The coronavirus, widespread quarantines, an unprecedented self-induced recession, and unchecked rioting, looting and protesting - all in a presidential election year - are radically disrupting American habits and behavior. Rents, home prices and office occupancy rates in major cities, especially on the two coasts, are dropping fast. Techies and young professionals have discovered that they can work from home without paying sky-high housing costs in order to be close to the office. Worries about COVID-19 in high-density cities, and unreliable city services add to the unhappiness. Residents want less dependence on mass transit and elevator living. Constant human contact is seen more as risky than desirous. Gun sales are at record highs. When some cities take steps to defund police and some soften bail laws, citizens quietly go to the local gun store and stock up on ammunition. Many of the people who have never before owned firearms are no longer clamoring for gun control. A “man’s home” is now becoming his armed castle. As a general rule, any business or activity that does not bother, judge or lecture Americans and instead allows them to work or relax in peace is preferred. Why are Amazon and Walmart booming while smaller businesses are going broke? Largely because home delivery better serves those who are barricaded at home, terrified both of the virus and government reaction to it. How ironic that in our quest to become safe and in control of our own destinies, we empower the anonymity of huge conglomerates and erode the viability of reliable, service-friendly, mom-and-pop stores.

In striking down the agreement, the chief concern of EU regulators was NSA surveillance, but our lack of a national privacy standard didn’t help either. What assurances do Europeans have that U.S. companies will protect their data if Americans don’t even have a comprehensive law in place to protect their own? That’s why enacting a federal privacy law is critical to reopening trans-Atlantic data flows and strengthening our position against China. By leading on data privacy, we can differentiate Silicon Valley from surveillance-obsessed Beijing to build trust with our foreign trade partners and increase American tech influence abroad. The good news is there’s growing support for a national privacy standard. Major tech CEOs from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to Apple’s Tim Cook have called for comprehensive privacy legislation. And a majority of the American people are behind them: according to a Pew Research Center poll, 75% of adults support stronger online privacy protections. The key will be striking an agreement that uniformly protects consumers without imposing undue burdens on free enterprise. This won’t be easy, but Congress is up to the task. As the former staff director of the Senate Republican High-Tech Task Force, I helped craft the CLOUD Act - one of the most important pieces of data privacy legislation to pass Congress in the last decade. What helped get the CLOUD Act across the finish line will also help with a federal privacy proposal. By passing national data privacy legislation, Congress can give Silicon Valley a competitive edge over China and help ensure U.S. digital hegemony in the 21st century.

This isn’t some run-of-the-mill corporate dispute but a crucial battle in a new cold war. For all intents and purposes, the United States and China are locked in a technological arms race, seeking to build influence and soft power through social media, 5G networks and other innovations. TikTok just happens to be the latest battlefield. Bringing TikTok under American oversight would help us score an important victory against China in the short term. But it’s not enough. If we want to claim lasting victory in the cyber cold war ― and secure U.S. digital dominance for decades to come ― we need to enact federal data-privacy legislation. Here’s why: If U.S.-based Oracle becomes the service provider for TikTok, it would protect Americans from having their data exploited by the CCP. Even in this scenario, however, third-party brokers could still legally purchase user data and, in turn, sell it to the Chinese government. That’s why we need a national privacy standard that applies to all companies operating in the United States, regardless of their country of origin. To keep our data safe, we can’t expect American tech firms to buy every foreign app that goes viral. We can, however, require every Internet platform seeking to do business here to comply with a U.S. privacy standard. Our European partners have been pushing us to adopt a uniform privacy standard for years. And our inability to do so contributed to the dissolution of the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield last July. But without the guidance provided by the Privacy Shield, small and mid-size American companies will have more difficulty navigating European markets, where the slightest privacy infraction could result in an existential lawsuit.

In August, President Trump announced his intentions to ban TikTok unless the Chinese company finds an American buyer. The news came just weeks after a European court struck down the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, which facilitated data sharing on both sides of the Atlantic. What do these seemingly disparate events have in common? They both underscore growing concerns over the misuse of consumer data ― and the urgent need for Congress to pass a federal privacy framework. Passing this framework is essential to securing America’s digital leadership in the new cold war with China. Over the last decade, China has become Silicon Valley’s fiercest competitor, proving that it’s not just good at stealing technology but building its own innovations as well. Beijing has established itself as a near-peer adversary in quantum computing, artificial intelligence and 5G technology. Huawei, meanwhile, is growing faster than any other smartphone maker in the world, even as the company’s reputation for being a pawn of Chinese intelligence grows with it. Then there’s TikTok, the white-hot social media platform with more than 1 billion users around the globe, including more than 80 million in the United States alone. Like Huawei, U.S. officials consider TikTok a tool of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). They even suspect the CCP of using the app to spread propaganda and harvest American user data ― hence the president’s decision to take action against its parent company, ByteDance. Set against the backdrop of China’s rise in tech, its long record of IP theft and recent acts of cyberaggression, the significance of the TikTok controversy comes into focus.

For the communists in China, like communists everywhere, Catholics pose a serious challenge. On the mainland, decades of repression have driven much of the Catholic Church underground. After the Communist Party took power and eviscerated religious freedom on the mainland, Hong Kong became a natural conduit for missionary outposts that helped keep contact with the mainland faithful. There are an estimated 400,000 Catholics in Hong Kong (in a population of 7.5 million), and many of the city’s elite - like here in the U.S. - are products of Catholic schools. Not surprisingly, Catholics have been influential in the city’s pro-democracy movement. Many have been arrested. One of them, publisher and entrepreneur Jimmy Lai, perhaps Hong Kong’s most prominent Catholic, was recently arrested for violating the national security law. Pope Francis, who seems to have an opinion about everything, has sat by silently while the wolves have circled his sheep. The idea that the Chinese Communist Party can be brought into the civilized world simply through trade and empty rhetoric about engagement is, by now, thoroughly discredited. If that approach worked, we would not now be thinking about how to deal with concentration camps in Xinjiang or repression of Catholics in Hong Kong or seizure of territory in the Pacific. To its credit, the nascent Biden administration understands that the concept of economic engagement has been a failure. That is something that neither the Europeans nor Pope Francis seem to grasp. In this instance, as elsewhere, Mr. Pompeo was right. China’s aggressive and illicit behavior cannot be ignored, should not be tolerated, and will not be changed by European money.

So far, Mr. Kim has successfully played Russia, China, South Korea and the U.S. against one another. Russia and China would like to reduce - if not eliminate altogether - the U.S. military presence on the Korean peninsula. Both Moscow and Beijing have argued for reducing international sanctions before North Korea completes denuclearization. The Biden administration should be prepared for three equally precarious scenarios: that the North accelerates its missile and nuclear programs; that the North seeks to sell its nuclear and missile technology to U.S. adversaries and non-state groups to bolster its economy; or that the regime collapses altogether, spawning a destabilizing nightmare of loose nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Mr. Kim’s bellicose threats might have been designed to assuage his population. But if past is prologue, the North Korean leader is also seeking to encourage a new round of negotiations with a new team in Washington. Having eschewed Mr. Trump’s top-down, personal diplomacy, Mr. Biden should consider appointing a special envoy to re-start negotiations with North Korea, which has been largely frozen since Mr. Trump rightly walked away from what would have been a bad deal at the 2019 Hanoi summit. As a trust-building measure, the U.S. and North Korea could begin by opening liaison offices in their respective capitals. Diplomatic engagement should focus on matching concrete North Korean nuclear arms cuts and transparency with economic incentives and the possible easing of sanctions. The special envoy should also seek common ground for engaging Mr. Kim with China and Russia, neither of whom wants a nuclear North Korea or a chaotic failed state on their border.

Of all of the wickedly challenging national security threats awaiting the Biden administration, none might be as complex as North Korea. In spite of international sanctions, natural disasters and a COVID-induced border lockdown, North Korea has advanced its ballistic missile capability, including a new ICBM unveiled in October, and added an estimated 30 to 40 nuclear weapons to its stockpile. President Biden will no doubt be asking his intelligence agencies, the military and the State Department to reexamine U.S. policy on North Korea, which has for years sought face-to-face negotiations with Washington, a peace treaty ending the Korean war, diplomatic recognition by the U.S. and acceptance of the North as a nuclear state. But Mr. Kim has never provided an inventory of his nuclear arsenal or an itinerary for their destruction. His behavior strains the logic that North Korea has accumulated ICBMs and nuclear weapons for the sole purpose of bartering them away for food, energy and a more productive relationship with the international community. Mr. Kim knows his brutal regime, which denies its citizens every political, civil and religious liberty, is inherently unstable and in great need of an economic lifeline. One of the world’s most isolated countries, the “Hermit Kingdom” has a young, literate and inexpensive workforce as well as large reserves of coal, iron ore, limestone and minerals. A prosperous North Korea integrated with the outside world, however, would increase pressure for greater political freedom, which would threaten the regime’s survival. North Korean leaders have no doubt internalized the lessons of the Soviet Union’s collapse in the wake of Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost reforms.

One idea comes from scientists who calculate that the world has an additional 2.2 billion acres of land suitable for reforestation. That provides enough room to plant an extra 1.2 trillion trees that would contribute to carbon sequestration. More than half of reforestation potential is in six countries: Russia (373 million acres), the United States (255 million), Canada (194 million), Australia (143 million), Brazil (123 million) and China (99.3 million). Many countries are welcome to join this effort, but the United States and Russia must lead. With all the differences between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, it looks like this idea is a rare case when both men have a similar vision. On Oct. 13, 2020, following up on his pledge made the during 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and later during the State of the Union, Mr. Trump signed an executive order establishing the “One Trillion Trees Interagency Council,” which will be responsible for coordinating the federal government’s support of this initiative. President Biden said: “In my view, we’ve already waited too long to deal with this climate crisis, and we can’t wait any longer. We see it with our own eyes, we feel it, we know it in our bones, and it’s time to act.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. climate envoy John Kerry also discussed climate change and the implementation of the Paris climate agreement in a call on Feb. 13. They agreed to cooperate further within the Arctic Council, including developing contacts, “given the significance of climate issues on the Arctic agenda.” Some American and Russian activists propose to involve in this process general public and have a tree planting international Flashmob on April 25.

So, when Mr. Biden talks about a return to “normal,” what exactly does he mean? This is especially important to know since, as senator and vice president, he endorsed all these wars. Another interesting question arises when one hears about the return of American values to U.S. foreign policy. Besides the obvious fact that Washington often works with and supports dictatorial regimes whenever it serves its interests, the very meaning of the term “values” has itself become rather ambiguous. American society is heavily polarized and judging from the often-mega-hateful rhetorical exchanges between Republicans and Democrats, the conflicting sides apparently confess a different set of values. Therefore, as Steven Cook of the Council of Foreign Relations correctly suggests, Americans “must first repair the damage they have done at home to their own sacred values, principles and ideals. Unless the United States demonstrates some humility on both fronts, its messages to the world about freedom and rights will be so diminished that they will be easily ignored.” Considering the chances that the U.S. establishment might follow Mr. Cook’s advice are slim, and that Russia and China are not prepared to yield to America’s hegemony, does that mean World War III is inevitable? Some may accept this bleak destiny but there are many Americans and Russians who agree with Sting when he sings that “I do not subscribe to this point of view” and suggest starting a dialogue. Why not begin with an area where former President Donald Trump, Mr. Biden, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping - or for that matter leaders and peoples of around 200 countries or territories on this planet - would agree on how we can save our beautiful planet without losing but adding jobs.

Adm. Charles Richard, who heads the U.S. Strategic Command responsible for nuclear deterrence, recently stated on the pages of this newspaper that “there is a real possibility that a regional crisis with Russia or China could escalate quickly to a conflict involving nuclear weapons, if they perceived a conventional loss would threaten the regime or state.” So, does that mean that the words of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev that a “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought” and that “each nuclear arms state should renounce any and all options involving the initiation of nuclear warfare” are obsolete and we should get ready for Armageddon? To answer this question let us review President Biden’s “America is back,” return to “normal” foreign policy that will be infused with “American values.” As Harvard professor Stephen Walt correctly states: “When U.S. foreign-policy officials have pursued realistic goals in a flexible and nonjudgmental way, they have mostly succeeded. When they have tried to do the impossible, have relied too heavily on military force and overt coercion, and have expected other states to ignore their own interests and just do as they are told, these U.S. officials have mostly failed.” Mr. Walt did not present the consequences of these failures but his colleagues at Brown university did, and they are horrific: Since 2001, more than 801,000 people have died due to direct war violence, among them more than 335,000 civilians. The number of wounded is several times higher and 37 million people became war refugees and displaced persons. Tens of thousands of Americans have been killed and wounded and the U.S. federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is more than $6.4 trillion.