PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Dialectic of the Draft
Americans will understand themselves less fantastically if they consider the extent to which the end of the Selective Service System a half century ago gave them permission to put their public selves to sleep. It is 50 years ago now…
The US Press, Spooks & the Church Committee
Nineteen fifty-three was a peculiar year for The Washington Post to question the C.I.A.’s drift into activist intrigues, writes Patrick Lawrence in this excerpt from his forthcoming book, Journalists and Their Shadows. On Jan. 9, 1953, The Washington Post published an editorial we can read all…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: A Yellen in the China Shop
Janet Yellen did an excellent job during her just-completed four-day visit to Beijing, we are now able to read in the corporate press. The Treasury secretary managed not to break any more China in the China shop. This counts as…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Breaking Bread with Authoritarians
In his way, India’s prime minister is as bad as some of the old Latin American dictators who got plenty of American support but never an evening meal — and certainly no cardamon-flavored strawberry shortcake for dessert. “For the first…
Patrick Lawrence: US Still Nowhere with the Chinese
The bitter truth is that the leaders of Biden’s foreign policy are too paralyzed by the ideology of American primacy to come up with a single, solitary new thought as to how to address other great powers as we enter…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Rape of Lady Justice
This is an open-and-shut case of the judiciary being misused to keep Trump out of the political process. Unlike during the Russiagate years, liberal authoritarians know they are operating in broad daylight this time. It is getting hard to keep track of the charges…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Deaf, but Not Blind to US Decline
In Fiona Hill’s recent speech it’s possible to detect the very faint signals of Washington’s policy elite responding to the immense global power shift that is underway. I count the advance among non–Western nations toward what we now call a new…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The USA’s Soviet-Style President
We are in for 19 months of relentless, insultingly transparent spin by way of which a patently incompetent man will be purveyed as commander in chief for another four years. Joe Biden announces — via a video, not in person…
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…
Patrick Lawrence: The Bidens’ Burisma Bribery
Let us cast our minds back just briefly to the very fine afternoon of July 22, 2016. It was an especially bright Friday, as you may recall, because WikiLeaks released a lot of Democratic Party emails that day, so shining a light…