The Current - Margaret MacMillan says we're not ready for the New World Order

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

These are unnerving times, sitting here at the beginning of September in 2026. The US-Iran war continues… Ukraine is heading into its fifth winter of a full-scale war with Russia. Under Donald Trump, the United States has taken a hammer to norms and institutions at home and abroad.  Margaret MacMillan says a new world order is coming, why we aren’t ready for it and how we can adapt.

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I'm Paul Hunter, and this is the current podcast. These are unnerving times sitting here at the beginning of September in 2026. The U.S.-Iran War continues. Ukraine is heading into its fifth winter of a full-scale war with Russia. Under Donald Trump, the United States has taken a hammer to norms and institutions at home and abroad. Margaret McMillan has long helped us understand how the past, past explains what's in front of us. She is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Toronto and an emeritus professor of international history at the University of Oxford. Her books

include Paris 1919 about the peace negotiations after the First World War and war, how conflict shaped us. This week, she published an opinion piece in the New York Times titled, A New World Order is Coming. We Aren't Ready. Margaret McMillan joins us now from Washington, D.C. Good morning, Margaret. Good morning, Paul. So are you right that we've arrived in a new age of disorder? What do you mean by that? Where are we at? Well, I think all the things we took for granted. You know, the world didn't work perfectly. We know that since 1945, but we had a sort of order. We had negotiations between the big powers. They had arms agreements. We had international institutions which most nations in the world supported and which worked pretty well. And we're now

seeing the disruption of that order. We're seeing bad relations increasingly between the great powers, competition between the United States and China, and the institutions from the UN, but a whole host of other institutions, the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization, all sorts of international agreements are now up in the air. And I think we're finding it very disturbing, because we don't know where we're going. We have an unpredictable United States, which used to back the world order. It's still a great power. And we don't know what it's going to do next.

It seems to be alienating dependable allies. And what I find extraordinary is it would alienate Canada of all countries. You know, I was speaking about your piece after reading it with people. And I was making the analogy kind of, you know, when you look at a mirror, you never see yourself age. It's just things happen and you don't really notice. Your piece, you use the analogy of a coming storm, or as the kids might say these days, winter's coming, that it's possible to misread or not notice the signs that a storm is about

to hit. How are we misreading or ignoring signs that a new world order is coming? I think we're beginning to read them very much now because we're directly under threat. But I think for a long time, I mean, it was, you know, I mean, I probably said it as well. You know, it's just one administration in the U.S., for example. It will soon be over. things will go back to normal. I think we failed to recognize, I again, include myself in this, just how lawless that Russia was becoming, how prepared Putin was to break all sorts of international agreements, many of which he'd signed himself, and his invasion of Ukraine,

which was completely without basis, whatever he may say. And so I think we tend to think, don't worry, it'll go back, we're used to it. And we were used to a very long period, those of us who lived in countries like Canada, a very long period of people. piece. So I think we just simply assumed this was a temporary blip and we go back to it. I think we're not assuming that certainly in Canada anymore. You talk about dead rats. Explain that. Well, one of the analogies, I sometimes think fiction can give you a good sense of a time. And I was referring to the plague, the Albert Camus novel about the Algerian city of Iran, where everyone's living happily and everything's going along fine. And then people notice there are a few more dead rats in the

street. And this seems a bit odd because you don't usually see dead rats in the street. And then they sort of explain it away, well, you know, the rats may be hungry or the rats may either something. And what it is is actually the first signs of the plague. You know, pandemic has hit Iran or is hitting the whole city. But the temptation is to explain the dead rats away at the beginning. And I think we need to look at the warning signs. And I think we in Canada are certainly doing that more and more now. You know, I live and work in Washington, D.C., where you are right now, and I've spoken to a lot of Americans about this situation, you know, specifically in the U.S. with Trump, and there are a lot of, you know, a lot of Canadians unhappy with the Trump administration. A lot of Americans are unhappy

as well. You can look at his popularity ratings, for example, as evidence of that. And I've often thought, it's as if, it's as if Americans thought, well, what's, you know, how, what's the it can happen in a sense. It doesn't really matter. We'll get over it. We'll get through it. This kind of feeling of, not on nipotence, but somehow things will be all right in the end. We'll get past it. Is that wrong to think that way broadly in the United States or broadly as these signals have appeared in front of us of potential upheaval? I think so. I mean, it's always, it's always foolish to panic too soon and say, you know, like Chicken Little, the sky is falling.

But I think we do need to really worry. And I think if I were an American, I'd be worrying because the United States has been and still is a great power. But no, history doesn't teach us lessons, but it does give us examples. And I think if there's, you know, there are plenty of examples of great powers that are no longer great powers. You know, for various reasons they lose their power. And I think, you know, the idea of a fortress America, I'm not sure, is really going to work. Why do you? So why don't people pay more attention to the significant?

to the signals, to the dead rats. I think because we're getting on with our lives. People have so many things to think about, you know, people are getting married, having families, buying houses, worrying about jobs, people are getting older, worrying about their old age, whatever. You know, we have a lot of things to worry about. And I think because we've lived,

a lot of the world hasn't lived through a long period of peace. I mean, a lot of the world has seen wars since 1945, and we're seeing a lot of wars internationally today. But I think a lot of us in the fortunate parts of the world, in Canada, in the Americas generally, in Europe, in parts of Asia, have lived in very peaceful and stable societies. And I think we've simply got used the idea that that's the way society is and that's the way the world works. And if there's a crisis, it's sooner or later will be settled. The great powers will get together and do something. And that, I think, has led to a sort of complacency, you know, that things will go on.

And I think we have to remember that things don't always go on. And as I say, we shouldn't panic. But I think we really need to think seriously about what we can do to try and make the world a more stable place. I mean, middle powers like Canada have to think of what role they can play because they can't just assume that the great powers will be benevolent. I want to get to Canada in a second and Mark Carney, but you know, you note rightly that there's been all kinds of conflict around the world, even though it's not necessarily in the face of many in the West. But where does that, all the conflict that we talk, where does it lead? I mean, is some sort of world war inevitable? No, I don't think anything's inevitable.

And a lot depends on human decisions. And may in the future, of course, depend on AI decisions, which is another issue that I find worrying. Good point. But I think, no, I think nothing is inevitable, but things become more likely. And what may be possible is not a major conflict between two great powers. I mean, we have to hope not because of the types of arsenals they have, including nuclear arsenals they have.

But what we may see is more war, more opportunistic wars. We're seeing more civil wars, often backed by outside powers. I mean, I think of Sudan, which has become a sort of playground in a horrible way for outside powers to try and exert influence and gain control of important natural resources. So I think we may see more of that. And I think what we're seeing also, and it sounds silly, but we're seeing a breaking of norms. You know, the idea that you don't do certain things, the idea that you don't invade a country without any provocation, that you don't invade a country and take over its territory and the rest of the world just shrugs and says,

well, now you've got hold of that territory. I guess it's yours. You know, that has been a very important norm that we've had that the international community will not recognize the seizure of territory by another state. It won't recognize it. And that's gone. And when people break the rules, I mean, we've seen. that even in, you know, our own lives. When people start breaking rules, others attempted to follow the example. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. And every weekday, I hosted news podcast called Frontburner. We do one story

a day and try to give you a deep but not overwhelming amount of information and context. Think of us as a show that pulls lots of story threads together so you don't lose the plot. We're here to help you learn how all of these threads fit together. Follow Frontburner wherever you get your podcasts. So let's get into a little bit of weeds here, history. You referenced the French Revolution in your piece, the Russian Revolution and the rise of Nazis in Germany. Can you unpack that for us relative to what the world is looking like today?

Well, I think you often get a combination of defeat abroad. It seems so often to fuel discontent in societies, understand. and often you have domestic upheavals that were perhaps coming anywhere. In the case of France, the French state was effectively bankrupt by 1789, and I think there was widespread concern that people were going to be starving, and there was a crop failure, in fact, the year before the French Revolution. So it was a bad time, and I think it led to tremendous upheaval. It led, of course, eventually to the emergence of Napoleon,

a man of enormous military talent and other sorts of talents as the leader of France. You would never have risen to that position without the revolution. And in the hands of Napoleon, France went on to conquer most of Europe and caused absolute misery and wars that lasted for 20 years. So I think sometimes we get a combination of domestic factors and international factors, which both affect the societies that have the revolutions, but then can affect the world at large because often those revolutions go beyond their borders. All right, so let's draw Canada into this.

You mentioned that. Prime Minister Carney's speech in Davos in January this year he talked about middle powers banding together to fill the gap left by the United States. I mean, how realistic is his vision of an alliance of middle powers in terms of pushing back against this, you know, the age of disorder that we're talking about? Well, I think we have to think like that because what are the alternatives? The alternatives are for the middle powers to sort of ban what the political scientists is called bandwagoning, simply try and find a great power who will, they can shelter under.

But if you take shelter under a great power, it's not going to be very comfortable. The great power will do exactly what it wants. And so I think the prospect of middle power is looking for safety by trying to find a big power that might at least offer them some protection is not really a very appealing one. And I think if you look at the collective power of middle powers, I mean, if you put Canada, the Canadian economy and the Japanese economy together, for example, or you add in the European Union economy, which is the third biggest economy in the world, you actually have a considerable amount of economic and political

and potential military power. And these are countries, and I would include Australia and a great many others as well, which share the same sorts of values and don't want to live in a world in which the strong do what they want to do and the weak suffer what they must, as Eucydides, the Greek historian said. We don't want that sort of world, I think, a lot of us.

And so I think there is capacity, and I think we've seen leagues of states before. and NATO in fact is, although the United States was dominant in it, NATO was very much a participatory organization in which the middle powers played a part. And so I do think we have to think in these times. I thought Prime Minister Carney was absolutely right in what he said at Davos. I don't mean to be doom and gloom, but what if that isn't effective? Well, it won't be great, will it?

I mean, I think what some people are talking about is the world being divided into spheres of influence where you have one dominant power in a region, so China would dominate, say, a large part of Asia, Russia, although it's a very weak in Russia, but Russia might potentially recover, and Russia would dominate Ura Asia, eastern Europe and parts of Central Asia, and the United States would dominate the North and South America.

But that isn't as neat as it sounds. I mean, spheres of influence are inherently unstable because there are the borders where each sphere clashes with another sphere, and there's competition between spheres. and also you get within spheres of influence countries that don't really want to be there. I mean, I'm not sure that Latin American countries and Canada would be all that happy being dominated by the United States. I think there would be continual sort of unrest.

And I do think we've seen this in the past. Spheres of influence are unstable. I mean, I think what we have to hope for is some sort of overarching system which brings different types of powers together and helps them at least work together, even if it's at a minimum of not going to war with each other. You know, one of the big question marks hanging over the United States right now is what happens after Donald Trump. I wonder your thoughts on that. I mean, so much has been written about the effect of Trump on the sort of international order with how he's dealt with USAID, the United Nations, etc. I mean, do you see a world in which it regains its, you use the word dominant, but that it regains its dominant position on the global stage once Trump?

leaves office? Well, you probably know more about it than I do because you're observing them the whole time. But, you know, what I think is that it's relatively easy to throw away your power. I mean, the United States had both moral authority. And although it was challenged at times, and of course it at times it did very, very, you know, things that were very wrong. But I think once you've thrown away that authority, it doesn't come back that easily. And I worry about what's happen to American politics, to the American political system. It seems to me that there are divisions deeper than they used to be. Now, maybe Americans, and they've done it before, they will come together and begin to rebuild their institutions and begin to talk to each other across the divide.

I mean, I think there are a lot of people in the United States who are very concerned about that. And I think it will take time. And I think the international position of the United States has been damaged. And trust is a tricky thing, isn't it? I mean, you take a long time to be. build trust in a person or another country. And once you destroy it, you can't just turn around and say, we didn't actually mean it. You know, I was looking in the paper press today, but what Scott Percent,

the Secretary of Treasury said about Canada not counting for anything and that crack about the submarines out of the Edmonton Mall. Why do that? And it's not going to be something, it's going to be hard to forget remarks like that, I think. Even Carney is saying, until that stuff stops, you know,

all these, the challenges between the two countries ain't going to be mended until that kind of stuff ends. Yeah, it seems to me so gratuitous. You don't need to make these sort of bad, not even good jokes, actually. I was reading some of the comments on your opinion piece because that's the age we're in now.

You can read instant comments when things are written. And there were a few that said, you know, there are always doomsday scenarios in all eras and that uncertainty and change is sort of part of life and part of human history. I mean, what would you say to someone who says you're overstating the risks as you look out at the world? Well, it's a discussion we should have.

I mean, I may be wrong, and I would actually like to be wrong on this one. I'd really like to be wrong that it's not a bad time for us, but I haven't read the comments. I never do, actually, because I've, well, I think. Healthy life decision. I think it is. But, you know, I think, I do think the signs are bad, and I think we need to be sensible. I agree. There's no point saying absolutely things are at beyond repair. It's hopeless. What can you do? But I do think we need to look around. And it's not the world it was in 1990, for example, at the end of the Cold War. It's not a world in which there's some, but there are still good signs. I mean, there still is, you know, we still see the capacity of countries to work with each other and we still see a lot of international cooperation. But I do find this situation worrying. And it reminds me too much of the periods before the first and

Second World Wars. Gosh, Margaret. I mean, sorry. But, you know, it is worrying and it does, it can feel bleak reckoning with all of this. But, you know, to look the other way is not really an answer either, is it? I mean, there was another, I'm going to sort of, I'm going to trouble you with another comment.

Zoe Kay from New York, who says that she's a 19-year-old university student and asked if the preparations for a new world order can be extrapolated to the, personal level. And she writes, quote, how should I be adapting to face these challenges? I wonder what answer you'd give to Zoe and anyone listening who might have the same question. Well, I think we have to pay attention to what's going on in the world. And I think we have to pay attention to what's going on in our own societies. And there are ways of doing that. I mean, I think healthy democracies depend on a number of things. They depend on sort of action at the street level.

You know, the people who come immediately, a friend of mine fell down the other day and broke a leg. And immediately people came and helped and called the ambulance and so on. And it's that sort of, even at that level, the interaction that we have a sense of responsibility

for each other, I think, is very important. And so I think there are many ways. I mean, I don't think you have to rush out and get engaged in large movements necessarily or join a political party, but taking some sense of responsibility for those who are named, neighbors and taking some interest in what's going on around you. I think if you turn

inwards and say, well, I'm just going to enjoy myself. What can I do? It's not good. It's not good for society. And in the end, it's probably not going to help you avoid trouble. Margaret, given the subject matter today, I'm not sure if me saying to you that it's been a pleasure chatting is appropriate, but it has been a pleasure. And it's been a very, it's given us all reason to think. And so I thank you for taking the time with us today. Well, thank you very much for a very interesting conversation. I really liked your questions. Thanks, Margaret. Talk again. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Margaret McMillan is an Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Toronto and an Emeritus Professor of International History at the University

of Oxford. Her books include Paris 1919 and War, How Conflict Shaped Us. You've been listening to the current podcast. I'm Paul Hunter. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.