For Iranians overwhelmed by economic, health, and political hardships, the historical irony on display at the sprawling Behesht-e Zahra (Zahra’s Paradise) cemetery, Tehran’s largest, could not be more acute.

It was there that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, upon his return from exile in February 1979 to launch Iran’s Islamic revolution, promised Iranians a “rich, satisfying life,” and told them to expect more than new homes, free water and electricity, and free bus rides.

“Don’t be satisfied just by those,” the charismatic Shiite cleric declared. “We will exalt your souls.”

Yet 43 years later, from Behesht-e Zahra and numerous other cemeteries across the country, reports emerged in December of a rash of thefts born of economic desperation so severe that thieves are stealing gravestones and reselling them at a discount after grinding off the names of the deceased. 

Grim as that cemetery desecration may be, for Iranians it is just one more telltale sign of a broader, yearslong decline from the dream of exalted souls. With few expectations of government help, as the economy disintegrates, other signs include a new spike in the national suicide rate and a surge in demand for counseling services.

In December, the head of Tehran’s coronavirus task force, Dr. Alireza Zali, made a headline-grabbing announcement. One out of every 3 citizens now grapples with some form of “mental disorder,” he said.

Ebrahim Noroozi/AP

People shop in a supermarket in north Tehran, Iran, Sept. 25, 2021. As U.S. sanctions strangle Iran's economy, record inflation is causing stunned shoppers in the country to cut meat and dairy from their diets and to purchase less each month.

“Given the disastrous inflation, poverty, unemployment, suppression, and restrictions on freedom ... such mental disorders are no surprise,” responded Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, who now lives in exile, on her social media channel. “These figures just demonstrate how critical the situation in Iranian society has become.”

“To promote mental health in Iran, people need to feel valued, that we are accepted by society,” said Saba Alaleh, a clinical psychologist who left Iran in September.

“Unfortunately, we see that in Iran ... everything has to be within the structure of the ruling regime,” said Ms. Alaleh, speaking from Turkey to a recent online panel organized by the Washington-based Middle East Institute (MEI). “In such a repressive environment, I lose my individuality and my self-respect is diminished. And losing my self-esteem, my mental chaos will increase.”

Every nation in the world has felt the psychological bite of COVID-19. A study of 204 countries published by The Lancet last October, for example, found a pandemic-related global increase of more than 25% in both “major depressive” and anxiety disorders in 2020.

On the pandemic front, the Iranian authorities in fact won praise last year from the World Health Organization for adopting “innovative approaches in essential mental health services,” which implemented “best practices from around the world.”

Within three weeks of the first COVID-19 cases being detected, the WHO noted, Iranian health officials had set up a national help line offering “trained mental health staff to provide individualized service,” which answered an average of 5,130 calls each day during the first nine months of the pandemic.

But beyond COVID-19, Iran’s misery has been deepened by a unique constellation of harsh U.S.-led sanctions, government economic mismanagement, drought, and a regime that is widely seen not as a problem-solver, but as adding to the suffering.

The array of pressures on Iran may, in fact, make the country’s mental health landscape unique, and the combined result is what some analysts call a growing “culture of sadness.”

“Countries can go through depression,” Dr. Mojgan Hakimi, chair of the department of psychology at Touro College in Los Angeles, told the MEI panel. But “policies can make a difference,” she added. “Freedom can make a difference.”

Vahid Salemi/AP

A man fills his car at a gas station in Tehran, Iran. A cyberattack last October disabled every gas station in the country; President Ebrahim Raisi said the attack was designed to get "people angry by creating disorder and disruption."

Signs are emerging that political hard-liners, who now control every lever of state power, are beginning to recognize the severity of the problem, even if they have not yet prioritized finding solutions.

Top officials have acknowledged widespread hardship, offering cash handouts and promising to fix the economy.

Still, political disillusionment has a key impact on the public’s mental health, says Farshad Momeni, director of the nongovernmental Institute of Religion and Economic Studies.

“As the people’s relationship with the ruling system worsens, we face a trust deficit, instability, dishonesty, hoarding, decline of morality, addiction, corruption, suicides, psychological problems, mental issues, growing divorce rates, and so on,” Mr. Momeni told officials of the research arm of the governmental Social Security Organization in November.

“Our [government] survey and monitoring system ... fails to see the most obvious phenomena,” he warned.

In Iran today, inflation, poverty, a sense of hopelessness, and suicide rates are all on the rise. Indeed, official statistics show that the ranks of those in “absolute poverty” have doubled in the past three years to include 30 million Iranians – more than one-third of the population.

