When world leaders assembled for their group photo at the G20 summit in New Delhi Sunday, there was no Xi Jinping to showcase China’s rise, no Vladimir Putin to glad-hand and lobby for Russia’s perspective on its war in Ukraine.

Alone with big-power status at the elaborately decorated Gandhi monument was U.S. President Joe Biden. He was “disappointed,” he said, that Mr. Xi skipped the meeting, yet relishing a moment that underscored the United States’ still-unrivaled position and breadth in the 21st-century world.

It was affirmative for a president who took office in January 2021 asserting that “America is back” after the retrenchment and disdain for U.S. global leadership of the Trump presidency.

“The message ‘America is back’ is pretty easy to sell at a G20 where the president of the United States is in attendance, but Xi and Putin are not,” says Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts University’s Fletcher School in Medford, Massachusetts, and an expert in U.S. grand strategy and geopolitics.

Mr. Biden was “engaged in what [former Secretary of State] George Shultz used to refer to as ‘gardening,’ and it’s something Biden really goes out of his way to do,” he adds. “You take care of your allies and partners and work with them along the way so they will trust you and work with you and with international institutions” – like the G20, NATO, or the AUKUS grouping of Asia-Pacific powers.

Still, Mr. Biden’s turn to the world stage, which wrapped up Monday with a stop in Vietnam, was not one of unmitigated triumph. The trip also highlighted a rising challenge to established global powers from developing countries, as well as growing doubts about America’s staying power as the 2024 presidential election looms.

The developing world’s desire not to be beholden to any one power or to the U.S.-led post-World War II international order was evident in the G20 summit’s final statement, which contained softer language on Russia’s war in Ukraine than did the group’s statement last year.

That change reflected host India’s efforts since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 to stake out a neutral position amenable not just to it but to numerous developing countries that have eschewed the West’s fierce condemnation of Moscow’s aggression.

Evan Vucci/AP

President Joe Biden meets Vietnam President Vo Van Thuong in Hanoi, Vietnam, Sept. 11, 2023. The United States is seeking strengthened relations between the countries to counter China’s increasingly aggressive activity in the South China Sea.

Indeed for some experts, the stubborn global divide over the war in Ukraine demonstrates the limits of Mr. Biden’s approach to foreign policy.

“Much to Biden’s credit, he rallied our European allies on Ukraine, but his inability to rally other countries from a standoffish position ... has to be seen as a negative,” says Robert Lieber, emeritus professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown University in Washington. The G20 statement on Ukraine is further evidence that “the number of countries willing to condemn Russia since its invasion hasn’t budged,” he adds.

Mr. Biden may have won some points with the Global South as a result of the proposals he championed at the summit, including new World Bank initiatives to put more money into developing countries’ digital connectivity and other projects. He also signed on to a new infrastructure project to connect India to the Middle East and Europe through rail and ports – a plan some analysts say aims to provide an alternative to China’s ambitious Belt and Road program.

But countries are unlikely to be won over until the shovels actually start hitting the dirt, some experts say.

“The Global South’s point of view is that so far they’ve heard mostly talk even as China has steadily moved infrastructure projects along,” says Robert Daly, director of the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States in Washington. “If you want to win them over, you have to change their perspective that we [the West] provide lectures, while China provides easy cash.”

Concerns over a return of isolationism

Then there are the doubts Mr. Biden faces internationally concerning the prospects for his international vision or for a more isolationist America, especially if former President Donald Trump returns to the White House.

“What I heard was deep concern over what was widely portrayed as the historic disaster a second Trump presidency would constitute,” says Mr. Daly, who returned to Washington last week from Berlin. “It’s quite clear [other countries] would no longer see the U.S. as a reliable partner they can count on and work with if they’re going to be whipsawed by a dramatic change in our foreign policy every four years.”

Indeed for some, part of Mr. Biden’s objective over a month heavily focused on foreign policy – next week he’ll make the case for his international vision at the United Nations General Assembly in New York – will be to secure to the extent he can America’s role in the world, whatever the result of the next presidential election.

“The primary thing Biden can do is defeat Trump in 2024,” says Dr. Drezner, whose article “Bracing for Trump 2.0” is featured in this month’s Foreign Affairs.

