Russian President Vladimir Putin has been hearing for months from a chorus of Russian nationalist hawks that the country’s 200,000-strong expeditionary force in Ukraine is too small to achieve victory. That complaint only grew louder after the Ukrainian army’s swift and decisive recapture of its northeastern Kharkiv region earlier this month.

In an early morning speech Wednesday, Mr. Putin largely took the hawks’ side.

He announced Russia will mobilize a much bigger army of intervention, it will sponsor the immediate Crimea-like annexation of four Ukrainian territories, and might adopt much more destructive military tactics than previously employed. The announced plan prioritizes access to resources for Russian defense industries and calls up some 300,000 Russian reservists to active duty. Mr. Putin, while certainly no dove, had up to this point tried to minimize the war’s effects on the Russian public.

The mobilization bolsters the Russian forces already in Ukraine, made up of volunteers, contract soldiers, and separatist militias, which hawks argue are facing an ever-growing Ukrainian army that enjoys a near-unlimited pipeline of Western arms and support.

The “partial mobilization” coincides with laws hastily passed by the Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, that would enable a legal state of war in Russia. Formerly postponed plans to hold referendums in the Ukrainian Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions on requesting incorporation into Russia are now slated to take place this weekend. These measure are expected to pass, after which Moscow will regard the military front line in those regions as Russia’s own state borders.

Russian Presidential Press Service/AP

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks to the Russian nation in a televised address in Moscow, Sept. 21, 2022. Though Mr. Putin's "partial mobilization" falls short of what some hawks wanted, it goes toward addressing one of their major criticisms of the fighting.

The prospect that Russia will in the future regard those sovereign Ukrainian lands as its own territory casts an ominous light on Mr. Putin’s statement, amid a discussion of Western “nuclear blackmail” against Russia, that “in the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country and to defend Russia and our people, we will certainly make use of all weapon systems available to us. This is not a bluff.”

Many Western observers are interpreting Mr. Putin’s words as a threat to use nuclear weapons in case of an attempt to seize what he considers Russian land. That would be a marked shift from Russia’s existing nuclear security doctrine, which Pavel Zolotaryov, deputy director of the official Institute for US and Canadian Studies, says envisages use of nuclear weapons in only two cases: “First, if there is a threat to the existence of the Russian state. Second, when a nuclear attack on the Russian Federation has taken place.”

Sergei Markov, a former Putin adviser, argues that Russia will not launch a nuclear strike, whatever Mr. Putin’s speech may suggest. “We’re not going to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, not under any circumstances. Why would we need to? And think of the world reaction. Especially those countries that are friendly with Russia, they would immediately be outraged and join the U.S. campaign against us. We obviously will think about that.”

“The picture is going to change dramatically”

Analysts agree that the new decisions will drastically step up Russia’s prosecution of the war in Ukraine, making it far more bloody and destructive. At the very least it will prevent any repeat of Ukraine’s Kharkiv success, say Russian military experts, who attribute the rout to long, relatively undefended front lines.

“The Kharkiv retreat demonstrated what had been obvious for some time, that Russia lacks enough manpower to hold the front line,” says Alexander Khramchikhin, deputy director of the independent Institute of Political and Military Analysis in Moscow. “The idea now is to mobilize veterans with needed skills, though it’s not really clear how many can actually be brought in.”

Some analysts say a big infusion of fresh troops will enable Russia to wrap up its offensive in the Donbas, which has dragged on for months with only incremental gains. Others say a winter offensive in the south, to take the Black Sea port of Odesa and link up with Russian-occupied Transnistria, might be possible. Regardless, it is unlikely any of the new troops will see deployment to Ukraine before January, due to both the time needed to train and Ukraine’s late-year mud season.

AP

Members of the Luhansk regional election commission listen to a speaker as they plan to hold a referendum in Luhansk People's Republic, controlled by Russia-backed separatists, in Luhansk, Ukraine, Sept. 21, 2022.

“The main result of these new decisions will be a major increase in Russian army manpower,” says Mr. Markov, who has been advocating a more assertive war effort for quite a while. “The main reason the Russian army has had some failures is because even though Ukraine has a quarter of Russia’s population, it’s implemented full mobilization and achieved an army that’s much larger than ours. We should be able to field [several hundred thousand] new troops soon, and that will be enough to crush the Ukrainian army.”

The troops to be called up are a selected list of about 300,000 reservists, mostly those with special military skills, and not the millions of army veterans who would become available in the event of full mobilization. Mr. Markov also references a new “volunteer” force – the Third Army Corps – that is reportedly being assembled, as well as the possibility of foreign recruits (primarily men from former Soviet, Central Asian republics) who would agree to fight in exchange for Russian citizenship.

“The picture is going to change dramatically in the coming period. Western countries will have to decide what to do. If they maintain the current level of support, Ukraine will lose,” says Mr. Markov. “There is a chance that they will escalate in some way, and we need to be ready for that. Or, perhaps, they will opt for negotiations.”

“Putin is violating the social contract”

Mr. Putin’s decision to order “partial mobilization” avoids any strenuous test of public war support, at least for the moment, say experts.

“The general attitude of Russians toward partial mobilization is going to be moderately negative,” says Denis Volkov, director of the Levada Center, Russia’s only independent polling agency. “Over the past six months people got used to the situation, life returned to some kind of normal. But now people with children of conscription age are going to feel worried. ... If the mobilization remains partial, however, that will allow a lot of people to just close their eyes and think it doesn’t concern them.”

Abbas Gallyamov, a former Putin speechwriter-turned-critic, sees the longer-term political consequences for the Kremlin in a more pessimistic light.

“Putin is violating the social contract which he had with the society at some point: You don’t go into politics and I guarantee you a comfortable life,” he said on his YouTube channel. “If one side violates the contract, the other side considers that the contract ceased to exist. That’s why it took so much time for Putin to make this decision. He knew it was going to be unpopular.”

Though relatively muted, antiwar voices are present, and responding to the evident failure of Russian war aims so far. An online petition calling for an end to the war has garnered well over a million signatures in recent days.

Depending on how things shape up on the battlefield in coming months, more drastic measures may well be in Russia’s future.

“Our turbo-patriots expected a different set of decisions from Putin,” says Yevgeny Gontmakher, a professor at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics. “They wanted a declaration of war, general mobilization, and measures that would turn Russia into a besieged fortress. They won’t stop pressuring for that.”

The intensifying global contest between democracy and autocracy – heralded by President Joe Biden as the defining battle of this century – took center stage at the United Nations Wednesday as the American leader used his speech to the General Assembly to condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The war, he said, was a stab at the “core tenets of the United Nations Charter” and an attack on the principle of national sovereignty.

Invoking every U.N. member state’s reliance on the Charter to protect it from powerful neighbors, the president added, “This war is about extinguishing Ukraine’s right to exist as a state, plain and simple.”

Mr. Biden spoke just hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a dramatic escalation: a partial mobilization of forces and assets and a repeated threat to use nuclear arms. That followed significant gains made by Ukrainian forces recently against invaders they have battled since Feb. 24.

The notable defeats suffered by Russian forces have prompted a public questioning of Mr. Putin’s war by powerful leaders in the “autocracy” camp – most notably China’s Xi Xinping – and by leaders like India’s Narendra Modi who have sought to maintain a neutral stance on the conflict.

Yet even though Mr. Biden vilified Mr. Putin for moving to escalate the war in the face of rising global condemnation, he used much of his address to signal his understanding that in a world of rising climate-related destabilization, food shortages, and persistent health challenges, the war is not everyone’s top preoccupation.

Since the war’s onset, both President Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have portrayed it as a fight for democracy and for the U.S.-led rules-based international order.

Yet the problem with reducing global affairs to a battle between two ideologies, some diplomatic and international relations experts say, is that it shrinks the space and environment of cooperation and mutual trust needed for addressing pressing and even existential global issues, from climate change to food security and health.

And as the house that multilateralism built over the ashes of World War II, the United Nations may very well be the wrong place to press a vision of a great global ideological confrontation.

Where global challenges hit hardest

With his vision of the democracy-autocracy struggle and specifically, the war in Ukraine, “Biden is speaking and acting with a high degree of moral certainty that we are on the side of the angels,” says Michael Desch, a professor of international relations at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and founding director of the university’s International Security Center.

“We may have the Europeans and other Western allies with us on this,” he adds, “but much of the world is trying to tell us that there are other problems that the continuing war in Ukraine is sucking the air from.”

Brendan McDermid/Reuters

President Joe Biden addresses the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Sept. 21, 2022. Russia's war in Ukraine, he said, was a stab at the “core tenets of the United Nations Charter.”

It is especially the developing world, which is being hit hardest by global challenges like climate change, massive migration, and public health concerns, that resists joining a global ideological battle that would make addressing those threats more problematic, some say.

“We’re in the foothills of a new Cold War, with a world that is divided along lines of political systems and ideologies,” says Michael Doyle, a professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a former U.N. assistant secretary-general. “But at the same time, we’re seeing the emergence of a new Third World that doesn’t want to be forced into the straitjacket of a binary autocracy-vs.-democracy world.”

A realization of this resistance may explain why much of Mr. Biden’s speech to the General Assembly Wednesday was dedicated to addressing the triple threat of climate change, food insecurity, and world health.

Mr. Biden did indeed refer to the “contest between democracy and autocracy” that he has made a hallmark of his presidency, and he reiterated his conviction that “democracy remains humanity’s greatest instrument to address the challenges of our time.”

But he also downplayed the confrontational aspects of this contest, noting that the U.N. Charter was “negotiated among dozens of countries with different ideologies.”

Moreover, he declared the principles upon which the U.N. was founded – from national sovereignty and member nations’ territorial integrity to universal human rights – to be “the common ground upon which we all must stand.”

In what was perhaps the most heartfelt and human line of his speech, Mr. Biden noted as he laid out the high costs that the entire world pays for rising food insecurity, “If parents cannot feed their children, nothing else matters.”

Other avenues for leadership

Even before the American president arrived in New York, U.S. officials were acknowledging many countries’ misgivings about seeing the biggest week in international diplomacy dominated by a war they see either as only tangentially connected to their interests or as further complicating domestic challenges – one example being how the war has deepened the food insecurity crisis.

“No, [the General Assembly week] will not be dominated by Ukraine,” said U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield at a briefing with journalists last week. “Certainly other countries have expressed a concern that ... as we focus on Ukraine, we are not paying attention to what is happening in other crises around the world.”

And indeed, U.S. diplomatic engagement at the U.N. this week seems in part designed to demonstrate that the United States is taking the lead on a number of global issues.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken joined the African Union, the European Union, Colombia, and Indonesia in hosting a ministerial-level meeting on global food insecurity. Citing World Food Program statistics, Mr. Blinken said the war in Ukraine and its effects on global food supplies have raised the world’s “food insecure” population – people already facing hunger and threatened with famine – to more than a quarter billion.

David 'Dee' Delgado/Reuters

Secretary of State Antony Blinken co-hosts a meeting on food security during the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Sept. 20, 2022. The U.S. is seeking to demonstrate leadership on several global challenges beyond the war in Ukraine.

On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Biden was set to chair a meeting on replenishing the Global Fund that spearheads international efforts to tackle a number of health challenges largely affecting the developing world, including malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS.

President Biden also used his speech to energize long-discussed but largely dormant efforts to reform the U.N. to better address the challenges of the 21st century. The U.S. proposals include reform of the Security Council, whose five permanent and veto-wielding members reflect the power balance coming out of World War II, rather than an equitable assessment of global power distribution today.

Still, some experts say the U.S. and Western allies remain so focused on an ideological casting of the war in Ukraine that they risk prolonging a conflict that is costing not just Ukraine and Russia, but the entire world.

“When we recently saw both Xi and Modi indicating it’s time for Moscow to rethink what it’s up to in Ukraine, that suggested to me that [the Chinese and Indian leaders] may have been more diplomatic and realistic than what I expect the West to be in New York,” says Notre Dame’s Dr. Desch.

“The U.S. should have seized on that public distancing of two significant powers from Putin’s war as an opportunity to move forward diplomatically,” he says. “But [the U.S.] is so painted into a corner that it’s going to be hard to find a reasonable way out of this war.”

