Best of the week - 22 January 2021
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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.
US domestic policy
- Rotten to the core? How America’s decay accelerated during the Trump era. Frances Fukuyama in Foreign Affairs
- The cure for demagogic populism by Michael Line in the Project Syndicate
- Goodbye Donald Trump. Yes, you were the worst of us. Paul Waldman in The Washington Post
- Has the ‘end of history’ been side-tracked by unforeseen forces? Michael Hirsh interviews Frances Fukuyama in Foreign Policy
- Be ready to fight. Mark Danner in the New York Review of Books
- The age of Trump is over. Now the US must tackle its polarisation. Alison Goldsworthy in Open Democracy
- Can Joe Biden save America? Andrew Andonis in Prospect Magazine
- Who’s who in Joe Biden’s cabinet. Julie M. Norman explains in The Conversation
- America – nation of myth-makers. Enduring debates about rights, freedom and individualism take us back to rival interpretations of what went on in the 1770s and 1780s. Read David Reynolds essay in Engelsberg Ideas
- Podcast: Account(ability) suspended: who governs online speech? Listen to Reasons to be Cheerful with Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd discuss who should decide what is acceptable online speech
- Podcast: Biden begins. What lies ahead for American politics and the Biden Administration? Listen to TALKING POLITICS
- Podcast: US Presidential election of 2020: consequences and prospects. Richard Johnson (QMUL) talks to Lisa Miller (Rutgers Univ) and Sidney Milkis (Univ of Virginia) for the Mile End Institute.
US foreign policy
- Joe Biden’s plan to rescue US foreign policy after Trump. A look back at Biden’s words from April 2020
- No amount of swagger can dress up Pompeo’s legacy as Secretary of State. Elise Labott in Foreign Policy
- Biden needs more than a diverse cabinet to advance a feminist foreign policy. Toni Haastrup and Paul Kirby in Foreign Policy
- Biden doesn’t need a new Middle East policy. James Jeffrey in Foreign Affairs
- How America can shore up Asian order. Kurt M. Campbell and Rush Doshi in Foreign Affairs
- Magic beans, baby. David Runciman reviews Barak Obama’s ‘A Promised Land’ in the London Review of Books.
UK
- The man who knows what ‘Global Britain means. Charlie Cooper writes about John Bew in Politico
- Podcast: Global Britain and the future of UK foreign policy. Listen to the latest Undercurrents interview with Robin Niblett, Director of Chatham House.
What’s going on elsewhere?
- How to contain Putin’s Russia. A strategy for containing a rising revisionist power. Michael McFaul in Foreign Affairs
- No experiments. Armin Laschet is elected leader of Germany’s CDU. Read Jeremy Cliffe in the New Statesman
- US policy of ‘maximum pressure’ has failed. Why the West needs to re-engage Tehran. Ellis Mallett in The Conversation
- Podcast: Populista! The rise of Latin America’s strongman with Will Grant and Mark Mardell from Intelligence Squared.
COVID-related
- Statistics explained: how to make sense of ‘excess’ deaths. David Spiegelhalter in the Guardian
- The free market gamble: has COVID broken UK universities? Rowan Moore in the Guardian
- Israel’s vaccine efforts are incomplete until they include Palestinians. Yara M Asi in the Washington Post.
Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash
