Patrick Lawrence: War in Our Time
BERLIN—Friedrich Merz has been in office as Germany’s new chancellor a matter of weeks, and already he has the German capital aflutter with worry about the increasing danger of a third world war. More to the point, while Germans are…
Patrick Lawrence: Waves Upon the Sea of Silence
A couple of weeks after Israel began its campaign of terror in Gaza two Octobers ago, a journalist and novelist named Omar El Akkad published a note on X, formerly known as Twitter, that has stayed with me ever since: One day,…
Patrick Lawrence: Germany in Crisis Part 4: Wanderers and Seekers
Editor’s note: Earlier versions of this story reported Germany’s shock when Friedrich Merz initially failed to win sufficient Bundestag votes to assume office. After intense negotiations, he won back the six votes needed to declare victory. Berlin, in the meantime,…
Patrick Lawrence: Germany in Crisis Part 3: A Culture of Submission
This is the third of four reports on Germany in crisis. Part 1 of this series is here and Part 2 here. BERLIN— I return briefly to those singular moments when Olaf Scholz stood next to President Joe Biden at a press conference on…
Patrick Lawrence: Germany in Crisis Part 2: A Short History of Exploding Gas Pipelines
This is the second of four reports on Germany’s various crises, the history that produced them and how Germans, other than the neoliberal elites who now hold power, think about their way forward. Part 1 of this series is here. POTSDAM—A single,…
Patrick Lawrence: Germany in Crisis Part 1 —The Lost Man of Europe
This is the first of four reports on the crises that now beset Germany — what they are, the history that produced them, and how Germans think about finding their way forward once again. I thank Eva–Maria Föllmer–Müller and Karl–Jürgen…
Patrick Lawrence: Season of the Sophists
Mahmoud Khalil, 30–year-old holder of a green card permitting him permanently to live and work in the United States, spouse of an American, lettered in his field after study at an Ivy League university, with nothing on his record to…
Patrick Lawrence: Speak, Claudia!
Watching that procession of hapless European supplicants passing through the Oval Office this week, my mind wandered briefly and came back with an imaginary scene I found pleasurable and instructive all at once: What if Claudia Sheinbaum went to see…
Patrick Lawrence: What Odds, as Trump Takes on the Deep State?
This is the second of two essays considering President Trump’s unfolding offensive against the institutions and agencies comprising the deep state — the permanent state or the invisible government, as it is also commonly known. The first in this series…
Patrick Lawrence: Trump vs. the Deep State
This is the first of two commentaries examining what the writer reads as President Trump’s unfolding offensive against the institutions and agencies comprising the deep state — or, if you prefer, the administrative state or the permanent state or the invisible government….
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