We would all like to vote for the best man but he is never a candidate. – Kin Hubbard

Azra Isakovic

Your Monday Briefing – What you should know for Monday January 4

Books

Books – Secrets and Spies: UK Intelligence Accountability After Iraq and Snowden, by Jamie Gaskarth | Chatham House
Books – A Year in Reading: Books in the Time of COVID | National Review
Books –The Coming Global Backlash against China | National Review
Books – Trade Wars Are Class Wars – How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace, Matthew C. Klein and Michael Pettis | Yale Univ Press
Books – To Rule Eurasia’s Waves The New Great Power Competition at Sea Geoffrey F. Gresh | Yale Univ Press
Books/Review – Biden’s Dreampolitik | Bruno Maçães

Must-Reads

US/China – China used stolen data to expose CIA operatives in Africa and Europe, by Zach Dorfman | Foreign Policy
US/China – Beijing ransacked data as U.S. sources went dark in China, by Zach Dorfman | Foreign Policy
US/China – Tech giants are giving China a vital edge in espionage, by Zach Dorfman | Foreign Policy

Russia/Baltic – Respect Thy Neighbor: Russia and the Baltic Region, by Dmitri Trenin | Carnegie Russia
Julian Assange – The Kafkaesque Imprisonment of Julian Assange Exposes U.S. Myths About Freedom and Tyranny Glenn Greenwald
Europe – An Embattled Public Servant in a Fractured France Roger Cohen | New York Times
2021 –  What Will a Post-Trump and Post-Covid World Look Like? | Geopolitics Mag
US/China– Don’t Assume U.S. Would Beat China in a Taiwan War  Daniel Davis, 1945
UK/Turkey – UK-Turkey FTA: Beyond the Economics  Tridivesh Singh Maini, Notes on Liberty
The Carnival Goes On  Robert Zaretsky, Forward
What Will Historians Make of Our Annus Horribilis?  Victor Davis Hanson, NRO
A Sovereign Britain Still a Global Force  Con Coughlin, The National
Britain Must Rebuild Trust in Europe  Camilla Cavendish, Financial Times
US/China/ – A Messy Financial Divorce for the US and China by George Magnus | Project Syndicate

Research & Analysis

Research – The Most Popular RAND Research of 2020 | RAND Corporation
China/Nato – China’s rise as a global security actor: implications for NATO Meia Nouwens | IISS
Strategy – Hedgemony: A Game of Strategic Choices | RAND Corporation
Terrorism – Community and Gender in Counter-Terrorism Policy Jessica White | ICCT – The Hague PDF
Terrorism – Mitigating the Impact of Media Reporting of Terrorism: Libya case study, Mary Fitzgerald | ICCT – The Hague  PDF
China/Russia/Serbia – Sino–Russian Interests in Serbia: Competitive, Coordinated or Complementary? Veerle Nouwens and Emily Ferris | RUSI PDF