Welcome return to internationalism

Few diplomats or U.N. insiders give the U.S. effort to reform and update the U.N. much chance of success. But at the same time, some say the mere fact that the U.S. is including the reform agenda as part of a full-court diplomatic press is indicative of the U.S. return to a more active international engagement under President Biden.

“American leadership is back, and Biden has returned to a brand of internationalism that emerged after Pearl Harbor and that much of the world likes and is comfortable with,” says Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington who served as senior director for European affairs in the Obama National Security Council.

This is a “defining moment for democracy,” Mr. Kupchan says. But he adds that the test for Mr. Biden and other leaders of democracies is to move beyond rhetoric to demonstrating democracy’s value to populations and its superiority to the authoritarianism that others are advocating.

Noting the shaky global economy, an uneven emergence from the pandemic, and rising global hunger and migration, he says, “This is a moment in which democracy needs to get back up on its feet and prove to its citizens it can deliver.”

Yet while others agree that much of the world is relieved to see the U.S. return to a traditional leadership role, some caution that many countries remain wary of America’s staying power. At the same time, some say the U.S. shift under Mr. Biden so far has resonated most with Western allies.

“The world sees a sea change compared to the previous [U.S.] administration and a recommitment to world order,” says Columbia’s Dr. Doyle. “But from the standpoint of much of the developing world, they ask, ‘What’s that doing for me?’ They remain skeptical and need to be persuaded they won’t have to bear the cost of the new Cold War.”

Alexandr Demyanchuk/Sputnik/Kremlin/AP

Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) speaks to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during their talks in Uzbekistan last week. Mr. Modi upbraided Mr. Putin for having launched his invasion of Ukraine.

“Questions and concerns.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s startling acknowledgment that his key ally, China, harbored those misgivings over his war in Ukraine was just one sign that the price he is paying for his army’s setbacks is not just military.

There is a geopolitical cost too: The army’s failings have dealt a blow to his grand neoimperial ambition to reassert Russia as a major power on the world stage. The invasion of Ukraine was a crucial part of that plan.

The effects reach beyond China. Narendra Modi, the prime minister of Asia’s other rising economic power, India, last week publicly upbraided the Russian president over the war.

Closer to home, former Soviet republics – from Azerbaijan to Central Asia – also seem to be recalculating their interests in response to a sense of Russia’s weakened ability to impose its political will.

The war is not over, and the prospect of an outright Ukrainian victory is, at the very least, distant. Mr. Putin’s announcement on Wednesday that he was mobilizing some 300,000 reservists was a reminder that he retains the capacity to launch renewed attacks on Ukrainian forces and to strike energy facilities and other critical infrastructure.

But Russia’s international heft has shrunk, and that seems likely to outlast whatever happens on the ground. And the more destruction Mr. Putin unleashes – especially were he to become the first leader since World War II to use a nuclear weapon – the more he weakens his international position.

Gleb Garanich/Reuters

The scene of destruction in the town of Izium, in northeastern Ukraine, recently recaptured from Russian forces by the Ukrainian army, Sept. 20.

His immediate worry is not that China, India, or the former Soviet republics will formally side with Ukraine against Moscow. They’re likely to remain “fence sitters,” having abstained on the United Nations’ post-invasion condemnation of Mr. Putin’s war.

Yet Mr. Putin knows that the view from the fence has changed dramatically, now that the war has gone on for far longer than expected, and involved Russian retreats in a number of areas.

So when he and Chinese leader Xi Jinping traveled to the Central Asian country of Uzbekistan last week for a summit of the Beijing-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), he recognized how the war had weakened his position. Saying that he understood China’s “questions and concerns,” Mr. Putin was reduced to adding a note of thanks for its fence-sitting. Russia appreciated “the balanced position of our Chinese friends on the Ukraine crisis.”

He sounded less like the leader of a superpower and more like a supplicant.

And not a supplicant who necessarily gets what he wants. Even as SCO members were meeting in Samarkand, India’s U.N. representative briefly came off the fence to vote against Russia and in favor of allowing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to address this week’s U.N. General Assembly remotely. In Samarkand, meanwhile, Mr. Modi bluntly told his Russian counterpart that “today’s era is not an era of war.”

