Best of the week - 9 July 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.

Getting ready for COP26

• Uncanny plane. Nathanial Rich argues there is no going back to whatever might be meant by ‘nature’  Mark O’Connell in the New York Review of Books
• Who holds the welding rod? Wind power, green jobs and global capitalism. James Meek in the London Review of Books
• Podcast: Imagining climate futures with Kim Stanley Robinson. From Exponential View.

Global affairs

• The forever virus: a strategy for the long fight against Covid. Larry Brilliant, Lisa Danzig, Karen Oppenheimer, Agastya Mondal, Rich Bright and W. Ian Lipkin in Foreign Affairs
• A world without American democracy? The global consequences of American democratic backsliding. Larry Diamond in Foreign Affairs
• A very cold war in the Arctic. A new struggle for resources, trade and military might has polarised the Arctic states. As the region thaws, geopolitical competition is heating up. Kristina Spohr for Engelsberg Ideas
• Podcast: Geopolitics. Q&A session with the TALKING POLITICS team.

United States

• Does America really support democracies or only other rich countries? Jack Werner in Foreign Affairs
• Democracies don’t try and make everyone agree. Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic
• Biden faces diplomatic pressure from Germany, Ukraine on Russian policy. Robbie Gramer and Jack Detsch in Foreign Policy
• Trump is working harder than ever to undermine democracy. William Saletan in Slate
• Did America’s racial awakening reach IR Professors? Kelebogile Zvobgo in Foreign Policy
• Biden’s dangerous corruption obsession. Christopher Sabatini in Foreign Policy
• Podcast: The end of America’s 20 year’s war in Afghanistan. Listen to the Daily podcast
• Podcast: Listen to former FBI Director James Corney on President Trump and his regrets. From EP2 - I’ve been thinking with Peter Frankopan
• Podcast: Trump and everything else. Listen to TALKING POLITICS.

China

• Xi’s gamble. The race to consolidate power in China. Jude Blanchetter in Foreign Affairs
• China’s ruling creed at 100: the party never stops. Kerry Brown for Engelsberg Ideas
• Regime change is not an option for China. Focus on Beijing’s behaviour not its leadership. Evan S. Medeiros and Ashely J Tellis in Foreign Affairs
• The clash of systems: ideological competition with Beijing. Thomas Pepinsky and Jessica Chen Weiss
• Sanctions on China won’t help Uyghurs and other migrant workers. Chi Zhang in The Conversation.

United Kingdom

• What’s after the end of history. Marxism, football and Trump’s demise. Tom Holland and Frances Fukuyama  in conversation in the Spectator
• New survey rates British prime ministers. Kevin Theakston and Mark Gill for The Conversation
• No island is an island. Brexit breaks with centuries of British foreign policy. David Reynolds in Foreign Affairs
• Brexit at 5. Where are we now? Christopher Grey in Prospect Magazine
• Our politics of nostalgia is a sure sign of present-day decay. Nick Cohen in The Guardian
• Particularly Anodyne. The intelligence war against the IRA. Richard Norton-Taylor for the London Review of Books.

The best of the rest

• Why did we invade Iraq? Fred Kaplan in the New York Review of Books
• What next in Israel/Iran’s shadow war? David Patrikarakos in the New Statesman
• Haiti and the Trump illusion. The US cannot wall itself off from the troubles facing its neighbours. David Frum in the Atlantic
• How Ethiopia’s Tigray war fuels Amhara expansionism. Kjetil Tronvoll in Foreign Affairs
• Confrontation in Colombia. Alma Guillermoprieto in the New York Review of Books.

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash