Welcome to Scouted!

Our series highlights new, provocative work in international relations and foreign policy.

In this podcast, I sit down with one of the field’s most creative and influential voices, Professor Amitav Acharya, to talk about his new book, The Once and Future World Order (Basic Books, 2025).

Spanning five thousand years of global history, the book challenges our conceptions of world order—and our diagnoses for its future. Acharya shows that ideas often credited to the West—e.g., property rights, democracy, humanitarian values, just war, freedom of the seas, open trade—actually have deep roots in civilizations from Sumer and India to Greece and Mesoamerica.

The result? A radically different perspective: aspects of world order have deep intellectual and normative roots in non-Western civilizations. World order isn’t a Western creation, but a shared inheritance with global foundations. And history shows it need not be fragile. As U.S. leadership ebbs, many observers predict chaos; Acharya argues instead that order will adapt and endure, supported by a large cast of actors.

In our conversation, we explore:

* Key aspects of world order with roots in ancient non-Western civilizations;

* The 15th century Indian Ocean trading system as precursor to globalization;

* Why the West’s imperfect contributions (think democracy in Athens or the Magna Carta) are viewed as foundational, while equally imperfect precursors in non-Western civilizations are overlooked;

* What previous world orders teach us about order without hegemony;

* And how the future of world politics looks more like a “multiplex” stage, with many consequential state and non-state players shaping the script.

Sweeping and provocative, the book challenges many core ideas in international relations.

Welcome to the conversation!

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