Patrick Lawrence

Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author, and lecturer. His most recent book is Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century (Yale). Follow him @thefloutist. His website is www.patricklawrence.us. Support his work via www.patreon.com/thefloutist.

A Modern Day Marshall Plan: Mexico Offers the US an Easy Out to the Border Crisis

López Obrador’s $20 billion development plan gives Washington a chance to help rectify the historic damage it’s done to the living conditions of people in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

Patrick Lawrence
By Patrick Lawrence
Central America Migrant Caravan

With President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatening to shut down the government if he doesn’t get his wall, it’s good that someone in a position of authority actually has a workable solution to the migrant crisis festering on the Mexican border with the U.S. The day after Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office as Mexico’s president on Dec. 1,

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The Long-term Consequences of Trump’s Campaign Against Iran

The U.S. is going for the jugular with new Iran sanctions intended to punish those who trade with Teheran. But the U.S. may have a fight on its hands in a possible post- WWII turning-point .

Patrick Lawrence
By Patrick Lawrence
Donald Trump | Iran

The next step in the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran comes this Sunday, Nov. 4, when the most severe sanctions will be imposed on the Islamic Republic. Crucially, they apply not only to Iran but to anyone who continues to do business with it. It’s not yet clear how disruptive this move will be. While the U.S.

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The Battle for Your Mind

There are battlefields in Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, and elsewhere, but given the state of corporate media, perhaps the most consequential battle now being fought is for our minds.

Patrick Lawrence
By Patrick Lawrence

After reading The New York Times piece “The Plot to Subvert an Election” I put the paper down with a single question. Why, after two years of allegations, indictments, and claims to proof of this, that, and the other did the newspaper of record—well, once the newspaper of record—see any need to publish such a piece? My answer is simple: The

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How the US Came to Adopt a ‘Me First’ Foreign Policy

The bitter reality is that U.S. foreign policy has no definable objective other than blocking the initiatives of others because they stand in the way of the further expansion of U.S. global interests.

Patrick Lawrence
By Patrick Lawrence
A float depicting U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un parades during the Nice carnival, Feb. 17, 2018, in Nice, southeastern France. The Carnival celebrates this year the "King of Space." Claude Paris | AP

The Trump administration has brought U.S. foreign policy to the brink of crisis if it has not already tipped into one. There is little room to argue otherwise. In Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, and in Washington’s ever-fraught relations with Russia, U.S. strategy, as reviewed in my previous column, amounts to little more than spoiling the

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