Over the past decade, academics and policymakers have vigorously debated the question of whether climate change poses a security threat, with particular emphasis on whether it causes internal conflict. Connections are complex, leaving policymakers to talk about climate change vaguely as a “threat multiplier” when combined with other forces. But saying that climate change is a threat multiplier isn’t all that helpful unless we know something about the characteristics that make countries more likely to experience instability.

Responding to my recent Foreign Affairs article (“The Catholic Church’s Biggest Crisis Since the Reformation,” October 11), Reno casts the Francis pontificate as “deregulatory,” and in line with “a secular ruling establishment.” At the same time, he offers a somewhat skeptical reassessment of Pope John Paul II, who was until recently regarded as a hero among conservative Catholics, especially in the United States. Reno fails to make important conceptual distinctions, and he levels unfair accusations at Pope Francis and his allies. Nevertheless, his argument furnishes a valuable example of just how radicalized the conservative traditionalist movement within U.S. Catholicism has become.

Yet as far as Taliban leaders are concerned, the group has little reason to commit to a peace process: it is on a winning streak. The Taliban control key Afghan highways and are conducting targeted assassinations across the country. They have made important territorial gains and now have complete or partial control over some 250 of about 400 districts.

Upon his death in 1975, Franco was buried in a monumental tomb in the so-called Valley of the Fallen, a war memorial about an hour’s drive from Madrid. There, the dictator lies below a towering 450-foot stone cross, in a subterranean basilica hewn almost 900 feet into a mountainside. The monument is an unsettlingly bombastic reminder of Spain’s troubled past and a pilgrimage site for Franco’s admirers to this day.