PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Pelosi Fallout
The U.S. now operates as a bulwark against time and history — a hopeless but destructive project. We witnessed a major breach in trans–Pacific relations last week in consequence of Nancy Pelosi’s self-indulgent, utterly failed maunder through East Asia. We…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Who Should Control Foreign Policy?
Proposing that foreign policy be subjected to democratic processes is a call, essentially, to revolution. I had a letter in the mail the other week from someone named Barry Klein, who resides in Houston. I filed it knowing I would write…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Biden’s Summit of No-Shows
This could prove an historic shift, reversing more than a century of usually coercive influence in Latin America. I tip my cap, as we all should, to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico. And to Presidents Luis Arce of Bolivia, Xiaomara…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The New Iron Curtain
The Ukraine crisis proves to be Europe’s crucible and Europe proves a profound disappointment. We have read a great deal about a new Cold War since the U.S. cultivated the coup of February 2014 in Ukraine and the nation was…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: A Nation of ‘Geophobes’
Amid rampant Russophobia and Sinophobia, America’s penchant for Cold-War “national character analysis” will — if left unchecked — lead the U.S. into deepest trouble. Ruminating on the American condition some years ago, I invented a word to describe us as…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Ukraine & the Strength of Nonalignment
Liberals once mocked the Bush–Cheney regime’s with-us-or-against-us routines. Now the trans–Atlantic foreign policy cliques have no capacity to see the world differently. I was interested to read, last December, of the expansive agreements Vladimir Putin and Mahendra Modi signed at the conclusion of…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Great Acquiescence — Glory to Ukraine
Americans don’t merely acquiesce to the imperium’s wars, interventions, collective punishments and assorted other deprivations. They actively embrace them. The other day I ventured forth from my remote village to a lively market town called Great Barrington to shop for…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Imperial Infantilism
Diplomacy is an essential skill in the century swiftly taking shape around us, but we find that hurling playground insults at the leader of another nation has become normal in post-9/11 Washington. It’s getting downright difficult to keep track of all the epithets…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Casualties of Empire
Diabolic methods of propaganda and perception management are at work now that have no precedent. This is war waged in a new way — against domestic populations as well as those declared as enemies. The news reports come in daily…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Hearts Versus Minds
There is a time-honored and destructive tradition in the U.S. of citizens approaching their political causes with blind faith. I am seeing many fewer blue-and-yellow flags in evidence during wanderings in my corner of New England. Thank goodness that didn’t last long,…