PATRICK LAWRENCE: Moscow’s Difficult Decision on Idlib
Turkey’s leader, who nurses dreams of some kind of neo–Ottoman restoration across the Middle East, is now on a reckless tear. As Recip Tayyip Erdogan prosecutes his latest military intrusion southward into Syria, all the old mythologies about the Turkish president and…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Mike Pompeo’s Latest Delusion
The U.S. secretary of state’s “West is Winning” speech in Munich last weekend was delusional. Even by his highly delusional standards, Mike Pompeo came forth with a doozy at the Munich Security Conference last weekend. “The West is winning,” saith the…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Trump’s Weakness for Power
Coercive might and money may be all that matter in Manhattan real estate. But they are bound to sink the president’s take-all-you-want “deal of the century” for Israel. With the publication of the Trump administration’s Mideast “deal of the…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Latest & Most Reckless US Imperial Act
Following the U.S. assassination of Soleimani, the Trump administration is leading American conduct abroad into a zone of probably unprecedented lawlessness. Of all the preposterous assertions made since the drone assassination of Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad on Jan. 3, the…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Iranian General’s Intent
Given the gravity of last week’s drone assassination, the State and Defense Departments must prove their claims against Qassem Soleimani. AFAQ–TV, a satellite station broadcasting from Baghdad, ran a brief video clip last May of Ali Khamenei speaking to a small gathering….
PATRICK LAWRENCE: ‘As the Clever Hopes Expire’: A Look Back at the Ending Decade
A monumentally destructive U.S. decade — symptomatic of imperial decline — exposed a shamefully pliant press. But we have at least one reason to resist incurable pessimism. I sit in one of the divesOn Fifty-Second StreetUncertain and afraidAs the clever hopes expireOf…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Trump’s Creaky Door to Peace in the Koreas
The question is, which side betrayed the once-promising prospect of denuclearization and an end of seven decades of flashpoint tension in Northeast Asia. In June 2018, when Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un summitted in Singapore, the American and North Korean…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Now the Interim of US Self-Deception Over Bolivia
To read the mainstream press on what just happened to Evo Morales is to enter a hall of mirrors. Years from now, maybe a generation from now, it will be permissible to describe Evo Morales’s resignation-at-gunpoint two weeks ago as…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Impeachment Pantomime
The political theatrics that begin Wednesday raise several questions. For starters, will Joe Biden be investigated for mounting evidence of corruption? And why is the corporate media turning the CIA “whistleblower” into a phantom in plain sight? Now that “Russiagate” has…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: A Sudden-Seeming Power Shift in the Middle East
Despite the high-speed impression created by events in the past few weeks, the shifting trends of Russian and U.S. influence on the region have been underway for years. Rarely do world events move at the velocity they now assume in the…
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