Book Talk | The Once and Future World Order
What if the “end of Western dominance” isn’t catastrophe, but rather a chance to build a fairer global system?
Join us for a conversation between Amitav Acharya, one of the world’s leading scholars of global order, and Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, as they unpack Acharya’s sweeping new book, The Once and Future World Order.
Spanning five millennia, from ancient Sumer and India to medieval caliphates and Eurasian empires, Acharya demonstrates that world order long predates the modern West. Humanitarian norms, economic interdependence, and rules of inter-state conduct emerged across civilizations, suggesting that order can endure, and even improve, as power diffuses beyond Washington and Brussels. Far from a prelude to disorder, the decline of Western primacy may open space for a more plural and equitable system in which non-Western nations gain voice, power, and prosperity.
As social unrest and great-power rivalry unsettle today’s landscape, this discussion reframes the future: why narratives of inevitable chaos are historically wrong, how non-Western traditions of order have been erased, and what cooperation in a truly multipolar world might look like.
The conversation will take place on Tuesday, November 18th from 12:00 – 1:00 PM Eastern Time.
Panelists
Amitav Acharya
Amitav Acharya is the UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance and Distinguished Professor at the School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC. Previously he was a Professor at York University, Toronto and the University of Bristol, U.K. He is currently Honorary Professor, Rhodes University and Professor Extraordinarius, University of Pretoria (both in South Africa), and Guest Professor, Nankai University, China. He was the inaugural Boeing Company Chair in International Relations at the Schwarzman Scholars Program at Tsinghua University, Fellow of Harvard’s Asia Center and John F. Kennedy School of Government, and Christensen Fellow at Oxford. His books include "The Once and Future World Order: Why Global Civilization Will Survive the Decline of the West" (Basic Books 2025); "The Making of Global International Relations"(Cambridge 2019: with Barry Buzan), and The End of American World Order" (Polity 2014, 2018).
Trita Parsi
Trita Parsi is the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute. He is an award-winning author and the 2010 recipient of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. He is an expert on US-Iranian relations, Iranian foreign policy, and the geopolitics of the Middle East. He has authored four books on US foreign policy in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Iran and Israel. He has been named by the Washingtonian Magazine as one of the 25 most influential voices on foreign policy in Washington DC for five years in a row since 2021, and preeminent public intellectual Noam Chomsky calls Parsi “one of the most distinguished scholars on Iran.”