India and China both have good reasons to retain close relationships with Moscow. For India, the benefits include arms and military equipment, as well as Russian oil.

Tingshu Wang/Reuters

Customers in a Beijing restaurant dine near a giant screen broadcasting news footage of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Mongolian President Ukhnaa Khurelsukh during a meeting last week.

China also imports critical goods from Russia. But its geopolitical interest in the alliance runs even deeper. In Mr. Putin, the Chinese leader sees a key ally in his bid to supplant the U.S.-led post-World War II international order.

Yet even before the Ukraine war, Mr. Putin was always destined to be the junior partner, if only because of China’s incomparably larger, more diverse, and more modern economy. Russia remains overwhelmingly dependent on exporting its natural resources, especially oil and gas.

The war, and the Western sanctions it provoked, have sharpened that imbalance, and the Chinese know it. So do the Indians. Witness the hard bargains Beijing and New Delhi have been driving to buy Russian oil at a steep discount.

The sense that Russia is less powerful, more distracted, and less trustworthy as an ally also seems to be seeping into a number of the former Soviet republics where Mr. Putin had hoped to spread Russia’s revived great-power influence.

Last week, Azerbaijan suddenly launched a new incursion into Armenia, rekindling the conflict over the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh. It seemed a bid to test Russia’s resolve; Moscow dispatched peacekeeping troops to Armenia after the last major fighting there and acts as a guarantor of Armenia’s security through a regional grouping called the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

This time round, the Americans helped secure a truce, and when Armenia asked for CSTO military help, it got a fact-finding mission instead.

Other former Soviet republics in Central Asia also seem to be slipping from Moscow’s control. Fighting broke out last weekend between neighbors Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, for example. None seems likely to countenance anything like a break from Moscow. But, like the Chinese, they’ve largely avoided breaching the West’s economic sanctions on Moscow.

They are also drawing ever closer to China, their more powerful near neighbor.

And in the case of the two main energy economies in the area, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, there’s been a shift toward closer ties of a different sort – one decidedly unlikely to improve Mr. Putin’s mood.

They’re increasing their exports to the European Union.

Few professions seamlessly weave celebrity and community together the way teaching does. That is part of the charm of “Abbott Elementary,” which debuts its Season Two tonight. Even as the sitcom receives numerous awards for its relevant writing and performances, it still retains a refreshing humility. 

That down-to-earth spirit reminds me of my personal Abbott – North Aiken Elementary School in Aiken, South Carolina. Even though the brick building where I attended grade school was razed years ago to make room for expansion of the nearby high school, I can still see the “home of the Bears” vividly. I remember the 30-minute rides to school, the kickball field, and the merry-go-round that might fly into space if not for a rickety pole keeping it grounded.

I remember the assemblage of talent that would shape my life and the lives of my friends forever. I was a teacher’s kid, so I knew the secret – teachers could do anything. I hosted a school talent show when I was in third grade, and one of the acts was my mom. She did an amazing cover of Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing,” which I remember well, because I was so self-conscious about being a teacher’s kid that I didn’t introduce her as my mom.

Whereas my favorite subjects are math and history, the strength in “Abbott” is its chemistry – not just with its cast, but with the ability to incorporate grace and glamour into inglorious circumstances.

The cast is truly lovable, from showrunner, creative genius, and star Quinta Brunson to Tyler James Williams of “Everybody Hates Chris” fame, and comedian Janelle James, among others. Their off-screen synergy might match their on-screen timing as they accompany one another to various awards shows, rooting for one another as if they are up for education’s coveted “teacher of the year” recognition.

It’s fitting that Ms. Brunson is also a teacher’s kid – her rise from meme maiden to sitcom queen is what happens when the mischievous kid in school turns cleverness into a career. 

Sheryl Lee Ralph’s depiction of teacher Barbara Howard reminds me of my mother. Long before Ms. Ralph played a motherly role to Ms. Brunson’s character, to the students in “Abbott,” and even to the title character in “Moesha” (portrayed by Brandy Norwood), she was an iconic Black starlet in “Dreamgirls.” Glamour with grace.

If beauty and patience seem like terms far away from the current state of public education, that is certainly understandable. Teacher shortages, gun violence, and educational inequities heightened by the pandemic are further squeezing an already strained system. “Abbott” gets that as well, as evidenced by its contributions to underfunded schools.

Still, generous donations alone don’t constitute culture. What “Abbott” offers at this moment is a safe space, not only for imagining how to overcome adversity in education, but also for rethinking the balance between entertainment and empowerment.

Even with that crazy carousel and my own striking resemblance to America’s favorite nerd, North Aiken was still a haven. I could be found in a computer lab, playing an assortment of games like Oregon Trail and Carmen Sandiego. North Aiken was an “underfunded” school like Abbott, but it never seemed that way, because my mom and her colleagues made it feel like home for us.

I miss those times, not just in the context of adulthood, but with the tragedies of Sandy Hook and Uvalde in our midst. Public education needs a morale boost, and if the high jinks and hope of Hollywood teachers can provide a moment of relief from some of that misfortune, that is a win. If we can make role models out of athletes, why not make heroes out of our teachers again?

I am looking forward to tonight’s Season Two premiere of “Abbott Elementary” with the anticipation of a kid ready for the first day of school – clothes ironed and shoes laid out. I’m also thinking about the influence of unsung teachers who make our society what it is, and how we should take every opportunity to celebrate the mutuality between the learning teacher and the masterful student.

Mr. Williams described this dynamic perfectly last week in a tribute to Ms. Ralph’s Emmy win, where he graciously helped her to the stage to receive her award. 

“No matter how old or grown we get NEVER forget those who paved the road that you have the privilege of walking on today,” Mr. Williams wrote on Instagram after the awards show. “And if the time comes and you so happen to have the honor, walk them down that same road to their flowers.”

AP

A dog looks over a wall in front of a house covered in ice near Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2018.

Denmark has broken the ice on a difficult issue in debates over global warming. Yesterday it announced it will start giving money to countries that feel the worst effects of climate change and yet are the least responsible for it. The decision by one of the world’s most industrialized nations could set a precedent for similar countries in acknowledging how their historic use of fossil fuels requires them to lift up less-developed nations.

Copenhagen’s initial pledge is modest – $13 million. That’s compared to an estimated $70 billion needed annually by developing countries for adaptation to climate change. But the recognition of responsibility signals potentially larger funding to help such countries become resilient to adverse weather events, especially if the money is directed toward clean governance and local support.

Danish Development Minister Flemming Møller Mortensen said the move would have a healing effect on “negotiations between rich and poor countries, where the debate about loss and damage for far too long has been full of conflict.”

Since 2013, every United Nations climate summit has officially recognized the need for “loss and damage” compensation. The idea is that wealthier nations should help offset the long-term effects of their carbon emissions. The effects range from damage to homes to damage to ecosystems and culture. 

Putting a number on such compensation has been difficult. A lawsuit in Peru shows why wealthier nations have resisted giving climate aid. A local farmer is suing an energy producer in Germany over the possibility that its emissions helped melt glaciers that resulted in the flooding of his village. Where, richer countries ask, are the boundaries of liability?

Earlier this year, a group of 48 developing countries calling itself the V20 group of vulnerable nations sought to address that concern. It established a fund to both share the burden of climate costs and show that such funding can be fairly and transparently used.

Taking responsibility for the adverse impact of emissions has gained some ground. Scotland and a region in Brussels made modest “loss and damages” pledges at last year’s climate summit in Glasgow. At the U.N. this week, 16 countries, including Germany, agreed to support biodiversity – which helps mitigate climate change and its effects.

“Only through dialogue, cooperation, and sharing of ideas, information, and experiences, we will be able to advance concrete initiatives that can help people, communities, and countries at risk,” wrote A.K. Abdul Momen, Bangladeshi foreign minister; Mr. Mortensen; and Birgitte Qvist-Sørensen, general secretary at DanChurchAid, in Climate Home News. “Our goal is to turn dead-end discussions into cooperation and action helping us all to manage climate induced loss and damage.”

Climate resilience need not mean cycles of helplessness and recovery from weather events. It can mean rejuvenation through economic cooperation and higher standards of governance. Denmark has helped the world take a step in that direction.