PATRICK LAWRENCE: Moscow’s Difficult Decision on Idlib
Turkey’s leader, who nurses dreams of some kind of neo–Ottoman restoration across the Middle East, is now on a reckless tear. As Recip Tayyip Erdogan prosecutes his latest military intrusion southward into Syria, all the old mythologies about the Turkish president and…
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…
The Revelations of WikiLeaks: No. 5 — Busting the Myth WikiLeaks Never Published Damaging Material on Russia
A month before Hillary Clinton spread the widely-believed myth that WikiLeaks had never revealed anything on Russia, the publication had already released more than a million files on the country. via Consortium News: This is the fifth article in a series that…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Establishment is Changing its Tune on Russia
Russophobic rhetoric persists in Washington, but a counter-argument is emerging. Are Western democracies, the U.S. and France in the lead, rethinking the hostility toward Russia they conjured out of nothing since Moscow responded to the coup Washington cultivated in Ukraine…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Weaponizing the Dollar
The Trump administration’s incessant sanctions wars are curbing the dollar’s global hegemony and speeding the demise of U.S. empire. The signs are mounting steadily now. As the Trump administration weaponizes the dollar in defense of American hegemony, it…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Why the Dust Won’t Settle After Mueller’s Report
It won’t be “full and thorough” and Democrats will continue to look for political payoff from Russia-gate, writes Patrick Lawrence. Last week gave us mounting indications that Robert Mueller has finished his two-year probe into alleged Russian interference in the…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Pompeo, Pence & the Alienation of Europe
If the objective was to further isolate the U.S., the two officials could not have done a better job last week, writes Patrick Lawrence. What a job Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did in Europe…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: In Venezuela, US Forgets What Century It Is
Destabilizing other nations in gross violation of international law will no longer go unopposed, writes Patrick Lawrence. The Venezuela crisis worsens by the day. Early last week the U.S. sanctioned PdVSA, the state-owned oil company, by sequestering income from U.S. sales…
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….
Why China Tiptoed onto the Far Side of the Moon
Xi Jinping’s state media was strangely quiet about its historic lunar landing, writes Patrick Lawrence in this look at the U.S. effort to maintain primacy over advanced technologies. When China landed a space probe on the far side of the…