What Caught My Eye (no. 22)

Some interesting articles and podcasts that caught my eye this week

Here’s this week’s edition of articles I thought worth reading and sharing. Don’t hesitate to recommend your own reads; I may include some as well.

• Roger Cohen, Srebrenica, a Massacre Foretold, Still Casts Its Shadow, New York Times, July 11, 2025. Thirty years ago this weekend, a horrendous massacre occurred in a small Bosnian village. More than 8,000 boys and men were slaughtered. Roger Cohen, who covered this war from beginning to end, reflects on the event and what it still means today.

• Rana Foroohar, The global economy is suffering from the Rashomon effect, Financial Times, July 7, 2025. The FT’s economic commentator argues that the markets aren’t responding to big events in the way we’d expect—not to a global pandemic, not to the biggest change in the trading system, not to any other external shock. The reason, Foroohar suggests, may be that the world hasn’t settled on a new economic narrative. The old world is gone, but we’re not sure what the new world might bring.

• Michael Shear, The Cost of Victory: Israel Overpowered Its Foes, but Deepened Its Isolation, New York Times, July 5, 2025. Israel’s response to Hamas’s terror attack of October 2023 has remade the Middle East, leaving it more powerful and dominant than at any time in its history. But this has come at the cost of increased regional and global isolation.

• Russia’s summer Ukraine offensive looks like its deadliest yet, The Economist, July 9, 2025. Russia is making steady territorial gains in the Donetsk region—but at a cost that is truly staggering. Overall Russian casualties now likely accede 1 million, and the number of killed likely being around 200-350,000. Recall that 15,000 Soviet soldiers died in Afghanistan over 10 years, and that proved to be too much for the regime.

• Yaroslav Trofimov, The Fault Lines in the Autocratic Axis, Wall Street Journal, July 10, 2025. The Journal’s Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent reexamines claims that a new axis of autocracies has emerged in light of the Israeli and US attacks on Iran. Tehran got little support from other members of the Axis, underscore that for most solidarity takes a back seat to immediate national interests.

• Garry Kasparov and Anne Applebaum, What Exactly is Required to Preserver our Democracy, The Atlantic, July 11, 2025. An enlightening, and frightening, conversation between staff writer Anne Applebaum and former world chess champion and democracy activist Garry Kasparov about the threat to democracy and what must be done to preserve. Read the transcript or listen to the podcast.

Finally, in case you missed it here are links to articles I wrote, interviews I did, panels I joined, and a synopsis of my weekly podcast on world news.

• Has Trump Turned on Putin? America Abroad, July 10, 2025

Happy reading, watching, and listening!