The struggle against Covid-19 has often been compared to fighting a war. Much of this rhetoric is bombast, but the similarities between the struggle against the virus and against human enemies are real enough. War reporting and pandemic reporting likewise have much in common because, in both cases, journalists are dealing with and describing matters of life and death. Public interest is fueled by deep fears, often more intense during an epidemic because the whole population is at risk. In a war, aside from military occupation and area bombing, terror is at its height among those closest to the battlefield.

The nature of the dangers stemming from military violence and the outbreak of a deadly disease may appear very different. But looked at from the point of view of a government, they both pose an existential threat because failure in either crisis may provoke some version of regime change. People seldom forgive governments that get them involved in losing wars or that fail to cope adequately with a natural disaster like the coronavirus. The powers-that-be know that they must fight for their political lives, perhaps even their physical existence, claiming any success as their own and doing their best to escape blame for what has gone wrong.

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The US president again faces a lacklustre Democratic candidate but his real opponent is Covid-19, writes Patrick Cockburn.

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Had the German invasion of Britain gone ahead in 1940 – with Churchill deploying mustard gas – the Second World War would have taken a very different turn, writes Patrick Cockburn.

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Patrick Cockburn is an acclaimed journalist specializing in conflicts in the Middle East. He has published numerous books on Iraq and Syria, having worked as a Middle East correspondent for the Financial Times from 1979 before starting with The Independent in 1990. He has received multiple prizes for his work, including the Martha Gellhorn Prize in 2005, the James Cameron Prize in 2006, the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 2009, Foreign Commentator of the Year at the 2013 Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards, Foreign Affairs Journalist of the Year at the 2014 British Journalism Awards, and Foreign Reporter of the Year at the 2014 Press Awards.

Cockburn has just published a new book entitled War In the Age of Trump. He recently sat down with Monia Al-Haidary to discuss the US intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as his observations on the role of history and journalism in these long-running conflicts.

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Listen to the interview here.