PATRICK LAWRENCE: Desperation Row
Reflecting Volodymyr Zelensky’s confidence that the Trumpster would oblige him, he, Zelensky, actually visited Raytheon, the Tomahawk’s maker, before his session at the White House. What a big game Volodymyr Zelensky talked before his latest little while in the Oval…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Our Age of Unreason
Remarks delivered in late August at the annual congress of Mut zur Ethik, which translates (a little awkwardly) as “the courage of one’s ethics.” This group gathers in Zürich’s environs each summer to hear a variety of speakers consider a selected…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Trump & the Russophobes
The extent to which Trump’s démarche toward Moscow succeeds will be the extent to which the U.S. can transcend a long, regrettable history and finally embrace the 21st century. There is no saying yet whether Donald Trump will succeed in…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: How to Read the Durham Appendix
The method of those who built Russiagate’s tower of lies and disinformation grows clearer and the list of their names longer. Not that we needed more evidence to dismantle the extravagant tower of lies and disinformation known as Russiagate: This was…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Washington Takes on the BRICS
Trump’s lashing out at the group of non-Western nations is so clumsy, so off the mark, so utterly unaware of where the hands are on history’s clock. Well, it took long enough for the White House and the policy cliques…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Trump Dead-Ends Putin
For a good long time what’s been happening in Ukraine is nothing more than postwar gore. If you have lost a war but cannot admit it, you are playing the old game of pretend. Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: ‘Completely & Totally Obliterated’
The Iraq invasion and the bombing of Iran are acts of desperation — the conduct of a wounded, uncertain nation that went on the defensive when the Twin Towers went down and history arrived on its shores. I have heard many…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: For Whom the Drones Buzz
If military drones are “revolutionizing” instruments, then wherever we are, we are in a field of battle. Those drone attacks on five Russian airfields last week were nothing if not daring. No final report from Moscow yet, but three figures’ worth of Ukrainian…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Diplomatic Chess, Ukraine the Pawn
In Istanbul, a door was pried open after a soap opera’s worth of chicanery in London, Paris, Berlin and Kiev. Now the question is what Trump can do to address Russia’s concerns. As was universally expected, little came out of Istanbul…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Voices of Many Jews
This very welcome letter marks out the significantly worsening alienation between world Jewry and the Zionists’ defacement of the Judaic tradition. At last, at last, Jews with powerful voices have gathered en masse — a critical mass, I would say —…