Evelyn Hockstein/AP

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and U.S. President Joe Biden talk during the launch of the Global Biofuels Alliance at the G20 summit in New Delhi, Sept. 9, 2023.

Mr. Biden can use the months before entering the heat of the campaign to cement his vision and America’s commitment to its global role by locking in ties with allies and partners, he says. Gains that the administration seeks with some hard-to-crack cases – Dr. Drezner cites Mexico on immigration and illicit drugs, and Iran on its nuclear program – might be won by using the “threat” that terms for cooperation will be better now than under a second Trump administration.

In case anyone failed to grasp the message of an engaged America at the G20, Mr. Biden bookended the India visit with further displays of U.S. leadership.

On his post-summit stop in Vietnam, he cemented a strategic partnership aimed at countering China’s increasingly aggressive activity in the South China Sea. Vietnam raised the U.S. to the highest level in its hierarchy of diplomatic relations.

Mr. Biden – who met at the G20 with China’s No. 2 leader, Premier Li Qiang – rejected the suggestion at a Sunday press conference in Hanoi that his five-day trip “around the world” was about containing China, preferring to characterize it as aimed at fostering greater global security through strengthened ties with allies and partners.

“We have an opportunity to strengthen alliances around the world to maintain stability,” he said. “That’s what this trip was all about.”

Global campaign

Equally striking in this endeavor was the full-court press of American global engagement that the administration ran over the week leading up to the G20 summit.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Kyiv to demonstrate “enduring support” for Ukraine against Russian aggression, while White House Middle East envoy Brett McGurk traveled to Riyadh to press forward on a potential Saudi-Israeli normalization agreement that would transform the Middle East.

The U.S ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield – a member of Mr. Biden’s Cabinet – made a visit to Chad’s border with Sudan to highlight the plight of refugees from Sudan’s civil war and warn about the threat of what some experts say could be another genocide in Sudan’s Darfur.

The flurry of recent activity around the administration’s goal of a grand deal securing a normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia had many eyes trained on Mr. Biden in New Delhi to see if he would meet with summit attendee Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

No meeting occurred, though Mr. Biden did warmly shake hands with the crown prince – whom he had once vowed to treat as a “pariah” over the 2018 assassination of Saudi journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi.

Georgetown’s Dr. Lieber says a normalization deal would constitute a “sea change” in the Middle East and a “real achievement for Biden’s foreign policy” in the run-up to the 2024 election.

“It’s the kind of deal that only an engaged United States would be able to accomplish,” says Dr. Lieber, author of the recent book “Indispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in a Turbulent World.”

He says there’s no getting around the “terrible crime” the Saudis committed in killing Mr. Khashoggi. But he says the reality is that the U.S. engages with many unsavory leaders and countries “that have committed vastly greater crimes,” in pursuit not just of its own interests but of a more “stable world.”

Hands still muddy, Jorge Córdova looks over the young lumilla tree he has just planted here in memory of Gabriel Martínez, a teenager murdered in September 1973 at the outset of Chile’s nearly two-decade-long dictatorship. 

Mr. Córdova joined an international collective that plans to plant more than 3,000 native trees across 15 acres of protected land in southern Chile over the coming year. Each tree will commemorate the life of a victim killed or disappeared under the rule of Augusto Pinochet. 

“We cannot forget or go through life as if nothing happened,” says Mr. Córdova.

On Sept. 11, 1973, a U.S.-backed coup ousted the democratically elected, socialist President Salvador Allende, ushering in 17 years of brutal violence and the suppression of political dissent. 

Half a century later, the South American nation is still reckoning with its complicated past – and how, or even whether, it should be remembered. The government only last month announced a formal role in the search for those who disappeared during the dictatorship, and there are elected officials who still stand up for the coup. 

Chileans are increasingly divided by misinformation about the dictatorship and by what locals call desmemoria, or “forgetting.” Some 36% of the population in a recent poll said that “the military was right to commit the coup,” up from 16% a decade ago.

“It’s a topic that creates deep segregations in Chile,” says one man in the capital, Santiago, who requested anonymity due to divisions in his own family. “Most people prefer not to talk about it. We don’t want to talk about uncomfortable things.”

Naomi Larsson Piñeda

Jorge Córdova plants a tree in memory of a boy killed in 1973 by Mr. Córdova's uncle, who was then a police officer under the Pinochet dictatorship. It is one of 3,000 trees to be planted to commemorate victims of the regime.

But today, on the 50th anniversary of the Chilean coup, there are individuals and groups, like Ecomemoria, for which Mr. Córdova has volunteered, working to ensure that the legacy of the dictatorship is remembered in its entirety. It’s a heavier lift than most expected, given that the atrocities from that period are well documented. But growing political divisions – and the ways in which Chileans envision their nation’s future – shape the way today’s anniversary is remembered.

“There is not a single piece of land in Chile that doesn’t bear the scars of the dictatorship. Yet society lives as if nothing happened,” says Jimmy Bell, the son of a political prisoner who was imprisoned and tortured.

Barriers to truth?

When Mr. Allende’s Popular Unity party came to power in 1970, it aimed to forge Chile’s democratic path toward socialism. Mr. Allende had won just 36% of the vote and faced a hostile Congress, while the rapid nationalization of industries led to widespread mismanagement and hyperinflation. The United States, in the throes of the Cold War, tried to thwart Mr. Allende’s campaign and presidential program and supported the coup three years into his administration. 

Over the subsequent 17 years, Mr. Pinochet worked to remove what he saw as the stains of Mr. Allende’s socialism, ruling with authoritarianism and terror. He enshrined his power in the 1980 constitution, guaranteeing that he could stay in office until at least 1989.  

Those affected by disappearances and murders during Mr. Pinochet’s rule are still struggling for justice. A culture of impunity has dominated for decades, and efforts to convict the perpetrators are even more desperate now as many of them reach old age.

The Chilean government last month announced a national search plan to find the remains of those who were forcibly disappeared. Until now, the work has been down to families, friends, and civil society.

Viviane Drouilly is one of those still searching for her sister, Jacqueline Paulette Drouilly Yurich. She was 24 years old and nearly four months pregnant when she was abducted in 1974 by the secret police. “My sister never reappeared,” Ms. Drouilly recalls. “The atmosphere was one of fear, uncertainty, and absolute despair.”  

Naomi Larsson Piñeda

Viviane Drouilly’s sister was forcibly disappeared during the Pinochet regime. "The atmosphere was one of fear, uncertainty, and absolute despair,” Ms. Drouilly recalls.

Her sister is one of nearly 1,500 people who were forcibly disappeared. To date, just over 300 have been found and identified. 

“The social, moral, and economic harm to thousands of Chilean families was enormous,” she says. “It continues today.”

Just 34% of the more than 3,000 registered cases of those executed or disappeared have led to criminal sentences, and 0.6% of the upwards of 38,000 cases of torture have resulted in convictions, according to Rodrigo Bustos, head of Amnesty International Chile. Mr. Pinochet never served a day behind bars, while in neighboring Argentina, the generals who headed a military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983 were prosecuted in a 1985 trial. 

“During the dictatorship, the state put up a series of barriers to reaching truth and justice,” Mr. Bustos says, pointing to an amnesty law introduced in 1978, protecting military personnel who committed human rights violations. “There has been so much impunity.”

Chileans are choosing to forget about the past because “successive governments since [the] return to democracy” didn’t take action, says Mr. Bell, whose family has lived in exile in the United Kingdom since fleeing the regime in 1974. 

“There’s been no education, no attempt to show what happened, and no attempt to show who it was who really benefited from the dictatorship,” he says. 

“Didn’t just disappear”

Many Chileans do not agree that their history needs dissecting. For some, Mr. Pinochet saved the country from Marxism and implemented policies, such as mass privatization, that were credited for the country’s economic dynamism – despite creating widespread inequality.

“Thank God the junta came; otherwise we would be the same as Cuba,” says Maria Viera, who grew up on the outskirts of Santiago. She recalls bare supermarket shelves before the coup and lines stretching blocks to buy chicken.

