Activists wanted plastic eliminated altogether (until they need a COVID-19 vaccine delivered through a plastic vial and needle). Activists have urged Americans to stop using any plastic. The oceans have become a target of concern. The villain is plastics. Ocean studies have found much of the floating plastic in the Pacific comes from Asia ― and straws or bottles are rarely to blame. National Geographic found much of the plastic in the famed Great Pacific Garbage Patch is abandoned fishing gear ― 20 percent of which is estimated from the 2011 Japanese tsunami. A balanced perspective is to acknowledge some plastic use as essential for health and safety. We can replace plastic straws. But some items have no better alternative. Masks, gloves, and syringes have saved lives throughout the pandemic. Plastic bottles, which have a better environmental footprint than other containers, are essential to distribute water during natural disasters and frequent water infrastructure failures. For food, plastic wrap prevents spoilage and contamination. And science is stepping up once again as waste researchers are seemingly developing new ways to recycle plastic every day. Recently discovered enzymes in cow stomachs can break down plastic. Recent developments around superheated steam have made it possible to recycle any plastic. A newly invented robot can sift through sand and stop plastics from reaching the water. Innovators have also developed robots to clean up existing ocean waste. Most bans are not sensible solutions. Most of us have no appetite to return to the era before packaged foods, or many liquid containers.

Americans have always taken pride in our innovations. We hold more active patents than any other country. Despite that track record, some pessimists have given up on our ingenuity. This is most obvious in the environmental movement. Regarding climate change, pollution, or conservation, activists want the government to ban anything they deem “harmful” to the planet. Everything from fossil fuels to plastic products is targeted for bans or higher taxes despite our ability to get out of tight corners. In the 1970s and ’80s, the biggest concern about climate was the widening hole in the ozone layer. The hole above the Arctic was expected to cause skin cancers and a variety of other doomsday predictions. Destruction of the ozone layer was fueled by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), an aerosol commonly used in refrigerators and air conditioners. Once science identified the threat, companies found a way to substitute improved gases. The ozone hole closed. The solution wasn’t to ban air conditioners or refrigerators. The solution was to make them better. Given the noise level around air pollution and toxic emissions, you would be excused for not knowing America has cut carbon emissions more than any other country. Cars have become more fuel-efficient. Catalytic converters in your auto exhaust system were invented to clean up emissions from the tailpipe. Energy-efficient homes and buildings use less power and better insulation. Innovations in fracking have made natural gas an attractive energy source, which emits half as much carbon dioxide as coal.

Do you know what a “Reverse Kissinger” is? I ask because there’s reason to believe that some of President Trump’s advisers are telling him that a Reverse Kissinger should be his approach to Russian ruler Vladimir Putin. In the early 1970s, President Nixon, guided by Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser and secretary of state, opened diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. Their goal was to drive a wedge between that young and economically weak communist regime and the older and more powerful Soviet Union, thereby giving the U.S. an advantage in the Cold War. A Reverse Kissinger implies that Mr. Trump would attempt to do the opposite: Draw Moscow away from Beijing and closer to Washington. But the Nixonian/Kissingerian detente with Mao Zedong was possible thanks to the preexisting Sino-Soviet split, a souring of relations between the two Marxist/Leninist states based on ideological and strategic differences. Today, there’s no Sino-Russian split to exploit. On the contrary, Mr. Putin concluded a “no-limits” strategic partnership with Xi Jinping. We know what Mr. Putin wants: the restoration of the Russian/Soviet empire. Toward that end, he seeks to subsume Ukraine, turning it into a colony like Chechnya or a vassal state like Belarus. Finally, if you think conquering Ukraine would sate rather than whet Mr. Putin’s geopolitical appetite, think again. Moldova would be low-hanging fruit. Next in line might be NATO members such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all of which have significant Russian minorities, the result of Soviet settler colonialism. If the U.S. failed to defend those states, NATO would collapse. The demise of other American alliances would follow.

