Best of the week - 17 September 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.

Global issues

• The centre cannot hold. Can a divided world survive common threats? Thomas Wright in Foreign Affairs
• The dark underside of the representations of history Latria Graham in the Atlantic.

United States, 9/11 and Afghanistan

• Sound and fury in the post 9/11 Middle East. In the end years of upheaval led only to despair. Shadi Hamiid in  Foreign Affairs
• America played into Al Qaeda’s hands. US influence has been systematically dismantled across much of the Muslim world, a process abetted by Washington’s own mistakes. Ali Soufan for the Atlantic
• Which victims of 9/11 get remembered. The real meaning on never forget from the New York Times
• Pakistan – Taliban relations after the fall of Kabul. Michael Kugelman in Foreign Policy
• Why the West was doomed to fail in Afghanistan. Anatol Lieven for Prospect Magazine
• Podcast: Afghanistan two decades since 9/11. Listen to interviews with Lyse Doucet for BBC Radio 4
• US failure in Afghanistan was not the result of a plan poorly executed. Rather, it reveals the violent logic a the heart of American power.  Nicholas Guarnaccia in Open Democracy
• The lie of nation building. From the very beginning the problem with the US involvement in Afghanistan lay essentially in the deficits in American democracy.  Fintan O’Toole in the New York Review of Books.
• The end of American hegemony. Afghanistan does not mark the endo of American era; the challenge to its global standing is political polarisation at home.  Frances Fukuyama in the Economist
• Biden, the realist. The President’s foreign policy doctrine has been hiding in plains sight, Joshua Shifrinson and Stephen Wertheim in Foreign Affairs
• Joe Biden’s new world order. The United States has  allied with Britain and Australia to form a new anti-China grouping. Tom McTague in the Atlantic
• The counter terror war that America is winning. The United States has centered its efforts on invasions and insurgencies. But another campaign appears to be having greater success. Julia C. Morse in the Atlantic
• Why reviving the Iran nuclear deal is crucial for Joe Biden’s presidency. Helen Thompson in the New Statesman.

China

• The silence of Chinese intellectuals under Jingping. Kerry Brown for Englesberg Ideas
• MinXin Pie on why China will not surpass the United States from the Economist.

UK, Europe and Russia

• Three areas where the new Foreign Secretary will have the most influence. Jamie Gaskarth in The Conversation
• The fateful Chancellor. What the end of Merkel means for the rest of the world. Jeremy Cliffe in the New Statesman
• German election. What to expect in the race to replace Merkel. Ed Turner in The Conversation
• AUKUS; Is the arms race with China the price of ‘Global Britain’? Barbara Yoxon in The Conversation
• Macron’s ambitions have been torpedoed by Aukus. The new partnership is a sign of France’s relegation from the world stage. John Keiger in the Spectator
• Podcast: The UK, US and Australia’s new AUKUS security pact. What’s it all about? Martha Kearney speaks to Ben Wallace, UK Defence Secretary and Nick Robinson speaks to Dr Henry Wang, President of the Centre for China and Globalization, a think tank in Beijing, and advisor to the Chinese government
• How the fall of the Soviet Union still haunts Ukraine. Ido Vock in the New Statesman
• In Germany’s election, the fate of the EU is at stake. Timothy Garton Ash in the Guardian.

Middle East

• The Middle East is mired in conflict and collapse, but it also has an identity crisis. Gregg Carlstrom for a special report in the Economist
• Authoritarian, corrupt and more of the same. Lebanon has a new government. Walid El Houri for Open Democracy
• The anxiety effect: how 9/11 and its aftermath changed Gulf Arab states’ relations with the US. Dina Esfandiary reiports for International Crisis Group.

Africa

• Enemies of progress. France’s obsession with retaining influence over its former West African colonies has led to brutal dictatorships in Burkino Faso and Chad. Howard W French in the New York Review of Books.

The best of the rest

• Competition is for losers: Silicon Valley’s  pursuit of power. David Runciman in the London Review of Books.

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