Best of the week - 12 March 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.

COVID-related

• The pandemic of inequality: How coronavirus is setting women’s right back decades. Natasha Preskey, Sophie Gallagher and Harriet Hall in The Independent
• The pandemic that won’t end. Michael T Osterholm and Mark Olshaker In Foreign Affairs
• The pandemic has given women a new kind of rage. Helen Lewis in The Atlantic
• How the pandemic has changed the world. The year of COVID-19. Foreign Affairs
• Medical Apartheid. Read Mouin Rabbani in the London Review of Books.

Global politics

• How to put out democracy’s dumpster fire. Our democratic habits have been killed off by an internet kleptocracy that profits from disinformation, polarisation and rage. Anne Applebaum and  Peter Pomerantsev in The Atlantic
• Feminist foreign policies are already with us. Jennifer Thomson in The Loop, ECPR’s Political Science blog
• Podcast: Women in history: Listen to Sumita Mukherjee, Charlotte Lydia Riley and Barbara Taylor share their experiences as women in academia. They cover a range of topics such as using academic titles, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the structures of universities. From the Mile End Institute podcast series.

United States

• Foreign policy for pragmatists. How Biden can learn from history in real time. Gideon Rose in Foreign Affairs
• Biden’s stimulus is the dawn of a new economic era. The United States’ massive relief package is a triumph says Adam Tooze in Foreign Policy.

UK/Europe

• The cost of Brexit adds up. The Economist
• What the British empire did for us. Alex Peake-Tomkinson in Prospect Magazine
• Will the EU emerge from the corona crisis stronger or weaker? Timothy Garton Ash in the Guardian
• As the Merkel period approaches its end, the German left has several paths to the chancellery. Jeremy Cliffe in the New Statesman
• Where face masks are required but burkas are banned. Switzerland’s mid-pandemic burka ban doesn’t protect liberal values or security. Read Rim-Sarah Alouane in Foreign Policy.

China

• Tsiang Tingfu: pre-revolution China’s last bridge with the West. Rana Mitter in Engelsberg Ideas
• China is losing influence and that makes it dangerous. Salvatore Babones in Foreign Policy
• Myanmar coup: how China could help solve the crisis. Matteo Fumagalli in the Conversation.

The best of the rest

• Time for international re-engagement with Western Sahara. Read this report from International Crisis Group
• Great power competition is coming to Africa. Marcus Hicks. Kyle Atwell and Dan Collini in Foreign Affairs
• Mozambique’s forgotten insurgency. Lynsey Chutel in Foreign Policy
• Palmyra and the myth of civilization. Sameer Rahim in Prospect Magazine
• Growing pains. China and the project of the century. Laleh Khalili in the London Review of Books
• Biden has an admirable Hail Mary for Afghanistan. He also needs a plan B. The Washington Post
• US-Japan relations: why two new leaders need a fresh approach to the alliance in the Asia-Pacific. Ra Mason in The Conversation
• With Lula back, is Brazil’s centre doomed? Frida Gitaz in World Politics Review
• Central Americans are fleeing bad governments. Dan Respreto in Foreign Affairs.

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash