The World Today

June & July 2015: Special 70th anniversary issue

A photo of the first cover of The World Today magazine which launched in July 1945

The World Today was born 70 years ago. In this special anniversary edition, we will be looking at what the past can tell us about the present. In our cover story, Kevin Rudd writes that the rules-based global order inherited from 1945 is changing. Will the US and a rising China work together, or against each other?

Human rights, at the heart of the post-war settlement, are in danger of being watered down

How do you solve a problem like Germania? This question was at the heart of international politics throughout the 1950s. Germany needed reliable, democratic institutions and a new economic order.

The Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm was prescient in predicting an uprising in Colombia which lasts to this day

America’s rules of military engagement are changing at last as it adapts to a new world

At last there is a chance to set right the damaging legacy of Nixon’s offensive against narcotics

Russia’s economy looks increasingly like the old Soviet model it replaced, but it is actually more flexible

The magazine you are reading was born in July 1945, midway between VE Day and the devastating use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It was a time of fierce determination by policymakers to make a better world which would not slip back into war.

Articles

The Y2K scare may have felt like a con but it refocused IT in Britain

America is changing and this complicates predictions for the 2016 presidential election

Britain has redefined the problem many times over the last 70 years as calculations on a possible solution have changed

We examine our coverage of the rise of China since the 1940s. Britain cannot afford to stand aloof from Beijing and continue to be a reluctant dance partner