Work has begun in earnest on the Fall 2021 issue of 

 – which will examine human displacement as a global phenomenon that is reshaping societies as it challenges individual resilience. The issue will appear in late October. 

During the worst weeks of 2020, more than 12,000 Florida hospital beds were occupied with COVID-19 cases. But this summer, the virus has blown past that peak: During the last several days, well over 15,000 Florida residents have been hospitalized with COVID. If the state’s hospitals were under strain last year, today things are that much worse.

profiled a Florida physician who has been on the front lines of the pandemic from the beginning

., an internist at the University of Florida Shands Hospital, in Gainesville. Glenn reached out to Jones last week to talk about what he has seen during the Delta surge.

With more than 200 COVID-19 patients in house, Jones’s hospital has needed to covert additional units into ICUs and quasi-ICUs. “The patients are coming in younger,” Jones says. “We’ve had 18-year-olds, 20-year-olds. And they’re coming in much sicker. In the earlier waves, when we admitted patients they’d usually be OK with oxygen by nasal cannula at first. But the other day we had seven new admissions and they all had to be maxed out on high-flow oxygen. They come in so close to dead.”

This was not the summer that Jones had hoped for. This past spring, after a solid year in the COVID trenches, he felt badly burned out. “I was just licking my wounds, to be honest,” he says. “There really was some damage. I took some time off with my family and tried to focus on hobbies. And I know that many of my colleagues have been through the same. I don’t know that any of us were done with the recovery process. And now, with the surge – it’s not a great mix.”  

So far, Jones says, the hospital has managed its staffing crisis reasonably well, by bringing in temporary contractors. But that strategy always carries costs: “The contract nurses who have come in are fine,” Jones says. “But they don't have the institutional memory of how this hospital works. That extra five minutes it takes them to find a telephone number or to learn our process for transferring a patient – when we’re this busy with patients who are critically ill, those small delays are very palpable.”

Jones says that he’s sometimes had to resist being drawn into arguments with patients. “You ask them if they’ve been vaccinated, and some of them just start cussing you out,” he says. “But you just take a deep breath and realize that by definition, it’s not anyone’s best day.”

Even amid the surge, Jones says that only around 20 percent of people in Gainesville stores are wearing masks. “This is a sinking ship,” he says. With the state’s lackluster approach to public health, Jones expects the Delta surge to get worse before it gets better. He and his wife recently decided to keep their kids at home this year; pre-school would simply be too dangerous.

Jones and his wife also have had to put on hold their hopes of returning to work in a refugee camp in Colombia, as they once did for six months each year. When 2021 began, they had hoped to be back in Colombia by September. “Our hospital is stretched so thin right now,” Jones says, “my division has made it clear that no one’s going anywhere.”

 is the chance to talk about each issue on 

 – a long-running series of interviews hosted by 

In our conversation about the Summer 2021 issue on treaties and negotiations (

, the Deputy Director of the Asia Program, for a wide-ranging discussion of 

 – his insightful article on the complexity of India’s stance on international agreements.

Make sure to keep Wilson Center NOW on your radar. The program brings you the best of the Wilson Center’s thinkers every week. 

 create and sharpen the unique sensibility that had such an immense impact on Hollywood? A new book – 

Billy Wilder On Assignment: Dispatches from Weimar Berlin and Interwar Vienna

 (Princeton) – explores the roots of one of Hollywood’s most accomplished and acclaimed directors in the fervid journalistic atmosphere of Central Europe between world wars. 

Wilder’s career in movies was a dazzling string of successes, starting as a writer on classic films such as 

 (1939) and then leaping into an extraordinary run as a director of restless genius across numerous genres – including 

 in 1960), and perhaps the best film about Hollywood itself ever made: 1950’s 

Fans of these movies and others will delight in 

 ’s collection of pieces from the famed director’s early career as a big city reporter. Editor 

 (a film historian and professor at the University of Texas at Austin) foregrounds the numerous signposts to Wilder’s future in the yellowing pages of newspapers such as Vienna’s 

. And there is plenty of fascinating material to find, including a 1929 interview with future 

The collection also allows the reader to glimpse how Wilder’s foundational artistic sensibilities  were formulated through feuilletons and snappy profiles dashed off to meet deadlines. Wilder’s bemusement in the glitzy nonsense of England’s dancing Tiller Girls demonstrates a showman in the making. Yet his early ability to sniff out the contradictions and absurdities of class is also evident – as one can readily see in his 1926 interview with American publisher 

The man sitting across the room from me is a Vanderbilt, a member of the American billionaire family: he’s so rich that if the urge should strike, he could buy the entire Unter den Linden including the Brandenburger Tor, just for fun. 

“I am Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr.,” he says, full of kindness and warmth. While speaking he displays a sturdy but flawed set of teeth. 

He finally gets the answer a half hour later: Mr. Vanderbilt has no time for dentists: he has to work hard, work hard and always.

 is also a sharp pen portrait of the era in which he worked. 

 – one of the nimblest and liveliest translators working today – renders Wilder’s journalism into an English that leaps off the page with deadline urgency. Even brief pieces such as “Berlin Rendezvous” or “Renovation: An Ode to the Coffeehouse” etch the atmosphere of post-Habsburg Vienna and Weimar Berlin into energetic prose. 

Indeed, a sharply-observed “report” written by Wilder on his time on the hustle as a professional dancer could have been lifted from a 

It is bitterly cold at my place. It needs to be heated starting tomorrow, at least a little. It’s not the least bit pleasant to spend two hours half-naked, pedantically carrying out my dressing routine, knotting my bow tie with fingers that have turned blue from the cold.  

One might quibble that Isenberg's "Editor's Introduction" doesn’t offer readers a bit more context on the teeming journalistic world that Wilder pushed his way into so aggressively as a teenager in Vienna.

’ landmark biography of Austrian literary giant 

 – offers a window into fractious battles of Viennese journalism. Timms’ work is particularly pungent on and the immense unpopularity of Wilder’s first employer, 

Isenberg relates Wilder's claim in an 1963 interview with 

morning." But Kraus’ biographer cites a published account from 1977 which asserts that Wilder’s interview with Freud was cut short by the founder of psychoanalysis' deep dislike for 

Freud quickly showed Wilder the door after discovering he was from Békessy's newspaper

But such quibbles are minor when weighed against what 

 accomplishes. Iseneberg's collection offers those interested in the Golden Age of Hollywood valuable new insight into one of its most significant personalities. It is also a vivid account of the vanished world that helped shape Billy Wilder. 

Cover photograph:  Detail from Gustav Klimt's Beethovenfries. (Public Domain) 

Klimt_-_Beethovenfries_-_Verzehrender_Schmerz.jpg

A monthly look at what we're reading and watching.

WQ Dispatch - August 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic which engulfed every corner of the globe in early 2020 has exacted a catastrophic toll, sowing 186 million infections and 4 million deaths by mid-July 2021. It also badly dented (and even shattered) the world economy and the interconnected supply chains that help nourish it – creating even more widespread misery.  

Yet the political earthquake unleashed by COVID-19 upon a world already riven by nationalism and increasing state violence is also significant, and it has created immense impediments to collective action to fight the outbreak.  

For instance, the pathway to the emergence of the novel coronavirus remains a scientific mystery. But conspiracy theories about COVID-19’s origins have taken hold in many nations, with potentially-seismic foreign policy implications.

Weaknesses in the mechanisms of globalization also have been laid bare in closed borders, interrupted transit, and canceled flights. And as the world struggles with issues of vaccine equity, major powers see the race to develop, manufacture and distribute vaccines as an exercise in soft power.

Prospects for the planet’s comprehensive recovery (as well as the prevention or amelioration of future outbreaks) may depend upon a global treaty on pandemics. And a number of international organizations and world leaders are already signaling their support for such a measure. 

Charles Michel, President of the European Council, 

called for such a treaty in December 2020

 by World Health Organization Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and almost 30 other world leaders who co-authored a commentary in support of a measure. 

In only two months, sufficient momentum had gathered for the World Health Assembly to 

declare a special session in November 2021

 to explore a pandemic treaty. Yet major players such as China, Russia, and the United States still have not joined the explicit calls for a global agreement. 

he most prominent figures in global health advocacy and reform

 in government, international organizations, and academia. Her career at the World Health Organization (WHO) included a central role in creating 

 in 1986. Kickbusch has also been deeply involved in making and executing public health policy in various roles in the German government, and her academic expertise has led to appointments at Yale University and in her current position as founding director and chair of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.   

, Kickbusch spoke about the obstacles in the way of an agreement, and how nations might come together to act against future pandemics. She also debunked faulty presuppositions about the WHO’s authority, flexibility, and potential effectiveness as a venue for a treaty.

Kickbusch says inequity and delay are costing more lives and creating geopolitical tensions, especially as the world sees images “of people in the global North happily going to football matches and to the beach…and other parts of the world not having access to vaccines.”

The new dangers posed by COVID-19’s recent march though India and Africa, she says, as well as the spread of variants such as Delta through countries with high vaccination rates, “have created a new nervousness. It's slowly sinking in that the pandemic is not over – and it's not going to be over for quite some time.” 

In this “difficult and tense” moment, adds Kickbusch, “nobody really knows where we're going to be at the end of November when the decision on the treaty will be taken.” 

Pandemics such as COVID-19 do not respect borders. So collective global effort to battle outbreaks is imperative. 

The urgency of the COVID-19 crisis has led to impassioned arguments in favor of far-reaching measures, such as a May 5, 2021 article in The Lancet by Johnathan H. Duff and  20 other contributors titled 

“A global public health convention for the 21st century.”

Given the clear and present danger posed by COVID-19 and future pandemic diseases, there is a need for the international community to establish a more effective system to ensure observance of international pandemic regulations such as the [International Health Regulations (IHR)]…. The inexistence of an adequate system to ensure coordination, collaboration, and compliance with international public health security agreements (such as the IHR bolsters) the need to create a new convention that addresses these shortcomings.

orthright about the need for an international pandemic treaty

. But in a response she published alongside the May 5 

“A pandemic treaty for a fragmented global polity”

 – she argued that the “forceful WHO-like global entity” proposed in that paper and elsewhere would boast “powers beyond the reach of geopolitics today.” 

She sees forging a global pandemic treaty that balances effectiveness and global buy-in as foundational.

“A treaty always does more than one thing,” Kickbusch observes. “It is a political manifestation that countries take this issue seriously, and a signal that it's an issue that's really important for everyone…. The 

WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control

 was very much of that nature. Tobacco is a danger for all of us, and, therefore, we need rules that apply to all of us and support all of us. So I think this notion of ‘We're All in This Together’ is actually becoming even clearer.” 

Balancing the political and legal dimensions is also essential: “What is it – in terms of content of the treaty – 

Centering essential elements is crucial. “The minute you talk about a treaty in the global health space,” says Kickbusch, “everyone will ask: ‘Can I get my issue into this treaty as well?’ There 

 tension about how much a treaty should focus on pandemics. The European Union clearly said we want a pandemic treaty. We don't want a global health treaty. But there is a community out there that would like to see a broader treaty—which I don't think would stand that much chance, quite honestly. 

“So really it’s focus,” she continues. “We really need something that sets the rules for global sharing. What are we willing to share?” Placing that question at the heart of the matter will “ensure that the treaty – whatever is agreed – will contribute to joint rules, and to sharing, and to greater equity.”

Kickbusch is not surprised by a sentiment among those who think and write in the public health space that something stronger is required. There is ample evidence that existing structures are not coping with the catastrophe.  

“Many people are worried about compliance,” she says, “because the International Health Regulations have not been able to ensure compliance. Some people, and I think quite unrealistically, think about sanctions. But if we look at other areas of global treaties and agreements, sanctions have never been particularly successful.”

Circling back to things that bring skeptical nations – especially larger P5 countries such as China and Russia and the United States – to the table is crucial. “What must the treaty contain to be an incentive? Countries will have different interests,” says Kickbusch, “What can be incentives for these countries to be supportive of a treaty?” 

Kickbusch suggests that many answers can be found in previous successful agreements. The hard work of shaping a treaty to prevent future global outbreaks has started already in the pages of scientific journals.

“That's what people are doing a lot right now,” she says. “Looking at other treaties and agreements.”

The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is one example. “The framework is central,” she continues. “How that was negotiated. You actually have a process mapped out. What's helpful is that the process guarantees academic input. It guarantees – and this is something people forget – input from other UN organizations. Straight away, the framework convention had a working group of other organizations, which included the World Bank.”

The benefits can be startlingly useful. “The big study by the World Bank on the economic impact of tobacco,” she recalls, “was a significant contributor to the adoption of the framework convention on Tobacco Control.”  

Kickbusch insists the framework process is sturdy enough for a global pandemic treaty. “You might want to change one or two things, here or there,” she says. “But through the established process, you can actually hear the voices of others. You can involve other parts of the UN system.”

Those other parts of the UN system also can offer insight and inspiration to shapers of a global pandemic treaty. How does the Human Rights Council do country assessments? How does the International Atomic Energy Agency assess safety and security? 

 as another useful model: “[New America CEO] Anne-Marie Slaughter has said that the Paris Agreement is the new type of treaty we will be doing in the future, because it sets a goal, but allows countries to interpret the terms of reaching it. You're responsible to reach the goal, but the treaty doesn't tell you to do steps one, two, three, four.” 

While she allows that the Paris Agreement’s open-ended options might prove tricky in a pandemic context, Kickbusch says the concept is worth looking at as new treaties are devised.  

” she says. “We have to be creative in saying what can we learn from that work. People sometimes forget this, because they always look at the content of a treaty. But one of the things we found with the framework convention is that the process of the treaty itself is important. It keeps the issue on the agenda. It brings partners together who might otherwise not talk to each other. At the national level, because treaties need to be ratified, it takes the issue into parliaments and leads to discussion. So there are five or six process benefits that one must also take into account that can be very, very important, especially depending on which parties you want to involve.”

The growing momentum for a global pandemic treaty will certainly aid its prospects. “We have commitment from a significant group of heads of state,” observes Kickbusch. “They are saying: ‘We see this as an issue that goes far beyond our health ministries. It’s an issue that we need to tackle at the highest level.’” 

This sentiment also reflects “what is happening now in countries,” she continues. “They are discussing new types of security councils, or including health security in national security councils. All those kinds of things are starting to happen because [these governments] have experienced the gap [between public health and national security].”  

Kickbusch observes that bridging this gap is key. Global advocacy for a treaty and better-managed responses must not simply target health ministries. “The International Health Regulations are very health system focused. And the focal points for the IHR, and for outbreaks, are within the health system.” 

Informed political leadership is required to act effectively, especially at the earliest stages of a pandemic. “Taking it to heads of state and government level officials has consequences for the internal organization of the issue and the responsibilities within the country.” 

Kickbusch says high-ranking diplomats usually have a strong involvement “because they have an interest in what treaties they are getting into. What does this agreement mean? What are our responsibilities?”

High-level leadership also brings significant benefits to treaties in the public health space. She observes that 

Pandemic Influenza Preparedness (PIP) Framework

 negotiations were successful in part because “you had the two top diplomats who had the chair at the time – from Norway and Mexico – used all their diplomatic skills as experienced negotiators to get it through.” 

“What must the treaty contain to be an incentive? Countries will have different interests. What can be incentives for these countries to be supportive of a treaty?” 

Because so many complex issues occur at the intersection of public health and security, the significant momentum for a global pandemic treaty among heads of state, diplomats, and international organizations is key to getting an effective agreement. “All these people are right there at the top,” she says. “That will reflect how the treaty is negotiated. We've seen how geopolitical this is. How it affects the economy and everything else. Everyone's going to say: ‘Hey guys, we're not going to leave that to the health ministers.’”

“The closeness and the interrelationship to traditional security issues is something that some of the P5 countries are always particularly very concerned about,” says Kickbusch. “When the [current] International Health Regulations were negotiated, the link to traditional security, biosecurity, etcetera, was absolutely essential for some countries. They wanted to make sure that any kind of health surveillance on biosecurity did not become undercover surveillance that might have military implications.” 

A number of issues will generate significant scrutiny, and even conflict. “Safety for whistleblowers could be something in a treaty,” Kickbusch says. “The rights to access and investigation. All the transparency issues that you might want to see in a treaty. These issues all have significant consequences for countries with different types of regimes.”

The World Health Organization is central to global health. Yet the WHO has been a magnet for intense criticism during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many question whether it will be an effective venue for negotiating a global pandemic treaty, especially given the immense security issues surrounding any potential agreement. Will the WHO have the gravity and the authority to be the platform to forge a treaty? 

Kickbusch says that the WHO has the power, flexibility, and track record that will set the stage for success – and bring in every major player needed to do so.

“There is a misunderstanding that if you negotiate such a treaty within the World Health Organization,” she observes, “you would limit it to health ministers. That is not the case at all. The constitution of the WHO is very open as to who negotiates.  In many cases, it is high-level diplomats. So if you negotiate in the context of the World Health Organization, it does not mean that you cannot achieve that larger agenda.” 

The flexibility of the WHO means that a global pandemic treaty need not be a UN endeavor. “Some people argue we have to go to New York,” says Kickbusch, “because we can't reach all those other people of importance [outside of public health]. But that's not a valid argument. If you look over the past few years – and actually longer, since the German G20 in 2017 – you see the extent to which the World Health Organization is involved with the G20 and the G7.” 

She amplifies her point with examples: “Now you have all these heads of state speaking at the World Health Assembly. And I don't know how many heads of state Dr. Tedrous talks to daily. So [the landscape] has shifted. That's not really an argument.”

Indeed, Kickbusch argues that negotiating a pandemic treaty in the WHO “would significantly strengthen the World Health Organization. There has been so much talk about this. Look at G7 and G20 declarations. We want to strengthen WHO. Well, this is one way you can do it. Negotiate a high-level treaty within the umbrella of the WHO constitution.” 

The WHO’s constitution provides pathways to effectively manage any treaty. “One has to look at the constitution,” urges Kickbusch. “Not the organizational body. Because if you’ve negotiated a treaty, you also get a treaty Secretariat. That's also something many people don't realize. They think the treaty is going to be sucked into the WHO in some indeterminate manner. But the minute you have a treaty – as happened with the framework convention on tobacco use – then you create a framework secretariat, which works with the parties to the treaty.”

The delicate but essential interplay between the urgency of this moment and the nitty gritty of diplomacy leaves Kickbusch wishing for speedier progress made on a global pandemic treaty.

“It's a great pity we’re losing four to six months because of the decision at the World Health Assembly,” she observes. “Even though I am happy that there was no decision against a treaty, and a decision to explore the benefits more [deeply], so that countries have more opportunities to think about it. But if we had those four months or six months, depending when you start counting, we’d be in better shape.”

Framework conventions are a useful way to accelerate the process, claim early victories, and win time needed to settle thornier issues. “The beauty of a framework convention is that you set the principles,” says Kickbusch. “You set some basic agreements. But you also give a work plan for difficult issues that are taken up in the conference of the parties that follows, because we do know difficult issues can take up to three years and longer to resolve.” 

History provides clear example, she adds. “We moved forward quite quickly in negotiating the agreement on the influenza sharing,” says Kickbusch, “once one had the breakthrough discussions with the private sector.” 

"It's slowly sinking in that the pandemic is not over – and it's not going to be over for quite some time.” 

That is why Kickbusch feels so strongly that such a framework convention, created at the World Health Organization “is actually the type of agreement that could be achieved reasonably soon.”

The central issue, she reiterates, is “What are we willing to share?” Agree on that, Kickbusch continues, and “I think you could have a framework convention in a reasonable period of time. If the treaty process were to start at the end of 2021, you could agree on a treaty –  if you work hard – by late 2023 at a special session of the World Health Assembly.”

Even nations that cannot join the treaty formally might support the effort in tangible ways, she argues, giving the example of the strong U.S. support for the 

– which it has never formally joined. “If one major country is not a full party to the treaty,” observes Kickbusch, “there are still many ways in which that nation can be part of those parts of the agreement that they think are important and that would suit their own interests.”

A treaty agreed in 2023 might not alleviate the world’s present suffering. But it would be down payment on stopping the next deadly (and inevitable) pandemic in its tracks not only in wealthy societies, but across the globe.

Cover photograph:  A volunteer helps a woman fill out paperwork before her COVID-19 vaccine in Rwanda in March 2021. (WHO / Andre Rugema)

F98A2901.jpg

Is a global pandemic treaty within reach? A key public health thinker lays out the path.  

What The World Needs Now 

Theatres are physical structures. Creative works – plays, operas, concerts, dance – make their home in them for a brief moment in time. Then they disappear. The building remains, but only memories linger.

The spaces in which landmark diplomatic events take place have much in common with theatres. Leaders take center stage and hold the fates of nations in their hands. Yet these public spaces brim over with energy and activity backstage – as well in the spotlights.

One of the best songs in Lin Manuel Miranda’s 

– “The Room Where It Happens” is written in the voice of Aaron Burr, who longs to be in the spaces where decisions are made. 

Burr’s longing and frustration are often ours as well. In this essay, we examine some rooms and spaces where weighty decisions were made – and how they look today with only memories inside them.

The Treaties of Osnabruck and Westphalia (1648) 

The Thirty Years War of 1618 to 1648 was one of the grimmest and most useless conflicts in human history. 

, the war “is thought to have claimed between 4 and 12 million lives.” Fewer than half of a million of those deaths came in combat, however, as “disease and famine took the lion’s share of the death toll.”  

Yet the multiple parties to the Thirty Years War groped to a necessary peace through protracted and tedious negotiations. Peace talks took place not in one town, but in two: Osnabrück and Münster. 

 that “although there was a famine in the surrounding country, supplies did not run short and nobody was in a hurry. They took six months from the opening of the congress to decide how the delegates were to sit and who were to go into the rooms first.”

Three agreements were made in the town halls of Osnabrück and Münster in 1648. The first agreement, between the Spanish and Dutch  Münster agreed in May 1648, is recorded in the famous work by Gerard ter Borch. (The artist just happened to be in town.) 

No artist captured the scenes at the second and third agreements. Wedgewood does observe that the delays in the peace extended to the final ceremonies on October 24, 1648: “Even on the day, the deputies, having waited from nine till one at Münster, were told to come back at two. Only then did the leading ambassadors appear, and both the treaties of peace were signed.” 

Napoleon Bonaparte rose to power on audacity and hope. His journey thrilled poets (Goethe) and composers (Beethoven) alike. Yet his bloody quest to dominate Europe was blunted in 1813 in the Battle of Leipzig, and he was forced to abdicate. Thus emboldened, the rulers of the old order that Napoleon had humiliated for a decade gathered in Vienna in 1814 to recreate a world without him.  

Accounts of the Congress of Vienna often stress its gaiety. (One wag jibed that the Congress did not move, but danced.) Yet power politics were the main item on the agenda, as participants including Russian Tsar Alexander I, Austrian minister Klaus von Metternich, and British leader Arthur Wellesley (later Duke of Wellington) battled over territory (including  Switzerland and Poland) as well as future alliances.

The restored King of France, Louis XVIII, sent a seasoned minister – Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand – to defend his interests. In one of his letters, the French diplomat noted that “The court of Vienna continues to show such a generous measure of hospitality toward its titled guests that it must be a burden in view of the state of its finances; one sees everywhere nothing but emperors and kings, empresses and queens, hereditary princes, ruling princes, and the like. The court pays for everything; the daily expenses are estimated at 220,000 paper gulden.”

The Congress’ work was largely done when Napoleon escaped his exile on Elba and seized power again in 1815, only to be beaten decisively at the Battle of Waterloo in June. Napoleon’s defeat confirmed that a vision to take Europe back to its future – forged by the diplomats who met in Vienna – won the day. But when the balls had ended, the specter of an emerging nationalism untethered from direct imperial rule loomed ominously on the horizon.    

The Surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia (1865)

The most immense conflict ever fought on U.S. soil ended 90 miles west of Richmond, Virginia, in the parlor of the private home of Wilmer McLean. Having finally subdued the capital of the Confederacy, General Ulysses S. Grant chased and trapped Robert E. Lee’s bedraggled army as it tried to unite with other rebel forces in North Carolina.  

The story of April 9, 1865 is oft-told. Grant’s muddy boots and relaxed manner. Lee’s spit and polish. The generous terms of parole for the Army of Northern Virginia offered by Grant and accepted by Lee. Rations provided by the Union to the vanquished foe. Confederate cavalrymen and artillerymen could keep their horses.   

That a fratricidal war ended in such a small room is worthy of reflection. There was no Matthew Brady to record the moment, and notable depictions of the surrender are conjecture. Union troops ransacked the house for souvenirs before the ink was dry. The house itself was dismantled for a never-realized move to Washington, DC in the late 19th Century – and only rebuilt in the 1940s. 

Indeed, the print of the site of surrender (above) was commissioned by McLean in an attempt to recoup his losses. And the actual tables and chairs used by Grant and Lee? They are in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.  

The anniversary of the First World War still celebrated to this day is November 11 – the somber day in 1918 that an armistice brought an end to the devastating conflict. But no one celebrates June 28, 1919 – the date on which the Treaty of Versailles was signed in Paris and formally ended the conflict. 

Though historians continue to debate the various impacts of the treaty and its role in setting the stage for World War II, the almost instantaneous verdict rendered by John Maynard Keynes in his book, 

 (1919) seems indelible. Versailles was a retributive and counterproductive treaty, or as Keynes vividly put it: “a Carthaginian peace.” 

Indeed, the site of the peace conference and signing itself carried a significant historical burden, since the 1871 treaty that ended the Franco-Prussian War with Prussia in the ascendancy was also a Treaty of Versailles.  

It was likely the Treaty of Versailles that was at the top of poet W.H. Auden’s mind when he wrote, in “September 1, 1939”:

I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Only two decades after a flawed and vindictive peace made in a Hall of Mirrors, Auden could not have known the immense depths of evil that would be unleashed by a totalitarian regime across Europe and beyond. 

The images of that day in Versailles haunt us because they remind us that mirrors can be a maze, and the images within them distorted.  

Though the allied triumvirate of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had met previously in Tehran in 1943, the image of the three men in the courtyard of the Livadia Palace in Yalta remains one of the most indelible photographs of the Second World War. 

The three leaders met in the Crimean port in early February, at a moment when the end of the bitter global conflict seemed in sight. Yet the fractures between the nations were already evident, and what the postwar order would look like was largely set in motion at the former coastal retreat of Tsar Nicholas II.

Yalta was Stalin’s home turf, and he acted accordingly. Roosevelt and Churchill won a number of declaratory victories – as well as a promise to enter the war in Asia three months after victory was achieved in Europe. Yet on practical question after practical question of Soviet influence over Eastern and Central Europe (including Poland), Stalin emerged with what he wanted as his armies swept toward Germany itself.  

The images of Yalta are so striking because they do not seem in any way triumphal. Roosevelt is clearly ill. Churchill exhausted and distracted. Even Stalin seems measured. The next time the three allied nations would meet – in Potsdam in July 1945 – Stalin was the only man still in power at the end of the meeting. 

Roosevelt had died in April, replaced by Harry S. Truman. Churchill was routed from office in the midst of the conference by Labour Party leader Clement Atlee. The war itself would hasten to an end only four days after its conclusion, when the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.   

Images from sessions of the Helsinki Process that led to the signing of the Helsinki Accords capture what might have been the zenith of Cold War diplomacy. Many key figures of global diplomacy in that era can be found in these photographs, as the two-year Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) ended with a summit in the Finlandia Hall in the summer of 1975. 

The Helsinki Accords cemented the stability of the concept of détente between the world’s two opposing geopolitical blocs. So much so, in fact, that many observers in the United States believed that Western democracies had gotten the wrong end of the stick. 

Yet the tide of human events in Europe had different ideas. And a seed planted as article VII in the so-called “Decalogue” of the agreement – concerning “respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief” had a profound effect on political thought and action that helped lead to the transformational events of 1989.   

Ripples from Helsinki had immediate effects behind the Iron Curtain. On November 1, 1975, an ad hoc theatre group gave a small and unadvertised public performance of a new play – 

 – by banned writer Vaclav Havel at a pub in a Prague suburb. When word got out, writes Carol Rocamora in 

Acts of Courage: Vaclav Havel’s Life in the Theatre

, Czechoslovak authorities wanted to react forcefully, but were compelled to employ quieter methods of suppression because of the Helsinki Accords. “[T]o punish the artists or the audience,” she observes, “would be violating the agreement.”

One night of theatre on the outskirts of Prague proved the deal made in Helsinki had more force than anticipated. They proved the animating spirit behind Charter 77 – the powerful movement spearheaded by Havel and other dissidents which provided the lifeblood of that nation’s Velvet Revolution. 

The wars that tore apart Yugoslavia from 1991 to 1999 were not ended completely at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) in October and November 1995. But the Dayton Peace Agreement negotiated and agreed there between the leaders of the three parties to the conflict – under immense pressure from the United States and the European Union – did create a landscape for an uneasy peace among bitter enemies. 

Dayton’s key architects – U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Assistant Secretary of State Richard C. Holbrooke – saw Wright-Patterson’s tight insulation from outside distractions as essential to successful negotiations. Yet the base boasted an additional benefit: A bloc of Visiting Officers Quarters offering separate, equitable and uniform accommodations for Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian leaders. 

Since there was no direct access between the quarters and the Hope Hotel where talks would be held, then-88th Air Base Wing Commander Robbie Robinson oversaw the creation of a winding walkway to link the quarters and the negotiating venue. “It was November,” Robinson told the author of 

a tenth anniversary account published by the WPAFB

. "This is Ohio and who knows what kind of weather we'd have to deal with.” 

Today, that walkway – where U.S. diplomats badgered, debated, threatened and cajoled Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic – is known as The Peace Walk. And the conference center where the talks were successfully concluded? It is now the Richard C. Holbrooke Conference Center. 

Cover photograph: President Gerald R. Ford and members of the U.S.  delegation at the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in Helsinki's Finlandia Hall on July 30, 1975. (National Archives and Records Administration)

Photograph_of_President_Gerald_R._Ford_and_Members_of_the_American_Delegation_Taking_a_Break_at_the_Conference_on_Security_and_Cooperation_in_Europe_in_Helsinki,_Finland_-_NARA_-_7462031.jpg

Statecraft needs stagecraft. We look at the sites of landmark diplomacy -- then and now.  

The Rooms Where It Happened

We are working busily on the Summer 2021 

. The theme for the issue is "Conflict/Resolution," and we will examine treaties and agreements in an age of hyper-nationalism, discord and strife with essays and interviews on global health, intellectual property, energy and national security.