The annual inflation rate had reached 43.4% by last month, according to government figures, and some food prices had risen by nearly 80%.

In Tehran, one vivid example of the scale of want can be found at a big fruit and vegetable market, where grocers put damaged and expiring produce on sale at a steep discount at 7 p.m. Every evening, shoppers stand in long lines to take advantage of the cheap prices.

“To tell you the truth, I am really puzzled with how people cope with this,” says an Iranian journalist with decades of experience, who was astonished when introduced to the market by a man living in the basement of his building.

He notes recent statistics from the Central Livestock Union that meat consumption has fallen in the past year by 50%, while sales of dairy products have dropped by nearly 60% in the same period, thanks to price rises of 70%.

Iranian Army/AP

Iranian missiles and a launcher are pictured during a joint army and Revolutionary Guard maneuver last October – a massive, two-day air defense drill in the country's sprawling central desert.

“That also affects the mental situation of people, that they can’t buy what they used to buy before,” says the journalist, who asked not to be named. So do fears of joblessness, he says, at a time when unemployment rates have topped 10%.

The widening financial hardship is increasingly visible in daily life: People are renting rooftops or living in tents; a growing number have turned to scavenging. In recent weeks, Iranian media have carried reports on how some Tehranis – not those who are destitute or have addiction problems, but employed ordinary people who can no longer afford to pay a rent – sleep every night while riding public bus routes back and forth across the city.

“The economy in Iran is everything, and mental health is seriously connected to it,” says a professional photographer who has chronicled Iran’s battles with COVID-19 and other trials over the past two years, who asked to remain anonymous.

“People felt they were at the edge of this nightmare, that they opened their eyes and saw this unknown, dead world,” he recalls. “Iranians ... were not prepared for this situation.”  

One result: Suicides have increased, leaping by 29% in the early months of the pandemic compared with a year earlier, according to the official Statistics Center of Iran, and the annual trend has remained upward, though no recent government figures are available.

Iranians have also shown their anger at the government’s failure to stem the country’s economic slide, taking to the streets to join protests that are sometimes violently put down, leaving hundreds dead since 2018.

The latest round of teacher protests erupted after President Ebrahim Raisi presented his budget last month. He proposed a 240% increase in spending on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and a 56% increase for state-run media, while offering only a 10% wage hike to teachers and other government workers.

It all adds up to more psychological pressure.

The increased availability of COVID-19 vaccine has eased some of the strain, after a slow rollout and the initial refusal by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to permit Western-made vaccines. But the coronavirus is not the only problem.

“It is a bit different from the past; the seriousness of the situation seems to be created by the people in power,” says the journalist. “Even Khamenei has mentioned that the trust between the people and the regime has been damaged.”

Vahid Salemi/AP

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi addresses the parliament during a vote of confidence session last November. Iran is still negotiating a restoration of the nuclear deal from which the U.S. pulled out three years ago, in the hope that Western economic sanctions will be lifted.

The new hard-line President Raisi has made some populist moves by visiting provinces shunned by his predecessor, Hassan Rouhani. They are “an attempt to bridge this growing gap that many officials now acknowledge,” says the journalist.

So was a promise of “good news” by the government’s economic affairs chief, Mohsen Rezaei, which turned out to be a welfare card worth only $8 per month that has still not been introduced.

Iran’s parliament, too, has been criticized for ignoring the multiple crises and instead focusing on religious issues and further restricting freedoms. It recently found time to forbid the import of musical instruments and sunglasses.

Critics say such behavior illustrates how out of touch Iran’s leaders are, and how unable they are to improve economic conditions, which might help improve Iranians’ mental health.

“They’ve got other priorities,” Alex Vatanka, an Iran expert at MEI, told the recent MEI panel.

“They are engaged in the battle of ‘all time’ against the United States; they have a [regional] foreign policy project that they want to finish.

“And in the meantime,” he added, “they are forgetting about the homeland ... about the majority of Iranians who really have issues that they need to have provided for at home.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File

The Lady Justice statue outside the United States Supreme Court in Washington. Roughly 95% of criminal cases around the country are resolved via plea bargain, but the process, which generally takes place in secrecy, doesn't always deliver justice – to the defendant or the victim.

Last year, in Berkshire County in Massachusetts, local prosecutors charged two white men arrested in separate cases with assault and battery. Both were in their 30s, neither had any prior criminal history, and both cut deals in exchange for pleading guilty.

But their deals differed significantly, despite the similarity of their cases. One man received a short probation sentence that included rehabilitation services; the other received a long probation sentence and fines.

Roughly 95% of criminal cases around the country are resolved via plea bargain, according to the Department of Justice. “Criminal justice today is for the most part a system of pleas, not a system of trials,” wrote U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in a 2012 opinion. What’s more, they happen almost entirely in secret, often negotiated out of sight of a judge and always out of sight of a jury of peers.

Now, some prosecutor offices are working on prying open the “black box” of plea bargaining. Hoping to make the process fairer and more transparent, they’re partnering with academics to track data related to their plea deals. Other prosecutors are trying to reduce the number of bargains they make.

Though far removed – perhaps too far removed – from the vision at America’s founding of a justice system built on a robust right to trial by jury, plea bargaining will likely always be needed. But there is now an increasing demand to improve the process.

“We have really needed this kind of data, this kind of research, for a long time,” says Ronald Wright, a professor at Wake Forest University School of Law who researches criminal prosecutors. “It’s groundbreaking.”

“We know about the outcomes [of plea bargains], and we know something about the inputs,” he adds. But the middle of the process, “all the formulations that go into making the offers, we’ve been blind to that for more than a century.”

“We want to be able to be transparent”

Plea negotiations mostly hinge on prosecutorial discretion. Their bail recommendation, for example, could keep a defendant in jail, thereby ratcheting up pressure to accept a plea. Another example is threatening more serious charges if a defendant refuses to accept a plea, known in the legal community as the “trial penalty.”

Outside of the fact that almost all criminal cases are resolved through plea bargains, very little is known about them – including inside prosecutor offices themselves. But since last April, researchers at Duke University have been helping prosecutor offices in Durham County, North Carolina; and Berkshire County, Massachusetts, document felony plea negotiations more thoroughly. Both district attorneys – Satana Deberry in Durham and Andrea Harrington in Berkshire – were elected a few years ago after promising progressive reforms to their offices.

Ben Garver/The Berkshire Eagle/AP

Berkshire County District Attorney Andrea Harrington speaks during a news conference, March 14, 2019, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Ms. Harrigton's office has been working with researchers since last April to document its plea bargaining process more thoroughly as a first step in improving it.

In Durham, researchers’ preliminary findings have revealed that 79% of felony cases involved only one plea before the offer was accepted, and that the vast majority of defendants who accepted pleas were people of color (though the office didn’t specifically track demographic information).

Formal, written plea offers are rarely revised, the researchers wrote in a report published last year. And “Alford pleas,” which contain a formal claim of innocence, are extremely uncommon. Defendants who accepted plea deals averaged around a decade less prison time than the maximum possible sentence for that category of crime. (Note: that maximum sentence would be reserved for people with lengthy criminal histories.) But the researchers added that they “lacked information concerning the reasoning of prosecutors for selecting plea options.”

“We want to be able to be transparent. We want to be able to tell our community what we do, who we’re prosecuting. We want to be able to be fairer,” says Ms. Deberry.

There is less data out of the Berkshire County office so far, but the information has encouraged prosecutors to have more contact with victims, Ms. Harrington says. It also suggests that her office is achieving one of her goals: sending more defendants to appropriate treatment programs.

In addition, under Massachusetts law, judges can reject or make changes to plea agreements, and the Duke researchers write that the plea tracker “could eventually shed light on how the judges and defense counsel influence case outcomes in Massachusetts.”

Looking ahead, Brandon Garrett, a professor at Duke University School of Law and leader of the project, says he and his colleagues will begin working with another local prosecutor office in Utah this spring. They also hope to partner with public defender offices this year and collect plea bargaining data from their side.

“Besides studying patterns, we want lawyers to do good work. Typically people do better work if there are steps to follow, if there are best practices,” Professor Garrett says.

“I firmly believe documenting the plea process will be seen as something any ethical lawyer does 10 years from now,” he adds, “even if no office had done it before a year ago.”

The plea tracker has also allowed Ms. Harrington to see why those two men in their 30s received such different sentences: The man with the longer sentence was believed to pose a higher risk of recidivism, she wrote in a Boston Globe op-ed; for the man with the shorter sentence, the prosecutor wanted to ensure his mental health needs were addressed. 

“I know we’re going to see problems. I know we’re going to see things that we need to address,” she adds. “We can’t fix things that we don’t necessarily understand.”

When pleas don’t deliver justice

The rampant and uneven nature of plea bargaining has had severe consequences for defendants and victims alike.