These aren’t fringe opinions. Elected officials and Cabinet members, including a former interior minister, have expressed support for the dictatorship. Last month a congresswoman claimed that well-documented accounts of sexual violence used as torture during that period are “urban legend.”

“As a society, we seem to be going backwards,” Mr. Bustos says. Less than half the country’s citizens (42%) believe the coup destroyed democracy, the lowest number since 1995.

“The dictatorship didn’t just disappear after 1990,” says Felipe Gonzalez, senior lecturer of Economics at London’s Queen Mary University, referring to the year Chile returned to democracy. 

Mr. Pinochet remained a central public figure for years after his dictatorship ended, serving as the head of the army for another eight years. His presence is still felt, nearly two decades after his death. The social uprisings that erupted across Chile in 2019 were sparked by remnants of his policies and economic model, which put basic services like public transport, health care, and education out of reach for many Chileans. 

His 1980 constitution is still in force today. Last year, voters rejected an attempt to rewrite it. The draft replacement, which included a measure to recognize Indigenous sovereignty among other reforms, was characterized by some as too liberal and progressive for a largely conservative country. Today, the conservative majority is in charge of creating a new draft, which has thus far included proposals ranging from completely banning abortion to expelling immigrants in the country illegally.

Carlos Barria/Reuters

A woman dressed in black attends an event to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Chilean military coup, in Santiago, Chile, Sept. 10, 2023.

Responding with life

Back in the forest, members of Ecomemoria lament Chile’s lack of reckoning with its past – and how that sparks division today. 

The group, founded in 2002, is made up of former political prisoners and exiles who work to counter the idea that Chile is ready to forget, seeking to encourage memory and education. In their current forestation project, they say the visible presence and growth of the trees over time will be an effective way to encourage discussion among future generations. Each tree will have a plaque commemorating a victim.

“How do you respond to the brutality of the dictatorship?” asks Mr. Bell. “We have to reflect the dreams of the victims – that dream was for a better life,” he says. “So, we respond to the dictatorship with life.” 

Mr. Córdova takes time apart from the group to observe the hundreds of small trees neatly lined up around him. He looks back at the tree he just planted and is overcome with emotion.

Mr. Córdova came to Ecomemoria just a week ago after reading about the group online. He arrived without notice, wanting to ensure, in part, that the deaths and human rights abuses of the dictatorship are never repeated.

There was also the guilt.

Young Gabriel, in whose honor Mr. Córdova planted a tree, “was executed along with seven other people on the street, not too far from where I grew up in Santiago,” he says, his voice breaking. “He was executed by my uncle.” 

Mr. Córdova’s uncle worked for the national police at the time and is one of the relatively few perpetrators of dictatorship-era violence who has been tried and convicted for his crimes. 

“I want to pay for this guilt, though it is not my fault,” Mr. Córdova says. “We need to be able to say as a family that we are against what happened to this boy,” he says. “So that this can never happen again.”

Matthew Daly/AP/File

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan (center) listens as resident Shannon Rainey speaks during a tour of Gordon Plaza neighborhood in New Orleans, Nov. 17, 2021.

Sheena Dedmond doesn’t invite company to her home in New Orleans’ Gordon Plaza subdivision anymore. Not her friends, not family, not anyone.

The five-bedroom house she inherited from her late mother has done more to, than for, their family, Ms. Dedmond says. 

Before her parents and others trickled into a then-new development in the late 1970s, this 95-acre site was home to the Agriculture Street Landfill. Homebuyers at the time were aware of the site’s history, but families like Ms. Dedmond’s received assurances of the development’s safety – and were placated by the allure of affordable property. 

For hopeful buyers, a majority of whom were Black, it was a path to economic mobility. 

But since then, those who call Gordon Plaza home have complained of chronic ailments that they say are due to toxins from the former landfill bubbling out of the earth. Ms. Dedmond, shaking her head, says she couldn’t bear the guilt of exposing others to the dangers she and neighbors – second families, who helped raise her – face. She doesn’t let her children play outside, out of fear of increasing their exposure to hazardous chemicals.

Now, after three decades of effort by residents including Ms. Dedmond – efforts that for years seemed fruitless – the lives of residents here at Gordon Plaza are poised to change. In June last year, New Orleans officials at last agreed to relocate residents of Gordon Plaza, where 58 of 67 homes remained occupied by owners or renters. The city set aside $35 million to buy out the homeowners.

For Gordon Plaza residents, their pending relocation represents long-awaited justice, even as the city’s action signals a wider trend of societal awareness of environmental inequities. Emotionally, the residents’ journey has been one of perseverance; legally, it’s an anomaly across a movement where such victories remain rare. 

“It’s been a lesson on how hard it is to realize environmental justice,” says Lauren Godshall, an attorney for Gordon Plaza residents and a clinical assistant professor at the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic. 

Chris Granger/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate/AP/File

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell speaks Feb. 2, 2022. She has supported relocation efforts for residents of Gordon Plaza, built on 95 acres that for decades had been used as a landfill.

Solidarity got them here. Even as mayors and city council members – as well as state and federal policymakers – ignored or rebuffed their pleas for help, residents of Gordon Plaza persisted. They persisted as a presence at council meetings. They persisted as a voice in their city, louder and louder with each passing year. 

For years, nothing happened. Until it did – until council members like J.P. Morrell, who sponsored the move to create a city-funded relocation fund, were elected. New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who recently survived a controversial mayoral recall effort, has also made Gordon Plaza relocation efforts a key part of her platform. 

A symbol of wider U.S. challenges

Nationally, Gordon Plaza’s plight fits a legacy of discrimination and racism – and of the difficulties in meeting a legal burden of proof. A landmark 2007 report led by environmental justice pioneers Robert Bullard and Beverly Wright, among other researchers, found that 55% of the 9 million Americans living near hazardous sites were nonwhite, far above the share of the overall population. For low-income Black Americans, in particular, a 2017 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the risk of fatality from poor air quality due to pollution is three times greater than for the overall population.

The Agriculture Street Landfill opened back in 1909, roughly a century before these health discrepancies gained public attention. The site would collect at least half of all waste produced locally in those years – including pest control chemicals – until its mandated closure in 1957 following Louisiana’s ban on open-air landfills nearly a decade prior. In 1965, the landfill would reopen temporarily to accommodate Hurricane Betsy debris.

Social and political change was afoot across the United States by that time. Passage of federal legislation forcing Southern states to expand civil rights would soon broaden the scope of opportunity for marginalized Black populations. New Orleans officials began developing affordable properties, including what would become Gordon Plaza. Like Ms. Dedmond’s folks, many of the newly arriving families to the subdivision were first-time homebuyers.

In 1983, soil testing found potentially toxic materials at the proposed Robert R. Moton Elementary School nearby. 

A decade of additional soil testing would pass, and gradually, at first, murmurs among neighbors of others falling ill began. In that time, the elementary school opened in 1987 following the site’s remediation. However, after one of the school’s sewage lines ruptured a few years later, state and federal officials recorded further discovery of lead and other chemicals in the area. It then took until 1994 for the Environmental Protection Agency to declare Gordon Plaza and the surrounding area a federal Superfund site – only after a class-action lawsuit.

The federal government defines Superfund sites as abandoned industrial areas containing hazardous materials. The sites require long-term remediation and removal. Environmental regulators estimate that more than 21 million Americans live within a mile of a Superfund site. The proximity to Superfund sites has been linked to an increase in infant mortality rates, declining mental health levels, cancers, and more negative health effects, the Department of Housing and Urban Development says.

But Gordon Plaza’s dilemma is unique – the residents live on top of a Superfund site. 

“Superfund sites aren’t where human beings actually live,” except for this one, Ms. Godshall says. 

Struggles of motherhood

In 2012, Ms. Dedmond told her mother she was expecting her first child. She remembers her mother’s excitement at the news. 

But Ms. Dedmond’s mother also told her of the miscarried pregnancies she had experienced over the years. There had been seven. It happened often in their community, and women blamed the toxins beneath them.

Gerald Herbert/AP/File

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan stands near a Marathon Petroleum refinery while touring nearby neighborhoods in Reserve, Louisiana, Nov. 16, 2021. He has been promoting equitable access to clean air, water, and soil nationwide.

By the end of 2012, as Ms. Dedmond was in the last trimester of her first pregnancy, her mother was experiencing new health challenges. 

