Patrick Lawrence: ‘Pessimism of the Mind, Optimism of the Will’
Some years ago now, while researching a book that eventually came out as Somebody Else’s Century, I spent time in Ahmedabad, a city in the northwest Indian state of Gujarat. Ahmedabad has a long and interesting history as a place where…
Patrick Lawrence: Europe and the Legitimization of Deception
The U.S., having no need of or gift for statecraft, has long practiced what I’ve taken to calling the diplomacy of no diplomacy. You can’t expect much from bimbos such as Antony Blinken or Wendy Sherman, Blinken’s No. 2 at…
Patrick Lawrence: The Sino-Russian Summit You Didn’t Read About
The New York Times coverage of the recent summit between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping misses some of its most important details, writes Patrick Lawrence. It is never very easy to understand what is going on in the world if…
Patrick Lawrence: The Souls of Ukrainian Folk
As Kyiv prepares to persecute the souls of its own people, it seems we are about to witness just how inhumane this project has been from the outset. The U.S.–cultivated coup in Kyiv not quite nine years ago, when a…
Patrick Lawrence: Between Myth and History
Patrick Lawrence delivered the following remarks, based on his book Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century, before the Committee for the Republic in Washington on December 15. The Committee is a nonpartisan group founded in 2003 that advocates a…
Patrick Lawrence: In Ukraine, the Autumn of Oligarchs
The nice thing about being an oligarch is that you are so wealthy it doesn’t matter that you are looked upon as a predatory pariah. The nice thing about being an American oligarch, such as Jeff Bezos, is that America…
Patrick Lawrence: The Trans-Atlantic Rift Grows Wider
What an occasion, President Biden’s first state dinner. Better late than not at all, given it came last Thursday evening, nearly two years after he took office. Apart from guests of honor Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron, monsieur le président et sa…
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…
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…
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