In 2002, for example, Christopher Ochoa was exonerated after 13 years in prison for the rape and murder of a young woman. He had confessed to the murder after more than 12 consecutive hours of police interrogation, and pleaded guilty in order to avoid the death penalty.

And last week a woman in Baltimore complained publicly about attempted murder charges against her ex-boyfriend being dropped as part of a plea bargain, despite his having set her house on fire while she and her roommates slept inside.

“Plea bargaining is rapidly becoming a system of ultimatums delivered by prosecutors, rather than real negotiation,” says Martín Sabelli, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

As in Mr. Ochoa’s case, innocent defendants can be pressured into making confessions before even seeing a lawyer. If a defense lawyer does get to meet their client, prosecutors can make compelling plea offers before that lawyer has time to investigate the case, file motions, or even get to know the client. Plea offers can also be made, and accepted, before discovery, when prosecutors share evidence – including potentially exculpatory evidence – with the defense.

“I get some plea offers the first day I meet my client,” says Mr. Sabelli. “[Defendants] just break under the threat of the trial penalty.”

“It fundamentally undermines the vision of the framers, and fundamentally undermines our basic sense of justice,” he adds.

Having a guilty defendant accept responsibility for their crimes is important not just for a sense of justice, but for the individual’s rehabilitation, says Paul Heaton, academic director of the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.

But pleas often don’t even mention the crime that occurred. “In reality what usually happens is you’re not pleading out to what actually happened,” but to a lesser charge, Mr. Heaton says.

Managing the “mammoth in the room”

The right to a trial by jury is as old as America itself – and was of particular importance for the framers, who felt the visibility of the process would help ensure that a citizen’s rights are protected.

But as the legal system grew increasingly professionalized, plea bargaining became more common. And as the war on drugs escalated, flooding the system with new cases to prosecute, pleas became the only way the system could continue to function. But the framers’ vision of a justice system in full view of the public has been eroded in the process.

No one is seriously advocating for a return to the Colonial-era jury trial-only system, but some prosecutors – like Utah County Attorney David Leavitt, a Republican; and newly elected Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat – are starting to reduce the number of plea bargains they negotiate. 

Given the sheer volume of cases that move through the U.S. criminal justice system every day, plea bargaining will continue to be necessary. But across the ideological spectrum – the American Civil Liberties Union and the libertarian Cato Institute are but two examples – many agree that plea bargains can be fairer and more transparent, and shouldn’t be coercive.

Before corrections can be made, however, the full extent of the problems in the plea process needs to be researched.

“We have a mammoth in the room. We can kind of see it, but we can’t see every part of it,” says Mr. Sabelli. Having more data, he adds, “will help us understand more the nature of the beast.”

Clarification: This article has been updated to reflect that maximum possible sentences would be handed down to defendants with lengthy criminal histories.

The name given to Russia’s so-called Putin Generation is a bit ironic. For while the segment of Russia’s population composed of young adults may have grown up knowing only Vladimir Putin as the leader, politics – and the Russian president – are low priorities.

Experts, however, have spent a great deal of time trying to understand the moods, views, and preferences of this enigmatic demographic in search of keys to Russia’s future. Because this new generation has no memory of the Soviet era of their grandparents, nor of the post-Soviet corruption and kleptomania of the 1990s of their parents.

Despite its emphasis on Communist ideology, the Soviet life experienced by their grandparents was tense, marked by enforced conformity and a daily struggle to satisfy basic consumer needs. That gave way to the desperate 1990s and the world that shaped their parents, a time when people struggled to survive, to reinvent themselves after the disintegration of Soviet economic life.

Instead, this generation, at least among those young people that the Monitor interviewed, seems to have a sense of optimism about life and a desire to reach beyond simple material security and do something to improve the world around them. That’s something relatively new in Russia.

“I have much bigger ambitions than them”

Despite his ubiquity in their lives, Mr. Putin is not a symbol or icon to his namesake generation, many experts say, but merely a flashy pop-sociology way to demarcate them without taking into account social class, education, gender, and other critical markers.

“They may have spent their whole lives with Putin as president, but I don’t think this has shaped them into some distinct ‘Putin Generation,’” says Elizaveta Sivak, a sociologist at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. “For them the most important thing is to communicate with their peers, follow their individual interests, concentrate on important life choices. Putin is somewhere in the background. There are very few who think expressly about politics, issues of democracy, and so on.”

Yet everyone agrees that they are different from their forebears and differ among themselves. Only 1 in 5 of the nearly 10% of Russians in this age bracket has the slightest interest in politics, few trust any form of authority, and most are absorbed in family and close circles of friends, according to the most exhaustive survey of the demographic. 

They universally draw their information from the vast global internet but without any common methodology. Disinterest in religion is growing among them. Half see themselves as “citizens of the world,” and yet almost two-thirds believe that a “strong leader” is the best defender of the common good.

The contrast between their experience and that of their parents is stark – and they are keenly aware of it.

“My parents talk a lot about the ’90s, how there was no food, no money, crime all around, and how much better things are now,” says Alina Poroshina, a political science student from Novosibirsk, in Siberia. She says she’s been lucky to attend a higher educational institute in Moscow, and she appreciates what her parents say.

Pavel Golovkin/AP

Young people sit inside a cafe in Moscow, Nov. 9, 2021. The so-called Putin Generation – those who have only known life under Vladimir Putin's leadership – are beginning to come of age, and now have an opportunity to shape Russia.

“But I have much bigger ambitions than them,” she says. “Everyone around me has grown up feeling the insecurity communicated by our parents, the need to get a career, to sacrifice in order to get ahead. I am lucky, because higher education is expensive, and many peoples’ parents can’t afford it.” As a hobby, she takes part in a modern ballet dance group.

Her desire to insert herself into the existing system, not overturn it, seems typical among young people. Despite the widening crackdown on what the Kremlin sees as politically active and foreign-supported nongovernmental groups, the space for nonpolitical civic action remains surprisingly open, at least compared with the Soviet deepfreeze that Russian society is still emerging from.

“In Russia today, civil society is more active than in the past,” says Ms. Sivak. “Things have really changed in this respect. There has been a proliferation of volunteer groups, community organizations, other groups that want to change something specific in the environment around them.”

Much has been made of youth participation in street protests organized by now-jailed anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, and most of the young Russians interviewed for this piece indicated that they were well aware of his fate. Ms. Sivak suggests that youth involvement in Russia’s sporadic street protest movements has been overestimated, and that most young people tend to be wary of all kinds of radicalism.

“There is a lot of discussion about students and street protests, but it turns out that their participation was not so numerous compared to other social groups,” she says. “In general the young people tend to look toward more evolutionary approaches.”

Ms. Poroshina, who clearly knows the political landscape, seems to exemplify that outlook.

“My goal is to become a political consultant,” she says. “First, I want to learn the shady side of it. But then, when I am aware of how it all works, I want to find ways to make it work in peoples’ interests. ... The key is to convince people to get involved in what is going on around them. You often hear people saying ‘I’m not political.’ What they don’t realize is that all life is political. Every choice we make causes changes for better or for worse. There are so many ways, all around us, to get involved and make things a bit better.”

“There are lots of jobs”

Timofey Zhukov, who is in his last year of high school, typifies the education-first, career-oriented priorities that his generation seems to have inherited from their parents. He wants to be a computer programmer like his father, and spends most of his spare time at home with his devices.

Fred Weir

High school student Timofey Zhukov, shown here at the Starlite Diner in Moscow, wants to become a computer programmer. “I’ve tried different things. I’m just not much interested in music, politics, or religion, like some other people,” he says. “Computer programming is a good way to go in this country."

“I’ve tried different things. I’m just not much interested in music, politics, or religion, like some other people,” he says. “Computer programming is a good way to go in this country. There are lots of jobs, always opening up. You can start making money just working from home on your own computer.”

The highly individual lifestyle Mr. Zhukov describes would be incomprehensible to the collectivized Soviet generation, and even parents sometimes look askance, say experts. But it’s hard to say how any of this impacts Russia’s direction, at least for now.

“The modern generation of youth is more free. They study better. They are oriented toward success,” says Natalya Zorkaya, a researcher with the Levada Center, Russia’s only independent public opinion agency. “The younger people have a higher sense of self-esteem. A lot of subjects have stopped being taboo for them. But all this happens in a narrow social layer, and doesn’t influence what’s happening in society as a whole.”

One reason Mr. Zhukov doesn’t go out much, he says, is because the Moscow suburb where he lives, Perovo, is a poor, dangerous place.

“When I see or hear a police car, I start to think something bad is going on,” he says. “I don’t break the law. But I am scared all the time. The authorities just have too much power.”

“If you want to change things, you need to do it yourself”

The only politically active person in the interviewed group is Daria Averkina, a psychology student in her early 20s. She works part time as an analyst for the New Peoples Party, a newcomer to Russia’s permitted spectrum of opposition parties that actually crossed the 5% barrier in recent elections and won 13 seats in the new State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament. Funded by a cosmetics tycoon, the party puts forward a liberal, anti-bureaucratic face that appeals to many like Ms. Averkina.

“Our president isn’t eternal,” she says. “Our generation is growing up. We didn’t live in the Soviet Union, and we feel like things depend on us, not on the state. I don’t like the way things are in this country. I believe that if you want to change things, you need to do it yourself. ... Many people think change is impossible. But they just don’t know their rights and possibilities. There is always a place to start.”

Soviet generations tended to marry very young, because that improved their position for jobs, housing, and other perks. Like all of the young people interviewed here, Ms. Averkina says she wants to have a family, but not necessarily soon. Other goals, like education, career, and travel should be satisfied first, she says.

Courtesy of Daria Averkina

Daria Averkina, a psychology student and political activist in Moscow, is working within the Russian system to foster change. "Many people think change is impossible," she says. "But they just don’t know their rights and possibilities. There is always a place to start.”

Though she has traveled a lot, Ms. Averkina says she plans to remain in Russia. She’s philosophical about the Kremlin’s current strained relations with the West. “Russia wants to position itself as a leader, because it’s big and powerful. But it finds acceptance difficult,” she says. “It’s really unfortunate that we’re seen by many as an enemy. Ideally, things would be different.”

“The idea that you can do something is growing”

Much will depend on whether this upcoming generation finds any route to power and influence, or is crushed by the current wave of repression against even some permitted political opposition movements.

“The main generational contradiction in Russia is between the young and the elderly,” says Greg Yudin, a sociologist at the Higher School of Economics.

“They no longer have any common language. ... The dominant attitude in Russia is to look out for yourself, because there’s nothing you can do to change things around you. But the idea that you can do something is growing,” he says. “Young people are concerned about the environment, the aggressive relations between people, the government’s disrespectful treatment of people, why are we so uncaring about the weak and dispossessed. So there is an urge for civil action, to find ways to make life more friendly and morally acceptable.

“But the elderly tend to be the elite. Putin, for example, doesn’t even use the internet. He belongs to a totally different culture. So how long that older generation plans to remain in power, and to what lengths they will go to hold on to it, is the key question.”

Editor's note: The story has been updated to correct the spelling of Natalya Zorkaya's surname.

Jason Lee/Reuters/File

China's President Xi Jinping meets then-Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, May 24, 2018.

In the fight against the world’s authoritarians, U.S. President Joe Biden wants help from democratic allies. But not all those allies are fully on board with his vision.

A recent poll asked voters in 20 democracies to choose between forming alliances to stand up to countries like China and Russia and taking a softer line that protects mutual economic interests. The YouGov/Global Progress poll of more than 22,000 people then divided countries into three groups: pro-democracy hardliners, pro-engagement “soft-liners”, and a middle group dubbed “handwringers.” These handwringers include Germany, Hungary and the Netherlands, and their populations show clear fissures over how much weight to put on exporting democratic values.   

Respondents in France, Italy, and Spain expressed fewer doubts: Economic cooperation trumps democratic alliances, putting them in the “soft-liner” camp. By contrast, Sweden and the U.K. sided with the pro-democracy camp, along with the U.S. and Canada.

And while these views don’t necessarily preclude NATO allies standing firm against Russia in the current standoff in Ukraine, for example, it does point to ambivalence in Europe over President Biden’s democracies-versus-authoritarians framing.    

Behind this hesitancy is the narrative that the U.S. lost much of its shine as the world’s democratic beacon amid President Donald Trump’s tenure, capped by the Capitol riot debacle as his term came to an end. There are also unique historical ties between individual countries and Russia, and support for strong economic ties with China. More than that, Europe with its welter of languages, cultures and styles of governance doesn’t fall so neatly into “black and white thinking,” says René Cuperus, a political columnist and senior fellow at the Clingendael International Institute, a think tank in The Hague.

“The Europeans don’t like to think in terms of friend or foe, and what [Biden’s] summit of democracies is doing is more or less preparing a new Cold War between the democracies and authoritarianism,” says Dr. Cuperus, referring to a virtual summit held last month. “I don’t think that Europe wants to enter that frame. They are part of a multilateral family.”

A call for self-reflection

For four years, Europe endured a U.S. president who flattered dictators and disdained democratic allies, including in Europe. That the same president, or an acolyte, could return to power has led some to question the stability of American democracy itself.

