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Siding Siding withwith KimKim givesgives GOPGOP a jolta jolt BY J OHN W AGNER BY J OHN W AGNER AND S EUNG M IN AND K IM S EUNG M IN K IM
“I don’t believe he “I would don’thave believe allowed he would that have allowed that to happen,” Trumptosaid. happen,” “It just Trump wasn’tsaid. to his “It just wasn’t to his advantage to allowadvantage that to happen.” to allow that to happen.” Trump said that heTrump spoke said to Kim that about he spoke the to Kim about the resident Trump resident received Trump cautiousreceived cautious death of Warmbierdeath and that of Warmbier Kim “feelsand badly that Kim “feels badly pushback from fellow pushback Republicans from fellow for Republicans for about it.” He saidabout the North it.” HeKorean said the leader North Korean leader saying he believed North sayingKorean he believed dictaNorth Korean dictaknew about the case knew but about learned the about case it but only learned about it only tor Kim Jong Un’s assertion tor Kim Jong that he Un’s was assertion that he was after the fact because, afterTrump the fact suggested, because, “top Trump suggested, “top unaware of the treatment unaware ofof American the treatment collegeof American college leadership” might not leadership” have been might involved. not have been involved. student Otto Warmbier student while Ottoimprisoned Warmbier while in imprisoned in Warmbier’s parentsWarmbier’s respondedparents Friday. responded Friday. his country. his country. “We have been respectful “We have during been this respectful sum- during this sumRepublican lawmakers Republican were careful lawmakers not towere careful not to mit process. Now we mit must process. speakNow out,”we Fred must andspeak out,” Fred and criticize Trump directly, criticize butTrump severaldirectly, said they but several said they Cindy Warmbier said Cindy in aWarmbier statement.said “Kim inand a statement. “Kim and took a different view took of a different whether Kim view was of whether Kim was his evil regime are responsible his evil regime for are theresponsible death of for the death of trustworthy, particularly trustworthy, when particularly it came to his when it came to his our son Otto. Kimour and sonhisOtto. evil Kim regime andare his evil regime are role regarding Warmbier, role regarding who wasWarmbier, returned to who was returned to JON CHOL JIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS JON CHOL JIN/ASSOCIATED responsiblePRESS for unimaginable responsible cruelty for unimaginable and incruelty and inthe United States in thea United coma and States diedinshortly a coma and died shortly humanity. humanity. or lavish No excuse praise can or lavish praise can afterward in 2017. afterward in 2017. American student Otto American Warmbier, student center, Otto is Warmbier, center, isNo excuse change change that.” Speaking ThursdaySpeaking as TrumpThursday headed home as Trumpescorted headed in home 2016 atescorted the Supreme in 2016 Court at the in Supreme Courtthat.” in Trump’s commentsTrump’s prompted comments sharp critiprompted sharp critifrom a two-day summit from awith two-day Kim summit in Hanoi, with Pyongyang, Kim in Hanoi, North Korea. Pyongyang, North Korea. cism from Democrats, cismwho from alleged Democrats, a pattern who ofalleged a pattern of Sen. Rob Portman Sen. (R-Ohio) Rob Portman said he continues (R-Ohio) said he continues coddling coddling leaders. authoritarian Among those leaders. Among those have a misbelief of have who this a misbelief leader is.” of who this leader is.” authoritarian to see North Korea to assee “anNorth evil regime.” Korea as “an evil regime.” weighing were both weighing senators in were fromboth Virginia, senators from Virginia, Sen. Lindsey Sen. Lindsey (R-S.C.), O.who Graham has (R-S.C.), whoinhas “I think it starts at“Ithe think top,”it Portman starts at the said.top,” Portman said. O. Graham where Warmbier where Warmbier college. attended college. been athat staunch been ally a staunch on manyTrump issues,ally saidon many issues, said attended “And I think we have “And to acknowledge I think we have that toas acknowledge we as weTrump Sen.Kim Timhad Kaine said Sen. Trump Tim Kaine has repeatedly said Trump has repeatedly he didn’t “buy it for he adidn’t minute” “buy that it for Kim a minute” had that deal with them.” deal with them.” accepted theHe word accepted of “dictators,” the word like Russian of “dictators,” like Russian nothing tofamdo withnothing Warmbier’s to dotreatment. with Warmbier’s He treatment. Portman, who was Portman, close to Warmbier’s who was close fam-to Warmbier’s President Vladimir President Putin orVladimir Saudi Crown Putin or Saudi Crown suggested “probably Trump trying was to“probably leave trying to leave ily in Ohio and fought ily in for Ohio hisand release, fought said, for hissuggested release, Trump said, was Mohammed Prince bin Salman. Mohammed bin Salman. some engaging space to negotiate” some space on broader to negotiate” issues on Prince broader issues however, that he has however, long favored that he engaging has long favored can only imagine “I can howonly it felt imagine for the how it felt for the with Kim sayingwith he trusted Kim byhis saying account. he trusted his “I account. with North Korea, as with Trump North is Korea, doing, as and Trump that is doing, andbythat Warmbier have the President family to have defend the President defend Sen.progress” Susan CollinsSen. (R-Maine) Susan Collins said she(R-Maine) was said shefamily was toWarmbier the United States had the United made “some Statesprogress” had made “some Kim Un,” Kaine Kim said Jong in aUn,” statement. Kaine said “Why in a statement. “Why “surprised that [Trump] “surprised accepted thatat [Trump] face value, accepted at Jong face value, toward denuclearizing toward thedenuclearizing nation. the nation. you not go towould bat foryou an American not go to bat family for an American family what happened apparently,towhat the American happened towould the American Asked if Trump should Asked trust if Trump Kim, Portman should trustapparently, Kim, Portman of this American student of this American who was so student brutal-who was so brutalwho was heldhe there.” who was held there.” said, “I think he should said, “I verify think whatever he shouldheverify whatever izedshort by thetheir North Korean ized byregime?” the North Korean regime?” Trump and cut Kim shortabruptly their cut hears from [Kim] independently.” hears from [Kim] independently.”Trump and Kim abruptly The No. 2acHouse Democratic The No. 2 House leader,Democratic Rep. leader, Rep. summit Thursdaysummit amid contradictory Thursday amid ac- contradictory House Minority Leader House Kevin Minority McCarthy Leader Kevin McCarthy H. Hoyer Steny said H.he Hoyer was “concerned” (Md.), said he was “concerned” counts of why they counts were unable of whytothey reach were a deal unableSteny to reach a deal (Md.), (R-Calif.) also counseled (R-Calif.) caution also counseled on trusting caution on trusting thatweapons. Trump took Kim that “at Trump his word took Kim when“at hehis word when he to dismantle Pyongyang’s to dismantle nuclear Pyongyang’s weapons. nuclear Kim. Kim. innocenceclaimed in the innocence brutal death” in the of brutal death” of At aKorea news conference At abefore news heading conference home, before claimed heading home, “I do not see the leader “I do not of North see the Korea leader as of North as Warmbier. Warmbier. Trumpsaid. condemned Trump the “brutality condemned of thethe North “brutality of the North somebody who’s a friend,” somebody McCarthy who’s asaid. friend,” “WeMcCarthy “We “Such statements “Such dishonor statements this young dishonor this young regime” KoreanWarmbier’s regime” following death at Warmbier’s death at know what happened know to what Otto. happened We know what to Otto. Korean We know what following memory causememory further and paincause to hisfurther pain to his age but the president age 22,made but the clear president he didn’t mademan’s clear he didn’t andman’s this country has done. this Icountry supporthas thedone. president I support the22, president grieving family,” Hoyer grieving said family,” in a statement. Hoyer said holdbut Kim personally hold accountable. Kim personally accountable. in his effort to denuclearize in his effort them, to denuclearize but I do not them, I do not n in a statement. n
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Motherhood The limits of as Trump’s a campaign directasset appeals BY J SOHN AMANTHA H UDSON, S CHMIDT A NNE G EARAN oments D ENYER after Kirsten AND S IMON
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in Hanoi Gillibrand announced her candidacy for presthe Democratic woident, days of soaring rhetosenator ric demonstrated burping a and over-the-top flatbaby doll on between national television. tery President Asked by late-night host Stephen Trump and North Korean Colbert whyJong she Un was turned running, leader Kim to she billed herself as a “young finger-pointing Thursday after mom,” willing to “fight for other their second summit ended in an people’s hard as Ian would impasse kids and as confusion, outfight own.” critics say he comefor themy president’s In her own stump speech, Sen. should have seen coming. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) Trump said North Korea’s detalked about her mand for totalpotty-training relief from sancdaughter in five days to meet disthe tions in exchange for partially requirements of aweapons daycarepro— mantling its nuclear with three bags of gram the washelp the of main stumbling M&Ms. in a CNN town hall, block to And an agreement. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) “Basically they wanted the recounted how she was forced to sanctions lifted in their entirety, leave hospitaldo just 24 Trump hours and wea couldn’t that,” after birth to her daughsaid atgiving a news conference before ter, an experience thatalways motivated leaving Vietnam. “You have the to benow-presidential prepared to walk.” candidate to Trump advocate forKim a state law guarsaid promised he anteeing 48-hourmissile hospital stay would notaconduct launchfor new moms. es or test nuclear weapons, and Asofficials an unprecedented number U.S. said the two sides of women launch camwould continue to talk.their But North paigns for the Minister presidency, the Korean Foreign Ri Yong female Democratic 2020 candiHo was noncommittal. dates are putting their experiHolding a separate news conences mothers front and cenferenceaswith international reportter, candidlystep about ers speaking — a remarkable for jugthe gling parenting and work. And in secretive authoritarian state — Ri doing they blamedso, theexperts United say, States for are the breaking withHe long-held percepbreakdown. also disputed tions of the past that discouraged Trump’s characterization of North women in politics from talking Korea’s request. about their in the home. “What weroles proposed was not the “Usually that youa removal of mentioning all sanctions, but are a mother was death senpartial removal,” Ri asaid through tence in the workforce,” said an interpreter. Caitlyn Collins,Ri ansaid, assistant In exchange, NorthproKofessor of sociology at Washington rea would “permanently and comUniversity in St. all Louis aupletely dismantle the and nuclear thor of aproduction new book, “Making material facilities” at Motherhood Work.” facility. Now, The far the Yongbyon nuclear from being houses seen asthe a hindrance compound country’s to a political main nuclear career, reactor,motherhood which is the is being used as an asset. regime’s only source of plutonium, an enormous as “That’s well as some — but notcultural all — of shift,” Collins said. its uranium-enrichment facilities. the shift is part or of It Experts does notsay include warheads amissile broader groundswell of supinventory. port forchicken-and-egg women’s issues, building The problem on the women’s marches, the of when the strapped North Ko#MeToo movement and particurean regime is rewarded, and for larly record number of womwhat,the is the central element of a
EVAN VUCCI/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Experts blame North Korea summit’s abrupt end on a lack of preparation at lower diplomatic levels Female 2020 candidates leverage experience deal that has eluded previous U.S. Pompeo said that no date had a President Donald as mothers, a topic once considered liability presidents. North Korea wants Trump and North been set for ongoing talks. JULIA RENDLEMAN/THE WASHINGTON POST
more upfront than U.S. negotiators are willing to give, and it fell to Trump andtoKim to try to meet in en elected Congress. theSome middle. of the most memorable That was going to work images fromnever the midterm elecwithout more preparation and tions included women leaders bottom-up planning, said Scott with their children or grandchilSnyder, a as Korea the dren, such Rep.expert AbigailatSpanCouncil on Foreign Relations. berger’s (D-Va.) daughter sitting “I thinkher the failure was an her adbetween legs during missionspeech of a need for more time victory or House Speaker and working-level talks sworn to achieve Nancy Pelosi being in an agreement,”by Snyder said. “Itsaid lets surrounded children, the North sumErin C. Koreans Cassese, know an that associate mitry has of to political be accompanied professor science by at process and that an end run the University of Delaware. around working-level talks “creand The midterm campaigns exclusive focusthat on the leader level ated a sense women candiwon’t necessarily dates don’t needyield to results.” fit into a Pompeo box insisted that the particular in order to Unitwin,” ed Statessaid. has put in thatthey’re grunt Cassese “Instead work andas was not sandbagged. running themselves, running Asked why the two sides authentic campaigns. .” did not come to an interim agreement, By choosing to speak candidly Pompeo said, without elaboration, about balancing work and famthatthese “you should assume that ily, female not candidates are we didn’t come to agreement on a also normalizing motherhood, whole number of issues.” Cassese said. Studies have shown
“My sense is, it’ll take a while,” he said. “We’ll each need to regroupmothers a little bit.” that in the workplace abrupt end to the summit areThe perceived as less competent may committed have exposed thenon-mothlimits of and than Trump’s to appeal ers and strategy men, and sufferdirectly lower to Kim, used toinridicule pay as a whom result.he Mothers public as “Little Man” butasked now office haveRocket too often been praises as a savvy who being could how they’re goingleader to juggle presidea over country’s ecoboth momhis and an elected nomic —transformation. official a question rarelyTrump asked said the two parted on friendly of fathers in office, Cassese said. terms, but heand didWarren not dangle Gillibrand in par-a White House invitation other ticular have made theirorexperiperks asashe did after their first ences mothers defining meetingin lastthe year. themes first few weeks of “Good personalworking rapport is their campaigns, togood, conbut it’swith not enough bridge big nect a vast to segment of gaps inand the course of one high-levvoters push for policies like el summit,” said Darylchild Kimball, paid leave, affordable care executive director of the Washingand universal pre-k. But they’re ton-based Associaalso using Arms their Control stump speeches tion. to make the case that motherTrump could claim afhood has shaped their success work ethic ter the summit in and wholeaders’ they arefirst as politicians — Singapore because the histhat potty simply training a toddler in toricdays meeting had happened at all, five is proof that nothing is said hard,” Bruce Jentleson, professor “too as Warren ahas said.
Korean leader Kim Jong Un had hoped to comeSpanberger, to a deal on Abigail North Korea’s congresswomannuclear elect forprogram Virginia’sand U.S.District, sanctions, but 7th their summit addresses theincrowd Hanoi ended aspeech day in her victory early on6, Thursday on Nov. while her without any formal daughter Catherine agreements. hides by her feet.
of Opening public policy up and about political the chalscilenges ence atofDuke beingUniversity a workingand moma in former politics Stateis Department nothing new adviser. for Gillibrand, This time,who they served needed hermore first term than in thethe symbolism Senate with of grins an infant and and handshakes a toddler. replacing She toldthreats the story of of “fire how, andas fury,” a freshman Jentlesonsenator said. in 2009, “Youshe don’t was setasked up a summit to preside this over way and the Senate be surprised from 5like to 7that,” p.m. She Jentleson tried said. to explain “You dotothe a male prep staffer work, you thathave theahours degreewould of agreebe impossible ment beforehand.” for her, because they were To some when extent, she needed Trumptobacked nurse her himself infant intoson. a corner After last the year staffer by refused saying that to any accommodate deal with North her, Sen. KoreaMark must Udall be all (D-Colo.) or nothing agreed — to complete switch slots denuclearization with her. in exchange In unveiling for any lifting herof sanctions. proposed plan “It was for auniversal good tactical child position care, Warren to start with talked . . . but about an untenable her own struggle position to to find maintain child care throughout for her two negotiations,” young children said a former while U.S. she was intelligence teachingofficial, at a lawspeaking school —on a story the condition she repeated of anonymity in a speech to at aavoid fundraising becoming event involved in inNew the Hampshire politics of theon issue. Saturday. “The question She recounted was always juggling going work to be,with when Sundo day we soften, school, and bake how sales, do we do laundry it in a and way bathing so that children we can and say “falling with a into straight bedface somewhere that we’re innot thelifting early hours sanctions, of the butmorning.” make enough modifications “It wassohard, that we butcan I could actually do hard,” get something Warren said. back”“Itfrom was the exhausting, North Koreans. but I could do exhausting. Kim The came thing withthat a step-by-step eventually sank proposal me?that Yup. included Child the care.” verified She almost shutdown quit of Yongbyon her job, she — which said, until the former her 78-year-old official said was Aunt“aBee big from thing,Oklahoma it’s not a little offered thing”to—help and take askedcare for partial of the sanctions children. relief in return. Warren Butissuch far agreements from the first “recandidate quire negotiations,” to highlight and the the imporsumtance mit apparently of affordable ran outchild of time. care. Her “It’s plana has disappointment, also already faced and intense maybe acriticism step backwards, in some but quarit ters, doesn’t butfeel it’s rare like — they’re and notable breaking — to offsee theaentire candidate process,” focus theonformer child care official as said. a signature “The fact issue thatinthey the first couldn’t fewmeet weeks unrealistic of a campaign, expectasaid tions Kelly shouldn’t Dittmar, divertan us assistant from unprofessor derstanding of political that apparently science they and scholar may try this at the at the Center working for Amerilevel.” canSue Women Mi Terry andand Politics Lisa Collins, at Rutgers fellows University. on Korea at the Center for Strategic “In theand past International we’ve looked Studat our ies, assessed presidential the summit candidates as a failas something ure that could separate “make it and verydifferdiffient cult .to. .move as not negotiations being tasked forward with the at theday-to-day working level caregiving since the disresponsibilities,” cussions on even Dittmar basic principles said. “We’re have failed finally at having the highest that converleadersation ship level.” at the n presidential level.” n
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Mr. President, disband your climate denial panel JOHN F. KERRY was secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 and is a visiting distinguished statesman at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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any have become immune or anesthetized to the daily assault on truth that is the Trump presidency, an alternative reality where North Korea has denuclearized and Russia might not have attacked our elections in 2016. It would be laughable were it not dangerous. Presidents are supposed to hold consensus together, not invent fictions to fray it. ¶ But the administration’s most dangerous collision with facts has been its effort to paralyze U.S. efforts to join the nations of the world in confronting climate change. The White House plans to convene “experts” to “determine” whether climate change is a national security threat. We know what the outcome will be: President Trump’s council of doubters and deniers will convene to undo a 26 yearold factual consensus that climate change is a nationalsecurity threat multiplier.
As we careen toward irreversible environmental tipping points, we have no time to waste debating alternative facts only to invest years more reestablishing trust in the real ones. No panel 10 years from now can put the ice sheets back together or hold back rising tides. Begin with the kind of facts that John Adams called “stubborn things.” In 1991, President George H.W. Bush’s administration assessed in its National Security Strategy that threats such as climate change, which “respect no international boundaries,” were “already contributing to political conflict.” Each of Bush’s successors included climate change in their National Security Strategies. Even after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush’s administration made room in the 2002 National Security Strategy to warn of “dangerous human interference with the global climate.” Were four consecutive
administrations wrong? No. The factual basis of climate change’s threat originated not with politicians but with the national security community, including the intelligence community. Eleven retired military leaders constituting the military advisory board at CNA, a naval think tank in Arlington, described climate change in 2007 as “a threat multiplier for instability.” Seven years later, 16 retired flag officers representing all branches of the military implored Americans to understand the severity of “a salient national security concern” because “time and tide wait for no one.” Instead of convening a kangaroo court, the president might want to talk with the adults he once trusted enough to fill his top national security positions. Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats has reported that climate change would increase “the risk of social unrest, migration, and interstate
MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES
Sea ice is seen from NASA’s Operation IceBridge research aircraft above Greenland on March 30. Climate change is breaking apart and melting these ice sheets, threatening global sea levels.
tension in countries such as Egypt, Ethiopia, Iraq, and Jordan.” Then- Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told the Armed Services Committee last year: “Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today.” These officials weren’t making back-of-the-envelope projections or envisioning some distant, dystopic future. Climate change is already impacting national security. The land that houses Naval Station Norfolk, the biggest naval installation in the world, is literally sinking. In fact, sea levels on the East Coast are rising twice as fast as the global average, thanks to uneven ocean temperatures and geology. Consider what further sealevel rise could mean for this base or for the U.S. Navy fleet, 20 percent of which is homeported nearby. Increased risk of wildfires can even prevent troops from training with live ammunition. Willful denial won’t change the fact that our military readiness will be degraded when the permafrost our Alaskan bases are built on begins to thaw out. And it doesn’t end with military impacts. While climate change didn’t lead to the rise of
the terrorist group Boko Haram in Nigeria, the country’s severe drought and the government’s inability to cope with it helped create the volatility that militants exploited to seize villages, butcher teachers and kidnap hundreds of innocent girls. The prospect of a more arid climate throughout the Middle East and parts of Asia will increasingly strain the most essential resource of all: fresh water. We’ve already seen tensions rise around the basins of the Nile, Central Asia’s Indus River and the Mekong in Southeast Asia. Areas facing unrest, instability and weak governance are breeding grounds for violent extremism. Climate change will only exacerbate mass migration in places already enduring economic, political and social stress. We can spend the next two years debating whether two plus two equals five. But it would mean someday a young American in uniform will likely be put in harm’s way because truth lost out to talking heads. Debate how to address the climate national security threat, not whether it’s real. Mr. President, listen to our military leaders and disband your climate denial panel. n
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TOM TOLES
Health-care plans aren’t universal MEGAN MCARDLE is a Washington Post columnist and author of “The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success.”
It’s the killer argument, the coup de grace that every advocate for universal health-care coverage eventually delivers: “Other countries have better outcomes than we do at half the cost.” And since Democrats seem to be gearing up to make another big push for health-care reform, you can expect to hear it over and over for the next few years. Ironically, the discussion will probably fall under the very American slogan Medicare-for-all, but that’s just a catchall for “more and cheaper health-care coverage.” The reformers will take a variety of approaches to achieving that goal. All the way to the left, we find Bernie Sanders’s vision of a universal, government-run, single-payer system, similar to the ones found in Canada and Scandinavia, only more generous. Inching toward the center, we see proposals for some sort of government-run fallback for the private markets, more akin to what exists in Australia or Germany. The Sanders model is more popular with young progressives, but it has limited appeal outside the Democratic base. Creating the most generous system in the world would entail the highest price tag in the world — estimated by economic policy analyst Charles Blahous to cost $32 trillion in new government spending over a decade.
Also, while Medicare-for-all polls quite well, getting rid of private insurance doesn’t. A recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that while two-thirds of voters would support something called Medicare-for-all, only one-third would support it if the policy involved paying more taxes or eliminating private health insurance. Using Medicare as a public option avoids some of the political difficulties of trying to do a full Canada. But while the challenges of enacting lesstotalizing schemes aren’t so immediately evident, they’re nonetheless considerable. It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time Americans have looked enviously abroad at some
other country’s universal healthcare system and tried to import it here. You may remember the last time it happened: 10 years ago, when the Obama administration put together its landmark healthcare plan. That plan was designed along roughly the same lines as systems in Switzerland and the Netherlands, both of which have achieved universal coverage while spending a substantially lower fraction of their national income than America does. Yet, when the United States implemented the same structure — mandatory private insurance that’s subsidized for lowerincome people — it didn’t work here the way it did there. Nine years in, we’re spending almost 40 percent more on health care than the Swiss and 70 percent more than the Dutch. Meanwhile, almost 15 percent of the U.S. population lacks health insurance. You can point to various reasons for that: court decisions, Republican obstruction or flaws in the law itself, which had a much weaker mandate and cost controls than the Dutch or Swiss models. But then, that’s the point: Attempts to reform the American health-care system will be undertaken within the constraints of the American
political system. The American political system is more fragmented, and easier for interest groups to lobby, than most other systems in the developed world. The nation’s health-care system is also fragmented — and huge, accounting for upward of 15 percent of gross domestic product. Any attempt at reforming it would be tremendously expensive, triggering a taxpayer revolt. And so, the last time around, Democrats passed a weak, flawed version of other systems, because American voters wouldn’t stand for a stiff mandate or stiff new taxes to pay for subsidies. Instead of imposing robust cost controls that would threaten the income of politically powerful hospitals and health-care professionals, Democrats enacted a bunch of complicated and opaque programs that they hoped would somehow confuse providers into accepting less money for providing the same treatments. The next round of health-care reform will encounter exactly the same obstacles. If we try to go the route of Canada or Germany, we will probably end up in roughly the same place we did when we tried to go Dutch: which is to say with a system that looks like nothing else in the world. n
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Chinese troops sit on Afghan doorstep B Y G ERRY S HIH near Shaymak, Tajikistan
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wo miles above sea level in the inhospitable highlands of Central Asia, there’s a new power watching over an old passage into Afghanistan: China. For at least three years, Chinese troops have quietly monitored this choke point in Tajikistan just beyond China’s western frontier, according to interviews, analysis of satellite images and photographs, and firsthand observations by a Washington Post journalist. While veiled in secrecy, the outpost of about two dozen buildings and lookout towers illustrates how the footprint of Chinese hard power has been expanding alongside the country’s swelling economic reach. Tajikistan — awash in Chinese investment — joins the list of Chinese military sites that includes Djibouti in the strategic Horn of Africa and man-made islands in the South China Sea, in the heart of Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s economic ambitions over the past seven years have brought a wave of major investment projects, from the resourcerich Caspian Sea to Cambodia’s coastline. The modest facility in Tajikistan — which offers a springboard into Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor a few miles away — has not been publicly acknowledged by any government. But its presence is rich in significance and symbolism. At a moment when the United States might consider a pact that would pull American troops out of Afghanistan, China appears to be tiptoeing into a volatile region critical to its security and its continental ambitions. Already, the retreat of old powers and arrival of the new are on display in Tajikistan, a tiny, impoverished country that served as a gateway into Afghanistan for U.S. units in the early phases of the 2001 invasion. During a recent trip along the
GERRY SHIH/THE WASHINGTON POST
While United States is looking to exit the country, rival tiptoes into region it has flooded with cash Tajikistan-Afghanistan border, The Post saw one of the military compounds and encountered a group of uniformed Chinese troops shopping in a Tajik town, the nearest market to their base. They bore the collar insignia of a unit from Xinjiang, the Chinese territory where authorities have detained an estimated 1 million Uighurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority. The crackdowns against the Uighurs have been internationally condemned as a violation of human rights, but the Chinese government says they are part of a campaign to insulate its restive far west from Islamic extremism seeping in from Central Asia. Scarce public information Details about China’s activities at the facilities, some of which bear the Chinese and Tajik emblems, are not made public. Also unclear are the arrangements over their funding, construction
and ownership. Satellite imagery shows what appear to be two clusters of buildings, barracks and training grounds, about 10 miles apart near the mouth of the Wakhan Corridor, a narrow strip of territory in northeastern Afghanistan. The Post separately spoke to members of a German mountaineering expedition who said they were interrogated in 2016 by Chinese troops patrolling the Afghan corridor, near the settlement of Baza’i Gonbad. Photos provided by Steffan Graupner, the expedition leader, showed Chinese mine-resistant armored vehicles and equipment embossed with the country’s paramilitary logo. Taken together, the findings add weight to a growing number of reports that China, despite public denials, has been conducting security operations inside Afghanistan. China’s Foreign Ministry declined to comment and directed
Villagers say dozens, maybe hundreds, of Chinese troops have been posted for three years at an outpost near Tajikistan’s border with Afghanistan.
questions to the Defense Ministry, which did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, Tajikistan’s Foreign Ministry said there are “no People’s Republic of China military bases on the territory of the Republic of Tajikistan,” nor “any talks whatsoever” to establish one. Analysts say the Chinese encountered by The Post may be paramilitary units under the command of the central military leadership but technically distinct from the People’s Liberation Army, China’s main war-fighting force. U.S. officials say they are aware of the Chinese deployment but do not have a clear understanding of its operations. They say they do not object to the Chinese presence because the United States also believes that a porous Afghan-Tajik border could pose a security risk. China’s encroachment into Afghanistan is “fascinating but not surprising — and should be welcomed by Washington,” said Ely Ratner, executive vice president at the Center for a New American Security, who was a deputy national security adviser to thenVice President Joe Biden. “We can and should foist more responsibility for Afghanistan on China,” Ratner said. “They don’t want a target on their back, but they’ve been free-riding on U.S. dollars and lives for security.” Despite harboring concerns about militants in Afghanistan for decades, China has been loath to be seen as siding with any party in the conflict, much less to put boots on the ground. Instead, China’s state-owned companies and banks have inked infrastructure deals, mining concessions and loans across Central and South Asia, the poor and turbulent belt that makes up its backyard. Its diplomats, who have robust ties with Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Taliban, have talked up China’s role as a regional peace broker — never a peacekeeper. But China’s global posture is changing under Xi, who has shed
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WORLD the country’s long-standing isolationism and spoken loftily about restoring its great-power status. ‘It’s hard to turn that down’ To make the days-long overland journey across Tajikistan, from the capital, Dushanbe, to the remote canyon held by Chinese soldiers, is to witness a landscape altered by an even more irrepressible force than the troops: Chinese money. In the west, Chinese-built coalfired plants loom over the skyline, providing electricity and heat to the capital’s residents. In the east, Chinese-funded hospitals and schools rise from the hardscrabble countryside. In the south, Chinese-financed tracks circumvent a crucial Soviet-era railway that had been shut down by Tajikistan’s neighbor, Uzbekistan. Stitching it all together are Chinese-bored tunnels and Chinese-laid asphalt that cut hours off trips along the country’s winding east-west highway. The projects reflect Tajikistan’s strategic position in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, an ambitious infrastructure investment plan to pull the Eurasian land mass into its economic embrace. China, through a single state bank, held more than half of Tajikistan’s external debt as of 2016, up from none in 2006, according to 2017 Tajik Finance Ministry data. In the soft-power stakes, the United States and Russia both appear to be losing relative ground to China, which provides scholarships for undergraduate Tajiks and military academy training for up-and-coming defense officials. Susan M. Elliott, former U.S. ambassador to Tajikistan, said China’s generous aid and funding should be applauded but viewed with skepticism. In the past year, a handful of countries that have taken Chinese investments have reconsidered BRI deals amid allegations of corruption and low feasibility. “If someone’s offering money to build roads and help put power lines up, it’s hard to turn that down when you have no alternative,” Elliott said. “This is a strategic and important part of the world, and we need to continue our strong partnerships with Tajikistan and other countries in the region.” n
KLMNO WEEKLY
The impossibility of Rami Malek’s Oscar win in Egypt BY S UDARSAN R AGHAVAN AND H EBA F AROUK M AHFOUZ
in Cairo
W
hen Rami Malek this past week became the first Egyptian American to win a best actor Oscar, Nesma Nasr experienced an unfamiliar jolt of inspiration. She felt that she, too, could succeed — if she left her homeland. “His winning made me feel like I have a hope,” said Nasr, a 28year-old designer. “If one day I traveled outside Egypt, I could accomplish something on my own because I have been crushed in all ways here, and I still can’t see a ray of light.” Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country, is grappling with an economy buckling under painful austerity measures, persistent corruption and growing political repression. Tourism, a pillar of the country’s economy and foreign currency reserves, remains anemic, undermined by terrorist attacks and the government’s authoritarian practices. Against this backdrop, Malek’s victory provides a rare boost for the country’s image, especially since the “Bohemian Rhapsody” star acknowledged his Egyptian roots in his Oscar acceptance speech. State media in Egypt reported his Oscar win widely, proudly noting how his father kept his U.S.-born son connected to Egyptian culture and his extended family in the town of Samalut, 250 miles south of the capital, Cairo. Malek’s family belongs to Egypt’s Coptic minority. Yet Malek’s success in the United States is also a reminder to many Egyptians, especially its young people, of the lack of opportunities in their homeland, as well as the social restrictions prevailing in the largely conservative society. In a Facebook post, blogger and activist Wael Eskandar wrote that “the true value” of Malek and Mohamed Salah, Egypt’s bestknown soccer star, who plays for
KEVIN WINTER/GETTY IMAGES
Rami Malek accepts the best actor Oscar for his portrayal of Queen singer Freddie Mercury in the biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
the Liverpool club in Britain, “is that they represent hope.” “They prove what we’ve believed deep in our hearts that we are capable of better, that we deserve better but are bogged down by our rulers and governments,” Eskandar wrote. “The real value of Rami Malek’s win is possibilities, that even if we’re held back by all the forces that tell us we can’t do anything, it’s possible that we can do better when given a chance.” Many Egyptians, though, don’t believe they will get such a chance in today’s climate. “Had Rami Malek been here, he would have been working in an Internet cafe. Oh God, let us immigrate,” tweeted a person who went by the name Ghada. Others noted that if Malek had played the flamboyant and openly gay Queen singer Freddie Mercury in an Egyptian film, the actor would probably have been arrested and imprisoned by President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi’s government, which has persecuted gay people. In January, an Egyptian television journalist was handed a 12-month prison sentence merely for interviewing a gay man on his show. “Freddie died almost 30 years ago and what is left of him is
beautiful (his music) and he deserves to be known for it,” tweeted Breathing Art in the Egyptian dialect of Arabic. “And Rami, had he played this role in Egypt, he would have been jailed and humiliated.” Other Egyptians went even further: “If he were still in this country, he would have been a tuktuk driver or be hanging from a rope,” Hamed Kabbara tweeted. Still, some older Egyptians held out hope that Malek’s win would help Egypt. “Of course, his winning is impressive and inspiring for us,” said Ayman Abulhassan, a 59-year-old doctor. “It certainly will post a very good image of Egypt. His roots are Egyptian. And Egypt is the root of civilization, even if it is passing through a dark time now.” Nasr, who is from the same governorate where Malek’s relatives live, said she came to Cairo to earn a master’s degree. Today, she works two jobs but can barely make ends meet. “My income is not even covering my expenses,” she said. “The economic situation here crushed any possibility for anyone to start a small business.” She said she hopes that Malek’s win “changes how others see Egyptians and that it will stop many from thinking that Egyptians are failures.” n
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COVER STORY
A final, desperate protest ‘Parking lot suicides’ at veterans hospitals prompt calls for better staff training and prevention efforts. BY EMILY WAX- THIBODEAUX in St. Paul, Minn.
A
lissa Harrington took an audible breath as she slid open a closet door deep in her home office. This is where she displays what’s too painful, too raw to keep out in the open. Framed photos of her younger brother, Justin Miller, a 33-yearold Marine Corps trumpet player and Iraq veteran. Blood-spattered safety glasses recovered from the snow-covered Nissan Frontier truck where his body was found. A phone filled with the last text messages from his father: “We love you. We miss you. Come home.” Miller was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidal thoughts when he checked into the Minneapolis Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in February 2018. After spending four days in the mentalhealth unit, Miller walked to his truck in VA’s parking lot and shot himself in the very place he went to find help.
“The fact that my brother, Justin, never left the VA parking lot — it’s infuriating,” Harrington, 37, said. “He did the right thing; he went in for help. I just can’t get my head around it.” A federal investigation into Miller’s death found that the Minneapolis VA made multiple errors: not scheduling a follow-up appointment, failing to communicate with his family about the treatment plan and inadequately assessing his access to firearms. Several days after his death, Miller’s parents received a package from the Department of Veterans Affairs — bottles of antidepressants and sleep aids prescribed to Miller. His death is among 19 suicides that occurred on VA campuses from October 2017 to November 2018, seven of them in parking lots, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. While studies show that every suicide is highly complex — influenced by genetics, financial uncertainty, relationship loss and other factors — mental-health experts worry that veterans taking their lives on VA property has become a
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PHOTOS BY JENN ACKERMAN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
desperate form of protest against a system that some veterans feel hasn’t helped them. The most recent parking lot suicide occurred weeks before Christmas in St. Petersburg, Fla. Marine Col. Jim Turner, 55, dressed in his uniform blues and medals, sat on top of his military and VA records and killed himself with a rifle outside the Bay Pines Department of Veterans Affairs. “I bet if you look at the 22 suicides a day you will see VA screwed up in 90%,” Turner wrote in a note investigators found near his body. VA declined to comment on individual cases, citing privacy concerns. But relatives say Turner had told them that he was infuriated that he wasn’t able to get a mental-health appointment that he wanted. Veterans are 1.5 times as likely as civilians to die by suicide, after adjusting for age and gender. In 2016, the veteran suicide rate was 26.1 per 100,000, compared with 17.4 per 100,000 for non-veteran adults, according to a recent federal report. Before 2017, VA did not
The parking lot outside the Minneapolis Department of Veterans Affairs, where Justin Miller, a 33-year-old Iraq War veteran, killed himself last year after spending four days in the mental-health unit. His death is among 19 suicides that occured on VA campuses from October 2017 to November 2018.
