CHATHAM HOUSE - Research paper - Competing Visions of international order 13 Envisioning the future international order Dr Leslie Vinjamuri Director, US and the Americas Program

CHATHAM  HOUSE - Research paper - Competing Visions  of international order 

13 Envisioning the future international order

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Director, US and the Americas Programme

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Today’s geopolitical disruptions have hastened the end of the post-war liberal international order, and will create the possibility for a new period of international order-building. Great powers may seek to divide the world into spheres of influence, but middle and emerging powers seek greater autonomy, and oppose the prospect of a world that forces them to take sides.

The liberal international order has shaped and given structure and predictability to international relations for more than seven decades. But the shortcomings of the order are well known. Hypocrisy has been a feature, rather than a bug. Sovereignty has rarely translated into equality. Major powers, and especially the United States, have enjoyed special status, while other states were relegated to the perimeters of the order.

Today, the critics and adversaries of the US and of the old order are both more determined and more capable. They have stoked division in Western democracies, and sought to divide Europe from the US, in a bid to weaken the transatlantic partnership and undermine its role as the anchor of this order.292 Many states reject the special status granted to the US and are determined to secure their autonomy. Yet few of these states agree on an alternative vision to give coherence and predictability to international relations. Turkey and Saudi Arabia, for instance, continue to seek close relations with the US but also are committed to securing their freedom of manoeuvre – in part, by diversifying their foreign policy through partnerships with China and Russia.

Similar hedging is evident among other rising powers. Brazil may embrace the liberal international order, but it also welcomes multipolarity precisely because it sees this shift as lessening the dominance of the US. India seeks a strong bilateral partnership with the US, but maintains close ties to Russia and portrays itself as a leader (with Global South partners) in the developing world. Both Brazil and India have been denied access to the most prized seats in the major multilateral organizations, but they – and others – are unlikely to accept this exclusion forever. If reform of the UN Security Council remains a pipe dream, or if voting shares at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank are not redistributed to reflect changes in the distribution of power, not least China’s rise, these institutions will lose their relevance and legitimacy. Rising expectations among emerging powers will be met through new points of access and influence.

The more surprising developments are those which come from Europe. Political leaders in France and Germany still cling to the fundamentals of the US-led order. But increasingly, these two key European powers seek to enhance their national but also intra-European capabilities and deepen Europe’s collective influence in NATO, with the goal of achieving greater strategic autonomy from the US. At the same time, the power of far-right groups in Europe has grown. These groups openly embrace values antithetical to the liberal order, and pose a continuing challenge to the effort to forge a stronger and more coherent agenda among European states.

The US had always been a reluctant multilateralist, asserting its exceptionalism, rejecting ratification of numerous international legal treaties, and insisting that it have veto power, a dominant voting share or some other legal exemption to safeguard its sovereignty even in the context of multilateralism.

But the most fundamental shift of all has been the turn by the US against the organizing principles of the liberal international order. Many will note that the US had always been a reluctant multilateralist, asserting its exceptionalism, rejecting ratification of numerous international legal treaties, and insisting that it have veto power, a dominant voting share or some other legal exemption to safeguard its sovereignty even in the context of multilateralism. America’s commitments to multilateralism and free trade have also been in decline for more than two decades. Despite this trend, the US has stood by the belief that America benefits from participation in multilateral institutions. That is, until today. The election of President Donald Trump for a second term has brought a sustained attack on multilateralism, the rule of law, and even the sovereignty norm.

This has set the path for a new period in international relations. Conceptually, this next period of international relations can be seen as a moment of ‘reordering’, one that has multiple structural drivers – but President Trump is more than a symptom. He is upending the three defining features of the liberal international order, by rejecting multilateralism and the centrality of alliances, further undermining the principles of free trade, and challenging the norms that underpin democracy at home.

The rest of the world has also changed. China is now a peer competitor to the US, and emerging and middle powers now have the ability to shape and affect outcomes at the regional level. Only some of these states harbour global ambitions. But global problems are in urgent need of international cooperation. Rapid technological advances are occurring alongside a climate crisis, large-scale demographic and social change, and the prospect of a migration and refugee crisis, while global health challenges continue to threaten disruption.

Taken together, these changes signal the need for a new international order. This research paper has offered one lens into the desire by a range of states to contribute to this.

Our research took as its starting point the assumption that in a system where power is far more dispersed than at any point since the Second World War, it matters how states other than the US conceive of international order. We also recognize that the process of order-building is dynamic, interactive and subject to events, some known but some unknown, with varying levels of significance. Many anticipated that the COVID-19 pandemic would lead to a fundamental reordering of international relations, for example. In the end, the pandemic exacerbated existing inequalities and imbalances and left many of the fundamentals of power in place. Other developments, such as the proliferation of nuclear weapons, have the potential to alter regional orders but as yet in undetermined ways.

The future international order

It could be two decades before we can safely describe, much less characterize, a future international order. What possible arrangements might we anticipate? There has already been a surge in the number of alternative structures for governing among discrete groups of states, and on discrete issues. This period of dynamism, adaptation, contestation and change is likely to be the defining feature of international relations for the foreseeable future.

The end of the West and of the transatlantic partnership

In response to Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, the transatlantic partnership demonstrated unexpected unity and resilience, building on patterns of cooperation cemented by a decades-old alliance. This partnership held firm in the face of actions by an authoritarian state determined to violate Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty and, in so doing, to strike at the most fundamental norm in the post-1945 order. Now, though, Western solidarity against aggression and norm-breaking looks unlikely to persist. Three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Trump is seeking to strike a deal with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. Europe has come under pressure from President Trump to commit to its own defence, and the continent’s leaders are gearing up for more unpredictable and potentially adversarial relations with the US.

This may yield an international order that is bound together by a transatlantic partnership bonded by shared interests, but the confidence in this future has been severely weakened. As the chapters on Russia, China and Iran elaborate, the West has powerful adversaries. At the same time, the US now seems to be re-evaluating its own alignments and unsettling the transatlantic partnership. However, today’s turbulence is not the first instance of division within the West,293 and the resilience of the transatlantic alliance as a shared geographical and values-based partnership may yet prove to be stronger than sceptics believe.

A dominant China?

Some scholars anticipate that the next phase in the development of international relations will be marked not by international ‘order’ but by disorder, a disorder that China is prepared for and that America is not.294 Others posit that China will benefit from Trump-related disruptions and is well positioned to become a dominant, perhaps even hegemonic, power in a future international order.295 The past seven decades suggest that there is an international desire for predictability and stability, even if underpinned by an order that is imperfect. Yet the chapters in this research paper unambiguously reveal that among great and emerging powers, none wishes to see China or the US dominate the international order. For most states, the pursuit of strategic autonomy is designed precisely to avoid overdependence on either the US or China.

Spheres of influence

President Trump’s recent attempts to assert control over Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal, and his admiring references to President William McKinley, have prompted a flurry of scholarship and commentary speculating that the US might seek to dominate sovereignty in the Western Hemisphere. Such speculation, in turn, has considered the consequent possibility of a return to an international order defined by spheres of influence divided between the great powers.296

The prospect of a grand bargain among regional hegemons fails to capture the complexity of international relations today.

How exactly the world might be carved up in such a scenario is not clear. The prospect that America would cede influence to China in the Indo-Pacific, not least on the issue of Taiwan, in exchange for control over the Western Hemisphere would require a major reversal of US policy. For Europe and Russia to reach an accommodation over spheres of influence in their regions would also require a reversal of 30 years of history. Indeed the prospect of a grand bargain among regional hegemons fails to capture the complexity of international relations today. The US is unlikely to relinquish its interests in Australia, India, Japan or South Korea, let alone the rest of Asia. Asia-Pacific states are themselves disinclined to oblige this type of great power contest. Nor does China show any sign of being willing to give up its footprints in Latin America or Africa. Europe’s own collective capabilities to defend and secure a sphere of influence (the contours of which, in any event, would be hard to define) are far from being realized.

Multipolarity

Many of the states covered in this paper describe the existing order as multipolar, rather than as unipolar or bipolar. Some states welcome multipolarity because they believe it gives them an opportunity to diversify partnerships and limit their external dependence. Yet the reality is that global power is far less distributed than some states would believe. Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey are all significant powers in their own right – but by most conventional definitions of military and economic power, the US and China are in a category of their own. The notion of a multipolar world in which there are many powers with regional influence, multiple alignments and a degree of autonomy is nonetheless significant, not least because states believe such a world to exist.

The reinvention of the liberal international order and of the West?

Few today are considering the possibility that the rise of President Trump is merely an aberration, and that his disruption will be limited to a four-year term. Scholars, policy analysts and policymakers are converging, instead, on the assumption that a more transformative and enduring shift is taking place. There is one exception presented in this research paper. In her chapter on Japan, Jennifer Lind argues that Japan benefits from the US-led international order but would prefer an order that is slimmed down, rules-based, embraces sovereignty, and focuses on developmental imperatives and human security. In this vision, human rights and democracy promotion are best left to sovereign states.

It is also possible that democracy in the US proves to be far more resilient than today’s sceptics anticipate. A new US Republican or Democratic Party may still embrace a more calibrated US engagement with the rest of the world. This could see a US leadership make the case for a form of internationalism that is grounded in shared interests and that, while defined by the US national interest, is also in the interests of other states. Conceivably, this agenda might focus on international cooperation to address major global public challenges: technological change (including artificial intelligence), climate change, public health, and of course peace and security. This newly envisioned liberal international order might also provide more scope for regionalism, minilateralism and plurilateralism. It could empower coalitions of the willing, respect sovereignty, and place less emphasis on enforcing human rights or exporting (and imposing) values.

The importance of agency and contingency

The US and those 11 adversaries, partners and allies that we consider in this paper will be among the most influential in determining the nature and structures of the future international order. But other states will be critical in shaping the resilience of any potential for global governance or international order. Africa deserves an entire paper of its own, for its likely future significance. Technological advance, climate change, immigration and demographic change will test the ability of states to cooperate.

In all of this, it is essential not to discount the role of agency and contingency. Structures matter; leadership is too often underestimated. The people, coalitions and resources that political leaders mobilize may also have a large impact – whether by design or by accident – on the effort to forge a future that is desirable, sustainable and prosperous. We should, where we can, take this lesson to heart and choose our leaders wisely.

About the authors

Leslie Vinjamuri (editor)

Leslie Vinjamuri is director of the US and the Americas Programme at Chatham House and professor of international relations at SOAS University of London. She is vice-chair of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs and deputy chair of the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission. From 2018 to 2024, she was dean of the Queen Elizabeth II Academy for Leadership at Chatham House.

Professor Vinjamuri’s research examines geopolitics, international order and America’s global role. Her publications include: America’s Last Chance with the Global South (with Max Yoeli, 2024, Foreign Affairs); and Anchoring the World: International Order in the Twenty-First Century (editor and contributing author, with Charles A. Kupchan, 2021, Foreign Affairs). She is the co-editor and contributing author of Human Rights Futures (Cambridge University Press, 2017), and co-author (with Jack Snyder) of ‘Trials and Errors: Principle and Pragmatism in Strategies of International Justice’ (International Security, 2004). She also led the research initiative and was a contributing author to Building global prosperity: Proposals for sustainable growth (Chatham House, 2022).

Her research and commentary have also appeared in numerous edited volumes and journals, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Security, Ethics and International Affairs and Survival, and she is a regular commentator and contributor to the international media.

Senem Aydın-Düzgit

Senem Aydın-Düzgit is a professor of international relations at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabancı University, and the director of the Istanbul Policy Center. She is also a non-resident fellow at the Institute for European Policymaking at Bocconi University. In 2024–25, she was based at the Harvard Kennedy School as the Pierre Keller Visiting Professor of Public Policy, and in 2023–24 she was a Richard von Weizsacker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. Her main research interests include identity, history and discourse in the study of international politics, with an empirical focus on European and Turkish foreign policies; and more recently, the nexus between domestic and foreign policies of middle powers in the changing international order. Her articles have appeared in many of the leading journals on international relations and European politics, including International Affairs, the European Journal of International Relations, the Journal of Democracy, the Journal of Common Market Studies and West European Politics, among others. She is the co-author of Turkey and the European Union (Palgrave, 2015) and Constructions of European Identity (Palgrave, 2012). She is a council member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a fellow of the Young Academy of Europe and an academic advisory board member of the Institüt für Europäische Politik.

Chietigj Bajpaee

Chietigj Bajpaee is a senior research fellow for South Asia in the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House. Prior to joining Chatham House, he was the political risk adviser for Asia at the Norwegian energy company Equinor (formerly Statoil). He has also covered Asia (with a particular focus on South Asia) for Control Risks, IHS Markit (now S&P Global), the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He also held visiting fellowships at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses and the Vivekananda International Foundation in India. Chietigj completed his PhD at King’s College London and the National University of Singapore, with a focus on India’s ‘Act East’ policy and relations with China. He holds a master’s degree in international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and completed his undergraduate studies in economics and politics at Wesleyan University and the University of Oxford. Chietigj is the author of China in India’s Post-Cold War Engagement with Southeast Asia (Routledge, 2022).

Alexander Cooley

Alexander Cooley is the Claire Tow Professor of Political Science and Vice Provost for Research and Academic Centers at Barnard College in New York. From 2015 to 2021 he served as the 15th director of Columbia University’s Harriman Institute. Professor Cooley’s research examines how international actors have influenced the governance, sovereignty and security of the post-Communist states, with a focus on Central Asia and the Caucasus. His books include Exit from Hegemony: the Unravelling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020 – co-authored with Daniel Nexon); Dictators without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia (Yale University Press, 2017 – co-authored with John Heathershaw); Great Games Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central Asia (Oxford University Press, 2012), an examination of Russian–US–Chinese competition for influence in Central Asia; and Ranking the World: Grading States as a Tool of Global Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2015, co-edited with Jack Snyder).

In addition to his academic publications, Professor Cooley’s commentaries have appeared in Foreign Affairs, the New York Times and the Washington Post. He serves on a broad range of national and international working groups, not-for-profit boards and advisory committees. He has provided testimony for the US Congress, the UK parliament and the parliament of Canada on regional issues related to his research.

Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer

Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer is acting president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF). In her previous capacity as senior vice-president for geostrategy, she led GMF’s geostrategy policy and risk advisory initiatives across Europe, the United States and the Indo-Pacific. Her areas of expertise encompass European affairs, transatlantic and international relations, and corporate diplomacy.

With more than 15 years’ experience in senior advisory and executive roles, de Hoop Scheffer advises governments, multinational corporations and financial institutions on the political, geopolitical and macroeconomic trends that shape their operations and strategies. She helps them develop early-warning systems and forward-looking decision-making processes.

She serves as an independent board director on the supervisory board of Meridiam and on the French Treasury Strategic Committee, among other bodies. She is also chair of the advisory board of the French Chief of Defence Staff and a member of the board of the France–Nederland Cultuurfonds, the advisory board of the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, and the editorial board of The Washington Quarterly. She is a member of the Trilateral Commission.

Prior to joining GMF in 2012 as its Paris office director and as a senior fellow, de Hoop Scheffer held key advisory positions in the French government, academia and international organizations, including with the French foreign ministry’s policy planning staff (2009–11), NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (2010–13), the French Ministry of Defence (2006–09) and UN peacekeeping operations (2006). She also served as an associate professor at Sciences Po Paris and as a research fellow at the Institut Français des Relations Internationales.

A dual French–Dutch citizen, de Hoop Scheffer holds a PhD in political science from Sciences Po Paris and is the author of Hamlet en Irak (CNRS Editions, 2007). She is a frequent public speaker and writer.

Ralf Emmers

Ralf Emmers is a professor in the international politics of East Asia and co-chair of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy (CISD) in the Department of Politics at SOAS University of London. His research interests cover security studies, international institutions in the Indo-Pacific, and the security and international politics of Southeast Asia. He was previously dean of the Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) and President’s Chair in International Relations, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.

Ralf completed his MSc and PhD in the International Relations Department of the London School of Economics and Political Science. His authored books include Cooperative Security and the Balance of Power in ASEAN and the ARF (Routledge Curzon, 2003); Geopolitics and Maritime Territorial Disputes in East Asia (Routledge, 2010); Resource Management and Contested Territories in East Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); and Security Strategies of Middle Powers in the Asia Pacific, co-written with Sarah Teo (Melbourne University Press, 2018). He is also the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook on Peaceful Change in International Relations (Oxford University Press, 2022). His research has been funded by the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Sasakawa Foundation and the European Union. He was a visiting fellow at the Australian National University, Griffith University and Warwick University.

M. Taylor Fravel

M. Taylor Fravel is the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and the director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Taylor studies international relations, with a focus on international security, China and East Asia. His books include Strong Borders, Secure Nation: Cooperation and Conflict in China’s Territorial Disputes (Princeton University Press, 2008) and Active Defense: China’s Military Strategy Since 1949 (Princeton University Press, 2019). His other writing has appeared in International Security, Foreign Affairs, Security Studies, International Studies Review, The China Quarterly, The Washington Quarterly, the Journal of Strategic Studies, Armed Forces & Society, Current History, Asian Survey, Asian Security, China Leadership Monitor and Contemporary Southeast Asia. Taylor is a graduate of Middlebury College and Stanford University, where he received his PhD. He also has graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and Political Science and from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. In 2016, he was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow by the Carnegie Corporation. Taylor is a member of the board of directors of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and serves as the principal investigator for the Maritime Awareness Project.

Jennifer Lind

Jennifer Lind is an associate professor of government at Dartmouth College, and a faculty associate at the Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies at Harvard University. She is also a research associate with the US and the Americas Programme at Chatham House. Professor Lind’s research focuses on the international relations of East Asia and US foreign policy towards the region.

Lind is the author of Autocracy 2.0: How China’s Rise Transformed Tyranny (Cornell University Press, 2025), a book that shows how authoritarian adaptation enabled China’s rise to become a superpower and technological peer competitor of the United States. Previously, Lind published (also with Cornell University Press), Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics (2008). She has authored numerous scholarly articles in journals such as International Security and International Studies Quarterly, and writes for wider audiences in Foreign Affairs. Her commentary is regularly quoted in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, and on National Public Radio (NPR). Lind has held visiting scholar positions at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and at Waseda University, Japan. She previously worked as a consultant for RAND and for the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Defense.

Lind holds a PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an MPIA from the School of Global Policy Studies at the University of California, San Diego, and a BA from the University of California.

Vali Nasr

Vali Nasr is the Majid Khadduri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center. Between 2012 and 2019 he served as the dean of SAIS, and between 2009 and 2011 as Senior Advisor to U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. Nasr is the author of Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History (Princeton University Press, 2025); How Sanctions Work, Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare (Stanford University Press, 2024 – with Narges Bajoghli, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani and Ali Vaez); The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat (Knopf Doubleday, 2014); The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam will Shape the Future (W. W. Norton, 2007); and Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty (Oxford University Press, 2009 – with Ali Gheissari). He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals and commentary in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. He is the recipient of the Carnegie Scholar Award, and of the Frank Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundation research fellowships. He was selected as Henry Alfred Kissinger Resident Scholar at the Library of Congress for 2024–25.

