Patrick Lawrence: Russia Takes Another Step Back From the West
News that Russia will suspend its participation in the New START nuclear arms pact, which arrived Tuesday via Vladimir Putin’s annual address to the Federal Assembly, had to land hard. This suspension is not a withdrawal, as various Western media…
Patrick Lawrence: Munich as Propaganda Fest
I love Wang Yi’s response when The New York Times’s Michael Crowley caught him in a hallway at the Munich Security Conference Saturday and asked the Chinese foreign minister if he planned to meet Secretary of State Antony Blinken on…
Patrick Lawrence: Objectivity and Its Discontents
Look, it is one thing for reporters and line editors to abandon the fundamental principle of objectivity as they hurl their hatchets at those who provoke their prejudices—Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, this, that or the other governor or senator, this,…
Patrick Lawrence: No, Joey, It Still Isn’t Morning in America
O.K., you have a speech of 7,000–odd words to deliver to Congress. It ought to run about an hour as these things go. But you have nothing to say. Call Joe Biden. He certainly got the job done Tuesday evening….
Patrick Lawrence: The Pathology of Ukrainian Nationalism
What kind of people are these? I asked as I considered, in my previous commentary, the bottomless corruption and cynical theft that have lately bubbled to the surface in Ukraine. What kind of polity is this? What kind of country is…
Patrick Lawrence: The Shadows Descend in Ukraine
Two of my favorite New York Times words are “shadowy” and “murky.” They are brilliantly suited to the Manichean version of our world the Times inflicts daily upon its unsuspecting readers. When The Times terms someone or some society or…
Patrick Lawrence: Japan Reenlists as Washington’s Spear-Carrier
It is always the same when Japanese premiers travel to Washington to summit at the White House. Nothing seems to happen and nobody pays much attention even when important things happen, when we should all pay attention, and, when we…
Patrick Lawrence: Europe and the Legitimization of Deception
The U.S., having no need of or gift for statecraft, has long practiced what I’ve taken to calling the diplomacy of no diplomacy. You can’t expect much from bimbos such as Antony Blinken or Wendy Sherman, Blinken’s No. 2 at…
Patrick Lawrence: The Sino-Russian Summit You Didn’t Read About
The New York Times coverage of the recent summit between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping misses some of its most important details, writes Patrick Lawrence. It is never very easy to understand what is going on in the world if…
Patrick Lawrence: In Ukraine, the Autumn of Oligarchs
The nice thing about being an oligarch is that you are so wealthy it doesn’t matter that you are looked upon as a predatory pariah. The nice thing about being an American oligarch, such as Jeff Bezos, is that America…
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