Best of the week - 16 October 2020
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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 news
- Why we should be more like Denmark: The common sense of purpose. Read Paul Collier in Unherd
- The ethics of the pandemic. Life or quality of life? Read Angie Hobbs in Prospect
- ‘The coronavirus unveiled’. Read this fascinating report from the New York Times
- Wang Xiuying looks at ‘China after covid’ in the London Review of Books
- Would herd immunity stop the spread of coronavirus? Robin Mckie, Science Editor for the Guardian explains
- Podcast: Listen to Politics Weekly Extra. Jonathan Freedland talks to Guardian US columnist Moira Donegan on whether Trumps’ handling of COVID may be his undoing.
UK politics
- Bye bye Britain. Neal Ascherson wonders if the Union is dead. London Review of Books
- Is Scotland heading for independence? Read Peter Kellner in the Article.
US election
- Republicans are suddenly afraid of democracy. Read George Packer in the Atlantic
- Dreaming of a landslide by Andrew Sullivan in the Weekly Dish
- Last exit from autocracy. What would a Trump second term look like? David Frum in the Atlantic
- Biden is not out of the woods. Thomas B Edsall in the New York Times
- Podcast: TALKING POLITICS talks to the historian Sarah Churchwell about how well America's political institutions have withstood the stress of the last four years
- Podcast: Has Donald Trump made good on this promise? The Daily talks to Peter Baker from the New York Times.
US foreign policy
- Where next for US foreign policy? Read a new report by Sophia Gaston and Evie Aspinall from the British Foreign Policy Group.
China/Taiwan
- China thinks America is losing. Washington must show Beijing it’s wrong says Julian Gewirtz in Foreign Affairs
- How China outsmarted the Trump administration: While the US is distracted, China is rewriting the rules of the global order. Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic
- Orphaned by the State. How Xinjiang’s gulag are tearing families apart. The Economist
- Podcast: How Taiwan is Using Technology to Foster Democracy. Listen to Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s Digital Minister explain how they are using the internet as a space for civic participation, dialogue, and consensus building. From Exponential View.
Middle East
- There is no hope. The slow disintegration of Lebanon. Read Martin Chulov in the Guardian
- Have Israel’s normalisation agreements with Bahrain and the UAE made the Middle East more volatile? A view from Geneive Aboo and Theodosia Rossi in Foreign Policy
- Yemen should be a factor in US Yemen foreign policy. Read the commentary from International Crisis Group.
In other news
- Read Christopher Coker’s fascinating essay on ‘The human need for war’. From Engelsberg Ideas
- ‘In the grey zone’. A look at proxy wars from Tom Stevenson in the London Review of Books
- Podcast: Listen to Intelligence Squared on The Ideological Roots of 'Wokeness'. Helen Pluckrose documents the evolution of the ideas that inform today's radical social justice activism, from its coarse origins in French postmodernism to its refinement within activist academic fields
- A Bretton Woods stocktaking: Can the multilateral institutions rise to the economic moment? Read Barry Eichengreen in Prospect.
Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash
