Best of the fortnight - 23 September 2022
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Each fortnight BISA Director, Juliet Dryden, scours the internet for IR-related content that might interest you. Here she brings you this week's best readings and podcasts to keep you up to date with what's happening around the world.
Global themes
- What worries the world? September 2022 from IPSOS
- The cultural conversations of mankind. Christopher Coker for Engelsberg Ideas
- Podcast: Why is progress on gender equality slowing? The Covid-19 pandemic has played havoc with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Progress to achieve gender equality by 2030 has not only stalled, it’s reversed. Listen to the Economist Asks podcast series with Anne McElvoy talking to Melinda French Gates.
Russia and Ukraine
- Putin’s next move in Ukraine. Mobilise, retreat or something in between? Lianne Fix and Michael Kimmage in Foreign Affairs
- The Kremlin must be in crisis. Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic
- What the mighty miss. The blinds spots of power. Ngaire Woods in Foreign Affairs
- Putin’s regime is banking on Western Ukraine fatigue. Olesya Khromeychuk for Prospect Magazine
- Ukraine War: more troops and threats of nuclear war. Stefan Wolff and Tatyana Malyarenko in The Conversation
- The West has only one choice left in Ukraine. Eliot A Cohen in the Atlantic
- Putin’s mobilisation speech. What he said and what he meant. Robert M Dover in the Conversation
- Putin details the next stage of the Ukraine war and who is being called up. Christopher Morris for The Conversation
- Russia is building a closer alliance with the world’s autocracies. Barbara Yoxon in The Conversation
- Podcast: Could Putin lose the war in Ukraine? Listen to the Economist Asks. Host Anne McElvoy asks Wesley Clark, a retired four-star US general, if Ukraine’s surprise counter-offensive marks a new phase in the war and what to expect if Russia retaliates. And Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, analyses whether the cracks in Vladimir Putin’s aura of invincibility will damage his standing at home
- Podcast: Escalation of the War in Ukraine from the Daily. Listen to Anton Troianovski, Moscow bureau chief of the New York Times explain why Putin is turning the war from one of aggression to one of defence, offering clues about what the next phase of the fighting will involve.
China
- No more ‘strategic ambiguity’ on Taiwan. Michael Shuman in the Atlantic.
United States
- The slow motion coup. What has Donald Trump taken from US democracy? Mark Danner in the New York Review of Books
- Let Puerto Rico be free. Read more in the Atlantic.
UK and Europe
- Turkey’s age of oppression. Suna Erdem in the New European
- Can the Commonwealth survive? Unless Britain develops the political will and provides the economic resources to review the Commonwealth, its future will be imperilled. Read Shashi Tharoor in Prospect Magazine
- Podcast: Long Live The British Monarchy? Listen to Intelligence Squared Debates on the longevity of the British monarchy. Graham Smith, who heads the British anti-monarchy pressure group Republic and Phillip Blond, English political philosopher and director of the ResPublica think tank
- Serbia bans Europride 2023. Read Koen Slootmaeckers in The Conversation.
Middle East
- Trade and security ties are knitting Israel into its region. Former enemies are drawing closer, offering hope of a more stable and prosperous Middle East. More in the Economist
- Saudi Arabia is imprisoning women while the rest of the world is not paying attention. Veronika Poniscjakova
- Raja Shehadeh: 'I felt as though my father was calling me beyond the grave’. The Palestinian writer on the parallels between his own activism against Israeli occupation and his fathers. Emily Lawford for Prospect Magazine
- Yair Lapid: the man who could end the Netanyahu era. Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic
- The vanishing point of the laws of war. Nearly all modern famines are caused by tactics of war, including those in Yemen and Tigray. Alex de Waal in the New York Review of Books.
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