The U.S. Supreme Court began a new term this week, and it began with a dose of skepticism.

During oral argument on Tuesday, several justices – including members of the high court’s robust conservative majority – questioned an appeals court holding that a federal consumer protection agency’s fundraising mechanism is unconstitutional. 

It’s unclear how the court will rule in the case, but the argument is an early indication that while this may be the most conservative Supreme Court in nearly a century, it still has standards and limits.

In some cases, the high court is facing the reverberations of its recent landmark rulings. In other cases, the court could deliver more rulings that conservatives have long pushed for. And then there’s former President Donald Trump, who is facing 91 felony charges amid four cases in state and federal court. Those cases are likely to be appealed and may reach the Supreme Court. 

But after a summer clouded by ethics controversies, the justices have returned to regularly scheduled programming to face, in various guises, the same question: How far right will they push the envelope?

Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP/File

Demonstrators gather outside the Supreme Court in Washington, June 24, 2022, after a majority of justices overturned Roe v. Wade, which had protected the constitutional right to abortion for nearly 50 years.

What are the big cases this term?

The argument Tuesday involved one of the term’s big cases, and one of the term’s big legal issues: the independence of federal agencies.

The even more conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit is a central player here. Some of the biggest cases the justices have agreed to hear this term involve appeals to rulings from that circuit, Tuesday’s case involving the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

In that case, the circuit court declared the agency’s entire funding mechanism unconstitutional – a mechanism that Congress has authorized for various federal programs for decades, including currently Medicare and Medicaid. During the argument, even some conservative justices struggled to understand the lower court ruling.

Congress may have “never gone this far” with that kind of funding mechanism before, said Justice Clarence Thomas, “but ... not having gone this far is not a constitutional problem.”

The Supreme Court-5th Circuit dynamic will be watched closely this term. Both courts have been reshaped in recent years, particularly by former President Trump. He appointed one-third of the current Supreme Court and six of 17 active 5th Circuit judges.

While moderate conservative justices rejected some of the more extreme arguments the court heard last term, experts say the 5th Circuit, which hears cases arising from deep-red Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, has been more cavalier. 

“You might say, why does the court have this focus on administrative law [this term]? Or you might say, why is the 5th Circuit issuing these remarkably extreme opinions?” says Carolyn Shapiro, a professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law.

“The 5th Circuit is doing some very extreme things, and the Supreme Court is almost always going to grant” appeals so those decisions can be reviewed, she adds.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP/File

Members of the Supreme Court, starting bottom row from left: Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito, and Justice Elena Kagan. Top row from left: Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Justice Neil Gorsuch, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

What else can we expect?

Another theme of the term is likely to be consequences.

Since a six-justice conservative supermajority took control of the Supreme Court three years ago, several legal priorities – including expanding gun rights and eliminating the constitutional right to abortion and race-based affirmative action in college admissions – have been addressed. This term will also see the court wrestle with the fallout from some of those rulings.

In 2022, for example, the court held that the Second Amendment guaranteed everyone the right to carry a firearm. Any restriction on that right must be consistent with the “history and tradition” of American gun policy, the court added, with little elaboration.

In a case scheduled for argument next month, the justices will have to elaborate. Specifically, does this history and tradition test mean the government can restrict people who are subject to domestic violence restraining orders from carrying guns?

The abortion issue could also return to the high court. An effort to revoke federal approval for a widely prescribed abortion pill already reached the justices, on an emergency basis, earlier this year, where they granted an emergency stay keeping the pill available. It’s possible the court will be asked to give the case a full hearing.

“The Supreme Court seems to have sent very strong signals to the conservative legal movement that it’s open for business,” says Steven Schwinn, a professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago School of Law. “But it hasn’t fully thought through what that means down the road.”

Are there other cases about the “administrative state”?

Yes, and the court will likely be more interested in restricting federal agencies in these other cases.

In another case from the 5th Circuit, the court will decide if the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission can impose civil penalties for securities fraud. The ruling could implicate the administrative powers of agencies from the Food and Drug Administration to the Postal Service. 

But another case, and one of the most high-profile of the term, is asking the justices to overturn the Chevron doctrine.

The doctrine, first articulated by the Supreme Court in 1984, holds that federal courts must defer to an agency’s interpretation of ambiguous statutes if it’s based on “a permissible construction” of the statute. Conservatives charge that Chevron has given federal agencies too much regulatory power over Americans’ daily lives, and several justices have openly criticized the doctrine.

“Together [those three cases] all put the court in the position of making clear how far it really wants to go in terms of curtailing the administrative state,” says Jonathan Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

“The court has already cut back on Chevron, and the way the question is presented, the court could cut back more without directly overturning the decision.”

Consequences are also likely to come into play with the three administrative law cases. The court has been willing to limit agency power in recent years, for example, but it’s been careful to do so in a way that doesn’t throw into question decades of agency actions, says Professor Adler.

“This term, the ability of the court to continue to sound those themes without [creating] significant consequences is more concerning,” he adds. “The court is going to have to think more carefully about the potential consequences. ... We’ll see if that affects how the court decides cases.”

Mariam Zuhaib/AP/File

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee (center), questions if the Supreme Court needs to adopt a code of ethics, April 6, 2022. Revelations about travel and favors accepted by justices have sparked calls for reform.

Wasn’t there lots of Supreme Court ethics news earlier this year?

Yes there was. Unlike other federal judges, Supreme Court justices are not subject to any formal ethics rules. And while people disagree over how big a problem it is, most agree that justices across the ideological spectrum have been able to make ethically suspect choices.

According to news reports, Justice Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito for years failed to disclose numerous gifts, including luxury vacations, from conservative donors and legal activists. Justice Sonia Sotomayor has been similarly criticized for reports that she encouraged public institutions to buy her books ahead of speaking engagements, and that she failed to recuse herself from cases involving her publisher.

“It heightens people’s concerns about the court, and to the extent they’re issuing opinions that are unpopular ... those concerns will continue,” says Professor Shapiro.

Justice Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts have brushed off the ethics concerns, the latter citing “separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence.” The court did adopt tighter reporting rules over the summer, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Elena Kagan have both said in the past month that the high court should take additional steps to address concerns about its ethics rules.

In a relatively surprising decision this week, Justice Thomas recused himself from a decision rejecting an appeal in a case involving efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Justices don’t have to explain recusal decisions, but the fact that a plaintiff in the case, John Eastman, clerked for Justice Thomas in the mid-1990s could be a reason. Still, court watchers say, it represents a departure for Justice Thomas, who had refused to recuse himself from similar cases in the past despite evidence his wife, Ginni, was involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The recusal “should not be big news,” said Joyce White Vance, a law professor and former federal prosecutor, on social media. “But in this day and age ... it is.”

Meanwhile, public approval of the Supreme Court is now at 40%, a record low, according to Gallup. Another potentially contentious term lies ahead.

Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have reached a new low this week following an uptick in terror attacks on Pakistani soil. 

Two separate suicide attacks in the western cities of Hangu and Mastung claimed the lives of at least 60 people on Sept. 29, and prompted a controversial ultimatum: Pakistan’s caretaker government ordered all unauthorized immigrants, including an estimated 1.7 million Afghans, to leave the country by Nov. 1 or face forced deportation. 

Central to the deterioration of ties between the governments is the relationship, perceived or real, between the Afghan Taliban and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), colloquially known as the Pakistani Taliban. The militant offshoot emerged during what became known as the war on terror, which was led by the United States.

Pakistan says the TTP is using Afghanistan as a safe haven from which to launch terrorist attacks, an allegation Kabul has consistently denied. 

Of the roughly two dozen suicide attacks carried out along the Pakistan-Afghan border since January, the majority can be attributed to Afghan citizens, says Sarfaraz Bugti, Pakistan’s caretaker interior minister.

“There is no doubt that attacks on us are coming from Afghanistan,” he said at a Tuesday press conference. On Wednesday, Pakistan’s army said an Afghan sentry had opened fire at the Wesh-Chaman border crossing and killed two Pakistani citizens, including a 12-year-old child.

Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid urged Pakistan to reconsider its ultimatum. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, he called the threat of deportation unacceptable and was adamant that Afghan refugees were “not involved in Pakistan’s security problems.”

The events represent a sharp break from Pakistan’s historically sympathetic attitude toward the Taliban, with whom they shared ideological and security interests. For years Pakistan has provided the Taliban much-needed financial and diplomatic support, and during the fall of Kabul, when the Taliban reclaimed power as Western forces retreated, then-Prime Minister Imran Khan said the group was “breaking the chains of slavery.”

But what Pakistan regards as Afghanistan’s failure to crack down on TTP activity has some seeing this relationship in a new light. Not all Pakistanis back the government’s ultimatum, but many see an urgent need for change. 

Sayed Zulfikar Bukhari, who serves as an adviser on international affairs in the Tehreek-e-Insaf party, Pakistan’s largest, argues that the inconsistency of Pakistan’s policy toward Afghanistan has had a destabilizing effect on the region. 

“Really and truly, we need to think about why we’re meddling in a neighboring country’s problems,” he says. “I don’t think Pakistan has gained anything in terms of having a close relationship with Afghanistan.”

Reuters

Rescue workers clear the rubble from a damaged mosque, after a suicide blast in Hangu, Pakistan, Sept. 29, 2023.

Suspicious alliance

After the collapse of the Soviet-backed administration of Mohammad Najibullah in 1992, Afghanistan became the theater of a long civil war that only ended when the Taliban – backed by Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency – took over the country in September 1996. Then, when the Taliban refused to extradite Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. President George W. Bush authorized a full-fledged military campaign to remove the Taliban from power and pressured Pakistan to become a front-line state in the war on terror.  

In the decades since, Pakistan has often been accused of playing both sides in the war. This infamous “double game,” as it has been dubbed in the American press, allegedly manifests in Pakistan’s oscillation between covert support for and military operations against the Taliban leadership. The result, experts say, is an alliance fraught with suspicion. 

In July, the chief of Pakistan’s politically powerful army, Gen. Syed Asim Munir, reminded Afghanistan’s de facto government of its commitment to ensure that its territory would not be used as a base for foreign terror operations. He also promised an “effective response” from Pakistan’s security forces should such attacks continue on Pakistani soil.

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

The recent suicide bombings in Mastung and Hangu have exacerbated tensions in what Farzana Shaikh, associate fellow at Chatham House’s Asia-Pacific program, describes as an already “uneasy” alliance.

“The Afghan Taliban, while they have certainly been the beneficiaries of Pakistan’s patronage, have always deeply resented the view that they are simply creatures of the Pakistani state,” Dr. Shaikh says. “What we find now is a very curious and some would say ironical situation where the Afghan Taliban, through their leverage on the TTP, have come to exercise the kind of control over some areas of Pakistan that would have appeared inconceivable some years ago.”

Tough love

Diplomat Maleeha Lodhi, who served as Pakistan’s permanent representative to the United Nations from 2015 to 2019, says it’s not going to be easy for Pakistan to extricate itself from this alliance, partly because the security concerns that initially drew Islamabad to the Taliban have not changed.

“The Taliban’s unwillingness to act against the TTP ... has strained Pakistan-Afghan relations, but stabilizing ties with its western neighbor remains a strategic compulsion for Pakistan given its unstable border with India,” she says. “The question is what kind of tough-love policy Islamabad is prepared to pursue to persuade the Taliban to respond to its security concerns.”

Experts see the crackdown on unauthorized migrants – which Mr. Bugti says is not aimed at Afghans, though most migrants in Pakistan are from Afghanistan – as one way to rattle the saber.

Abdul Khaliq/AP

The Taliban's spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, sits during an interview in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Aug. 14, 2023. He has adamantly denied that Afghan refugees were involved in terror attacks against Pakistan.

During the Soviet-Afghan war of the 1980s, approximately 6 million Afghan refugees moved to Iran and Pakistan in search of safety. Nearly 2 million more have fled their homeland since the Taliban retook Afghanistan in 2021, with many relocating to Pakistan. 

Of the 4.4 million Afghans living in Pakistan today, authorities say 2.4 million have refugee status and are free to stay. Beyond ordering unauthorized migrants to voluntarily leave the country in the coming weeks, the Pakistani government has not announced any concrete proposals to repatriate the others. Given the insecurity of the Pakistan-Afghan border, it is not clear if such a policy is even feasible.

Human rights campaigners in Pakistan are cautioning against a knee-jerk reaction from the government. 

Malaika Raza, the general secretary of the human rights wing of the Pakistan People's Party, argues that the state’s response toward asylum-seekers should be rooted in compassion. 

“As a neighboring Muslim country, Pakistan holds a unique position to understand and empathize with the plight of Afghan refugees,” she says, noting that there are people in Pakistan who have family on both sides of the porous border and could also suffer from escalating tensions.

“It is not only our moral obligation but also a reflection of our compassionate society to extend our protection and support to these vulnerable individuals,” she adds.

Jon Nazca/Reuters

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen attends the European Political Community summit, in Granada, Spain, Oct. 5, 2023.

It is a defining moment, one that has been drawing inevitably closer ever since Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his tanks and troops to try to subjugate Ukraine 19 months ago.

And while the decisions made in the coming weeks will involve the countries of the 27-member European Union, they will have important implications for the United States as well.

Because at stake is the prospect of a new political map of Europe, once the war in Ukraine is over, stretching the European Union into a wider partnership of democracies that would reach across the continent to the very border of Russia.

The vision is audaciously ambitious. It will depend significantly on how and when the war ends, since it would be hard to implement unless Ukraine regains control over all its territory.

Yet, with a rare show of urgency, EU leaders this week are embarking on a series of meetings to decide on the first steps toward making it a reality – possibly including the start of accession talks with Kyiv by the end of this year.

In the Spanish city of Granada, EU members met Thursday with all their neighbors in the 47-member European Political Community, before an informal EU leaders’ summit meets there on Friday.

The fact that a major eastward expansion is now on the EU’s agenda is a direct result of Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

And it underlines another reality: While Washington has been the indispensable leader of a united Western response to Mr. Putin’s invasion, the war itself is happening on European soil. It is the largest armed conflict on the continent since World War II.

Thomas Peter/Reuters

Ukrainian and EU flags fly in central Kyiv as the city hosts an EU-Ukraine foreign ministers meeting. Kyiv has asked to start talks before the end of the year on joining the European Union.

As with that world war and the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, the Ukraine conflict looks certain to leave Europe’s political alignment unrecognizably different.

The EU’s own roots lie in the post-World War II division of Europe, which left the Soviet Union controlling its eastern states. It began as a narrow coal-and-steel agreement between historic enemies Germany and France, part of a wider U.S.-backed effort to promote cooperation, economic development, and a lasting peace in Western Europe.

In the decades that followed, the Franco-German partnership grew into a thriving community of more than a dozen European countries, grounded in trade and economic cooperation but also increasingly in a shared democratic identity.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the group expanded again, but at a decidedly deliberative pace. It took 15 years to begin adding nearly a dozen former Soviet states.

The hope was that EU membership would not only bring these countries economic benefits but also reinforce their commitment to a democratic future.

That second goal has proved tricky. The new member states have indeed prospered, and most have integrated politically as well. But two former Soviet satellites, Poland and Hungary, are now under governments that openly espouse “illiberal democracy,” restricting minority rights, independent news media, and the rule of law.

Until now, that cautionary tale has dampened enthusiasm in many European capitals for the prospect of further expansion. More than a half-dozen other former east-bloc states have been kept waiting in line for EU membership for over a decade.

The new mood underscores how dramatically the Ukraine invasion has altered EU thinking.

For years, the EU had been actively engaging with the Kremlin. EU states – especially Germany, the bloc’s leading economy – had come to rely on Russian imports for much of their energy. That link is all but severed now, and it is hard to see how it might be restored.

On the political front, in an even more fundamental rupture, the EU has for the first time earmarked aid, including military supplies, to a country at war, Ukraine.

Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Reuters

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks during an EU-Ukraine foreign ministers meeting in Kyiv. He is keen to join the EU.

And EU foreign ministers this week traveled to Kyiv for their first-ever joint consultation meeting abroad. They met President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ahead of this week’s initial consultations in Granada on admitting Ukraine and the other Eastern European candidate countries.

There remains a raft of practical issues still to be worked out within the EU before new members could be admitted. One that could prove especially complex is how the additional budgetary costs would be shared among existing member states – any one of which, under current EU rules, could veto the expansion.  

And the current target date is 2030, seven years away.

But the main challenge is to learn the lesson of the last EU expansion to the east – that economic prosperity does not automatically translate into a democratic ethos.

Whether Hungary or Poland will yet reembrace the EU’s democratic mainstream remains unclear. In Poland’s case at least, the start of an answer could come soon, in a fiercely contested national election on Oct. 15.

But EU leaders are hoping that the new planned expansion will redraw more than the continent’s postwar economic map.

The aim is to answer Mr. Putin’s invasion with a widened family of European democracies.

Nathan Howard/AP/File

The Democratic National Committee’s rules committee discusses proposed changes to the primary system during a meeting in Washington, Dec. 2, 2022. The new schedule: first South Carolina, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada on the same day, then Georgia.

Roughly four months from now, Democrats will hold their first primary contest for the 2024 presidential race. The outcome isn’t really in question – President Joe Biden currently faces only nominal opposition for his party’s nomination.

What is in question is the location.

Officially, that first vote will take place in South Carolina. After decades of Iowa and New Hampshire kicking off the presidential election calendar, the Democratic National Committee last year upended that tradition at the behest of President Biden, who requested that “voters of color have a voice in choosing our nominee much earlier in the process.” The DNC tapped South Carolina – which has a sizable population of Black voters, and perhaps not coincidentally also revived Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign – to go first.

But talk with Democratic officials here in New Hampshire, including some of Mr. Biden’s most ardent supporters, and they’ll tell you that’s not happening.

“Of course” New Hampshire is going to go first, insists the state’s Democratic Party chair, Raymond Buckley, wiping sweat off his brow at an unseasonably warm picnic with local Democrats in Amherst last month. “Didn’t I say that a year ago?”

While the Granite State has not yet officially filed a waiver declaring its intention to thwart the DNC’s calendar, New Hampshire Democratic leaders flatly say they’re planning to do just that. Even if it means holding a primary election in which Mr. Biden isn’t on the ballot. Even if it means being stripped of half their delegates to the national convention next summer, as the DNC is threatening to do. 

On one level, the dispute may seem minor. But like hosting the Olympics, “first in the nation” primary status comes with real prestige, power – and money. Every four years, presidential campaign staffers and members of the media have descended on New Hampshire, filling hotel rooms and restaurants, while local television and radio stations are inundated with ads.

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

“At the end of the day, we’re going to be first, and Biden’s going to win the primary,” says New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Raymond Buckley at a Labor Day picnic for Amherst Democrats, Sept. 4, 2023.

And some say the confusion and frustration over the calendar changes could have real costs. In a reelection year that should be all about party unity, it could dampen enthusiasm and turnout in this and other key swing states – whose electoral votes could well determine the outcome in November. 

“New Hampshire will have the first primary, period. It doesn’t matter what the DNC does,” says Kathy Sullivan, a former New Hampshire party chair and DNC member. She accuses the national party of effectively “turning [its] back on a very hardcore group of Democrats” who want to show their support for the president.

“We have the DNC trying to tell us not to participate in an election,” she says. “That’s not democracy; that’s just plain stupid.”

Iowa and Georgia also in limbo

The standoff between New Hampshire and the national party has been going since last December, when the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee officially approved the new primary calendar, putting South Carolina on Feb. 3. New Hampshire and Nevada were supposed to follow on Feb. 6, with Georgia and Michigan at the end of the month. 

Iowa was taken out of the Democrats’ early lineup altogether, after a mishap-ridden 2020 caucus. But Iowa Democrats are considering implementing a mail-in caucus in mid-January, anyway. And Georgia, which was given an early slot by the DNC, is having trouble complying with the new calendar. The state’s Republican governor sets the primary date and has said he would only move the Democrats’ primary if the Republican National Committee agreed to move as well – which the RNC does not appear inclined to do. 

Charlie Neibergall/AP/File

A sign promotes the Iowa caucuses in downtown Des Moines, Iowa, February 2020. Implementing a revamped order for Democratic presidential primary contests has proved anything but simple.

In New Hampshire, officials say their hands are tied by a state law that requires New Hampshire to hold its primary one week before any other state primary – which the Republican-controlled legislature and governor have announced they will uphold. 

Officials at the DNC appear all but resigned to the fact that New Hampshire will probably go forward with a January primary date. If that happens, DNC rules state that any Democratic candidate who campaigns there will be ineligible to win the state’s delegates to the national convention. The Biden campaign, under this scenario, is not expected to put the president’s name on the ballot. 

“This is very much Biden’s decision. He is not going to put his name on the ballot,” says Elaine Kamarck, a member of the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee. 

Mr. Biden could, however, still win the state if voters choose to write in his name – an outcome that many New Hampshire politicos and party operatives are anticipating.

“At the end of the day, we’re going to be first, and Biden’s going to win the primary,” says Mr. Buckley. “Then we’re going to carry the state for Biden-Harris in November – and we’ll all move on.” 

