Patrick Lawrence: The Non-West Coalesces
Nations representing more than 80 percent of the global population and a like percentage of global gross domestic product are perfectly capable of seeing the Biden administration’s pointed provocations and do not approve. Something of epochal importance happened in Vienna,…
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: Propaganda and Evidence
The wall of propaganda that towers over us, resting on an insidious culture of irrationality that has come to suffuse the American polity, is weakening. Finally. Finally our mainstream press and broadcasters show signs of waking up to the cynical,…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Maestro of Messes
Biden apparently dreamed of the presidency for decades. And now as his first year in office draws to a close we must reflect on how perilous it often turns out to be when dreams come true. How fitting that Joe Biden’s first year…
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: Arc of Decline
U.S. leaders would rather accept ever-more extreme isolation as the price of power than surrender any of it. It is remarkable how quickly the Biden administration is acquiring its stamp — the watermark it will leave on our parchment when…
Biden is Already Breaking Promises
Tony Blinken will be secretary of state with the élan and faux sophistication the nakedly bankrupt foreign policy requires if the U.S. pantomime is to be sustained another four years. It was inevitable that President Joe Biden would betray numerous…
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: Empire with a Human Face
The Biden people are unlikely to speak of a new cold war with China, but they appear likely to wage one all dressed up as a sophisticated trans–Pacific strategy. Those boneheaded Trump people explained their hostile, xenophobic, fated-to-fail policy toward…
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…