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After the unravelling: Confronting the new world order
The post–Cold War international order hasn't collapsed from a single shock. It's been deliberately unwound. Thomas Wright, a former Senior Director for Strategic Planning in President Biden's National Security Council, argues that China, Russia, and the United States have each adopted foreign policies that broke the foundational restraints holding the system together. By historical measures, what's emerged has the hallmarks of a pre-war environment.
Drawing on his time inside the White House, Dr Wright diagnoses how we got here and what may come next. From Xi Jinping's strategy of asymmetric economic dominance, to Putin's war of conquest in Europe, to Trump's redefinition of American alliances as transactional arrangements.
This event was hosted by Sam Roggeveen, Director of the Lowy Institute's International Security Program, in Melbourne on Wednesday 6 May 2026.
Featuring
Thomas Wright
Thomas (Tom) Wright is a Nonresident Fellow at the Lowy Institute, and a senior fellow with the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy and Technology at the Brookings Institution.
Sam Roggeveen
Sam Roggeveen is Director of the Lowy Institute’s International Security Program. He is the author of The Echidna Strategy: Australia's Search for Power and Peace (Opens in new window), and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Canberra.
