ARTICLES
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The US National Emergency
COVID-19 calls on us to consider our plundered commons and unite around four truths made conspicuous by the pandemic. Now that the Trump administration has declared the COVID–19 virus a national emergency, it is plain that this once-a-century catastrophe has some things…
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…
Twilight’s last gleaming: Can Americans learn to accept the notion of post-exceptionalism?
Among the fundamental conceits of the exceptionalist creed is that America is above the laws that govern all other nations. A leap of faith is required to end this fallacy, argues Patrick Lawrence At four-thirty in the afternoon on Saturday, 4 April 2009,…
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…
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