Best of the fortnight - 5 November 2021

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.

COP26

• As the world burns: climate changes dangerous next phrase. Michael Oppenheimer in Foreign Affairs
• What does success at COP26 look like?  Sophie Garson for British Foreign Policy Group
• If Britain wants fresh ideas look to Finland. Edward Lucas in the Times  
• The climate debt keeps growing. Rich countries still refuse to pay their shares. Mohamed Adow in Foreign Affairs
• Capitalism is killing the planet – it’s time to stop buying into our own destruction. George Monbiot in the Guardian
• The geopolitical fight to come over green energy.  Helen Thompson for Engelsberg Ideas.
• It’s half time at COP26 and here’s how we are doing says Wesley Morgan for the Conversation
• 26 pieces for COP26 from the London Review of Books Archives
• Podcast: The denial files. The d-words v the planet. How much do disinformation and new forms of climate change denial threaten the fight to save the planet? Michael Mann investigates. From BBC Sounds
• Podcast: climate ambition vs energy reality. The team talk to Jason Bordoff, Dean of the Columbia Climate School and former Special Assistant to Barack Obama, about climate, COP26 and the enormous challenges of the energy transition. From TALKING POLITICS
• Podcast: how cities are leading the way in tackling the climate crisis. From Reasons to be Cheerful.

Global Politics

• Why the age of impunity endangers us all. David Miliband in the New Statesman
• The inevitable rivalry; American, China and the tragedy of great power politics. John J. Mearsheimer in Foreign Affairs.
• Order before peace. Kissinger’s Middle East diplomacy and its lessons for today. Martin Indyk in Foreign Affairs
• Containment beyond the Cold War. How Washington lost the post-Soviet peace. M. E Sarotte for Foreign Affairs.
• The story of Brazil’s self-styled strongman. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is a threat to health, democracy and the climate. Julia Blunck for Prospect Magazine.
• Bonfires of the vanities: Reflections on peacebuilding in Afghanistan. Alan Doss for PassBlue.

United States

• The enduring lessons for Joe Biden from Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and George Shultz. Grant Golub in the Washington Post
• Revenge of the Donald. Nostalgia and resentment could be enough to catapult Trump back into the Presidency. David Frum in the Atlantic
• The age of America first: Washington’s flawed new foreign policy consensus. Richard Hass for Foreign Affairs
• Podcast: Republicans have their best election night since Trump won in 2016 – what went wrong for Democrats in Virginia and what it means for the 2022 midterms. From Pod Save America

UK and Europe

• After Merkel, Europe will be led by no one. Helen Thompson in the New York Times
• Lea Ypi: the freedom that liberalism brought was only for some people. George Easton interviews Lea Ypi for the New Statesmen.
• The future of the Balkans is being decided by a clash between the liberal idealists and conservative realists. Whichever worldview prevails will determine the region's geopolitical future. Timothy Less for Engelsberg Ideas
• The Polish people support the EU. It’s their government that continues to antagonise Brussels. Simona Guerra in the Conversation
• Is Turkey using chemical weapons against Kurdish forces? Why is no one investigating? Sarah Glynn for Open Democracy.
• Bosnia and Herzegovina: world leaders risk renewed violence if the country breaks apart. Iva Vukušić in the Conversation

Middle East

• A plan B for Iran. Washington needs to turn up the pressure. Michael Singh for  Foreign Affairs
• Cambridge did this to you. Questions of gay rights in the Middle East, through the colonialist past to the imperialist present. Tareq Baconi in the London Review of Books.
• Managing Lebanon’s compounding crises, a new report from the International Crisis Group

Africa

• Africa is changing and US Strategy is not keeping up. Foreign Affairs. Jon Temin in Foreign Affairs
• The battle for Addis Ababa. The Economist
• Sudan: How strong is the civilian opposition to the military coup?  Paul Jackson for the Conversation From International Crisis Group
• The discovery of diamonds in German Southwest Africa in 1908 led to ruthless exploitation of the colony. Joshua Hammer for the New York Review of Books
• Podcast: Tigray: the devasting toll of Ethiopia’s vicious year of war. Interview with Alejandro Gallego Schmid, Emnet Negash and Mukesh Kapila for the Conversation

Other

• We have a real chance to end online hate. Elisabeth Braw in Prospect Magazine
• Disinformation in the information age. Gill Bennett in Engelsberg Ideas