Best of the holidays and new year
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After a three-week break for the holidays, our 'Best of' series is back.
Each week BISA Director, Juliet Dryden, scours the internet for IR-related content that might interest you. Here she brings you the best readings and podcasts from the vacation period and the first week of January, to keep you up to date with what's happening around the world.
Welcome to 2021
- The world after the coronavirus. 12 leading thinkers predict what will happen in 2021 in Foreign Policy
- 10 conflicts to watch out for in 2021. Robert Malley in Foreign Policy
- Is the UN fit for purpose in 2021 and beyond? Francis Wade in Prospect Magazine
- Podcast: New year, new world from TALKING POLITICS (broadcast before recent US events). From Brexit, to Biden to COVID.
COVID-related
- Get the jab! Rupert Beale in the London Review of Books
- Why isn’t the UK government talking about the airborne transmission of COVID-19? Sarah Manavis asks in the New Statesmen
- COVID is a chance to build a world where everyone has access to basic vaccines. David Miliband and Anuradha Gupta in The Guardian
- We live in the age of the pandemic. This is what we need to do about it. Peter Frankopan for Prospect Magazine
- Living with the great plague of 1665. London’s response to its last plague epidemic involved close collaboration between crown, city and parish. Read Vanessa Harding in Engelsberg Ideas.
Brexit
- Brexit deal done: what’s in it and where next for the UK and the EU? Andrew Glencross in The Conversation
- The gaps worth noting in the Brexit trade deal. David Phinnemore in The Conversation
- Boris has succeeded where all others failed. Matthew Goodwin for Unherd
- Britain has lost itself says Peter Gumbel in The New York Times.
US politics
- Post Trump America needs the courts, not truth and reconciliation. H A Hellyer in Foreign Policy
- Trump crosses a bright red line. The President’s non-stop abuse of power seems determined to force a reckoning. Read David Frum in the Atlantic
- Calling a coup a coup. Paul Musgrave for Foreign Policy
- What Trump and his mob taught the world about America. Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic
- The five crises of the American regime. Michael Lind in Tablet Magazine
- The nightmarish end to Donald Trump’s presidency. Edward Luce in the Financial Times
- Wanted lead suspect in election fraud conspiracy. Read Ankush Khardori in the New York Review of Books
- The Capital siege is the wakeup call America shouldn’t have needed. Larry Diamond in Foreign Affairs
- Podcast: An assault on the capital. The inside story from those inside! The Daily Podcast.
China/EU deal
- Cynicism explains a flawed EU-China commercial pact says the Economist
- Europe has handed China a strategic victory. Read Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times
- With the China deal, the EU leaves the hard part to Biden says Dalibor Rohac in Politico.
What’s happening around the world?
- 25 years since the Beijing platform. Let’s make women’s power culturally acceptable. Read Rachel Vogelstein and Jennifer Klein in Foreign Policy
- How the West supports Egypt’s military dictatorship. Maged Mandour in Open Democracy
- ‘Trump is crazy’. Hezbollah sees threat in President’s final days. Will Trump and Israel act against Hezbollah and Iran? Martin Chulov in the Guardian
- Israel’s Gulf coup. How Palestinians lost their Arab allies. Victor Kattan for Haaretz
- Yemen: no end in sight for the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. Robbie Gramer in Foreign Policy
- All is not quiet on Ethiopia’s western front. Violence in Benishangul-Gumuz endangers Ethiopia. Read Tom Gardner in Foreign Policy
- On betrayal. Espionage feeds off betrayal. And yet we find it difficult to love those who betray their country even in a just cause. Read Christopher Coker’s essay in Engelsberg Ideas
- Podcast: Reform and repression in Saudi Arabia with Madawi Al- Rasheed and Jeremy Bowen in Intelligence Squared.
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