One by one, the myths and lies propagated by the ruling elites about COVID-19 are falling like dominoes. What was supposed to have been “misinformation” is the real deal. Major government agencies - the Department of Energy and the FBI - now say that the virus probably leaked from China’s Wuhan virology lab. It didn’t come from a bat sandwich after all. Likewise, the lockdowns imposed all over the country did not slow the pandemic but did enormous damage. A year ago, Johns Hopkins issued a meta-analysis stating that while “lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted.” We now know that natural immunity derived from infection is far superior to that of the so-called vaccines, which prevent neither infection nor transmission. The February edition of the liberal Lancet medical journal reviewed 68 studies, concluding that the vaccines lose effectiveness sooner than natural immunity. Keep in mind that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health authorities dismissed natural immunity in favor of the vaccines for nearly two years. “The Lancet study’s vindication of natural immunity fits a pandemic pattern,” Allysia Finley wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “The public-health clerisy rejects an argument that ostensibly threatens its authority; eventually it’s forced to soften its position in the face of incontrovertible evidence; and yet not once does it acknowledge its opponents were right.” The CDC owes an apology to the signers of the Great Barrington Declaration, not to mention the public. Released in October 2020 and now signed by nearly a million “infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists.”

With the conflict between Ukraine and Russia and its attendant effects on Germany’s energy system clearly visible on the horizon, Germany retired three of their remaining six nuclear power plants. In a rational world, Germany would have simply kept the plants operating. They had to suspect that war on the continent would likely lead to a situation where Russian natural gas would be unavailable or undesirable. The Germans also have had a very recent experience with wind power underperforming. Such underperformance and the consequent need to burn more natural gas happened recently, and it resulted in both spiraling natural gas and electricity prices. Given the likelihood of interruption of the import of Russian natural gas, and the problem with wind generation, the least rational action was to close the nuclear power plants. But in response to pressure from environmentalists, way back in 2011, Angela Merkel had set a national goal of phasing out nuclear power by the end of 2022. So that was that. Why would Germany continue to follow an energy plan that no longer makes any sense? A plan so deficient that it touched off a global scramble for natural gas that has led to higher energy prices and higher fertilizer prices which have led directly to higher food costs globally. The reality is that the environmental movement, especially in Europe, was really born as an anti-nuclear movement, and many environmentalists consider the marginalization of nuclear power as the movement’s most significant achievement. Germany should reconsider its ill-advised energy policies, especially its wrongheaded decision to phase out nuclear power.

In a Jan. 23 policy address, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned that “it’s now or never” for addressing the nation’s demographic tailspin. He wants to double child-related spending, including more for day care and childrearing support - the sort of unimaginative solutions that politicians on the left and right favor. But Japan also has a low marriage rate, a precursor of a low birthrate. Can young couples be bribed to have children? Nippon isn’t alone. After decades of its ruinous one-child policy, China faces its own demographic disaster. In 2022, for the first time since the mass starvation of Mao’s Great Leap Forward, China lost a population of 850,000 from the previous year. And it will only get worse. China’s population is expected to decline by 100 million by 2050 and 600 million by the end of the century. Some China watchers say Chinese President Xi Jinping is panicking over his nation’s coming population collapse, which may force him to try to achieve his territorial ambitions while he still has the military muscle. Ailing Asian dragons are at the forefront of what could be the great plague of the 21st century. But the West can’t afford to be complacent. America’s fertility rate has fallen to 1.6. East and West, all of us suffer from the same ailment. In each generation, fewer are marrying, and those who do aren’t having enough children. We live in an anti-child culture driven by the myths of climate change and overpopulation. The answer isn’t a change of policy but a change of heart. We must return to a culture of life. Those with faith in the future have children. Those who don’t don’t.

It didn’t take long to start heading where no civilized people should go. A Japanese professor at Yale is talking about euthanasia for his country’s growing population of older adults. One-third of Japanese are over 65. One in 5 live alone. More than 30,000 die alone each year. A small industry has sprung up to remove their remains. Japan’s elderly crisis is a consequence of its demographic crisis. The nation has one of the world’s lowest fertility rates - an average of 1.3 children per woman, with 2.1 needed to maintain population stability. In 2022, its population declined by 800,000. It’s projected to fall an additional 30% by 2045. Back in the 1980s, Japan’s economy seemed invincible, and we were all learning Japanese business techniques. It worked for a while. In 1990, the nation’s gross domestic product grew 4.9%. By 2019, this growth had slowed to 0.3%. There aren’t enough young workers to keep the economy growing and pay social benefits to care for the aged. Professor Yusuke Narita, who is 38, told The New York Times in a Feb. 12 interview: “I feel like the solution is pretty clear. In the end, isn’t it mass suicide of the elderly?” And it needn’t necessarily be voluntary. “The possibility of making it mandatory in the future will come up in the discussion,” the professor remarked. Mr. Narita has a huge social media following. Some Japanese lawmakers are saying he’s creating the conditions for a much-needed discussion. “There is criticism that older people are receiving too much pension money and young people are supporting all of the old people,” a leading member of the Diet says.

Moreover, China emits more than 29% of the world’s tonnage of carbon dioxide said to cause global warming - double that of the United States. Yet its “developing” nation status shields it from culpability. How “progressive” is that? The anomaly is a vestige of policy crafted in U.N. climate summits of 1987 and 1992, when China was struggling to climb out of its agrarian-based economic past and join the industrialized world. In the intervening three decades, its economy has grown by a factor of 12, while its carbon emissions have more than quadrupled. All the while, the U.N. has doled out $1.5 billion to China from a development fund to which the U.S. contributed $1 billion. As 2022 comes to a close, Beijing is busy building more than half of the world’s new coal-fired power plants in 20 nations, and it is allowing its own atmospheric emissions to climb until at least 2030. All the while, U.N. climate doomsayers sit on their hands - except to grab another billion dollars from U.S. taxpayers. And while overlooking China’s dirty industrialization, Mr. Biden keeps U.S. fossil fuels in the ground as he wheels and deals in oil with enemies. He signed a deal allowing Chevron Corp. to expand its operations - in Venezuela. Tiring of climate hypocrisy, the Senate in September voted 96-0 in favor of declaring the obvious fact that China no longer fits the description of a “developing” nation and mustn’t be treated as such by intergovernmental organizations. The Senate resolution may be toothless, but it is more than Mr. Biden and his fellow globalists have done to hold China responsible for its share of climate change they profess to fear.

Proponents of globalism, including President Biden, are clinging to an outmoded climate policy with respect to China. By their leave, the land with the world’s largest population and the second-largest economy still enjoys privileges that come with the label of a “developing” nation. Refusal to recognize change is hardly the practice of the “progressive.” If Mr. Biden were genuine in his desire to protect the planet, he would demand that China meet carbon-emission restrictions to match its status as an industrial powerhouse. He is not. The United Nations’ recent COP27 climate summit in Egypt concluded with an agreement among wealthy nations to pay reparations for alleged damage to the climate caused by their use of fossil fuels. Leaving aside the counterpoint that carbon-based energy has powered the most rapid quality-of-life improvements in human history, the deal unfairly favors China, to wit: Mr. Biden agreed to pay reparations up to $1 billion; Beijing pledged to donate nothing. On one hand, the glaring disparity mirrors a contrast in 2021 per capita gross domestic product figures ― $69,287 for the U.S., $12,556 for China, according to the World Bank. On the other hand, treating China as if it were on a par with such economic laggards as Libya, Afghanistan and Cuba is nonsense. With a population exceeding 1.4 billion, the Asian giant is “developing” world-beating capabilities, such as the planet’s largest active-duty army, the most lethal hypersonic missiles, the most intrusive surveillance technology, and, in all likelihood, the deadliest pathogens.

When Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace in 1917, it wasn’t just the start of the Russian Revolution, but the beginning of communism’s century-long war on humanity. The global conflict has included civil wars and culture wars, gulags and killing fields, indoctrination and subversion, planned starvation and ethnic cleansing. It’s the forever war, fought on five continents, for a system that has failed miserably wherever it’s been imposed, but still never lacks true believers willing to kill for its utopian vision. And (bitter irony) they commit unspeakable crimes in the name of humanity. We fought communism directly in Korea and Vietnam and covertly throughout the 20th century. It created the sexual revolution and the terrorist war on the West. The storm unleashed by Lenin and his gang still rages, from China to Caracas, and from Ukraine to American cities. The Chinese Communist Party has presided over the bloodiest regime in history. Since 1949, it has killed as many as 50 million in the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and all of the other attempts to remake mankind. Vladimir Putin continues unprovoked war on Ukraine. The ex-KGB agent is determined to reassemble the Soviet empire. In the process, 40,000 civilians have been killed and the nation’s cities laid waste. A little bloodbath has never stopped communists. While the Chinese have only recently taken to the streets, riots have rocked Iran for months. Like the Chinese, Iranians are calling for regime change. Humanity has never confronted a more daunting foe than communism.

