Patrick Lawrence: What Odds, as Trump Takes on the Deep State?
This is the second of two essays considering President Trump’s unfolding offensive against the institutions and agencies comprising the deep state — the permanent state or the invisible government, as it is also commonly known. The first in this series…
Patrick Lawrence: Will Biden Provoke War with China?
Host Robert Scheer speaks with veteran foreign correspondent Patrick Lawrence on his criticisms of provocative US and NATO policies — and his subsequent ban by Twitter. “We are the provocateurs” — offered as a condemnation of current US foreign policy…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: A Sudden-Seeming Power Shift in the Middle East
Despite the high-speed impression created by events in the past few weeks, the shifting trends of Russian and U.S. influence on the region have been underway for years. Rarely do world events move at the velocity they now assume in the…
Discerning Vladimir Putin
We have left behind the Russian dolls, one inside the other as if occlusion were their very point. “A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” Churchill’s famous mot (invariably quoted out of context) is no longer for us….
Let’s Not Fall Into the Cold-War Arms-Control Trap
For our national security, we need self-control more than we need arms-control talks. Let us think together about the letter four United States senators sent recently to the now departed secretary of state Rex Tillerson, urging him to start arms-control…
Why Russia Is Emerging as the World’s Indispensable Diplomatic Power
Moscow, working in concert with others, has set courses toward the diplomatic resolution of several key conflicts. There was a remarkable succession of events in the skies over Syria earlier this month. I see lessons in what happened that none…
When Putin Talks, It Is Worth Listening
On foreign-policy questions, many Russians stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their leader. Vladimir Putin gave another of his end-of-year press conferences last week—nationally televised events consisting of an always-curious combination of Q&A, opinionating, offhand banter, observations on a wide range of domestic…
American policy totally failed in Syria — let’s be thankful
Despite media obfuscation, last week’s meeting between Putin and Assad suggests a new order in the Middle East I kept hearing National Public Radio programs this week to the effect that liberals and “progressives,” not to mention those in the…
Trump’s foreign policy is confused — but it isn’t really Trump’s
Trump had one consequential moment during his Asia trip — and everyone in the rudderless American media missed it No sooner did Donald Trump return a week ago from his 12-day escapade in Asia than the bickering began. Did the…
Trump Talks to Putin, and Suddenly Ukraine’s in Play
Fighting erupted in Ukraine after many months of uneasy but consistent calm after Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the U.S. and Russian presidents, finally spoke for the first time last weekend by telephone. Instantly, the Trump White House is faced…
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