“The day I went into labor, all I could think about was her,” as they were unable to experience that special moment together, Ms. Dedmond remembers. As Ms. Dedmond held her newborn daughter that day, she felt her heart breaking.

Nationwide movement toward legislation

The experience of Gordon Plaza reflects a wider pattern of discrimination in American housing, land use, and industrial siting, says Amy Laura Cahn, legal director for Taproot Earth and a former director of the Environmental Justice Clinic at Vermont Law School. 

“Undoing those effects, it’s difficult to do,” Ms. Cahn says. “It shouldn’t be that difficult, but it has been for a number of reasons.”

Last year, Ms. Cahn testified before Congress in support of a proposed Environmental Justice for All Act. She argued that existing federal environmental regulations and laws – as well as the civil rights legislation that helped propel Ms. Dedmond’s family into land ownership in the South – are ill-equipped to protect from environmental inequities. 

“Our environmental laws are not designed to protect communities from the harm of those cumulative impacts,” Ms. Cahn says. For those hoping to address disparate impacts, “the right to go to court is only available to individuals and communities in instances of intentional discrimination.” But proving discrimination is a “heavy lift from an evidentiary perspective.”

On the shoulders of victims themselves rests the burden of proof. Medical experts say it takes time for diseases linked to toxic residential exposure to emerge. Connecting residents’ ailments to certain chemicals can take years, if not decades or generations, health officials say.  

Still, Ms. Cahn continues, leaders at state levels are guiding a way forward. In 2020, New Jersey enacted its consequential Environmental Justice Law requiring permitting applications for new facilities, or for facilities hoping to expand, to include an environmental justice impact statement aimed at protecting “overburdened communities.” Massachusetts legislators have also approved a law requiring a similar climate analysis that stresses measures of potential harm to communities. 

Federally, similar efforts are rising. 

The Environmental Justice for All Act supported by congressional Democrats would require that cumulative health impacts be considered in permitting decisions. Also among its features is the proposed overturning of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2001 Alexander v. Sandoval decision to allow private citizens and organizations to pursue legal remedy from discrimination.

Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency, under Biden-appointed Administrator Michael Regan, has sought to put new emphasis on addressing injustice – including a special focus on Louisiana and the industrial region not far from New Orleans that has become known as “cancer alley.” 

“There are compromises that have been made,” Ms. Cahn says of the Biden administration’s approach to environmental justice efforts so far. “But we’re seeing an administration that has been definitely more responsive to civil rights complaints.”

Hope for new beginnings 

The older of Ms. Dedmond’s two daughters is 11 years old now. The Residents of Gordon Plaza community action group is inching nearer to the eventual housing relocation. It promises new beginnings for those who lost the most and new uses for the site they leave behind. The city intends to someday convert the area into a 5-megawatt solar farm, according to its current plan.

Hurdles remain, however.

Late last year, after the city set aside relocation funding, its appointed property appraiser created a stir among Gordon Plaza residents. Property evaluations were far below replacement costs that researchers at Tulane University had recommended based on comparable homes unimpaired by toxins. Ms. Dedmond’s 2,800-square-foot, five-bedroom, four-bathroom home – one of the modest subdivision’s largest – was valued at $358,000. The lower the value, the more limited residents’ next options for housing are.  

Gordon Plaza received the first buyout offer letters from the city in early April. 

Residents didn’t disclose the amount and asked for additional funding. Ms. Dedmond intends to test her new home’s soil and is adamant that her daughters won’t grow up in a sickness-prone neighborhood.

Even as the long process continues, she remains hopeful. She understands the work that led to where their effort stands today. 

If it wasn’t for her community’s perseverance, Ms. Dedmond says, “we wouldn’t be here.”

Fred Weir

Chinese cars assembled by the Russian company Avtotor in Kaliningrad are on display at the MIMS annual automobile exhibition in Moscow, Aug. 23, 2023.

Just a few years ago, the MIMS annual trade fair for Russia’s auto industry was dominated by European, Japanese, and Korean automakers. Nissan, Hyundai, BMW, Volkswagen, Renault, and Mercedes were by far the most popular foreign brands, with many of their products assembled in Russian factories.

