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: Late–Imperial Maladies
The worst part of living this distance from reality — or maybe the best part — is the knowledge, even if it is only subliminal, that we cannot go on like this. I am sick of reading that the Israelis’ genocidal…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Zionists Within
During Donald Trump’s first four years in the White House, the stranger to Washington’s infernal ways got nothing done: That cabal of various Deep State appendages — the Democratic Party’s upper echelons, the intelligence apparatus, the Justice Department and the…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Epstein Follies
There appears to be a good chance that Trump and his people have concluded that there is a fine line between attacking the Deep State and going along with it. Eleven days ago, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi hyped her office’s imminent…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Chihuahuas, Not Dobermans
Trump’s determination to end the Ukraine war has forced the Europeans, at last, to go their own way. And they charge in precisely the wrong direction. I have never been much for schadenfreude: It is always best to occupy one’s mind with worthier…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Trump 2.0 Crosses the Atlantic
Whatever the future may hold — and seldom does it present such promise and peril as now — Trump and his national-security team set a lot of wheels in motion last week. Eight years ago, at precisely this moment in…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Musk & the Myth of USAID
Among the agency’s missions, the one to promote democracy has made it a very sad story. What hath the MAGA movement wrought? I doubt the archest of Donald Trump’s arch-enemies ever imagined that in his second term he would take things…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Where Have All the Liberals Gone?
The new liberal consensus, born of a shared “exhaustion,” is that it is time to “tune out,” or “take a break,” or simply close one’s eyes and ears. I simply cannot figure American liberals and “progressives”—’pwogwessives,’” as the late Alexander Cockburn…
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…