“Economic war crimes.”
Kneecapping China seems the best Biden can do. This is the third of a three-part series on China and the West’s obsession with its emergence as a regional and global power. Part 1 can be read here and Part 2 here. Gina Raimondo,…
“Our China ‘diplomacy.'”
Incompetents in command. This is the second of a three-part series on China and the West’s obsession with its emergence as a regional and global power. Part 1 can be read here. Not one week after President Biden announced a…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Power
Patrick Lawrence asks some pertinent questions of the American people. Are Americans going to sit around indefinitely eating potato chips while the State Department and Treasury starve Venezuelan children? Are Americans going to play video games while Israel fires U.S.–made…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: No Insight After Afghanistan
Remaking the world — all of it — in the U.S. image has been a foundation stone of American foreign policy since the Wilson administration — a century ago. Tragedy, a scholarly friend reminds me, does not mean merely a…
“And now?”
Post–Afghanistan truths and lies. Americans are alive with questions now that Kabul has fallen, though “fallen” does not seem quite our word any more than it was in late April 46 years ago: Saigon did not fall; it rose. Vietnam…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: A Different World Order
A new order among nations does not imply some kind of Orwellian Oceania — a globally homogenized superstate, the grotesque dream of liberal cosmopolitans. You have to applaud — and read carefully into — the events that followed Washington’s latest…
“Pacific dénouements.”
We’re bombing badly in China. You did not read much about Wendy Sherman’s disastrous official visit last week to Tianjin, where the deputy secretary of state held talks with Xie Feng, her counterpart as vice-foreign minister, and met—key distinction here—Wang…
“The long fight simply to know.”
An exchange with Peter Kaufman It is not often a writer comes along who brings the ballast of history to our contemporary predicaments. This requires a certain intellectual depth and a lot of shoulder in contact with the wheel. Peter…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Some Cherry Garcia, Please
The apartheid state’s swoon into freak-out mode since Ben & Jerry’s took its stand tells us all we need to know about BDS’s accumulating power. Cherry Garcia, please, two scoops. No make that Chocolate Fudge Brownie. No, I want Coconut…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Empire’s Last Stand
The origins of the first Cold War have been hopelessly blurred in the histories. We can watch this time. It is occurring before our eyes. In the early months of 1947, President Harry Truman and Dean Acheson, his secretary…