PATRICK LAWRENCE: Biden’s Secret Stash
If this president didn’t know he was in possession of classified documents, in some cases for more than a decade, he simply is not qualified to hold any public office allowing him such access. There are two things I love about the…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Dimming the Lights
Two U.S. universities have recently taken the cultivation of ignorance to new lows, although at this point one hesitates to make any assumption as to where the bottom lies. Somewhere along the line, the thought seems to have taken hold among…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: A War of Rhetoric & Reality
Washington put us all on notice when Zelensky got to town: It has no intention of seeking a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis and every intention of recommitting indefinitely to its ideological war. Passing through Austin, Texas, the other night, we had…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Germany & the Lies of Empire
With Angela Merkel’s revelations of Berlin’s duplicity in its dealings with Moscow, Cold War II just got colder. “Germany is Hamlet,” Gordon Craig once wrote. The great historian of that nation (1913–2005) was noted for pithy summations of this kind,…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Zhou Enlai’s Posthumous Triumph
Nations now fashioning a post–Western world order appear to be abiding by the Five Principles espoused by China’s first and long-serving premier. The big news over the Thanksgiving weekend — big such that you could hardly find it in the mainstream…
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: War as Presentation
As the U.S. midterm elections approach, the gap between Western media’s depiction of the war in Ukraine and the actual war waged on the ground appears to be widening more dramatically. We are urged at every turn to dismiss everything Vladimir Putin…
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: Hearts Versus Minds
There is a time-honored and destructive tradition in the U.S. of citizens approaching their political causes with blind faith. I am seeing many fewer blue-and-yellow flags in evidence during wanderings in my corner of New England. Thank goodness that didn’t last long,…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Press Reckoning on Russiagate
Jeff Gerth’s investigation for The Columbia Journalism Review exposes the dark heart of the news media’s coverage of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. In the autumn of 1973, Jack Anderson, the wonderful iconoclast of the Washington press corps, published…