PATRICK LAWRENCE: More Futile Pacific Overtures
Nearly halfway through Biden’s term in office he finally met the Chinese president to discuss the single most important relationship between any two nations anywhere in the world. I’ve given up being amazed at how stupidly the Biden administration conducts…
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: Reeking of Butter
The House speaker has just given off a reek of butter that seems to have sent the whole of East Asia in search of hankies. The Japanese have a wonderful expression they sometimes use to describe Westerners when they are…
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…
Trump Will Be Steadier on China Than His Taiwan Call May Suggest
There’s only one smart way to take all the heavy breathing since Donald Trump’s 10-minute telephone conversation last Friday with Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s president. Ignore it: Most of what’s been ricocheting around the press last week misses the point by…
Trump’s Taiwan Kerfuffle—and How the Policy Wonks Got It Wrong
The claim that he had no idea of the political and diplomatic implications when he took his call from Taipei does not hold water. Are you paying attention to the commotion over Donald Trump’s 10-minute telephone conversation last week with…
U.S. China Policy: A Snake with Three Heads
It’s dismaying to consider that the world’s largest economy may not know what it’s doing when faced with the planet’s No. 2 economy (and one of the fastest growing). But three of Washington’s most recent moves toward mainland China—the security…
In Taiwan, Many Questions Remain
This article talks about the murder of writer Henry Liu, better known by his pen name Jiang Nan in Taipei, Taiwan. In the ensuing months, as the killing ballooned into the most damaging political scandal of the island’s postwar history,…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Macron’s Europe
France’s president has proven himself to be a well-oiled weathervane. What he says on Monday may not match what he says or does on Wednesday. But his remarks while visiting China are interesting in several ways. Emmanuel Macron got poor…