But a whole new cast of market players was on full display at the 27th annual edition of MIMS, held at a vast riverside exhibition complex in August.

When Russia’s war against Ukraine began last year, virtually all Western automakers pulled out of the country, abandoning their investments, closing dealerships, and shredding the warranties for millions of Russian car owners. Domestic new car sales plunged by 60% within months, and even production of Russia’s own homegrown brands, such as the iconic Lada, nearly ground to a halt amid critical shortages of imported parts.

But exhibition organizers say this year’s event was bigger than ever, with the places of Western companies now taken by scores of Chinese providers of auto parts and services, and a totally new presence of Iranian, Turkish, and Indian producers. The Russian manufacturer Avtotor, which formerly assembled BMWs and Kias at its plant in the Baltic region of Kaliningrad, showed off a range of Chinese models it will now be producing, while two Iranian carmakers – who have been overcoming sanctions for decades – announced plans to debut their products on the Russian market.

“The show remains, the geography has changed,” says Anna Manvelova, director of the exhibition. “This is a very difficult time for the Russian automotive industry, which was one of the most damaged due to sanctions. But a crisis is also a time of opportunity.”

An enthusiastic but embattled market

Back in Soviet times, Russia produced a full range of domestic vehicles, though Soviet cars were never comparable in quality to Western counterparts, nor produced in quantities nearly enough to satisfy consumer demand. The average Soviet citizen typically waited years to take delivery of a small Zhiguli – based on a Fiat design – while the more substantial Volga sedan was mainly reserved for official use.

So after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russians embraced automobile culture with great passion, including domestic models.

“Russian cars have always dominated the market,” says Ms. Manvelova. “In a rich city like Moscow, you might not see many Russian cars, but go out to any small town and that’s all you will see. The Lada is not only the current No. 1 on the market, it always was.”

But while Western sanctions over the Ukraine war didn’t bite much in most areas of everyday life, Russians felt them pretty quickly when it came to maintaining a car or trying to buy a new one.

Fred Weir

Spare parts produced by a Chinese company are on display at the MIMS exhibition. Chinese companies bring the same advantages that Western ones formerly did, including warranties and reliable servicing, experts say.

Prices of parts and servicing shot up, while many buyers had to settle for a used car. Top-end Western models were still available, but had to be brought in by semi-smuggling methods known as “parallel import“ and came at much higher prices and without standard warranties. Russian automobiles have always been rather basic by Western standards, lacking automatic transmissions. But now due to parts shortages they are also being produced without power brakes, airbags, and other amenities.

“The situation remains bad, with the price of a new car being about the same as a new [apartment],” says Vladimir Zinin, financial director of a major car dealers association. Russia’s network of car dealerships is still struggling, he says, and without them an orderly relationship between consumers, producers, and banks remains difficult.

Still, sales of new cars have rebounded this year though they are still below prewar levels. According to the Autostat news service there were about 50 million passenger cars on Russian roads at the beginning of this year, less than half of which were foreign models.

“At least we no longer fear that we’ll have to exchange our cars for horses and buggies, which is how things looked a year ago,” says Mr. Zinin.

“All kinds of new people”

Most participants in this year’s MIMS auto fair were traditional Russian companies, who are reeling from the impact of sanctions and urgently seeking means of import substitution or new foreign partners. The exhibition was a prime venue for finding new clients, replacement suppliers, or filling market niches vacated by Western firms. “There is a big vacuum, and it’s being filled by all kinds of new people,” Ms. Manvelova says.

But the switchover is not without rough spots, especially when it comes to switching to new, unfamiliar models.

Efforts to convince taxi services to switch to Russian makes instead of the cheap Korean cars they have used in the past have hit serious roadblocks. The daily Noviye Izvestia quoted the owner of a taxi company as saying there had been nothing but trouble with a couple dozen Lada Granta cars that he bought. They started to break down after 40,000 km (25,000 miles), had weak electronics, and their radiators constantly overheated. The only advantage of the Russian cars, he told the paper, was cheap spare parts.