Mr. Erdogan wants the U.S. F-35 stealth fighter, but he purchased Russian S-400 advanced anti-aircraft systems in 2019. There is no reason to believe he wouldn’t test the F-35 against the S-400s and report the results to the Russians. A few years ago, Mr. Erdogan cut off electricity to the massive U.S. air base in southern Turkey. He could do so again at any time. That base, Incirlik, is a strategic element of U.S. air operations in the Middle East, Africa and Southwest Asia. Since Mr. Erdogan came to power, he has supported Palestinians against Israel. He has supported Hamas in its war against Israel. In January, he said, “What Israel’s prime minister was doing in Gaza is not any less than what Hitler did.” Also in January, Mr. Erdogan objected to calling Hamas terrorists what they are. He said it’s wrong to label Hamas as terrorists. More recently, he called for the destruction of Israel during prayers at a mosque. These actions are not what we should expect from any ally, far less one we are pledged to defend. NATO is a shadow of its former self. The primary reason is that most NATO nations have not invested in their own defense despite Article 5 of the 1949 NATO Treaty, which requires all members to defend one another against attack. The NATO Treaty has no provision to throw a member state out of the alliance. It could, perhaps, be done by unanimous action, but that won’t happen. Mr. Trump should threaten the Turkish president with expulsion from NATO. Mr. Trump should make clear that there is no room in NATO for an Islamist state such as the one Mr. Erdogan has made of Turkey.

Several empires didn’t survive World War I, among them the Ottoman Empire, out of whose ashes arose the Turkish nation. Its leader, Kemal Ataturk, watched the Ottoman Empire’s corruption and decay and established Turkey as a secular state. Ataturk foresaw the danger of alienation in another Islamic state, so the Turkish army was tasked with guarding the new nation’s secularism. This lasted for about 70 years and ended with the election of Recep Tayyip Erdogan as Turkey’s president. In 1996, when Mr. Erdogan was mayor of Istanbul, he said that “democracy is like a train. You get off when you reach your destination.” He campaigned against Turkey’s secularism and won the presidency. His government controls the courts, the armed forces ― his army is the second-largest in NATO ― and the media. It is a dictatorship in all but name. Mr. Erdogan has weeded out of the Turkish military all who believe in secularism. He has established an Islamist state, and Turkey’s goals are now entirely inconsistent with those of NATO. Europe relies on Turkey to control Islamic immigration, which is a false hope. Greece and Bulgaria have increased border security, but other European nations have not. In 2015, Mr. Erdogan attacked and crushed the Kurdish opposition and jailed peaceful Kurdish opponents. In 2016, he imprisoned tens of thousands of people for real or imagined participation in a coup against him. Freedom, as we know it, is not to be found in Turkey. Mr. Erdogan, through his policies, has wrecked the Turkish economy. Inflation is now running at an annual rate of about 39%. The latest proof of Mr. Erdogan’s opposition to democracy is the March 19 arrest of Ekrem Imamoglu, his principal political opponent.

The Kim family has ruled North Korea since the beginning of the Korean War in 1950. The current leader, Kim Jong-un rules North Korea with an Iron hand. When Deng Xiaoping took over in December 1979, he inherited a poor and ravaged country. Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” caused millions of deaths from starvation, and the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 devastated the country. Deng’s vision of market-oriented reforms and opening to the outside world for investment, technology and trade met opposition from some conservatives in leadership positions. Still, Deng persisted, encouraging foreign investment in China, primarily from the U.S., while encouraging Chinese students to study in the U.S. In 2013, Xi Jinping ushered in a period of assertive leadership, stoking nationalism from a century of humiliation in the 19th century. Mr. Xi launched a significant military modernization campaign. He did not recognize the ruling from the United Nations Tribunal Court, asserting sovereignty over the South and East China seas and indicating a potential use of force against Taiwan. Mr. Xi aims for China to become the leading global power by 2049, marking the centenary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. These are just a few personal experiences of autocrats assuming or trying to assume total control of countries and territories despite the people’s wishes. We are competing with these autocracies to prove that democracy and the rule of law are far superior to autocracies and the rule of man.

Based on my numerous assignments abroad, and my subsequent work as a negotiator with North Korea, I have concluded that authoritarianism is on the move and democracy is under siege. The Iranian people had struggled for a democracy, but what they tragically got was an oppressive theocracy with the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, currently retaining absolute power. The Green Movement of 2009 was a spontaneous cry for democratization in Iran, brutally suppressed by the state’s security forces. The theocracy in Iran persists and destabilizes the region by supporting proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, all terrorist groups aiming to destroy Israel. On July 1, 1997, Hong Kong reverted to China from the United Kingdom under the principle of “one country, two systems.” Hong Kong was to remain autonomous until 2049, governed by its constitution, the basic law, which ensured an independent judiciary, multiple political parties, and freedoms of assembly and speech. In 2020, China imposed the national security law on Hong Kong. Since then, hundreds of protesters and opposition lawmakers have been arrested, stifling free speech and assembly. Myanmar’s military conducted a coup d’etat in February 2021, removing and imprisoning members of the democratically elected members of the ruling party. To date, thousands of protesters have been killed, with thousands arrested and close to 1 million displaced by the military junta. Mr. Putin has eliminated all opposition while invading Georgia in 2008, taking Crimea in 2014 and now entering the fourth year of its war of aggression in Ukraine.

President Trump announced Feb. 1 new tariffs on China specifically because of the country’s lucrative fentanyl dollars. If Mr. Xi had lived up to his San Francisco pledge, there would be no tariff. The Treasury Department issued a detailed narrative on how China’s pharmaceutical companies feed the Mexican cartels. These are not rogue companies. They could not possibly be in a long alliance with Mexican criminals without the Communist Party’s OK and direction. Treasury stated that it has “designated 28 individuals and entities involved with the international proliferation of illicit drugs, including a China-based network responsible for the manufacturing and distribution of ton quantities of fentanyl.” A “Chinese network” is pumping out horrible killer drugs. Who makes up this network? One syndicate leader is a Chinese industrialist. The Xi Jinping fentanyl gaslighting is chronic. In December 2018, Mr. Xi made the exact same promise to none other than President Trump, who called it a “game changer.” “The Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco Cartel in Mexico, using chemicals largely sourced from China, are primarily responsible for the vast majority of the fentanyl that is being trafficked in communities across the United States,” the DEA said. Does that sound like Mr. Xi kept his promise to Mr. Trump five years earlier? Mr. Trump acknowledged that his 2018 deal was a double cross. “Chinese officials have failed to take the actions necessary to stem the flow of precursor chemicals to known criminal cartels and shut down money laundering by transnational criminal organizations,” the White House said.

US. presidents have a history going back to President Franklin D. Roosevelt of optimistically and, at times, naively believing they could negotiate in good faith with the dictator sitting in the Kremlin. President Trump would do well to emulate Reagan’s peace through strength strategy, which brilliantly combined U.S. soft power with military force projection. Reagan branded the Soviet Union an evil empire, eloquently appealed to Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” and countered Soviet expansion worldwide while negotiating comprehensive nuclear arms reductions and setting the stage for the end of the Cold War. Mr. Putin operates out of a KGB-controlled cocoon. In public, he deliberately spews disinformation to deceive his adversaries and keep them off balance. Mr. Putin desperately wants to conceal the stark reality that he is losing. His army has been decimated in a meat grinder war, which has yielded Russia only just over 10% of Ukrainian territory. Russian army stocks of tanks, armored vehicles and artillery have been severely depleted. No matter what false image he deliberately projects, Mr. Putin has no friendships, only interests that are antithetical to ours. He has repeatedly stated that Ukraine is not a real country and that he invaded to defend ethnic Russians, both false claims that hark back to Adolf Hitler’s twisted justifications for annexing Sudetenland before conquering Czechoslovakia. Mr. Putin is negotiating with the United States, with backing from his closest allies Iran, North Korea and China, because he wants to make it appear that Russia is on a level playing field with the U.S.

If Mr. Trump achieves this, he will deserve plaudits and be able to turn his full energies to the many other foreign policy crises he has inherited from President Biden. Last week, Mr. Trump warned that he could “do things” that would be “devastating for Russia.” Researchers have compiled a list of economic sanctions that would bite like a crocodile rather than a mosquito. The sanctions would eat into Russia’s only cash cow: its oil revenue. To add pressure, Mr. Trump could increase the flow of weapons to Ukraine and remove restrictions imposed by Mr. Biden on the use of those weapons to strike targets inside Russia. Would that induce Mr. Putin to agree to a ceasefire without preconditions? Many military analysts say he is running low on munitions and has insufficient human cannon fodder to replace the corpses. So, he may see a temporary ceasefire as in his interest, though he is shrewd enough not to acknowledge that. Should there be a ceasefire, Ukraine would need to rearm to the gills to turn itself into a porcupine: difficult for the predator to swallow. The Europeans, particularly the Germans, should foot the bill. Stationing European peacekeepers could help prevent the conflict from reigniting. As for Mr. Putin, he would claim that he had not spilled blood and spent treasure in vain because he enlarged Mother Russia and established a firm land bridge to Crimea, where the Russian Black Sea Fleet is based. A ceasefire leading to a frozen conflict would give Ukrainians time to rest and rebuild, always keeping in mind: If you want peace, prepare for war.