How Did We Get Here?

BBC Radio 4

The deep back-stories behind the most consequential events in the world right now.

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  1. Episode 1

    No World Order: 1. The Responsibility to Protect

    Tristan Redman is joined by Lindsey Hilsum, international editor of Channel 4 News, and Allan Little, former BBC correspondent in Moscow and Africa, to look back at the decade after the Cold War in which the question of international intervention was repeatedly tested. They discuss Nelson Mandela's release in February 1990, the United States' retreat from Somalia after American soldiers were killed in Mogadishu in 1993, and the international community's failure to act during the Rwandan genocide the following year. They discuss Srebrenica, where UN peacekeepers were present but around 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed in 1995, and Nato's intervention in Kosovo in 1999, which went ahead without UN Security Council authorisation. The episode traces how these events fed into debates around the principle that became known as the Responsibility to Protect, and ends on 31st December 1999, as Boris Yeltsin resigns and Vladimir Putin becomes acting president of Russia. 'How Did We Get Here: No World Order' is a BBC News Long Form Audio production Presenter: Tristan Redman Producers: Keiligh Baker and Nik Sindle Sound engineers: Neil Churchill, Gareth Jones and Michael Regaard Production co-ordinators: Sophie Hill and Katie Morrison Editor: Matt Willis Radio 4 commissioners: Daniel Clarke and Hugh Levinson

    No World Order: 1. The Responsibility to Protect

  2. Episode 2

    No World Order: 2. The View from Beijing

    Tristan Redman is joined by Carrie Gracie, former BBC China editor and a reporter in China throughout the 1990s, and George Magnus, an economist and research associate at the China Centre, Oxford University, and former chief economist at UBS. Together they examine the decade in which China reshaped its relationship with the international system. They begin with Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour of 1992, when the then-retired Communist Party leader travelled to China's special economic zones to press the case for economic reform, a trip widely seen as decisive in setting China's course for the following decades. They discuss the handover of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, under the "one country, two systems" framework, and the Asian financial crisis of the same year, which left China's capital controls looking vindicated while much of the region required IMF assistance. The episode also covers the 1999 Nato bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and concludes with China's accession to the World Trade Organisation in December 2001, an agreement built on Western assumptions that economic integration would bring political liberalisation, and one whose consequences are still being worked through today. A BBC News Long Form Audio production Presenter: Tristan Redman Producers: Keiligh Baker and Nik Sindle Sound engineers: Neil Churchill, Gareth Jones and Michael Regaard Production co-ordinators: Sophie Hill and Katie Morrison Editor: Matt Willis Radio 4 commissioners: Daniel Clarke and Hugh Levinson

    No World Order: 2. The View from Beijing

  3. Episode 3

    No World Order: 3. Russia goes its own way

    Tristan Redman is joined by Gabriel Gatehouse, an investigative journalist and former international editor of BBC Newsnight, and Luke Harding, the Guardian's senior international correspondent, to trace the decade in which Russia moved from a brief partnership with the West to open confrontation with it. They begin in the immediate aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks, when Vladimir Putin was among the first world leaders to offer support to the United States, and Russian and American forces cooperated over Afghanistan. They discuss how that cooperation gave way, within two years, to Russian opposition at the United Nations to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, an invasion carried out without Security Council authorisation. They also discuss the near-fatal poisoning of Ukrainian opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko during the 2004 presidential election, the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006, and Vladimir Putin's speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2007, in which he rejected the idea of a unipolar, US-led world order. The episode concludes with Russia's invasion of Georgia in August 2008, an operation carried out on the pretext of protecting Russian citizens and peacekeepers in South Ossetia. A BBC News Long Form Audio production Presenter: Tristan Redman Producers: Keiligh Baker and Nik Sindle Sound engineers: Neil Churchill, Gareth Jones and Michael Regaard Production co-ordinators: Sophie Hill and Katie Morrison Editor: Matt Willis Radio 4 commissioners: Daniel Clarke and Hugh Levinson

