Patrick Lawrence: Reeking of Butter
The House speaker has just given off a reek of butter that seems to have sent the whole of East Asia in search of hankies. The Japanese have a wonderful expression they sometimes use to describe Westerners when they are…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: 21st Century Order
As a piece of the new world order that is under construction, Putin’s trip to Tehran last week was of singular importance. At last we were able to read, last week, a New York Times story that concerned the Russians but not…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Biden’s Taiwan Talk
We are witnessing the gradual dismantling of strategic ambiguity in favor of the clarity urged by Trump’s belligerent secretary of state, Mike Pompeo. Watching President Joe Biden’s stunningly clumsy performance in Tokyo last week, during which he committed the U.S. to…
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: The Empire’s Last Stand
The origins of the first Cold War have been hopelessly blurred in the histories. We can watch this time. It is occurring before our eyes. In the early months of 1947, President Harry Truman and Dean Acheson, his secretary…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Power
Patrick Lawrence asks some pertinent questions of the American people. Are Americans going to sit around indefinitely eating potato chips while the State Department and Treasury starve Venezuelan children? Are Americans going to play video games while Israel fires U.S.–made…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Aimless Empire
Under Biden, the world’s most powerful, most heavily armed, most determinedly righteous nation shows little sign of having any foreign policy at all. Bitter and frightening realities face us four months into Joe Biden’s presidency. On the domestic side it…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Blundering Biden Team
What occurred between Washington and Moscow last week, and at a hotel in Anchorage, bears a significance that we must not miss. “Biden is a national embarrassment on foreign policy,” a colleague wrote in a note over the weekend. This…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Biden’s Missing Link with Europe
While the Continent welcomed the Cold War’s end, America — which would be utterly lost without an enemy — never has. President Joe Biden at last got his chance to “sit at the head of the table” when he addressed (virtually, of…
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…