A looming embarrassment 

But some here worry that the whole debacle could dampen turnout in a state that has transitioned from reliably red to purple. New Hampshire’s Democrats may see little reason to vote in an unsanctioned primary – and, critically, many independent voters may opt to participate in the Republican contest instead. Any independent who votes in the Republican primary will be registered as a Republican from that point on unless they change their registration back to independent. 

T.D. Floras, a sales manager from Nashua, has voted Democratic most of her life, but says she’s planning to vote in the Republican primary next year because she doesn’t want to “throw away” her vote in an unsanctioned Democratic election. While she says it’s “really unlikely” she would vote for a Republican in November, she adds that “anything can happen.” 

Sophie Hills/The Christian Science Monitor

T.D. Floras holds her dog, Lola, at a September GOP picnic in Salem, New Hampshire. Ms. Floras attends primary events every election season and always takes Lola, whose first political event was an ice cream social with then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2006.

“People here take the primary here very seriously,” says Jim Demers, who co-chaired former President Barack Obama’s New Hampshire campaigns and steered Hillary Clinton’s in 2016. “If there is no effort made to write in Biden’s name, then a lot of independents are going to vote in the Republican primary. I think it’s important to keep those Republicans on the Democratic side.” 

The DNC says it’s confident Mr. Biden will win the New Hampshire primary regardless of when it happens and whether he’s on the ballot or not. State polls have the incumbent president leading his current opponents, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson, by as much as 50 to 70 percentage points.

But some warn it would be an embarrassing turn of events should the president somehow lose the first primary contest of the season, even an unsanctioned one.

“The DNC has this false belief that the New Hampshire primary will be irrelevant,” says Ms. Sullivan. “The first headline is going to be who wins the New Hampshire Republican primary. The second headline is either going to be: Biden wins on a write-in, or RFK Jr. wins the New Hampshire Democratic primary. What’s the bad headline for Biden?”

Still, national party officials say the embarrassment will be entirely New Hampshire’s, if the state long known for taking presidential politics seriously winds up backing Mr. Kennedy or Ms. Williamson in a low-turnout election that doesn’t feature the sitting U.S. president on the ballot. 

“New Hampshire will either go second as we suggested, or become pretty much irrelevant to the process,” says Ms. Kamarck with the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee. “The real question is, what happens in 2028?”

Staff writer Sophie Hills contributed to this report.

AP

People in the capital Addis Ababa buy chickens for the Ethiopian new year, Sept. 11.

The European Union on Tuesday announced a new effort to help Ethiopia rebuild from an ethnic-driven civil war that still lingers nearly a year after it was brought formally to an end. Then, yesterday, a United Nations mandate for an inquiry into human rights violations during and since the war expired.

The two developments raise a question: Might Ethiopia be a testing ground for new approaches to bringing justice and protection for civilians in a conflict? If so, that possibility may reflect a global shift in how democracies coax reforms in post-conflict countries.

The United States and countries in Europe and Asia have “begun to move closer ... in their emphasis on the shared values that unite them and separate them from their authoritarian rivals,” Princeton political scientist Aaron L. Friedberg notes. Bolstering democratic practices abroad, he wrote for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, requires new approaches in political credibility and economic investment.

Since the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, and arguably further back, individual countries and the international community have embraced truth-telling as indispensable to post-conflict reconciliation and lasting peace. The U.N. inquiry commission, established by the Human Rights Council in 2021, was meant to “provide guidance on transitional justice, including accountability, reconciliation and healing.” On Tuesday, it reported that “most, if not all, of the structural drivers of violence and conflict” in Ethiopia remain unaddressed and require “continued international scrutiny.”

The commission needed the request of at least one member state of the council to keep working. Yet even as the EU commits to postwar reconstruction, no European country made the call. Critics fear that, without the panel’s oversight, potential war crimes will go unpunished. But the E.U.’s new investment plan espouses many of the same goals as transitional justice through other means. This includes investments in essential services that war-affected communities need to rebuild their lives and initiatives that “promote social cohesion, trust, and a culture of mutual respect and dialogue.”

Those investments, starting with an initial EU pledge of nearly $700 million over three years, align with Ethiopia’s own projects to rebuild local economies disrupted by the war. In August, the government estimated it would need $20 billion over five years to rebuild.

Postwar reconstruction involves renewing “a social contract between citizens and the government,” notes Alpaslan Özerdem, dean of the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University, in a Wilson Center blog. In Ethiopia, the EU may be shaping a new model for reform and reconciliation, one that targets investments toward uniting a country around shared values of good governance.