Twenty-five years on from the pivotal events of September 11, 2001, the world looks almost unrecognisable. The assumptions that defined the post-Cold War order –Western primacy, the spread of liberal democracy, the era of US-led alliances and western strategic and economic leadership – have been tested, strained, and in many cases shattered. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine accelerated a fracturing that was already well underway, as have large-scale attacks on Iran. Today we live in a multipolar world – one where China’s Belt and Road Initiative is reshaping global infrastructure, where artificial intelligence is becoming the defining contest of great power rivalry, and where the centre of gravity is shifting decisively eastward. But for Peter Frankopan – author of the landmark bestseller The Silk Roads and Professor of Global History at the University of Oxford –none of this is without precedent. History, he argues, has been pointing in this direction all along.

In this live, interactive event for Intelligence Squared, Frankopan drew on his extraordinary depth of knowledge to show how the rise of the East isn’t a rupture with the past but a return to it and why grasping that changes everything about how we understand the present moment.