PATRICK LAWRENCE: War as Presentation
As the U.S. midterm elections approach, the gap between Western media’s depiction of the war in Ukraine and the actual war waged on the ground appears to be widening more dramatically. We are urged at every turn to dismiss everything Vladimir Putin…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Grave New World
Biden’s long-delayed National Security Strategy is the kind of pablum that disguises danger and comes with a price. The Biden administration — excuse me, the Biden–Harris administration if you please — has at last released its National Security Strategy, a document…
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,…
The Historic Collapse of Journalism
Accuracy no longer matters. Witnessing no longer matters. Conformity matters, writes Patrick Lawrence. I have never gotten over a story The New York Times ran in its Sunday magazine back in May 2016. Maybe you will remember the occasion. It was a lengthy profile 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…
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: The Imaginary War
It began when the Biden regime and the press misrepresented Russian aims in Ukraine. All else has flowed from it. What were the policy cliques, “the intelligence community” and the press that serves both going to do when the kind…
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: More Futile Pacific Overtures
Nearly halfway through Biden’s term in office he finally met the Chinese president to discuss the single most important relationship between any two nations anywhere in the world. I’ve given up being amazed at how stupidly the Biden administration conducts…