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. 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 (3)

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About

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

Information

  • Creator
    BBC Radio 4
  • Episodes
    14
  • Seasons
    2
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © (C) BBC 2026
  • Show Website
    How Did We Get Here?

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