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: US Meddling in Hong Kong
An honorable democracy movement that held its head high for many decades now falls to Beijing’s heavy hand after U.S. meddling. Midway in a week of shocking news, I awakened last Wednesday to a piece in Asia Sentinel that made my heart…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Trump’s Foreign Policy Explained
Trump arrived in Washington as a New York property man unfamiliar with the permanent DC establishment, but determined to make deals where others dare not go. Chaos was the result. “Some friendly health advice to Iran,” President Donald Trump tweeted last Wednesday….
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…