What Caught My Eye (no. 23)
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.
Julia Ioffe, What is Marco Rubio Doing? Puck News, July 10, 2025. Puck’s foreign affairs correspondent takes a deeper look at Marco Rubio’s tenure at the State Department. “Rubio’s appointment at Foggy Bottom was greeted with optimism in the building, where staffers saw him as a serious foreign policy person. But their hope quickly died as America’s chief diplomat instead became a mute accessory to Trump.”
Lawrence Freedman, A New Nuclear Role for Britain and France, Comment is Freed, July 13, 2025. The famed British historian and strategists returns to a subject — nuclear strategy — that long ago made him a standout in the field. Freedman delves deep into the implications of a United States that is no longer seen as a credible protector for nuclear strategy in Europe.
David Autor and Gordon Hanson, We Warned About the First China Shock. The Next One Will Be Worse. New York Times, July 14, 2025. The economists that once demonstrated the impact of China’s manufacturing dominance on the American economy now warn about the impact of China’s rapid technological advance on the US and global economy.
Gillian Tett, The New Age of Geoeconomics, Financial Times, July 11, 2025. The FT columnist takes a deep dive into the new global economy, in which geopolitical considerations now drive economic decisions. It’s a big change of the era of globalization that started after the Cold War. But it’s not so different from what existed before.
Omer Bartov, I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It. New York Times, July 15, 2025. A holocaust scholar takes a hear-rending look at the war in Gaza. “My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the I.D.F. as a soldier and officer and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.” Agree with it or not, the article deserves to be read.
David Pilling, Trump’s ‘Africa Second’ policy may be a boon to China, Financial Times, July 17, 2025. The FT’s Africa editor and columnist looks at the consequences of Trump putting Africa “second” (or last). While he sees advantages in emphasizing trade over aid and writes that many strongmen leaders approve of Trump, he warns that America’s retreat is providing another opening for China.
Angelos, Nette Nöstlinger, and Clear Calcutta, How Europe found a workaround to get Trump to help Ukraine, Politico Europe, July 15, 2025. Much has been written about how Trump turned on Putin and agreed to supply weapons to Ukraine (paid for by Europe). This Politico story dives into how European leaders—led by Merz, Starmer, Macron, and Rutte—worked to turn Trump around. One statement by a German official — the strategy “would enable the U.S. administration to increase the pressure on Russia and strengthen its support for Ukraine, while at the same time allowing it to remain one step behind the Europeans” — struck me as an accurate depiction of the US leading from behind.
Finally, in case you missed it here are links to some of the things I did and wrote this week.
Trump’s announcement that he would supply weapons to Ukraine, so long as they were paid for by Europe, and could put pressure on Russia, dominated a lot of the headlines this week. I shared my thoughts on Amanpour on CNN, BBC World News, and ABC News.
My bimonthly Politico Europe column, From Across the Pond, was published on Monday and focused on the question of whether Trump’s tariff deadline of August 1 is likely to stick or not.
On Monday, I was in Steamboat Springs to open the 2025 season of the Steamboat Seminar, with a talk on After Pax Americana, What? You can watch the talk and Q&A.
While my weekly podcast, “World Review with Ivo Daalder” is on hiatus this summer, I started to use Substack Live as a way to discuss pressing issues with key panelists of the show. On Thursday, I spoke with Anna Sauerbrey of Die Zeit and Steven Erlanger of the New York Times about Trump, Russia, and Ukraine.
And every Friday, I will write a World Review post on the three stories that struck me as particular interesting this week. I wrote the first of these last weekend and the second came out yesterday. I will post these on my new substack, World Review with Ivo Daalder. Please subscribe if you would like to get the posts in your inbox.
Happy reading, watching, and listening!