LAHORE: The world is transitioning to a new global system and this will a chaotic time in which western dominance and power will be replaced, said the speakers at a session of the Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) titled “Remains of the Day: The Post-1945 World Order and Diplomacy in a Time of Resurgent Great-Power Rivalry”.

The panelists included Michael Pembroke, historian and former judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales; Hina Rabbani Khar, former foreign minister; Mohammad Yahya, UN Resident Coordinator. The session was moderated by Lyse Doucet, chief international correspondent of the BBC.

They said Trump was a continuation of a trend of a change in the world order in which the Western powers, headed by the US, were starting to lose control and Eastern powers were emerging. They said that all Trump was doing was accelerating this trend.

Mr Pembroke, while discussing the current US withdrawal from UN bodies, pointed out that in 1984, the US withdrew from UNESCO. He said the US never played by the rules and added that in 1948, only a few years after the UN was established and its charter was agreed, the first principle of which was to respect the sovereignty of all nations, the US conducted the most outrageous campaign to undermine the Italian Communist Party. The operatives of the OSS, the predecessor of the CIA, handed out brown paper bags full of money all over Italy to undermine the Communist Party.

He recounted several instances in various countries where the US intervened and changed regimes for its own ends, including undermining the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, when he tried to nationalise the country’s oil in 1953.

“They created unrest in the streets, just like the CIA and Mossad were doing in the streets of Tehran a month ago, and caused the overthrow of Mosaddegh,” said Mr Pembroke.

Ms Khar said that this moment in history was different as the global system was no longer working for the West. Now, the US wanted to take a solo flight and on the other hand, China adapted to these changes. She termed it the ‘civilisational regression’ of the West. She said that it was an ‘absolute rupture’ of the order, and the world had changed; however, the powers were fighting for dominance but the common challenges, such as climate change and AI, were being ignored.

Speaking about the role of the UN in the global geopolitical changes, Mr Yahya said that although the structure of the UN was outdated, the values in its charter were not. He said that the world had changed and the UN would have to restructure itself for today’s problems.

Published in Dawn, February 7th, 2026