Best of the week - 30 October 2020

30 October 2020

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

Ten lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic. Philip Ball in the New Statesman
How did China beat its COVID crisis? Read Ian Johnson in the New York Review of Books
How corona is spread through the air. Let El Pais’s infographics explain
Podcast - Wake-up Call: ‘Why the pandemic exposes the weakness of the West' from Intelligence Squared. Is fear is on the march? All over the world citizens have surrendered basic freedoms to the state in order to be protected from COVID-19. Good government has become not just important but a matter of life and death. The assumption that Western governments have any advantage over the rest of the world is questionable: ask yourself, where would you feel safer today – in Los Angeles and Barcelona or in Singapore and Seoul?

World order

The post-American order. ‘America first’ will leave America behind. Kori Schake in Foreign Affairs
The end of American power: Trump’s re-election would usher in permanent decline. Eliot A Cohen in Foreign Affairs
A second Trump term would sabotage struggling democracies and US leadership. Asil Aydintasbas in the Washington Post
Podcast: Listen to Reasons to be Cheerful with Ed Milliband and Geoff Lloyd on how movements change the world and the national conversation. What works in driving political change? Social movement experts Deva Woodly and Hahrie Han talk about language, organisation and the strategies of success
Listen to an interview on Trumpism with Frances Fukuyama from Unherd.

US election

How much longer will Trump be our con-artist in-Chief? Read John Cassidy asks for the New Yorker
Why it has to be Biden. Trump has desecrated the values that make American a beacon to the world. The Economist
This election can’t contain the rage of my generation. Aaron White for Open Democracy
Podcast: What Trump means to us. Listen to TALKING POLITICS ask what four years of Trump has meant for our thinking about America and about democratic politics. Is it possible to give a balanced picture of Trump's presidency?
Podcast: Listen to the Daily on why US suburban women have changed their voting minds. Lisa Lerer, who covers campaigning, elections and political power for the New York Times, speaks to white suburban women
Podcast: Listen to the Ezra Klein Show on why 2020 isn’t 2016.