Our lead essay in the Winter 2021 issue – 

–  a professor of public policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and director of its School of Public Policy – made the case that the “First 100 Days” used to measure success since President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s push for a New Deal in 1933 would be unhelpful to the Biden White House. 

Roberts' essay helped shape the conversation around expectations for President Biden in the administration’s opening days. (His argument against the "First 100 Days" framing even ended up on t

After President Biden’s first 100 days arrived on April 29, 2020, we reached out to Roberts to see what he made of Biden’s first months in office – and what may lay ahead for the president and his agenda: 

Your essay was very close to the mark on how President Biden approached his first 100 days - despite the Democrats winning slender control in both Houses of Congress. What did you make of Biden’s successes and failures in the opening months of his presidency? 

 The Biden White House did a good job of tailoring expectations about what could be done in the first hundred days. It moved attention away from the usual measure of success – a battery of legislative victories – and toward objectives that were important and achievable, like getting Americans vaccinated and providing economic relief. This was the right thing to do in terms of both politics and statecraft. The White House also made significant progress in getting key appointments settled, reversing Trump-era executive actions, and staking out its position on key issues. It lowered the temperature and conveyed the sense that it had matters in hand.  Given the present-day realities of Washington politics, that is an impressive record.

Your article challenged the necessity of a first 100 days blitz for new presidents. Does Biden's approach strengthen the argument for looking beyond this expectation?

Absolutely. It's unreasonable to expect any new president to achieve a swath of legislative accomplishments in the first 100 days, given the complexities of government and politics today. Moreover, there are real dangers in trying for a legislative blitz – the result might be bad law and even more political rancor.  Treating the hundredth day simply as a "check-in" on presidential progress is less problematic, of course.  Even then, however, it would make more sense to give a new president a longer stretch – maybe six months – before passing judgment on how a new administration is doing.

Structural challenges and polarization will vex Biden going forward. In many ways, they have even intensified. Is Biden's approach to his first months in power a necessary path to achieve his aims leading up to 2022 midterms?   

 The room for maneuver in terms of achieving new legislation is very narrow, and the Biden White House will need to think very carefully about where to allocate its energy and political capital.  The temptation, understandably, is to focus on major changes in substantive areas of policy.  But I wonder whether the top-most emphasis ought to be on fixing the fundamental rules of the game – that is, legislation about elections and voting rights. This would have critical implications for policymaking in Washington for years to come.

At the center of the WQ’s Winter 2020 issue (The Power of Protest) was 

 – an interactive examination of how Hong Kong’s massive 2019 protests were not only a manifestation of the city’s desire to retain its status as a bastion of liberty within the People’s Republic of China, but also a teeming laboratory for the future of organized protest in a surveillance state.

Over the past eighteen months, however, the democracy movement in Hong Kong has encountered setback after setback. China’s rulers leveraged the global pandemic to accelerate their timetable to seize control of Hong Kong, and strip away the protections built into the 1997 handover of the province to that nation by the United Kingdom. Sweeping and draconian laws have been introduced to neuter electoral politics, stifle protests and clamp down on free speech. In late June, one of the few independent media outfits still operating in Hong Kong – 

co-authored our interactive piece, and he is also a key figure in 

For The Love of Hong Kong: A Memoir From My City Under Siege

 (Global Dispatches) – a riveting new memoir about Hong Kong written by his daughter, 

Hana Meihan Davis’ sharp, evocative and economical prose makes 

 a perfect introduction to the current crisis – as well as a succinct primer on the history of the city and its democracy movements.   

“Hong Kong is, after all, a city co-authored by Chinese imperialism, British colonialism, and the tightening stranglehold of Communist Chinese domination,” she observes. “To be a Hongkonger is to be a product of colliding empires, a rootless child defined by powers far away. The city is in many ways itself the exile, not fully belonging to the East or to the West. To be a Hongkonger is to be a dreamer, an inventor, a storyteller. Hong Kong needs its Platonic orators clinging tirelessly to its myth in order to survive.”

 both perspective and authority in depicting the terrain of democratic struggle there. Not only are Hana Meihan Davis’ parents central figures in the movement, but her godfather, Martin Lee, remains a key mover in Hong Kong's democracy battles. Yet her account is very much the viewpoint rooted in her own generation's perspective.

“With no memories of a British Hong Kong,” she observes, “and no attachment to China, mine is the generation that most adamantly regards itself as “Hongkongers” — a term added to the 

Richard Byrne