Best of the week - 23 October 2020

23 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

A medic’s case against another lockdown.Dr Matt Strauss in the Spectator
How did China beat its COVID crisis? Ian Johnson in the New York Review of Books
How do pandemics end? Read Mark Honigsbawn in the Guardian
How can policy makers improve crisis management?The right way to think about the future. J Peter Scoblic and Philip E Tetlock in Foreign Affairs.

UK politics

Boris’ red wall is crumbling before his eyes. Nick Cohen in The Spectator
Podcast: Democracy for sale from TALKING POLITICS. Peter Geoghegan of Open Democracy and Jennifer Cobbe of the Trust and Technology Initiative talk about Cambridge Analytica, money, power and what is and isn't corrupting our democracy.

US election

Donald Trump. The worst President in modern history. The New York Times
Can Biden defeat Trump? Emily Tamkin in the New Statesman
The radical politics of Kamala Harris performance style. Read Lauren Michele Jackson’s view in the New Yorker
The enabler-in-chief. The attorney general exemplifies the growing influence of right wing Catholicism under Trump. Read Fintan O’Toole in the New York Review of Books
Podcast: A peculiar way to pick a President. The Daily podcast series looks at the winner takes all Electoral College system.

US foreign policy/international order

How Trump unmade US foreign policy. Richard Haas in Foreign Affairs
The world order that Donald Trump revealed. Tom McTague and Peter Nicholas in the Atlantic
Trump, COVID-19 and the future of the international order. IR experts are pessimistic about the global order. Helen V. Milner, Susan Peterson, Ryan Powers, Michael J. Tierney and Erik Voeten report for Foreign Policy.

Rest of the world

Will Trump’s Syria hostage diplomacy work? Read Danni Makki’s analysis for the Middle East Institute
Spain’s politics if fraying. Jim Lawley in the Spectator
Podcast: The Seduction of Autocracy from Intelligence Squared. Listen to Anne Applebaum talk to Jonathan Freedland about what has happened to European politics where once there was common ground but now a rise in extremism
Why Pakistanis are daring to criticise their military by Ravi Agrawal in Foreign Policy
Guinea and the rule of Alpha Conde. Read Fleur MacDonald in the London Review of Books
Podcast: Two left landslides from Novara Media. This week saw victories for the left in New Zealand and Bolivia. Listen to Max Harris, author of NZ project, on Jacinda Ardern, and David Adler on the Bolivian election.