Best of the fortnight - 11 February 2022

Each fortnight 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.

Russia, Ukraine, Belarus  and China

• Putin’s game. How did so many in the West get Russia so wrong? Gregory Feifer for Engelsberg Ideas
• Where redlines fail. The promise and peril of public threats. Dan Altman and Kathleen E. Powers for Foreign Affairs
• The sliding doors approach to the Russian crisis. Thomas Wright in the Atlantic
• Why the chess metaphor for Putin is wrong. The problem with Russia is not a game. Daniel B. Baer for Foreign Policy
• Russia belongs at the centre  of Europe. NATO and the EU have reached their limits. Here’s what should come next. Anatol Lieven for Foreign Policy
• Vladimir Putin is a product of modernity. Why the tension in Ukraine may feel deceptively regressive. Tom McTague in the Atlantic
• Ukraine’s imagined European identity is irreconcilable with the political reality. Helen Thompson in the New Statesman
• Russia in 2020: alternative scenarios of the near future. Andrei Melville & Ivan Timofeev for Engelsberg Ideas
• Never deal with dictators in person. Dictators scent weakness so it’s wise not to risk meeting them. Andrew Adonis for Prospect Magazine
• NATO must not rule out the possibility that Putin’s target may be the Baltic States not Ukraine. Tim Willasey-Wilsey for Cipher Brief
• Russia’s military build-up in Belarus could be NATO’s next flashpoint. Ido Vock for the New Statesman
• Why is Belarus hosting Russian troops? Igor Ilyash for Open Democracy
• Podcast: Is Russia bluffing?  Listen to the Daily podcast from the New York Times
• Podcast: Putin’s next move. Listen to Shashank Joshi, Defence Editor of the Economist, talk about what Vladimir Putin hopes to get out of the Ukraine crisis and what anyone can do to stop him.  From TALKING POLITICS 

Geopolitics

• Revenge of the patriarchs. Why autocrats fear women. Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks for Foreign Affairs
• Russia and China’s growing friendship is more of a public relations exercise than a new world order. Marcin Kaczmarski and Natasha Kuhrt for the Conversation
• Podcast: The Xi-Putin alliance: how China and Russia are getting ever closer. Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center discusses what today’s alliance means for geopolitics. From Chinese Whispers
• A new frontier in US- Chinese rivalry as Beijing reaches for the moon and beyond. Yu Jie for The World Today
• Why Pakistan is sending one athlete and eight ministers to the winter games. Filippo Boni for the Conversation
• Podcast: Adapting to the New World of War. The world seems to be heading for a new era of permanent low-level conflict undeclared and unending. Mark Galeotti from UCL discusses for Intelligence Squared

UK and Europe

• The age of Elizabeth Windsor. Helen Thompson for Unherd
• Some lessons on inventing the future in Britain. How to make the country’s innovation agency work. From the Economist
• Has this experiment with celebrity government given us the most disreputable leader in history. Max Hastings in the Times.
• The UK must not dismiss European ‘strategic’ autonomy. A Chatham House report

Conflict around the world

• Economic migration. The root problem is not smugglers but global inequality. Seb Rumsby for the Conversation
• Forget about Novak Djokovic. Australia’s refugees face a far harsher fate. Tom Canetti for Prospect Magazine
• How have the uprisings of the Arab spring shaped the path of revolutions. Asef Bayat talks to  Tugrul Mende of Open Democracy
• Morocco: you’re with your King. Jeremy Harding for the London Review of Books
• Myanmar: while the world sits on its hand, people flight military junta with violence and silence.  Ronan Lee for the Conversation
• Podcast: Why have military coups returned to West Africa? Listen to the Inquiry from BBC World Service

Other

• The next century’s big demographic mystery. Experts can’t agree how many humans will be on earth by 2100. The implications could be profound.  Stephanie H. Murray for the Atlantic
• It’s no surprise that liberal democracy is giving way to authoritarianism. Ben Whitham for the Conversation.
• Society’s new speech codes will be its undoing. David Selbourne for Prospect Magazine
• Podcast: The next big thing. John Naughton talks about what’s coming next in the tech revolution and where it’s taking us. From quantum computing to cryptocurrency, from AI to the Internet of Things: what’s hype, what’s for real and how will it shape our politics. Listen to TALKING POLITICS

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash