Global instability and the end of illusion

What happens when the certainties that underpinned the post-war international order begin to fall apart? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Naomi Alderman is joined by three guests examining the forces that shape global power and the legacies of conflict.

The journalist and author Kim Ghattas discusses The Best Kind of American: Murder, War, and America's Undoing in the Middle East. Through an investigation into the assassination of Middle East scholar Malcolm Kerr in 1980s Beirut, she traces the origins of many of the conflicts and rivalries that continue to define the region today, linking warlords, revolutionaries and political leaders across four decades of turbulent history.

Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs columnist at the Financial Times, talks about War is Interested in You: The Breakdown of International Order and the Threat of World War Three. Drawing on discussions with political and intelligence leaders around the world, he argues that an era of relative stability is giving way to a more dangerous and unpredictable age of geopolitical competition and conflict.

And the historian and broadcaster David Runciman talks about his Radio 4 series 1956: The End of Illusion, which tells the intertwined stories of the Suez Crisis and the Hungarian Revolution. Together, these events exposed the limits of British power, challenged assumptions about East and West, and reshaped the global political landscape of the post-war world.

Producer: Katy Hickman
Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez