New Books in World Affairs

Green Thinking: Unlearning Outdated Ideas in Science, Economics and Politics (Routledge, 2026) is about unlearning, discarding damaging, outdated ideas deeply rooted in our societies. It seeks to “compost” the views of dead white men (René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, Norman Borlaugh) and of some not white or dead (Francis Fukuyama, Richard Dawkins, Richard Thaler), and explores the flowering of probiotic Green thinking, and the rediscovery in the 21st century of powerful indigenous and other previously repressed thinking. Natalie Bennett understands that the foundation of life is cooperation, not competition; that diversity is essential to resilience and health of systems; that humans are just one more species of animal, or, rather, holobiont; that reductionism has to be replaced by relational thinking; that financialising society has destroyed – as it was meant to do – relationships essential to wellbeing; and, perhaps most crucially of all, that we have to draw on the knowledge and wisdom of indigenous societies that have maintained themselves and their environments in healthy balance for tens of thousands of years. This means acknowledging that the time, energy and talents of all life must contribute to a new way for humans to live in balance with the more-than-human world. This book will appeal to fans of David Graeber, Kate Raworth, Tyson Yunkaporta, Jason Hickel, Anna Tsing, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ursula Le Guin, Bruno Latour, Wangarii Maathai, Merlin Sheldrake, Vandana Shiva, Lynn Margulis, Kim Stanley Robinson, as well as listeners to the New Books Network, Past Present Future, and HPS podcasts. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Most international organisations today-from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to the World Health Organisation-present themselves as technical institutions separate from political concerns. And yet they are frequently accused, whether by the public or by governments, of hiding behind this technocratic veil only to privilege a few rich and powerful nations. Experts appear as guardians of stability and protectors of an unequal status quo. Scholars of International Relations (IR) and international law have illuminated the production and contestation of expertise. But its historical emergence and distinctiveness remain under-explored. The Technocratic International: Experts and the Making of a World from Nowhere (Oxford UP, 2026) by Dr. Jan Eijking is the first book to historically examine and comprehensively theorise the role of experts in the institutionalisation of modern international order. How exactly did technical expertise come to be a central tenet to the work of international organisations? Based on archival material from Paris, London, and Geneva, The Technocratic International reconstructs the neglected history of expert mobilisation at early moments of institutionalised international cooperation in the nineteenth century. To understand how expertise works at the international level, examining how expert status and knowledge are produced is not enough. Instead, we must bring into view how expertise relates to claims about the very domain in which it operates. Historically, experts were not merely-as institutionalist and functionalist accounts assume - mobilised to epistemically optimise international policymaking. Instead, technocratic elites constructed “the international” through Eurocentric performances of expert approval. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

As the United Nations faces mounting geopolitical tensions, financial pressures, and new global challenges, what would meaningful reform actually look like? In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Fellow Peter Hoffman speaks with economist and Global Governance Forum Executive Director Augusto López-Claros about the UN’s record of achievements and shortcomings, the limits of past reforms, and the prospects for more fundamental institutional change. They discuss Security Council reform, the veto, collective security and disarmament, UN financing, climate governance, artificial intelligence, and the role of the next Secretary-General. Rather than simply making the existing system more efficient, López-Claros argues for rethinking the institutions and structures needed to address the global challenges of the 21st century.

Recent years have seen a striking resurgence of anti-imperial and anticolonial rhetoric on the international stage, from Global South to Global North and from the Left to the Right. Why do states deploy these forms of rhetoric in global politics? How do practitioners from the so-called non-Western world differ in their use and performance of rhetoric, and in what ways do they shape international order? In Rhetorical Powers: How Rising States Shape International Order (Columbia UP, 2026) Sasikumar Sundaram provides a bold new theory of rhetoric as power politics, demonstrating how non-Western states challenge their silencing within the Western-led international order. He argues that, in the deeply hierarchical international system, states in the lower rungs resort to rhetorical performances in order to be heard. Through anti-imperial and anticolonial rhetorical statecraft, states such as India, Brazil, and China seek to expose and exploit the contradictions in the legitimating principles, norms, and rules of the international system—and, in so doing, pursue and exercise power. Today, as Russia, Europe, and even the United States engage in anti-imperial and anticolonial rhetoric, Sundaram shows why lessons from the non-Western world are crucial to recognizing the dynamics of power politics and global disorder. A bracing challenge to established theories of power in international relations, Rhetorical Powers underscores the need to address enduring forms of silencing within the international order. Hosted by Sachin Nikarge

Great Power Diplomacy. The Skill of Statecraft from Attila the Hun to Kissinger (Princeton UP, 2025) is a captivating history of diplomacy—and an urgent reminder of why we need to revive its lost arts to survive in a dangerous era of great power competition. From the beginning of time, human societies have found themselves confronted by enemies too numerous or ferocious to defeat solely by force of arms. In these dramatic moments, wise leaders have turned to diplomacy to rearrange the gameboard in their favor and stymie seemingly unstoppable foes. In Great Power Diplomacy, American historian and diplomat A. Wess Mitchell recounts the forgotten story of how history’s most legendary empires have used diplomacy as a tool of grand strategy to outwit, outmaneuver, and outlast militarily superior opponents. Through fifteen centuries of history, Great Power Diplomacy recreates the perilous junctures, colorful personalities, and intricate statecraft that led to some of history’s most stunning diplomatic achievements—and greatest disasters. The protagonists include giants like Richelieu, Metternich, Bismarck, and Kissinger, but also a lesser-known cast of scoundrels, eunuchs, drunkards, and fools. At every turn, fortune favored those great powers with the foresight and dexterity to build winning alliances, splinter enemy coalitions, and, when necessary, make peace with their bitterest foes. Diplomacy of this kind has become a lost art in recent years as Western elites embraced the illusion that globalization and the spread of democracy would create a borderless world where nations would live in harmony and war would be abolished from the human story. But, as Great Power Diplomacy reveals, we will need to rediscover the secrets of skillful statecraft as the world enters an unstable new era in which continent-sized great powers compete for territory, resources, and prestige. By recalling diplomacy’s rich past, we can equip ourselves for a more dangerous future.