Best of the fortnight - 7 October 2022

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.

Russia and Ukraine

• Russia’s nuclear bluster is a sign of panic. Yielding to Putin’s blackmail would be a sign of folly. Elliot A. Cohen for the Atlantic

• Could the war in Ukraine go nuclear? Sixty years after the Cuban Missile Crisis the world again worries about nuclear.  From the Economist

• Nuclear war. Lessons from the Cuban Missile Crisis, 60 years on. Tom Vaughan for the Conversation

• How the Biden Administration is responding to Putin’s threats to go nuclear. Christopher Bluth for the Conversation

• Putin’s world is now smaller than ever. The moral and strategic disaster has ended his imperialist dreams. Angela Stent for Foreign Policy

• Why Russian’s are not protesting the war. Sergey Smirnov for Open Democracy

• Is Putin’s hold on the four annexed regions flimsy. Precious Chatterje-Doody for the Conversation

• How Russia is trying to win over the global south. From the Economist

• The swift death of Gorbachev’s USSR set Russia on a path to chaos. Vladislav Zubok for Engelsberg Ideas

• Podcast: Ukraine’s Best Known Novelist Andrey Kurkov on life, literature and the war in Ukraine. Hailed as a latter-day Bulgakov and a Ukrainian Murakami, his works are injected with an absurdist sense of the oddities of life.

China

• Xi Jinping’s quest for order: Security at home, influence abroad. Sheena Chestnut Greitens in Foreign Affairs

• How to make sense of Xi Jinping. His project to restore the Communist Party’s overbearing role had grim implications for China and the world. From the Economist

• China: Back to authoritarianism. Ian Johnson in the New York Review of Books

• Podcast: Succession and power: a look ahead to the 20th Party Congress. Cindy Yu speaks to  author of the Sinocism newsletter Bill Bishop and Professor Victor Shih about the upcoming Congress and whether, as most China watchers expect, Xi Jinping will remain in position, beginning his third term in power.  From Chinese Whispers.

United States

• The China trap and the perilous logic of zero-sum competition. Jessica Chen Weiss for Foreign Affairs

• Lucky guy - Jared Krushner. Joshua Cohen in the New York Review of Books.

Europe and UK

• The return of fascism in Italy. Ruth Ben-Ghiat for the Atlantic

• Nord steam pipeline sabotage. How an attack could have been carried out and why Europe was defenceless. Christian Bueger for the Conversation

• "Belarusians can’t rise up, but we are still fighting". The war in Ukraine has drawn international  attention away from repression in Belarus, but opposition leader-in-exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya says their struggle for freedom in shared.  Emily Schultheis for Prospect Magazine

• Europe has never had a global voice but that may be about to change with the rise of digital media. Liam Kennedy for the Conversation

• At the top table. The defence intelligentsia. Tom Stevenson reviews ‘Command: the politics of military operations from Korea to Ukraine’ by Lawrence Freedman in the London Review of Books

• Podcast: What drives Liz Truss? The people and ideas behind the PM’s economies. Jeremy Cliffe looks at the ideas , institutions and thinkers who have shaped Truss’s politics

• Podcast: The political legacy of Italian fascism: Following the Italian election victory of the post-fascist Giorgia Meloni and her Fratelli d'Italia party last weekend, many have asked what relationship it has with the country's fascist past.  Listen to historian David Broder talk for the World Review from the New Statesman.

Middle East and Asia

• Iran’s crisis of legitimacy. An embattled regime faces mass protests and an ailing supreme leader. Sunam Vakil for Foreign Affairs

• A whole generation revolts against the Iranian regime. Kim Ghattas for the Atlantic

• The reason Iran turned out to be so repressive. Shadi Hamid for the Atlantic

• How I’m fighting for Iranian women from the outside. Lucy Martirosyan and Carla Abreu in Open Democracy

• Iranian women burning their hijabs are striking at the Islamic Republic’s brand. Zahra Khosroshahi for the Conversation

• A moment of truth for Yemen’s truce. Commentary from International Crisis Group

• Podcast: Pakistan, Under Water. Listen to Christina Goldbaum, an Afghanistan and Pakistan correspondent for The New York Times talk about this once-in-generation flood that has marooned entire villages and killed 1,500 people, leaving a trail of destruction, starvation and disease. From the Daily. 

Africa

• The world should not ignore the horrors of Eastern Congo. The Economist

• The Asian question: On leaving Uganda. Mahmood Mamdani in the London Review of Books.

Latin America

• Belsonaro’s first round election bounce back reminds us why populist leaders are so popular. Robert M. Dover for the Conversation

• Brazil’s presidential election.  From the Economist.

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash