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…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: What Dan Ellsberg Means
The term “Fourth Estate” had taken on the dust of a neglected antique before the release of the Pentagon Papers. Afterwards it seemed possible to think again of the press as the independent pole of power required by a working democracy. …
PATRICK LAWRENCE: A War of Rhetoric & Reality
Washington put us all on notice when Zelensky got to town: It has no intention of seeking a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis and every intention of recommitting indefinitely to its ideological war. Passing through Austin, Texas, the other night, we had…
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: 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: Biden’s Taiwan Talk
We are witnessing the gradual dismantling of strategic ambiguity in favor of the clarity urged by Trump’s belligerent secretary of state, Mike Pompeo. Watching President Joe Biden’s stunningly clumsy performance in Tokyo last week, during which he committed the U.S. to…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Great Acquiescence — Glory to Ukraine
Americans don’t merely acquiesce to the imperium’s wars, interventions, collective punishments and assorted other deprivations. They actively embrace them. The other day I ventured forth from my remote village to a lively market town called Great Barrington to shop for…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Casualties of Empire
Diabolic methods of propaganda and perception management are at work now that have no precedent. This is war waged in a new way — against domestic populations as well as those declared as enemies. The news reports come in daily…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Russia’s Red Line
It is absolutely necessary that Moscow holds the line for the sake of a new security order in Europe and a sustainably stable world order in our time. “They must understand,” Sergei Lavrov said in one of his many public…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Europe’s Identity Crisis
As European leaders continue to import a version of U.S. militarism, rearmament will cost the Continent its postwar social contract. It is many years now since the French, bless them, revolted as Disneyland Paris arose near the previously uninvaded village…