Martin Quencez

Martin Quencez is managing director of geopolitical risk and strategy at GMF. Over the past 10 years, he has held several positions at GMF, including as deputy director of the Paris office and research fellow in the security and defence programme. His work includes research on transatlantic security and defence cooperation, and US and French foreign policy, on which he regularly writes for international media. He is a co-author of GMF’s annual flagship Transatlantic Trends report.

Quencez is also an associate researcher for the European Council on Foreign Relations, working in France for its European Powers programme. He has taught transatlantic relations at the Euro-American campus of Sciences Po and, prior to joining GMF, worked for the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses in New Delhi, focusing on French and Indian strategic thinking.

Quencez studied international relations at Uppsala University and is a graduate of Sciences Po. He is completing a PhD in contemporary history at Sorbonne Nouvelle University.

Constanze Stelzenmüller

Dr Constanze Stelzenmüller is the director of the Center on the United States and Europe and the inaugural holder of the Fritz Stern Chair on Germany and trans-Atlantic Relations at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. A German citizen, she is an expert on German, European and transatlantic foreign and security policy, as well as international law and human rights. From 2019 to 2020, Dr Stelzenmüller held the Kissinger Chair on Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress, and from 2014 to 2019 she served as the inaugural Robert Bosch Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Prior to joining Brookings, she directed the Berlin office of GMF and later served as Senior Transatlantic Fellow with the organization, heading the Transatlantic Trends Program. Dr Stelzenmüller’s work in the think-tank sphere follows a distinguished career in journalism, including the role of defence and international security editor in the political section of DIE ZEIT from 1994 to 2005. She has contributed to a variety of publications, writes a monthly column for the Financial Times, and is a frequent commentator in American and European news outlets.

Oliver Della Costa Stuenkel

Oliver Della Costa Stuenkel is a professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) in São Paulo, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, DC and a visiting scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research focuses on geopolitics and global order, Brazilian foreign policy, Latin American politics and emerging powers. He is the author of several books about geopolitics, including The BRICS and the Future of Global Order (Lexington Books, 2016) and the Post-Western World: How Emerging Powers Are Remaking Global Order (Polity, 2016). His articles have appeared in several leading journals on international relations, including International Affairs, Global Governance, the Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Global R2P and Conflict, Security and Development. He is also a columnist for Foreign Policy and Estadão in Brazil.

Sanam Vakil

Dr Sanam Vakil is the director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House. She was previously the programme’s deputy director and a senior research fellow. Sanam’s research focuses on geopolitics, regional security, Gulf Arab dynamics and future trends in Iran’s domestic and foreign policy. Sanam is also the James Anderson professorial lecturer in the Middle East Studies department at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS Europe) in Bologna, Italy, where she has taught Middle East politics since 2008. Previously, Sanam was on the faculty of SAIS Washington’s Middle East Studies programme.

Sanam is the author of Action and Reaction: Women and Politics in Iran (Bloomsbury 2013). She is also a regular contributor providing commentary and analysis at CNN, Bloomberg, BBC News, CNBC, Sky News, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Times, the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Independent and National Public Radio.

Ayşe Zarakol

Ayşe Zarakol is a professor of international relations at the University of Cambridge, where she is also a politics fellow affiliated with Emmanuel College. She is the author of After Defeat: How the East Learned to Live with the West (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders (Cambridge University Press, 2022), and the editor of Hierarchies in World Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Before the West has won six awards, including the SSHA and ISA annual best book prizes. In 2023, Zarakol was awarded the 8th Rahmi M. Koç Medal of Science in Turkey (and the first one in international relations). In 2024, she was elected to fellowship in the British Academy and the Academia Europea. Also in 2024, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Copenhagen. At the moment, Zarakol is overseeing an international research collaboration on global disorder funded by a British Academy Knowledge Frontiers Grant. She is also one of the two associate editors of International Organization. Her next book, Ozymandias, is a world history of strongmen, aimed at a general audience. This book is under contract with William Collins (UK) and Grove Atlantic (US).