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.

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