PATRICK LAWRENCE: Blinded to Syria
I do not know anyone who was not shocked by the lightning speed with which Damascus fell to expensively armed jihadist militias last weekend. I know very few people who do not understand that another domino has just fallen in the…
Patrick Lawrence: Deaf and Blind: The Maladies of American Diplomats
Here is a modest proposal, nothing too radical, just good sense. Turn over Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan to the Iranian authorities on the understanding the two statesmen, very loosely defined, would spend 444 days at the U.S. embassy compound…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Russia’s Turn From the West
Sergei Lavrov’s recent comments are a case of the subtext being vastly larger than the text. Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s steady, able, intellectually quick foreign minister, last week held one of those wide-ranging press conferences he and his boss favor. Lavrov’s…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Dialectic of the Draft
Americans will understand themselves less fantastically if they consider the extent to which the end of the Selective Service System a half century ago gave them permission to put their public selves to sleep. It is 50 years ago now…
The US Press, Spooks & the Church Committee
Nineteen fifty-three was a peculiar year for The Washington Post to question the C.I.A.’s drift into activist intrigues, writes Patrick Lawrence in this excerpt from his forthcoming book, Journalists and Their Shadows. On Jan. 9, 1953, The Washington Post published an editorial we can read all…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Appointment in Samarkand
Western coverage of last week’s summit in Uzbekistan brings us face-to-face with the extent to which Americans are not supposed to see the world turning. Only in America, Land of Opportunists, can you awaken on an early autumn Sunday to a…
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 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: The Diplomacy of No Diplomacy
We now watch as Biden and his foreign policy people effectively allow Israel to dictate the conditions under which the president can fulfill his campaign promise on Iran. A return to diplomacy: Let us hold this thought up to the light….
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Lost & Fearful in The Middle East
The Biden regime wanders in a funhouse of its own making. Of all the amateurish moments to arise as the Biden regime conducts its foreign policy, the White House’s official statement as B1–B bombers let loose over Iraq and Syria last Friday…