Best of the week - 26 March 2021
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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
- The race to zero. Can America reach net-zero emissions by 2050? Oliver Milman, Alvin Chang and Rashida Kamal in The Guardian
- Climate offers a glimmer of hope for US-China cooperation. Melinda Liu in Foreign Policy
Covid-related
- What we’ve learnt from tracking every covid policy in the world. Thomas Hale in the Conversation
- American can and should vaccinate the world. The case for an all out global approach to ending the pandemic. Helene Gayle, Gordon LaForge, and Anne-Marie Slaughter in Foreign Affairs
- https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-03-19/america-can-and-should-vaccinate-world
- Experts were just as inaccurate as lay people on covid’s social effects. Michael Varnum, Cendri Hutcherson and Igor Grossman in Foreign Policy
- Covid 19 has been a double-edged sword for experts – with worrying consequences for democracy. Mirko Heinzel and Andrea Liese in the Loop
UK and Europe
- The delusions of global Britain. London will have to get used to life as a middle power. Jeremy Shapiro and Nick Witney in Foreign Affairs
- Who won the Brexit argument? That’s a deeply unhelpful question. Read Jonathan Lis in Prospect Magazine.
- How to get a new normal in EU- UK relations. Richard Whitman in Encompass
- Britain’s biggest bully: Racist tabloids. Priyamvada Gopal in Prospect Magazine.
- Are woke academics a threat to the French republic? Ask Macron’s ministers. Didier Fassin in the Guardian
Global affairs
- The world still needs the UN. Building global governance from scratch is a fool’s errand. Read Suzanne Nossel in Foreign Affairs
- Five Eyes: the past, present and future of the world’s key intelligence alliance by David Gloe, Michael Goodman and David Schaefer.
- https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/five-eyes-the-past-present-and-future-of-the-worlds-key-intelligence-alliance/
- The new concert of powers. How to prevent catastrophe and promote stability in a multipolar world. Richard N. Haass and Charles A. Kupchan in Foreign Affairs.
- Why we need feminism now. Hannah Dawson in Prospect Magazine
- Podcast: Technopopulism. Chris Bickerton explains how technocracy and populism have come together to create a new form of democratic politics across the globe. Listen to TALKING POLITICS
US foreign policy
- Biden’s Trumanesque foreign policy. George F. Will in the Washington Post
- There will not be a new Cold War: the limits of US-Chinese cooperation. Thomas J. Christensen in Foreign Affairs
- The US and China finally get real with each other. Thomas Wright in The Atlantic
- How to contain Putin’s Russia. A strategy for containing a rising revisionist power. Michael Faul in Foreign Affairs
- China is not ten feet tall. Ryan Hass in Foreign Affairs
- For Biden, an anguishing choice on withdrawal from Afghanistan. Robin Wright in the New Yorker
- Podcast: Meeting the Joe-ment. Could the Biden Presidency be transformational? Listen to Reasons to be Cheerful with Ed Milliband and Geoff Lloyd
What’s going on elsewhere…
- Alive but not well. It’s a hard life for Myanmar’s democracy. Stefano Ruzza in the Loop
- China’s relations with the Africa continent. Three elephants in the room. Abdul Gafar Tobi Oshodi in Open Democracy
- Podcast: Ethiopia’s Tigray crisis and horn of Africa politics. Listen to Hold your Fire from the International Crisis Group podcast series.
- The only stable Saudi Arabia is a democratic Saudi Arabia. Madawii al Rasheed in Foreign Affairs
- Netanyahu vs not Netanyahu: Israel’s absurd election fiasco. Jalal Abukhater in Open Democracy.
- Stark choice for voters as Israelis head for the polls for the fourth time in two years. Amnon Aran in the Conversation
- Two years, four elections, the twists and turns of Israeli political deadlock. Mairav Zonszein lays out the stakes for International Crisis Group
- Podcast: Counter-Revolutions Vs. Counter-Marginalization Movements: (Re)Visiting the Online Tug-of-War a Decade After the Arab Spring. A discussion from the Middle East Centre, Oxford University with Walter Armbrust (St Antony’s College) Mark Owen Jones (Hamad Bin Halifa University) and Sahar Khamis (University of Maryland).
- How Putin is starving Syria and what Biden can do. Charles Lister and Jeffrey Feltman for Politico
- No country thrives on instability like Iran. The Islamic Republic needs the US as an enemy. The US needs as strategy to win a cold war. Karin Sadjadpour in the Atlantic
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