PATRICK LAWRENCE: The US Moves on Iran’s Oil Market as an Expression of an Irrational Foreign Policy
Patrick Lawrence gauges the backfiring potential of Pompeo’s withdrawal on Thursday of U.S. sanction waivers from eight major importers. A Decisive Defeat in Long-Running Battle with Foreign Policy Minders Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement last week that no importer…
America’s Absence in Istanbul: A Sign of Decline, Not Surrender
Team Trump missed the summit on Syria. In that, Patrick Lawrence sees another sign of Washington’s failure to accept its loss of diplomatic primacy. Lost in the Memory Palace: US Leads, But No One Follows You would hardly know it from…
David Hendrickson: We Need a ‘New Internationalism’
The author and professor in conversation. A friend recently told me about a book he was assigned to review and thought I should read. When he mentioned the title, Republic in Peril: American Empire and the Liberal Tradition, I ordered it…
Trump and Jerusalem: Will his “hard power” realism backfire bigly?
Like much of Trump’s foreign policy, the Jerusalem decision recognizes ugly facts about the U.S. role in the world Clarity is preferable to ambiguity even when the clear picture is grim. So I have found in many circumstances, and so…
There Are More Important Questions to Ask Than Whether Rex Tillerson Is In or Out at State
A renovated foreign policy rests on a great variety of factors beyond a house-cleaning at State. As so often with the Trump administration, one cannot tell what is what as to the future of Rex Tillerson. The secretary of state…
Trump’s foreign policy is confused — but it isn’t really Trump’s
Trump had one consequential moment during his Asia trip — and everyone in the rudderless American media missed it No sooner did Donald Trump return a week ago from his 12-day escapade in Asia than the bickering began. Did the…
Trump in Beijing—Devoid of a Strategy, While Xi Deploys China’s
Next to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, and its alliance with Moscow, Washington’s preference for perpetual conflict looks pitifully bankrupt. A tour of the Forbidden City, dinner in the Great Hall of the People, a review of the People’s Liberation…
Trump’s Non-Existent Foreign Policy Is Costing the US Both Money and Influence
The Trump administration has no coherent foreign policy, and the U.S. is paying the price for the President’s failure to figure out a post–Obama strategic framework. Trump and many of his advisers don’t seem to understand the speed at which…
Trump Has No South China Sea Strategy—and Needs One Fast
The South China Sea question is rolling toward the Trump White House like a long, low Pacific wave. Whenever it breaks, the president’s going to need a strategy he doesn’t seem to have yet. The strategy is just a piece…
Why China Tiptoed onto the Far Side of the Moon
Xi Jinping’s state media was strangely quiet about its historic lunar landing, writes Patrick Lawrence in this look at the U.S. effort to maintain primacy over advanced technologies. When China landed a space probe on the far side of the…