Last year the Moscow city government took over the sprawling Renault plant after the French carmaker pulled out of Russia. The same factory had formerly produced a Soviet compact car called the Moskvich, and Moscow’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin has pledged to reintroduce the brand in a modern all-Russian model, as a symbol of national resilience.

But the cars the factory has been producing are actually “re-badged” Chinese models, a fact that seems to underscore the deep complexities involved in fulfilling the Kremlin’s wish to recreate an indigenous Russian automobile industry.

Amir Kianmanesh, an executive of the Iranian automaker IKCO, says the Tara sedan, which his company has just begun introducing to the Russian market, will be an attractive option for consumers. He insists it’s price competitive with the Lada, but has many more advanced features that make it comparable to Western cars.

“Iran has been under sanctions for 30 years, and we’ve learned how to cope with it,” he says. “The Tara is 80% domestic production, with just a few imported parts. The Russians may have localized assembly, but not the whole production chain as we have. They have a long way to go.”

Everyone agrees that the biggest winner in Russia’s automotive revival is China. Chinese cars, particularly electric vehicles, have been making impressive inroads in global markets in general. They currently account for about half of all new car sales in Russia, and experts say their popularity is rising.

Chinese companies bring the same advantages that Western ones formerly did, including warranties and reliable servicing, experts say. But a survey conducted among Russian drivers by the industry group Otkritie Avto found that 44% complained about the cars’ thin metal skin, poor electronics and paintwork, and unsuitability for Russian roads.

“You can’t design new models from scratch, it’s too time consuming and expensive,” says Yevgeny Yeskov, editor of the online magazine AvtoBusinessReview. “Our best prospect right now is to bring large-scale production of Chinese models here, to restore our industry and market. We need the Chinese.”

Reuters

Members of Spain's Military Emergency Unit work to rescue people in Anougal, Morocco, after the Sept. 8 earthquake.

One global trend in recent years has been the ability and generosity of people to keep pace with frequent mass disasters. This has been evident in Morocco since Friday’s earthquake that destroyed parts of historic Marrakech and surrounding villages in the North African nation. Scores of countries quickly prepared to send assistance as well as made gestures of mourning and solidarity. The Eiffel Tower, for example, went dark on Saturday night.

Like many disasters, this one opened opportunities for aid from countries that Morocco sees as adversaries. Accepting such aid would set a tone of peacemaking as it allows for contact between peoples, enabling trust to grow. Any healing of tense ties between nations starts with the humility to accept such help.

A good example was seen after February’s earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. Greece was one of the first to send aid, even though at the time it was making threats against Turkey over a territorial dispute in the Aegean Sea. The gesture of aid cooled tensions. Turkish leaders restored diplomatic channels. The two countries’ foreign ministers toured affected areas together in a sign of renewed unity.

When another neighbor of Turkey, Armenia, offered to send rescue teams, Turkey opened a border crossing for the first time in 30 years to let them in. “I will always remember the generous aid sent by the people of Armenia,” Serdar Kiliç, Turkey’s envoy to Armenia, wrote on Twitter. Israel offered aid and medical teams to Syria. Although Damascus publicly refused, it quietly accepted the help.

Morocco now has a similar opportunity with Algeria, one of the first countries to reach out with compassion after the quake despite severed diplomatic relations over ethnic and regional disputes. Algiers opened its airspace immediately to Morocco-bound aid flights and offered to send rescue workers and medical teams. Israel and France – two other countries that have complicated histories with Morocco – have made similar offers.

Morocco has yet to accept that help. But Algeria’s gesture reflects the overwhelming support that ordinary Moroccans and Algerians share for warmer ties and open borders. “There is ... a moral duty that our country cannot shirk,” tweeted Algerian journalist Sid Ahmed Semiane, affirming the government’s offer. “No political conflict should silence our humanity.”

Emergencies like fires, floods, and earthquakes are compelling a fresh look at ways to use such events for peacemaking. “Since climate change affects everyone and natural disasters strike indiscriminately, nations can look beyond ideological, ethnic, religious, and other differences – and even prior conflicts – to forge ties in a collective battle against something that threatens them all,” wrote Limor Simhony, an Israeli policy analyst, in Foreign Policy. That work requires generosity as well as the humility to welcome it.