    No World Order: 3. Russia goes its own way

  4. Episode 4

    No World Order: 4: This Sucker Could Go Down

    Tristan Redman is joined by Cindy Yu, a columnist at the Times and author of the Substack newsletter Chinese Whispers, and Pierre Haski, a longstanding foreign correspondent and commentator on France Inter radio, to examine a five-year period in which China's confidence grew as the West's certainties came under strain. They begin with the Beijing Olympics of August 2008, which opened as Russia invaded Georgia, and the global financial crisis that followed within weeks of the closing ceremony, when the collapse of Lehman Brothers triggered the largest bankruptcy in US history and shook confidence in the American economic model. They also discuss the Arab Spring of 2011, and the Nato-led intervention in Libya that followed a UN resolution to protect civilians, an operation China and Russia came to see as having gone beyond its original mandate. The episode also covers the crackdown on civil society and the internet that followed inside China, and concludes with Xi Jinping's appointment as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in November 2012. 'How Did We Get Here: No World Order' is a BBC News Long Form Audio production Presenter: Tristan Redman Producers: Keiligh Baker and Nik Sindle Sound engineers: Neil Churchill, Gareth Jones and Mike Regaard Production co-ordinators: Sophie Hill and Katie Morrison Editor: Matt Willis Radio 4 commissioners: Daniel Clarke and Hugh Levinson

    No World Order: 4: This Sucker Could Go Down

  5. Episode 5

    No World Order: 5: Bonfire of the Agreements

    Tristan Redman is joined by Edward Luce, associate editor and columnist at the Financial Times in Washington DC, and Nicole Hemmer, political historian and associate professor at Vanderbilt University, to examine the years in which the United States, the architect of the post-Cold War order, began to turn away from it. They begin with Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo in December 2009, delivered less than a year into his presidency and defending the necessity of war even as it made the case for a rules-based world. They discuss the domestic fallout of the 2008 financial crisis, including the emergence of the Tea Party movement, and the disclosures made by WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden about US conduct abroad. They trace the longer roots of American populism, through Pat Buchanan's presidential campaigns of the 1990s and a changing political landscape, culminating in Britain's vote to leave the European Union and Donald Trump's election as US president, both in 2016. The episode concludes with the early months of Donald Trump’s first presidency, and the withdrawal of the United States from a series of international agreements, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Paris climate accord and the Iran nuclear deal. A BBC News Long Form Audio production Presenter: Tristan Redman Producers: Keiligh Baker and Nik Sindle Sound engineers: Neil Churchill, Gareth Jones and Mike Regaard Production co-ordinators: Sophie Hill and Katie Morrison Editor: Matt Willis Radio 4 commissioners: Daniel Clarke and Hugh Levinson

    No World Order: 5: Bonfire of the Agreements

  6. Season 2 Trailer

    No World Order: Trailer

    At the end of the Cold War, the international system underwritten by American power, liberal democracy and free markets looked to many like the high-water mark of a new world order. Fast forward to 2026, and that certainty looks far less solid. Tristan Redman is joined by journalists and experts who had ringside seats to the biggest moments since the end of the Cold War. Together, they ask whether this rules-based order is ending, what might replace it, and whether it ever really existed. From the collapse of communism and the conflicts of the 1990s to the wars in Georgia and Ukraine and the realignment of global power today. A BBC News Long Form Audio production Presenter: Tristan Redman Producers: Keiligh Baker and Nik Sindle Sound engineers: Neil Churchill, Gareth Jones and Michael Regaard Production co-ordinators: Sophie Hill and Katie Morrison Editor: Matt Willis Radio 4 commissioners: Daniel Clarke and Hugh Levinson

    No World Order: Trailer
See All Season 2 (6)

Trailers

About

The deep back-stories behind the most consequential events in the world right now.

Information

  • Creator
    BBC Radio 4
  • Episodes
    17
  • Seasons
    2
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © (C) BBC 2026
  • Show Website
    How Did We Get Here?

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