📰 Subscribe to UnHerd today at: https://bit.ly/4cfaeH0 UnHerd's Freddie Sayers meets Professor Odd Arne Westad. Watch it on the UnHerd website: https://unherd.com/watch-listen/the-stage-is-set-for-a-new-wwi/ Listen to the podcast: https://plnk.to/unherd?to=page Advertise on UnHerd @ zoe.white@unherd.com UnHerd's Freddie Sayers talks with Odd Arne Westad - Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University - about his new book The Coming Storm, which argues that rather than entering a new Cold War, we are actually reliving the high-tension multipolarity of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a dangerous era where rapid technological shifts, the collapse of globalisation, and the friction between a rising China and a nervous United States mirror the exact structural conditions that caused the world to sleepwalk into the catastrophe of World War 1. Follow UnHerd on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/unherd Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/unherd/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unherd/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@unherdtv //TIMECODES// 00:00 - 00:46 - Intro 00:46 - 01:58 - Host intro, guest and book thesis 01:58 - 04:03 - Why this is not a new Cold War 04:03 - 07:03 - Multipolarity and echoes of 1900–1914 07:03 - 09:51 - Great‑power rivalry and new spheres of influence 09:51 - 12:34 - Tech revolutions, AI and Taiwan as flashpoint 12:34 - 15:20 - How small crises and shaky alliances ignite big wars 15:20 - 18:01 - Britain–US and Germany–China parallels 18:01 - 22:04 - Domestic unrest, nationalism and rising populism 22:04 - 27:17 - Russia as Austria‑Hungary and the China–Russia axis 27:17 - 31:47 - China’s military posture and the France–India analogy 31:47 - 35:33 - Public opinion, animosity and willingness to fight 35:33 - 39:48 - Trump, leadership risks and odds of a new world war 39:48 - 40:05 - Outro #UnHerd #WWIII #China