separately track on-campus suicides, said spokesman Curt Cashour. The Trump administration has said that preventing suicide is its top clinical priority for veterans. In January 2018, President Trump signed an executive order to allow all veterans — including those otherwise ineligible for VA care — to receive mental-health services during the first year after military service, a period marked by a high risk for suicide, VA officials say. And VA points out that it stopped 233 suicide attempts between October 2017 and November 2018, when staff intervened to help veterans harming themselves on hospital grounds. Sixty-two percent of veterans, or 9 million people, depend on VA’s vast hospital system, but accessing it can require navigating a frustrating bureaucracy. Veterans sometimes must prove that their injuries are connected to their service, which can require a lot of paperwork and appeals. Veterans who take their own lives on VA grounds
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COVER STORY
Left: Justin Miller’s family visits his grave in Lino Lakes, Minn., on Dec. 13. Top right: Alissa Harrington holds the safety glasses recovered from the truck where her brother’s body was found. Bottom right: His psychiatric pills were delivered to his parents’ home days after he was found dead.
often intend to send a message, said Eric Caine, director of the Injury Control Research Center for Suicide Prevention at the University of Rochester. “These suicides are sentinel events,” Caine said. “It’s very important for the VA to recognize that the place of a suicide can have great meaning. There is a real moral imperative and invitation here to take a close inspection of the quality of services at the facility level.” Keita Franklin, who became VA’s executive director for suicide prevention in April, said the agency now trains parking lot attendants and patrols on suicide intervention. The agency also has launched a pilot program that expands its suicide prevention efforts, including peer mentoring, to civilian workplaces and state governments. “We’re shifting from a model that says, ‘Let’s sit in our hospitals and wait for people to come to us,’ and take it to them,” she said during a congressional staff briefing in January.
For some veterans, the problem is not only interventions, but also the care and conditions inside some VA mental-health programs. John Toombs, a 32-year-old former Army sergeant and Afghanistan veteran, hanged himself on the grounds of the Alvin C. York VA Medical Center in Murfreesboro, Tenn., the morning before Thanksgiving 2016. He had enrolled in an inpatient treatment program for PTSD, substance abuse, depression and anxiety, said his father, David Toombs. “John went in pledging that this is where I change my life; this is where I get better,” he said. But he was kicked out of the program for not following instructions, including being late to collect his medications, according to medical records. A few hours before he took his life, Toombs wrote in a Facebook post from the Murfreesboro VA that he was “feeling empty,” with a distressed emoji. “I dared to dream again. Then you showed
me the door faster than last night’s garbage,” he wrote. “To the streets, homeless, right before the holidays.” ‘They didn’t serve him well’ Miller was recruited as a high school trumpet player into the prestigious 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing Band based in Cherry Point, N.C. In Iraq, he was posted at the final checkpoint before U.S. troops entered the safe zone at al-Asad Air Base. Hour after hour, day after day, his gun was aimed at each driver’s head. He carefully watched the bomb-sniffing dogs for signs that they had found something nefarious. After he came home, Miller’s family noticed right away that he was different: incredibly tense, easily agitated and overreacting to criticism. He eventually told his sister that he suffered from severe PTSD after being ordered to shoot dead a man who was approaching the base and was believed to have a bomb.
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COVER STORY He sat with Miller’s mother, Drinda, as she closed her eyes in grief, rocking gently. Hahn and Harrington recalled their memories of Justin, playing the trumpet at Harrington’s wedding and taps at his grandfather’s funeral. After the investigation into Miller’s suicide, VA’s mistakes were the subject of a September hearing in front of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, but it was overshadowed by Brett M. Kavanaugh’s testimony during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Listening to the conversation about her son, Drinda broke down and left the room. She sat in the lobby, shaky and crying. Her daughter knelt down to hold her mother’s hand.
Miller called the Veterans Crisis Line last February to report suicidal thoughts, according to the VA inspector general’s investigation. The responder told him to arrange for someone to keep his guns and to go to the VA emergency department. Miller stayed at the hospital for four days. In the discharge note, a nurse wrote that Miller asked to be released and that the “patient does not currently meet dangerousness criteria for a 72-hour hold.” He was designated as “intermediate/moderate risk” for suicide. Although Miller had told the crisis hotline responder that he had access to firearms, several clinicians recorded that he did not have guns or that it was unknown whether he had guns. There was no documentation of clinicians discussing with Miller or his family how to secure weapons, according to the inspector general’s report, a fact that baffles his father. “My son served his country well,” said Greg Miller, his voice breaking. “But they didn’t serve
him well. He had a gun in his truck the whole time.” Franklin, head of VA’s suicide prevention program, called the suicide rate “beyond frustrating and heartbreaking,” adding that it’s essential that “local facilities develop a good relationship with the veteran, ask to bring their families into the fold — during the process and discharge — and make sure we know if they have access to firearms.” She said VA is looking at ways to create a buddy system during the discharge process, pairing veterans who can support each other’s recoveries. During the week of Miller’s birthday in December, his family joined his high school band leader to donate Miller’s trumpet to a local low-income high school. “He was a blue-chip, solid kid,” said Richard Hahn, his high school band leader. “He does this honorable thing and goes into the Marines. Then we have this tragic ending.”
‘He was making real progress’ A Rand Corp. study published in April showed that, while VA mental-health care is generally as good or better than care delivered by private health plans, there is high variation across facilities. “There are some VAs that are out of date. They are depressing,” said Craig J. Bryan, a former Air Force psychologist and a University of Utah professor who studies veteran suicides, referring to problems with short staffing and resources. “Others are stunning and new, and if you walk into one that’s awe-inspiring, it gives you hope.” The Murfreesboro VA hospital, where Toombs took his life, was ranked among the worst in the nation for mental health, according to the agency’s 2016 internal ratings. It has since improved to two out of a possible five stars. The program, “while nurturing in some ways, also has strict rules for picking up medications on time and attending group therapy,” said Rosalinde Burch, a nurse who worked closely with Toombs in the VA program. She believes she was transferred and later fired from the program for being outspoken that “his death was totally preventable.” He had been late several times to pick up his medications, and occasionally left group sessions early because he was suffering from anxiety, Burch said. “But those shouldn’t have been reasons for kicking him out,” she said. “He was making real progress.” Toombs’s substance abuse screenings were clear, and he was starting to counsel other veterans, she said. Burch wrote an email to the hospital’s program director, saying, “We all have the blood of this veteran on our hands.” Since Toombs’s death, the program has a new leadership team, including a new program chief and nurse manager, the hospital spokeswoman said. Burch has filed a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal agency that investigates whistleblower claims, to get her job back. For Miller’s family, their son’s death has motivated them to speak out about how VA can improve. “The VA didn’t cause his suicide,” Harrington said. “But they could have done more to prevent that, and that’s just so maddening.” n
KLMNO WEEKLY
“He was a blue-chip, solid kid. He does this honorable thing and goes into the Marines. Then we have this tragic ending.” Richard Hahn, Justin Miller’s high school band leader
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KLMNO WEEKLY
LIFESTYLES
Going ‘zero waste’ in a trashy world BY
T ERRENCE M C C OY
L
ittle Kamikatsu was facing a big problem. The rural Japanese town of 1,500 residents didn’t know what it was going to do with its trash. Residents had always burned it, first in front of their homes or on the farms, then in a large community pit, then in an incinerator the government quickly banned out of fear of pollutants. The town didn’t have money for a newer, safer incinerator. It had to find a new way. “They had to look into zero waste,” said Akira Sakano, chair of the board of directors of the Zero Waste Academy, an educational institution in Kamikatsu, explaining the discussions of those days in the early 2000s. That research introduced the town to what was then a virtual unknown but has since grown into one of the most widespread and successful recycling efforts in history, bringing cities the world over to the precipice of what once seemed fantastical: the elimination of waste. Today, places in rural Japan to metropolitan Sweden send very little of their trash to the landfill. Many more have a “Zero Waste” plan. In the United States, San Francisco leads the way, diverting more than 80 percent of its waste — two and a half times more than the national average. It has become a lifestyle, with millions of images flooding Instagram touting a #zerowaste existence, and generating new businesses. The concept calls on people to think differently about waste. It starts with the creation of categories. There are recyclables, like aluminum cans and glass bottles. Reusables such as clothing. Compostables such as uneaten food. And then those that shouldn’t be used at all such as plastic bags, which are very difficult to recycle. The number of categories might expand or contract depending on the location, but the goal behind the zero waste philosophy is the same: to vastly reduce the amount of trash going to the landfill — “diverting” it, in the parlance of waste experts, away from landfills
THE ZERO WASTE ACADEMY
With advanced recycling techniques, cities are slashing junk output by 80 percent — or more and incinerators. Debbie Raphael, director of the San Francisco Department of the Environment, who oversees the city’s zero-waste initiative, said it’s top-down and bottom-up. In San Francisco, there are three bins, one for recycling, one for compost and one for the landfill. The categorization is left to residents, and the sorting is left to the city contractor, Recology. “It takes policy,” Raphael said of the zero-waste philosophy, which has purportedly cut the city’s waste in half. “It takes financial incentives. It takes consequences for not participating. And it takes an ethic . . . of a sense of responsibility for the health of our planet.” It is a planet drowning in trash. Every year, the world is making more of it. In 2016 alone, the world’s cities produced more than 2 billion tons of solid waste. Americans produce a disproportionate amount, throwing away the equivalent of their own body weight
every month. And as the planet’s population grows, the problems are poised to become significantly worse. Large landfills, according to a Washington Post project on trash, get as many as 10,000 tons of waste every day and are filling quickly. Within three decades, trash will outweigh fish in the ocean, according to the World Economic Forum. If zero waste has an origin story, it would wind back more than 40 years to a man in Berkeley, Calif., named Dan Knapp. At the time, he was out of sorts. He’d just lost his job. His wife had left him. He was living with a college buddy in town, having just hitchhiked from Eugene, Ore. And he couldn’t stop thinking about trash. “My curiosity was inflamed,” he said. A former college professor with a PhD in sociology, he rode his bike to the Berkeley landfill nearly every day and scavenged — hands going through refuse for valuable metals. He’d thought he’d find a
Kamikatsu has instilled a system of strict categorization to help the rural Japanese town achieve zero waste.
bunch of unusable stuff. But it was an untapped resource. Recycling, he realized, could go way beyond what was then a lofty goal of 35 percent, beyond aluminum cans and paper. Our trash just needed to be categorized appropriately, he said. Recycling shouldn’t be made simple. It should be made complex. The thought ultimately led to a taxology of trash — called the “twelve master categories of recyclable materials” — laying some of the initial groundwork for the zero waste concept. But few people were listening. Knapp was just another Berkeley environmentalist — long hair, beard, the works. It took a city on the other side of the world, working on a plan that seemed stripped from the pages of the hippie manual. “In a natural ecosystem there is a balance,” began “No Waste by 2010,” a plan that Canberra, Australia, initiated in 1996. “The wastes from one process become the resources for other processes. Nothing is wasted. In a consumer society waste is an accepted part of life. A strategy is needed to reverse this trend.” Knapp, the owner of Urban Ore, which salvages Berkeley’s waste, said he was flown in as a consultant to advise the city. He brought back the town’s plan and soon was passing it around. He’d been calling his idea “total recycling.” But here was something much catchier, right there on the plan’s cover: No Waste, which quickly transformed to “zero waste,” according to interviews with environmentalists. “Dan was very instrumental in bringing [the plan] over,” said Neil Seldman, an official with the Institute of Local Self-Reliance in Washington. But Canberra’s plan accomplished more than that, said Paul Connett, a retired professor at St. Lawrence University who wrote, “The Zero Waste Solution: Untrashing the Planet One Community at a Time.” People took the idea seriously for the first time. “It wasn’t an activist talking about zero waste,” he said. “It was a government law. All of a sudden, it became a topic of conversation.” n
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KLMNO WEEKLY
BOOKS
Spoiler alert B Y R ON C HARLES / I LLUSTRATIONS BY J ULIA R OTHMAN
For the Olympic gymnast, success comes down to how well she sticks the landing. A flubbed dismount sullies even the most awe-inspiring routine. ¶ Stock-still at their desks, novelists face a similar demand for a perfectly choreographed last move. We follow them across hundreds of thousands of words, but the final line can make or break a book. It determines if parting is such sweet sorrow or a thudding disappointment. ¶ A character in one of Jess Walter’s novels says, “A book can only end one of two ways: truthfully or artfully.” Alas, most don’t end truthfully or artfully, but there are rare exceptions: novels that conclude with such gracefully calibrated language that we close the back cover and feel physically imprinted, as though the words were pressed into us by a weight we can hardly fathom. ¶ The rest is silence. ¶ Some of those great final lines remain markers of our favorite novels, holy relics of our most cherished reading experiences. Others enter into the language, take on a life of their own and eclipse their source. ¶ Here are 23 final lines that I have never forgotten.
“I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.” “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain (1884) “Huck Finn” is the most contentious Great American Novel. Censors’ objections have shifted over the years (from truancy to the n-word), but it’s been banned in parts of the country ever since it was published. But that last lonely line is pure genius. In Huck’s sweet accent, Twain captures the spirit of an adolescent nation determined to resist domestication and to keep exploring the unknown.
“There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air.” “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin (1899) Chopin ran right up against those same stultifying expectations in her last novel, “The Awakening,” about a wife and mother who falls in love with another man and begins to imagine a different life. Although it inspired considerable condemnation at the time, it’s now recognized as one of the earliest modernist novels and a foundational feminist text. The first readers were shocked by the heroine’s decision to walk into the sea and drown herself. Even today, Chopin’s final image of sensuous natural beauty is deeply unsettling.
“Beloved.” “Beloved” by Toni Morrison (1987) Morrison’s classic novel about slavery begins with this enigmatic line: “124 was spiteful.” We come to understand that animus slowly, as the story of a murdered baby moves backward and forward in time, before and after the Civil War. Former slaves and historians had described the horrors of slavery before, but Morrison made the psychological legacy of the South’s peculiar institution palpable as no other book ever had. After so much trauma, what other ending would do but a final invocation of that child who represents so many snuffed out by our nation’s foundational sin? “Beloved.”
“We try, as my sister said. We try. All of us. We try.” “Canada” by Richard Ford (2012) This novel is Ford’s finest. It’s a deeply contemplative story about a man whose parents were imprisoned for bank robbery, leaving him and his twin sister to fend for themselves when they were 15. Ford describes the adolescents’ harrowing adventures in beautifully polished sentences. But even more arresting is the book’s moral struggle to understand and forgive his parents’ failings — and his own. That final line, with its simple, imploring repetition, concludes the novel with just the right spirit of affirmation and regret.
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BOOKS
“It’s funny. Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”
“And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!”
“He was soon borne away by the waves, and lost in darkness and distance.”
“Reader, I did not even have coffee with him. That much I learned in college.”
“The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger (1951)
“A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens (1843)
“Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” by Mary Shelley (1818)
“A Gate at the Stairs” by Lorrie Moore (2009)
Holden Caulfield would scoff, but he’s served ably as the patron saint of disaffected teens for almost 70 years. His final advice, not to tell anybody anything, could have run anywhere, but it sounds especially poignant at the end. It’s a plaintive acknowledgment that his wandering confession to us has brought him no comfort.
Dickens didn’t “invent Christmas,” but the novelist certainly taught us how to celebrate it. His story about a reformed miser was an immediate bestseller. Repetition — and cynicism — may have reduced Tiny Tim’s final prayer to a saccharine cliche, but the tale of lives reformed and saved has lost none of its real sweetness.
“After all, tomorrow is another day.”
“She looked up and across the barn, and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously.”
“Gone With the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell (1936) Americans have consistently called Mitchell’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel one of their very favorites. Its immortality has been buttressed by a film adaptation. All kinds of criticisms have been leveled against the novel for its romanticized racism. But no one can forget Scarlett O’Hara uttering that blithely optimistic line, which has entered our vernacular as an expression of gallows humor.
“The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck (1939) Although initially attacked for its fierce critique of unregulated capitalism, “The Grapes of Wrath” was a phenomenal bestseller. Its final scene, the culmination of relentless hardships, losses and deaths, offers a moment of startling compassion and intimacy — the very milk of human kindness made flesh.
Although two centuries have passed, the cry of Dr. Frankenstein’s creature still moves anyone with a beating heart. Tortured by loneliness, the monster flees to the North Pole. How brilliant to end with the creature drifting away into the vast darkness — and whiteness — at the end of the world.
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) Fitzgerald’s story is considered one of the most poetic novels ever written, as this closing line demonstrates. Nick Carraway places Gatsby’s romantic quest in the context of those first Dutch settlers who placed their hopes on this now corrupted country. We know, he laments, that our first dreams can’t be realized, but we can’t help pining for them anyhow.
Lorrie Moore, one of the best short story writers alive, once said, “The end of a story is really everything.” “A Gate at the Stairs,” is about a witty young woman trying to figure out adult life in the face of two unspeakable tragedies. The ending offers a sigh of emotional relief: a wry repudiation of “Jane Eyre.”
“Are there any questions?” “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood (1985) The book ends with an epilogue that takes place at an academic conference in 2195. the professor warns to be “cautious about passing moral judgment upon the Gileadean.” The lessons of the past, he notes, are obscured by the passage of time. He then asks, “Are there any questions?” Those of us staring at a Supreme Court now tipping away from women’s reproductive rights probably have several questions.
“I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep.” “Gilead” by Marilynne Robinson (2004) “Gilead,” about two families in Iowa, comes to us as a sprawling letter written by John Ames, a 77year-old minister who fears he might die soon. What, he asks himself, must he tell his 7-year-old son before he’s carried away to imperishability? His testimony, sealed with that line from “King Lear,” is enough to convert anyone to the power of great fiction.
“Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?” “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison (1952) “I am invisible,” the unnamed narrator says at the start, “simply because people refuse to see me,” but by the end, no one could ever ignore him. In the final pages, the narrator knows some readers will continue to ignore the relevance of his life. But he knows that’s not true. In fact, he confesses that the universality of his experience “frightens” him.
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“And Madeleine kept squinting, as though Mitchell was already far away, until finally, smiling gratefully, she answered, ‘Yes.’ ”
“I wish you all a long and happy life.”
“For an instant, everything was bathed in radiance.”
“The Lovely Bones” by Alice Sebold (2002)
“March” by Geraldine Brooks (2005)
The plot sounds equally gruesome and mawkish: Susie, a 14-year-old girl, is raped and murdered by a neighbor, and then she describes her family’s reaction from heaven. Death has given her preternatural insight into the suffering of those left behind. Her final wish looks banal out of context, but after watching her family — and her murderer — for years, it’s devastatingly pure.
The father of the four sisters in “Little Women” (1868) is put at the center of the historical novel “March.” Mr. March has gone to serve as a chaplain to Union soldiers. By the time, March returns home at the end of Brooks’s novel, we know him as the haunted survivor of carnage. The light of a lamp brought into his parlor arrives like a foretaste of grace.
“The Marriage Plot” by Jeffrey Eugenides (2011)
“In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
“She called in her soul to come and see.”
“The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway (1926)
“Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
“Where the Wild Things Are” written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak (1963)
Hurston’s extraordinary novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God” fell out of print and was essentially forgotten, until Alice Walker rediscovered it in the 1970s. Now, fortunately, the tumultuous story of Janie, a black woman in Florida, is firmly rooted in the canon of American literature, and every year new readers “come and see.”
The tale of Max, the mischievous boy sent to bed without his supper, was Sendak’s greatest achievement, the perfect pairing of text and image. When Max “gave up being king of where the wild things are,” sailed back to his room and found dinner waiting for him, his mother’s love is confirmed, and the natural order of his world is restored.
“The Road” by Cormac McCarthy (2006) We arrive at the final page in a state of utter desolation. At that moment, McCarthy breaks away from his characters and describes trout that once swam in mountain streams. After the gray and bloodsoaked pages that came before, it’s shockingly beautiful and places humanity’s horrors against the boundless life of the Earth.
How painfully ironic that America’s most macho author should be remembered for a novel about an impotent man. In this closing scene, Lady Brett tempts Jake once again to imagine what “a damned good time” they could have had. But chaos and disappointments have cured Jake of pointless fantasies. He dismisses Brett’s romantic speculation with this bitter rhetorical question.
“The Marriage Plot” is about Madeleine, who gets her ideas of love from 18th- and 19th-century fiction. Torn between two men, Madeleine endures real tragedy before finally correcting her course, which we, can’t know for sure until that very last word.
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“He loved Big Brother.”
“He runs. Ah: runs. Runs.”
“Nineteen Eighty-Four” by George Orwell (1949)
“Rabbit, Run” by John Updike (1960)
Orwell’s protagonist, Winston Smith, works as a reviser of historical records in the Ministry of Truth before becoming a member of a doomed resistance movement. The novel’s final scenes of torture are undeniably terrifying, but what’s most chilling is the government’s success at twisting the very minds of its subjects. In that haunting last line, we see the success of Big Brother’s deception.
When we first meet 26-year-old Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, he decides on a whim to run away from his wife and toddler. It’s a “monstrously selfish” act borne of panic over his lost youth and responsibilities of adult life. Rabbit eventually crawls home, determined to be better. In the final pages, he flees again, which Updike captures in that closing line swelling with deliverance and cowardice.
“and it was still hot.”
Ron Charles writes about books for The Washington Post and hosts TotallyHipVideoBookReview.com n
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