Best of the week - 24 September 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.
Coronavirus
- Left wingers lured to the right by conspiracy theories. George Monbiot in the Guardian
- Podcast: Confronting Leviathan from TALKING POLITICS. What has the pandemic revealed about politics, economics and the new world order. From covid crisis to China crisis to climate crisis.
Geopolitics
- The ten challenges for the UN in 2021/22. The UN’s limitations on stopping deadly conflict have repeatedly been on display but there are still vital roles for it to play. The view from International Crisis Group
- Geopolitics never went away for the United States. For the US geopolitics has always been about national identity even in an era of globalisation. Perhaps it always will be. Andrew Preston for Engelsberg Ideas
- American power after Afghanistan. How to rightsize the country’s global role. Jessica T Matthews for Foreign Affairs
- How will China approach Afghanistan in the post- US era. Jessie Lau in the New Stateman
- The new tinderbox. Why the Indo-Pacific is the new arena of great power rivalry. The AUKUS pact is more than an arms deal. It is a glimpse of the future of geopolitics in the 21st century. Jeremy Cliffe in the New Stateman
- The new world order. Can Britain, American and Australia contain China? James Forsyth in the Spectator
- We should welcome the AUKUS pact. David Omand for Prospect Magazine
- AUKUS, the Quad and India’s strategic pivot. C Raja Mohan for Foreign Policy
- Podcast: Submarines and shifting alliances. The recent U.S.-British deal to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines might look relatively inconsequential. But it signifies a close alliance between the three countries to face off against China. From the Daily Podcast
- The future of conquest. Fights over small places could spark the next big war. Dan Altman for Foreign Affairs
- Of course Tony Blair won’t back down on Afghanistan. He’s still profiting off interventionism. Joe Duffy for Novara Media
- Surfing the global protest wave. Economic equality and social justice have ignited a cycle of protests around the world as a new generation make common cause to ensure their voice is heard. Kevin Gillan for the World Today.
UK and Europe
- How Aukus upended Macron’s grand plan. Helen Thompson for the New Statesman
- France’s Macron uses Biden’s Afghan debacle to push ‘Strategic Autonomy’. J Alex Tarquinio in Foreign Policy
- Who will be Germany’s next Chancellor? Nobody cares. Over the last 16 years, Merkel has seized full control of international affairs. Matthew Karnitschnig in Politico
- Angela Merkel. Gentle persuasion an age of populism. Matt Qvortrup in The Conversation
- Merkel’s caution has made Germany the great economic underachiever of our times. Mohammad Ali Nasir in The Conversation
- The mess Merkel leaves behind. The successor to Germany’s much admired Chancellor will face big unresolved problems. Read the view from the Economist
- What Germany says about far right politics. Yasmeen Serhan in the Atlantic
- Litvinenko court judgement has cross border implications says Kanstantsin Dzehtsiarou in The Conversation.
United States
- The new Puritans. Mob justice is trampling democratic discourse. Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic
- It’s too early to assign Joe Biden to the ash heap of history. But not too early for Democrats to start panicking. Susan B Glasser for the New Yorker
- Trump’s plans for a coup are now public. Adam Serwer in the Atlantic
- 21 million Americans say Biden is illegitimate and Trump should be restored by violence, survey find. Robert A Pape in The Conversation.
Around the world
- Misunderstanding Yemen. American efforts to uproot al-Qaeda’s Yemeni franchise often overlooked the country’s mercurial politics. Is the sectarianism that the group espoused still rife on all sides of Yemen’s war? Peter Salisbury for International Crisis Group
- How North and South Korea have become locked in a dangerous arms race. Christoph Bluth and Owen Greene for The Conversation.
- How democratic is the world’s largest democracy. Narendra Modi’s New India. Sadanand Dhume in Foreign Affairs
- ‘Objects, manipulators or temptresses’. How Senegal’s media fails women. Fatou Warkha Sambe for Open Democracy
- Why Jihadis are drawn to Khorasan. Suzanne Raine for Englesberg Ideas
- Podcast: The Peter Theil paradox. David Runciman talks to Thomas Jones about Silicon Valley’s best known investor-provocateur, his prescience, his mistakes, and why, despite his ultra-libertarian ideology, he owes so much to the state. From the London Review of Books podcast.
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