Best of lockdown so far - 17 April

BISA Director Juliet Dryden, with a little help from the BISA Exec, has scoured the internet for COVID-19 content that might interest you. Here she brings you the best readings, podcasts and videos from the past three weeks. She finishes with 'In other news', giving you a moment's break from the pandemic.

Reading

• In Foreign Policy, Audrey Wilson looks at the countries that have apparently succeeded in flattening the curve - Taiwan, Canada, South Korea, Georgia and Iceland
• Richard Haas writes for Foreign Affairs about how this crisis will 'accelerate history, not reshape it'
• Economist Joseph Stiglitz makes the case for a global economic response to COVID-19 in The Guardian
• Emily Tamkin writes for the New Statesman on the contradictions underpinning Donald Trump's battle with the WHO
• Otto English details the similarities between Boris Johnson and David Lloyd George, who spent 10 days in intensive care with Spanish flu in 1918

• In Politica, Dan Diamond’s looks at America’s two decade failure to prepare for Coronavirus
• David E Sanger in the New York Times asks whether the pandemic will make Trump re-think national strategy

• Zeynep Tufekci in the Atlantic argues that the WHO shouldn’t be a plaything for the great powers

• Dalibor Rohac in Foreign Policy argues that Europe needs an Alexander Hamilton, not more budget hawks

• The Spectator – New Six part series: Coronomics: stories from countries turned upside down.

Podcasts and videos

• RUSI hosted author and commentator John Kampfner to discuss whether COVID-19 is a 'boon to dictators or democrats' (YouTube)
• The Mile End Institute hosted Professor Sophie Harman and Professor Sara E. Davies to discuss Donald Trump's response to the Coronavirus pandemic (YouTube)
• Talking Politics discuss whether America can 'cope' with the immediate and longer-term consequences of the pandemic
• The D Group interviewed Professor Michael Clarke, author of Tipping Point: Britain, Brexit and Security in the 2020s, on the geopolitics of Coronavirus
• The Conversation asked 25 academics from around the world to record a two-minute field report of what the pandemic 'sounds like' where they are, capturing "the voices of people struggling, secluding and surviving"
• Intelligence Squared hosts Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and political commentator Anne Applebaum, author and journalist David Goodhart, and political commentator and writer Paul Mason, to examine how the crisis will affect politics around the world. Does the pandemic hail the return of big government? Will it prove to us that the globalised economy has gone too far, leaving us with dangerously overstretched supply chains? And will populist leaders be strengthened by the sense that the already dispossessed will be worst affected by the pandemic? Or will the indiscriminate nature of the virus help foster a new era of social and international solidarity?
• Listen to Adam Tooze on the Coronavirus Crash from Novara Media.

• Talking Politics looks at whether British politics is about to undergo a fundamental shift

• The Mile Institute bring us Professor Sophie Harman (Queen Mary University of London) and Dr Simon Rushton (University of Sheffield), who discuss the response of the United Nations Security Council to COVID-19. (YouTube)

In other news

• The Atlantic provides a commentary and pictorial record of Apollo-13 on the 50th anniversary of the ill-fated mission
• The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons issued a report that concluded Syrian forces deployed chemical weapons in aerial attacks in March 2017
• Defence News reports on an upsurge of missile tests in North Korea
• Wednesday 8 April was International Roma Day. Read a joint statement from the Council of Europe and the European Commission on the need to protect the rights of the 10-12 million Roma who reside in Europe
• In case we have forgotten: Brexit news!

Juliet will be back next week with the best readings, podcasts, videos and non-virus news, in our new 'Best of the week' series.

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash