Global News Podcast
The Global Story: The post-World War II era is over. What comes next?
18 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the current state of the rules-based international order?
Talvella sekä häikäisee että hämärtää. Siksi talvi vaatii omat lasit. Nyt kahdet lasit yksien hinnalla tai kehyksiä puoleen hintaan. Ja muista varata Instrun uusi kattavanäön tutkimus. Nappaa talven parhaat tarjoukset Instrun talvialesta.
LähiTapiolan henkivakuutuksen asiakasedulla saat nyt 25 prosentin alennuksen. Henkivakuutuksen myöntää LähiTapiola keskinäinen henkivakuutusyhtiö. Asiakasetu ja sen määrä vahvistetaan vuosittain. LähiTapiola, samalla puolella. Hei, olen Asma Khalid. Ja minä olen Tristan Redman. Ja olemme täällä sinulle bonusepisodissa Global Story Podcastista.
Every day we focus on one story, looking at how America and the world shape each other. So we hope you enjoy this episode and to find more of our show, just search for The Global Story, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
The world order as we've known it is being upended. Great powers and strong men are trying to use their muscle and might to expand territory. And there is no better man to help us make sense of these tectonic shifts than the BBC's international editor Jeremy Bowen.
The world has changed so much that it's going to be very difficult for a couple of strong leaders to impose their will on everybody. The danger is that little crises can become big crises and suddenly things start slipping out of control. One of the things that would stop, you'd hope, things slipping out of control is some kind of rules-based system.
From the BBC, I'm Tristan Redmond in London. And I'm Asma Khalid in Washington DC. And today on The Global Story, the post-World War II era is over. What comes next? Could you introduce yourself, please? I'm Jeremy Bowen. I'm the international editor of BBC News. Thank you for joining us. Good to be back.
All this week we've been talking about spheres of influence around the world. We've looked at the American, the Chinese, the Russian spheres of influence, and we've looked at how they've been vying for influence in Africa. Today we're going to try and patch it all together.
as well as looking at parts of the world that we haven't talked about yet. So I wanted to just go back in time a little bit and set up where the idea of a rules-based international order came from. So last weekend, Jeremy, I found myself listening to a speech by Winston Churchill. Ladies and gentlemen, you're assembled. This is not normally the sort of thing I do on a Saturday, but my daughter...
The people of the United States cannot escape world responsibility.
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Chapter 2: How did the idea of a rules-based international order originate?
To preserve peace and to forestall the causes of future wars. If there was going to be peace after the Second World War, there needed to be something that he called a world council. So I guess something resembling the UN Security Council. And then after the war, the Truman Doctrine happened. And it just so happens that this week is the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the UN Security Council.
So Jeremy, what do you make of that ambition to create this kind of international rules-based world order? Was it an admirable thing or was it misguided? It was of course admirable after the horrors of the Second World War and indeed the horrors of the first half of the 20th century to try to find a better way.
There had been a failure after the First World War. There was an international organization called the League of Nations that never really worked. So after World War II, so much had changed. The United States had become a world power, a world military power, an industrial power.
The old European powers were broken, Britain included. And when Churchill was speaking in that speech you referenced, his whole strategy in the Second World War, apart from just fighting on, was trying to get the Americans as engaged as possible. So, yeah, there were rules because awful things had happened, and they brought in things like the Genocide Convention and a lot of the fabric of international law that we might recognize now. But naturally, there were other things going on.
Yhdysvallat tekevät asioita, eivätkä niitä tarvittaisiin, vaan ne tekevät asioita siksi, että ne hyödyttävät heitä. Tuntui niin, että jokainen järjestelmä suomalaista turvallisuutta, jota Amerikassa johtaa, hyödyttäisiin Amerikasta. Tarkoituksena olisi saavutettavaa stabiliteettiä kontinenteissa, jotka olisivat todella huonosti huonosti. Tarkoituksena olisi saavutettavaa uusia markkinoita myös amerikkalaisille.
And as the relations between the West and the Soviet Union rapidly deteriorated after the Second World War and the Cold War kicked in and started going, there was a sense that they had to get together to stop what was seen by some at the time as the inexorable rise of communism and Soviet power. So by 1947...
Britain was bankrupt. And Britain sent a message to the Americans saying, we can't do what we would like to do. We haven't got the money. So the then president of the United States, Harry Truman, decided that America had to formalize its global post-war role. What he came up with, the Truman Doctrine, which was an idea that America would intervene in conflicts to protect people, and also in their own interests, and really it was about
Resisting Soviet Communism. And out of the Truman Doctrine came the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe. And out of that too came in 1949 the North Atlantic Treaty.
which was the foundation of NATO, North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Those things allied with the other conventions, genocide, human rights, rights of the child and so on that came in. All of those things shaped the way that they thought the post-war world might go. And for a while in different places it did work, actually, in some ways. But now, many years later, things have changed.
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Chapter 3: What examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the rules-based order?
Not everybody is, but I am. Nonetheless, though, regardless of their intentions, there was broadly this direct line between the Truman Doctrine after World War II, I would say maybe with some ebbs and flows, but up until Biden's foreign policy during the last U.S. administration. You have written this really thought-provoking analysis piece, I would say, on the BBC website, where you talk about whether Donald Trump now is creating a new world order. And so I want to dig into that in a little bit more depth.
You have been reporting for the BBC for, what is it, four decades? Is that right, Jeremy? Something like that. More than four decades, yeah. I'm losing count. You've seen nonetheless where this doctrine has worked and where perhaps it hasn't worked. So let's begin with that. Is there a story where the rules-based order that was created after World War II worked as it was intended to function?
Well, first let me say that from the outset, the idea of this rules-based order, not everybody accepted it was going to be a great idea. As European empires decolonized in the 50s and 60s into the 70s, countries became independent. They didn't necessarily want to be told what to do by Europe.
The old colonial powers plus the United States and the other superpowers, Soviet Union or whatever. There was something called the non-aligned movement in that period where countries said, we're not going to be part of the East or the West. We're going to try and do things for ourselves.
But yes, certainly in terms of the security of Western countries. And you asked for a specific example. Now this isn't actually about European security. At the time it was seen as something about global security. And that was the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq. Kuwait, major of course.
oil producing country and at the time the United States and the West very much depended on oil coming from the Arabian Gulf. And as a fairly young reporter, I was part of the BBC reporting of that. I went to Saudi Arabia just after the invasion of Kuwait in August of 1990.
On the road to the border through the sandstorms. American convoys are bringing more men and more equipment to confront the armies of Saddam Hussein. Drove up to the border with Kuwait. This is where the Americans say they've drawn a line in the sand against Iraqi aggression. The Americans have started deploying troops to Saudi Arabia. There was an enormous military build-up. Saudi intelligence told us that the Iraqis are dug in about 25 miles inside Kuwait.
Luulen, että kun sanoit, että tämä toimii, niin järjestelmä toimii, koska sitten presidentti George H.W. Bush meni Yhdysvalloille. Viikkoa sitten Yhdysvaltojen alueet aloittivat virallisia tavoitteita Irakissa ja Kuwaitissa. Jos jokainen oli perusasiantuntijana, se oli varmasti ensimmäinen presidentti Bush. Tämä virallinen toiminta, joka on otettu yhdessä Yhdysvaltojen päätöksiin,
and with the consent of the United States Congress, follows months of constant and virtually endless diplomatic activity. And he did it all through various UN resolutions, and the UN resolutions passed, and they were enforceable resolutions. President Bush took really big steps to deploy a vast army
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Chapter 4: What are the failures of the rules-based international order?
With a lot of help from allies to the Gulf area, particularly to Saudi Arabia. But he did it with the authorization of United Nations resolutions. So there was international legality on its side.
And the stated justification for this intervention was that it was not acceptable that Iraq try to annex territory of a neighboring country. Under the UN charter, the only justifications for legal military action are self-defense, one.
If a country is invited by a state to fight for them, that would be one. And also if there is authorization through a resolution through the Security Council. So there has to be one of these Chapter 7 resolutions that is voted through that can authorize the legal use of military force. And they got one of those through.
Ja sillä tavalla he tekevät sitä. Aloitamme uudestaan. Jeremie Bowen, BBC-ryhmä. Olin Bagdadissa, kun amerikkalaiset pysyivät Kuuteen. He menivät myös Irakkaan. Joulu alkoi sydäntäksi ja jatkoi melkein viisi tuntia. Yli 20 isoja explosioita kuului keskustelussa Bagdadissa. Olemme kaikki ymmärtäneet Bagdadissa, onko amerikkalaiset tullut.
The walls and windows of the Rashid Hotel, where Western journalists are staying, were shaken by a number of the attacks. And certainly the Iraqis of the Saddam Hussein regime, they really believed it was going to happen. And try to overthrow, you're saying, the Saddam regime at that time. Yeah, well, they thought their days were numbered. But then one morning I was woken up by gunfire. Early. In the hotel where we all were staying, the Hotel Rashid.
Ja ajattelin, että amerikkalaiset ovat täällä. Voisi olla amerikkalaiset. Sitten kuuntelin enemmän ja ajattelin, että se ei ole kauheaa. Ei ole mitään vahvaa. Ei ole tankkeja, ei ole moottoria, ei ole kohtaa, ei ole kohtaa. Tämä tuntuu kuin järjestelmää. Sitten menin ylös ja katsoin ulkopuolelta. Voin nähdä Irakkalaiset kaupungilla ja kaupungilla. He heittivät Kalashnikovia kymmenistä ja kymmenistä kerroksista. Sitten menin kotiin ja menin sinne.
Se, mitä tapahtui, oli se, että Amerikkalaiset, Irakkalaiset ja Amerikkalaisen järjestö tehtävä koalitiikka tehtiin nopeasti keskustelua, ja sieltä tuli järjestelmä. Kuwait on vahvistettu. Irakkalaisen armeija on vahvistettu. Meidän sotilastamme on saavutettu. Kuwait on yhä enemmän Kuwaitien kohdalla ja käsittelemällä oman suunnitelman.
They could not believe that the American-led forces had stopped. The justification they gave was that they only had authorization to go as far as they went. They also realized... Authorization from the UN? Yeah. It was more complicated than that, of course. But also they didn't have a resolution saying you can remove the government of Iraq. They had a resolution...
ja sanoi, että voidaan poistaa Irakkalaiset Kuwaitista. Se oli erilainen asia, joten he pysyivät sieltä. Nämä asiat ovat aina väärät, eikä mitään ole täydellistä. Mutta siinä tapauksessa voidaan sanoa, että järjestelmä toimii. Mitä sanoisit, että se oli esimerkki kertomisesta, jossa niin sanottu ulkoministeriö ei toimittanut?
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Chapter 5: How is Donald Trump's approach reshaping global power dynamics?
opened up a Pandora's box of killing and violence. Catastrophic consequences over a couple of decades. Frankly, they still feel the consequences of that invasion, one of which was the rise of jihadi groups, which in the end morphed into Islamic State, ISIS.
But one of the big issues about that invasion was they couldn't get a second UN resolution authorizing specific action. Because famously the French vetoed it, right? Well, the French were against it. This was the period when in the US capital French fries were renamed Freedom Fries. Because that was...
very good way of getting back at the French for being, you know, such, what they used to say at the time, cheese-eating. Oh, cheese-eating surrender monkeys, wasn't it? Cheese-eating surrender monkeys, yeah. So they couldn't get the same sort of consensus that George Bush senior had, but they went ahead anyway. And not long after that, the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said, well, yeah, they broke international law, this is an illegal invasion. He said that in a BBC interview, but it was a year or two afterwards.
But that was a situation very much where the system didn't work. And more recently, of course, the war in Gaza has been, it's looking very much to be a textbook case in the way that international laws have been violated by all parties.
Jeremy, can I pause a bit? Because here we are having this conversation about the breakdown of the way the rules were intended to work for decades. And yet, we're talking about two decades ago that the US invaded Iraq. Was it already breaking down at that point? I don't think the system has ever functioned perfectly. There's almost never been a point when it didn't function at times really quite badly.
International laws have been quite widely broken, especially by the most powerful countries in the world, repeatedly since the Second World War. And the criticism of the idea of a rules-based international order is that they're Western rules. And they're Western rules which are normally applied to...
Se on hyvin ei-perfeettinen. Mutta luulen, että mitä muuttuu nyt, on se, että Donald Trump ei edes anna lippusarvoa. Se on kaikki tärkeä näkymätön, että haluaisin kaivaa se kaikki pois.
As a counterpoint to the examples that you gave of places that would seem to prove that the international rules-based order hasn't worked. So the second Gulf War in Gaza, there are people who might say that those two wars, those two conflicts are examples of why it's right to try and pursue a rules-based international order.
For example, if George W. Bush had listened to the United Nations when it refused to give a resolution approving the war, then maybe the war wouldn't have happened and maybe hundreds of thousands of lives might have been saved. There are other people who might say that the quote-unquote rules-based international order tried to intervene in Gaza. For example, the International Criminal Court has indicted individuals, including Benjamin Netanyahu and the leadership of Hamas,
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Chapter 6: What might the future hold for global stability and order?
It's not simply saying, well, this is awful, all these people are dying, but getting to something a little bit more forensic, where you can say, for example, well, you shouldn't blow up hospitals, but if someone sets up a firing position on the top of the hospital, then you're perfectly entitled to Se on tavallaan se, että se on yksi asia, joka on yksi asia.
Yksi elonviisaus tähän väliin. Muistathan, että arki maistuu paremmalta, kun sitä ei ota liian vakavasti. Silloinkin, kun puuro palaa pohjaan. Eloveena. Sata vuotta täyttä eloa.
Yksi, kaksi, kolme, neljä, viisi. Ota LähiTapiolan henkivakuutus ja lepäät rauhassa. Henkivakuutuksen myöntää LähiTapiola keskinäinen henkivakuutusyhtiö. LähiTapiola, samalla puolella.
Klaas Olssonin asiakaskuulutus. Meillä on uutinen, joka koskee kaikkia asiakaitamme. Viikko kaksi ja kolme eivät ole vuoden synkimmät viikot. Päinvastoin tarjoamme nyt 30 prosentin alennuksen Northlightin kato- ja pöytävalaisimista. Ja kaiken lisäksi lampuista miinus 20 prosenttia. Klaas Olsson.
Yksi, kaksi, kolme, neljä, viisi. Ota LähiTapiolan henkivakuutus ja lepäät rauhassa. Henkivakuutuksen myöntää LähiTapiola keskinäinen henkivakuutusyhtiö. LähiTapiola, samalla puolella.
Well, why don't we talk for a moment, Jeremy, then about what is the alternative and what we're witnessing right now from President Trump. He has outlined this self-described Dunrow doctrine. He wants to focus more, he says, on the Western hemisphere. And it seems that he believes in almost going back in time to this era of empires kind of carving up the world into these different spheres of influence.
But it strikes me that maybe that's not possible in the year 2026 to do ever so neatly. I mean, all this week we've been looking at this story, and yet there are large swaths of the globe that we haven't talked about. I mean, where does Iran, where does India, where does Europe fit into this suggested new paradigm?
Yksi syy, miksi ajattelen, että ajatukset tulevat takaisin 19-luvun lopuksi, jolloin olivat influenssia, niin paljon, että se ei toimi nykymaailmassa, koska maailma on muuttunut. Kun eurooppalaiset maat, franssit ja britsit, kärsivät Afrikasta ja eri paikoista maailmaa yhdessä, he käyivät maissa, jotka eivät ollut kehittyneet,
If there were elites, they were probably kings and people who had inherited their massive wealth. The vast majority of people lived very hard lives and weren't very well educated, if at all. Things are massively different now. You look at the incredible transformations in India. That's one good example.
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