shiites took power in Baghdad following the ouster of Saddam Hussein. The border was first closed in 1990 after Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait.

A rapprochement between the two oil giants has been five years in the making. It reflects other tectonic shifts in the Mideast, such as recent recognition of Israel by a few more Arab states and a general response by the region’s leaders to appease restless youth mobilized on social media.

At a practical level, Iraq needs Saudi investments to provide jobs and to recover from a devastating war with the Islamic State. Saudi Arabia seeks to counter Iran’s strong hand in Iraq. Yet each shows a willingness to curb the historic Sunni-Shiite rivalry in the Middle East.

As a struggling democracy, Iraq is now better able to balance the interests of its Sunni and Shiite populations. During the pandemic, Iraq’s top cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called for aid to be given to people of all faiths. And Saudi Arabia is trying to show a new face of moderate Islam. Earlier this year it sponsored a TV drama showing Jews, Christians, and Muslims living together in a peaceful village.

The line of cargo trucks at the Iraq-Saudi border on Wednesday was more than a sign of commercial exchange. The two countries “follow the same religion and share the same interests and challenges,” said Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. And, he might have added, it’s about time they show it.