Best of the week - 11 June 2021

Each week 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.

G7 summit and global issues

• The G7 summit: the UK’s objectives and prospects for success. A report from the British Foreign Policy Group
• There’s a big agenda but the group’s world beating influence is much diminished. Steve Schifferes in The Conversation
• Biden, G7 and the limits of multilateralism. Thomas Gift and Julia Norman for the Hill
• Podcast: What’s the point of the G7 summit? Jack Blanchard guides us through while speaking to a host of special guests.  Listen to Westminster Insider podcast
• GDP numbers are not what they seem. Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven in The Conversation
• China’s covid cover up. John Gray in the New Statesman
• Lost opportunity: a world-wide vaccination plan. Read the view from the Economist
• How to speak when speech isn’t free. Erica Benner for Engelsberg Ideas
• Global migration drives the global democracy. How workers abroad weaken dictators back home. Abel Escribà-Folch, Covadonga Meseguer, and Joseph Wright in Foreign Affairs
• Foreign aid cuts. Victoria Honeyman in The Conversation
• Renewing the grand bargain part 1. Donors are still calling the shots. Jessica Alexandra in the New Humanitarian.

USA foreign policy

• Joe Biden worries that China might win. Thomas Wright in The Atlantic
• America is not ready for a war with China. How to get the Pentagon to focus on the real threats. Michael Beckley in Foreign Affairs.

UK,  Europe and Russia

• Can Britain be the ally that America needs? Tom McTague in the Atlantic
• Imperial delusions: Fara Dabhoiwala in the New York Review of Books
• Why did Denmark help the US spy on its foreign allies? Amelie Theussen
• Why is Putin so afraid of Alexei Navalny? Read the view from the Economist
• Podcast: Big ideas for gender equality. Listen to Reasons to be Cheerful with Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd.

China

• The Taiwan temptation. Why Beijing might resort to force. Oriana Skylar Mastro in Foreign Affairs
• Identity politics with Chinese characteristics. How the CCP’s Quest to Define “China” Shapes Beijing’s Agenda. Odd Arne Westad in Foreign Affairs
• The most adaptable party - the Chinese Communist Party. Ian Johnson in the New York Review of Books

Asia

• India’s democracy is the world’s problem. Small, rich, homogenous nations do not offer stories of hope.  Big, poor, diverse ones do. Jonah Blank in the Atlantic
• Each rock has two names. The war over Nagorno-Karabakh. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in the London Review of Books.
• Mynamar’s military are a force of chaos not stability. Andrew Nachemson in Foreign Policy

Middle East

• The twilight of the Arab state. As internal and external pressures mount, will Arab states recognise the need for reform before it is too late. John Raine for Engelsberg Ideas
• Cracks in the Israeli consensus. David Shulman in the New York Review of Books
• Assad wins 95% of the vote as the world watches in disbelief. Ali Aljasem in the Conversation
• Podcast: Why are so many Iranians planning not to vote? Listen to The Conversation podcast.

Africa

• Steal, Burn, Rape, Kill. The new famine in Ethiopia. Alex de Waal in the London Review of Books
• The dark side of Rwanda’s rebirth. Mvemba Phezo Dizolele in Foreign Policy.

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