Patrick Lawrence: Biden Sides With Trump in Killing Obama’s Iran Nuclear Deal
Among our mentally impaired president’s more prominent campaign pledges during the 2020 political campaigns was that his national security people would negotiate America’s return to the multi-sided accord governing Iran’s nuclear programs. Without hesitation, I offered excellent odds that this…
Patrick Lawrence: Why Do Nations Erase the Past?
Arecent report by the German news agency DPA has had me thinking ever since about various small, inconsequential matters: war, nationalism, identity, history, memory. It seems the people who manage the German gravesites of those who fell fighting the German…
“Anatomy of the imperium.”
The Scrum is pleased to have published several extracts, in two successive postings, from Aaron Good’s excellent American Exception: Empire and the Deep State, an outstanding achievement for its history of the national security state from its formative years onward and for the…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: More Futile Pacific Overtures
Nearly halfway through Biden’s term in office he finally met the Chinese president to discuss the single most important relationship between any two nations anywhere in the world. I’ve given up being amazed at how stupidly the Biden administration conducts…
Patrick Lawrence: Why Are the Russians Retreating in Ukraine?
The most opaque war in my lifetime and probably yours, the war we can hardly see because the reporting is so bad, just took an unexpected turn. There must be someone somewhere who anticipated the retreat of Russian forces from…
Patrick Lawrence: Why Is The New York Times Still Hyping ‘Russiagate’?
Veteran foreign correspondent Patrick Lawrence takes issue with this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. I have a perverse taste for books and newspaper pieces titled “The Untold Story of Whatever It Is That Hasn’t Been Told.” The cliché on the…
“An imperial colossus is born.”
Aaron Good on the deep state’s ‘legacy of ashes.’ When we asked Aaron Good if The Scrum could publish extracts from his American Exception: Empire and the Deep State, we also asked him to choose those sections of his recently published book (Skyhorse…
Patrick Lawrence: Disinformation, Absolutely
1. Everything you will read in this commentary is disinformation. 2. To say that this commentary contains disinformation is disinformation. 3. To say statements calling this commentary disinformation are disinformation is disinformation. This is what our public discourse has come…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: War as Presentation
As the U.S. midterm elections approach, the gap between Western media’s depiction of the war in Ukraine and the actual war waged on the ground appears to be widening more dramatically. We are urged at every turn to dismiss everything Vladimir Putin…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Zhou Enlai’s Posthumous Triumph
Nations now fashioning a post–Western world order appear to be abiding by the Five Principles espoused by China’s first and long-serving premier. The big news over the Thanksgiving weekend — big such that you could hardly find it in the mainstream…