China’s imports of Kazakh oil increased by over 400% last year, and Mr. Xi publicly defended Kazakhstan’s decision to stay neutral rather than support Russia’s war on Ukraine. Desperate to preserve his regime, Mr. Putin has made a Faustian bargain with his country’s long-term strategic competitor. As long as Mr. Putin remains in power, Russia will be economically and strategically subservient to China, the junior partner to an increasingly powerful Beijing. Mr. Putin claimed his “special military operation” in Ukraine would be completed in a matter of days. Instead, one year into his misguided war of choice, Russia has spilled massive blood and treasure, will have to contend with an expanded NATO with new members on its border and has become an easy mark for Chinese exploitation. The Russians have a saying: “One’s own shirt is closest to one’s skin.” China, over the past year, has been acting in its own self-interest - one that is counter to Russia’s national interests. Ukraine has sacrificed more and accomplished more to halt Russia’s brazen aggression than any NATO member in the history of the alliance. And Kyiv is demonstrating to Mr. Putin’s detractors and his inner circle the folly of the decision to rely so heavily on Chinese goodwill in the fight. NATO, of course, must carry on as the arsenal of democracy, supporting Ukraine’s right to self-defense and preventing a nuclear-armed state from successfully winning a war of territorial aggrandizement. But let’s also keep in mind that this strategy can also serve our interests in another major way by exposing, stressing and puncturing the faux Sino-Russian “alliance.”

But China provides Russia with none of the military equipment Moscow so desperately needs. Russia’s defense industrial base is struggling, but the Kremlin has been forced to rely on Iran for drones and North Korea for artillery rather than China, supposedly Russia’s “most important strategic partner,” in Mr. Putin’s words. Russia began reorienting its economy to China after the West imposed sanctions in response to the illegal annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014. China is now poised to supplant the European Union as Russia’s primary economic partner. China is importing Russian hydrocarbons at reduced prices and capturing Russia’s market for strategic commodities for both high technology and manufactured goods. In 2022, China’s oil, gas, liquefied natural gas, and coal imports from a cash-desperate Russia topped $60 billion, up $41 billion from 2021. The result is a massive trade imbalance and a Russian economy that is increasingly dependent on China, while Beijing, by contrast, enjoys exceptionally diverse commercial relationships around the globe. With Mr. Putin’s attention ? and his struggling armies ? focused on Ukraine, China has seized the opportunity to encroach on Russia’s traditional sphere of influence in Central Asia. In September 2022, Mr. Xi made a rare visit to Tashkent, Uzbekistan’s capital, to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit. China is aggressively developing a strategic economic and strategic partnership with that country. Kazakhstan has become a bridgehead for China’s “Belt and Road” financing initiative, including promoting Chinese construction projects.

One year into the most devastating war in Europe since World War II, China is ruthlessly focused on taking maximum advantage of a weakened Russia and an isolated Vladimir Putin. For Beijing, Russia’s massive, unexpected reverses on the battlefield since invading Ukraine in February 2022 offer an opportunity to dominate the Kremlin and boost its own grand strategy of becoming the world’s dominant power by 2049. Mr. Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping have met over 40 times since Mr. Xi came to power in 2012, relentlessly ratcheting up bilateral ties to challenge a U.S.-dominated “unipolar” world. Their armies routinely conduct major military exercises. They share intelligence and regularly coordinate their policies and messages against the U.S., NATO and the international rules-based order they seek to overthrow. At a virtual summit in December, Mr. Putin described Russia’s relationship with Communist China as “the best in history” and invited Mr. Xi to visit Moscow this spring. Just before last year’s invasion, the two famously declared their partnership of dictators had “no limits.” But among the many lessons to be gleaned so far from Russia’s murderous war on Ukraine is that today’s purported Sino-Russian alliance - just like the Soviet Union’s with Communist China in the last century - has clearly definable limits and, in many spheres, elements of outright competition. And unlike during the Cold War, it’s China that is setting the boundaries this time. It is clear that Mr. Xi wants to win big at the expense of his “ally.” Seeking to avoid secondary sanctions, China supports Russia diplomatically and with its Orwellian propaganda machine.