Patrick Lawrence: ‘Brain Dead’ and Dangerous, NATO Proceeds
It is now five years since Emmanuel Macron, in one of those blunt outbursts for which he is known, told The Economist, in a reference to the collective West, “What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO.” The…
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…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Russians in Ukraine
Recent disclosures provide an incomplete inventory of the West’s covert activities in Ukraine. There is more than we have been told, surely. You may have read or heard about the freakout that ensued after Emmanuel Macron convened a summit of…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Grand Delusions
This year’s Munich Security Conference was predictably all about the imaginary danger that Russians intend to proceed westward into Europe as soon as they finish in Ukraine. Let’s listen for a moment to Boris Pistorius, the German defense minister, in…
IMPEACHMENT: ‘Cognitive Warfare’ on Capitol Hill
We must keep our wits about us while the Oversight Committee considers evidence on whether to impeach President Joe Biden, as the cognitive warfare warriors attempt to subvert reality, says Patrick Lawrence. After a single day’s introductory hearings in the U.S. House…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Question About Biden
In the wake of Zelensky’s wildly provocative statements, it is time to question whether the U.S. president has a personal interest in prolonging the war in Ukraine. A friend and colleague wrote in an unusually sage commentary a couple of years ago that Ukraine would prove…
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…
The Skripal snafu: Whose interests are served by confrontation with Russia?
Theresa May is pushing a global showdown with Moscow over a shadowy poisoning case. Who stands to gain from this? Britain, the United States, numerous Continental allies, Canada, Australia and even NATO piled on the Skripal case this past week…
As Trump Abdicates Global Leadership, Europe Moves to Fill the Vacuum
ROME—Donald Trump has Europe quaking. His performances at the NATO and G–7 summits last week have left the Continent more uncertain of its trans–Atlantic ties than at any time since the early postwar years. From Paris to Berlin to Rome,…
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…