“I think in Europe, we would like to see the Americans go into self-introspection and self-reflection about their own democracy rather than exporting it. America is a very vulnerable, polarized democracy at the moment,” says Dr. Cuperus.

Michael Kooren/Reuters/File

Employees put on special clothing and footwear to prevent dust from entering the ASML factory in Veldhoven Netherlands. ASML is the world's leading provider of tools for making computer chips.

Deep, complex relationships with authoritarian countries like China and Russia also color the picture. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz hails from a center-left party with a historic affiliation with Russia, a country that was invaded by Germany and its fascist allies during World War II. “There’s a lot of guilt,” says Dr. Cuperus. “It’s not so easy for Americans to understand the legacy of the Second World War engine in Europe.”

Then there’s the economic weight of undemocratic powers like China. Take the Netherlands: It’s a longstanding trading nation that hosts ASML, a world-class computer chip toolmaker that underpins global high-tech supply chains.

“Should they be allowed to export their very high-class chips to China, or is that giving Western world a problem?” asks Dr. Cuperus. “But America is not compensating for that loss dealing with China. There should be a compensation mechanism within the western transatlantic trade arena.”

Trade with China has also driven policy in Germany, which under former Chancellor Angela Merkel backed a controversial European Union-China trade agreement that stalled last year. Germany also relies on Russian gas, particularly with the phaseout of nuclear power.

Operating from a different baseline

Overall, European countries perhaps operate from a different baseline than the U.S. on the purpose of foreign policy. Human rights violations don’t necessarily compel EU countries to act to change those governments’ behavior, says Sven Biscop, director of Europe in the World Program at The Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations.

“Furthermore, they don’t necessarily see the fact that China is authoritarian as the defining aspect of China,” adds Dr. Biscop. “Probably a democratic China would not abandon its claims to Taiwan, probably not even to the South China Sea, and it would still be a mighty economic competitor. What’s defining here — that China is authoritarian, or is it that it’s a great power?”

And while Russia borders Europe and poses a direct military threat, as seen in Ukraine, friction with China relates mostly to economic competition and the rules of trade, he notes.

Ultimately, there’s a pragmatism to Europe’s approach to global issues, and a realization that China and Russia need to be at the table, Dr. Biscop says. “People do care very much, for example, about climate change but it’s not so directly related to form of government,” he says.

For Hungary, another “handwringer” in the YouGov poll, the notion of standing up for democratic values is at odds with its own form of government under President Viktor Orbán; most analysts consider it a nondemocratic state. “Viktor Orbán has very openly challenged EU liberal norms, so it’s really a core part of his ideological identity,” says Richard Youngs, a democracy expert and senior fellow at Carnegie Europe.

Some European democracies are relieved that an America that vacated the field of democracy promotion and human rights policy under Mr. Trump has come back into the conversation.

“But I still think there’s a degree of skepticism over what a U.S.-led democracy and human rights push might achieve,” says Dr. Youngs. “The key question is, what happens now. It’s not simply about rebuilding the old transatlantic relationship. Can this move toward being an initiative that’s genuinely global?”

Millions of Americans experienced the power of poetry when Amanda Gorman presented “The Hill We Climb” at the presidential inauguration of Joe Biden last January. Gorman, the youngest inaugural poet, acknowledged that America is “far from polished, far from pristine,” yet captured the hopes of many with her closing lines: “The new dawn blooms as we free it, / For there is always light, / If only we’re brave enough to see it, / If only we’re brave enough to be it.”

A few days later, Gorman became the first poet to perform a poem at the Super Bowl. Her words honored an educator, a hospital worker, and a military veteran for their leadership during the pandemic. 

Now, with the publication of her first full poetry collection, “Call Us What We Carry,” Gorman expands and deepens her vision, gazing fearlessly at present circumstances and at the nation’s past. She imbues her work with timely, evocative language that shifts a reader’s perspective, explores hidden layers, and reveals wisdom and insight. 

For example, in the opening poem, “Ship’s Manifest,” Gorman notes, “To be accountable we must render an account: / Not what was said, but what was meant. / Not the fact, but what was felt. / What was known, even while unnamed.” 

That observation also describes how good poetry works. 

“Call Us What We Carry” is a rich, inventive collection divided into seven sections. Each section focuses on different aspects of history and the process of mourning or grappling with what has been lost.

Penguin Random House

Some of the most compelling poems deal with the losses and isolation that people have experienced throughout the pandemic. Others address injustices faced by Black Americans. In “Fury and Faith,” for example, Gorman undertakes the rage that many Black people feel and how that might be channeled: “Our goal is never revenge, just restoration. / Not dominance, just dignity. / Not fear, just freedom. / Just justice.”   

Recurring phrases and images thread through the work, as do references to music, literature, art, and culture. Together, those elements help illustrate the underlying theme that we carry memory, language, and trauma with us. How we carry them – with love, anger, or unforgiveness – determines our interactions with others and our very future.  

Part of what makes Gorman’s poetry compelling is her understanding that stories matter and that language can cleanse or defile us. In “Another Nautical” she writes: 

We, like the water, forget nothing,

Forgo everything.

Words, also like the water,

Are a type of washing.

Through them we cleanse ourselves

Of what we are not.

That is to say, words

Are how we are moored & unmarred. 

As readers move through these pages, they will feel a constant, gentle prompting to discard narrow, limited thinking. They will also hear the faint echo of major poets such as Lucille Clifton, Claudia Rankine, and James Baldwin who’ve stretched the genre and buttress Gorman’s distinctive, rising voice. 

Gorman, who is still in her 20s, has elevated poetry’s prestige. She has also energized young writers, who can see themselves through her eyes and words.  

Anyone who heard her inaugural performance can imagine her confident, poised delivery of the poems in “Call Us What We Carry.” Yet as Gorman has said in interviews, she struggled with a speech impediment until the past two or three years. Writing offered both respite and a form of self-expression.  

Her personal story lends credence to her observations about how difficult it can be to carry hope, and how necessary. As the title poem illustrates, “language is a life raft” that helps us bear and discard “Our rage, our wreckage, / Our hubris, our hate, / Our ghosts, our greed.” 

The best of her poems are brilliant and compelling; others are uneven and feel talky or didactic. Yet all of Gorman’s experiences and insights help readers understand the importance of cultivating hope and perseverance. She instills a sense of possibilities that might just help us start healing the divisiveness in the world.

AP

Cameroon players attend training ahead of their African Cup of Nations 2022 group A soccer match against Ethiopia outside the Ahmadou Ahidjo stadium in Yaounde, Cameroon, Jan. 12.

Usually when Cameroon is in the news, it is for something negative. The Central African country is one of the poorest and most corrupt. The Islamist militant group Boko Haram has displaced hundreds of thousands over the last decade. A low-level civil war festers in two provinces where English-speaking separatists feel marginalized by the Francophone majority. But in recent days, Cameroon has become the stage for something different: the power of sport to open what Nelson Mandela described as “a crucial window for the propagation of fair play and justice.”

As host of the biannual Africa Cup of Nations, the continent’s premier soccer tournament, Cameroon has become a showcase not just for the passion Africans have for the beautiful game, but also for their aspirations for stability and economic achievement.

The contests on the field provide a background for contests of ideals. One is Africa’s ongoing pursuit of self-confidence. Even before the pandemic Cameroon struggled to show it could host an international sporting event. In 2019 it failed to have venues ready in time, and the tournament was moved to Egypt. This year soccer clubs in Europe were reluctant to release their African players to play in the Cup due to concerns about the pandemic resurgence. As late as last month the Confederation of African Football (CAF)was divided on holding the event.

Those fears, argued CAF President Patrice Motsepe, deserved to be met. “We have to have confidence and belief in ourselves as Africans,” he said.

Now that the games have started, something more significant may be unfolding in Cameroon as well.

The conflict in Cameroon is a vestige of the country’s peculiar history of divided colonial rule under both the French and British. That cleft was never resolved, and in 2017 the current war broke out when lawyers in the two English-speaking provinces demanded greater autonomy. Since then more than 3,000 people have been killed.

Human rights activists and the International Crisis Group saw the Africa Cup as an opportunity for goodwill gestures and a truce. Instead, tensions have escalated. Rebels have vowed to disrupt matches in their strongholds with violence. The military has responded with increased deployments. Yet while both sides flex the harder forms of power, ordinary Cameroonians are finding strength in softer means.

Bombings in separatist strongholds ahead of the tournament prompted Muslim and Christian clerics to gather in mosques and churches in Yaoundé, the capital, to lead worshippers of both faiths in united prayer. Early on Wednesday, gunfire in the separatist town of Buea, where one grouping of teams is based, failed to derail the competition.

Human rights advocates have questioned how an international sporting event can be justified in a country where internal conflict has killed so many. In their determination to host and celebrate the joy of African soccer, Cameroonians are making a different argument: that unity and fair play can do more than violence to expose injustice. The ebullient drone of vuvuzelas by fans could be a sweet herald of peace.