It seems today that a sense of crisis permeates international affairs. From war to pollution to trade and beyond, there is much talk of the disintegration of the settled ways of doing things and fear of what comes next. The twenty-first century has turned sour for many believers in international order. This is not unique in history; order has been on the minds of writers for centuries, from Kant to Carr to Hedley Bull. It is hard to find a period in history when there has not been some sense of crisis. The problem of international order is both a perennial theme and an urgent contemporary concern. The essays in this collection broaden the conversation to consider the ambiguity, complexity, and contradiction within the concept of world order. Order is neither self-evident nor universally agreed upon; to the contrary, it is contested, political, and contingent. Order is a very disorderly idea.

One of the problems with the problem of world order is that what makes for order within societies is often precisely what makes for disorderly relations between them. I argue in this short essay that many of the problems with the problem of world order arise from assumptions that are widely shared within a discipline where the language of power and interest dominates and where a view of states as “like units” permeates. With more emphasis on values and visions of the good life, and acceptance that the ontological foundation of IR is difference rather than sameness, the debates about the problem of world order would take on a different form. The essay adapts the work of Hedley Bull and introduces the concept of “resilience-governance” to distinguish between resilience as a practice of self-governance taking place within ordering domains and resilience as a practice of “diversity-governance” taking place between ordering domains. The combination of the two allows for a bifocal view into how practices of resilience as self-governance may produce order within individual domains but will at the same time increase diversity and difference between the ordering domains, hence making the practices of resilience as diversity-governance much more challenging.

In this essay, I use Martin Luther King Jr.'s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” to open questions about international order and disorder. The idea of order is central to modern discourse on international politics, but the concept is often ill defined and ambiguous. King's ideas clarify three issues: First, is order understood as an objective condition of a system or a political judgment about its suitability for social life? Second, does compliance with law lead naturally to order? And third, is order always preferable to disorder? The way King answers each question is somewhat different than the conventional wisdom in international relations. IR scholars typically assume that international order is a universal good and that compliance with law enhances it. King highlights the gap between order as defined by the authorities in Alabama and his own lived experience. I use the difference to map the terrain of scholarship on international order and disorder and to draw implications for concepts, research methods, and political judgment.

Cracks in the liberal international order (LIO) have been occurring since its very formation. Yet, some international relations scholarship frames the narrative about imminent threats to the LIO as if such threats were new. From a postcolonial vantage point, this essay contends that mainstream theorizing about international order is problematically Eurocentric and develops a three-pronged argument. In the first place, the essay argues for understanding order as a command or as an imposition. Order as a command renders visible power disparities, injustices, and inequalities of the international order as seen by actors from below. Second, the essay leans on Edward Said's contrapuntal reading method to show that experiences of order are plural rather than singular or universal. Third, the essay argues that from a postcolonial perspective, the opposite of order is not chaos or volatility but rather agency or the authorship to be a rule maker. A full picture of order as imposition requires understanding how togetherness and sameness are modes for Global South actors to find collective unity to resist the injustices and inequalities of the LIO.

The Hobbesian problem of order has been central to international relations (IR) pedagogy. What are the political implications of this pedagogy? Giving students conceptual tools to understand world politics feels vital in this moment of anxiety about the erosion of the current international order. But some of the deepest threats to international order are rooted in a multiplicity of justice claims. IR's explanatory orientation, and the many biases underlying its anchoring concepts, limit our ability as educators to make sense of those threats in the language of the discipline. How do we teach IR, then, without socializing students into a problematic discipline that only reproduces the existing order? I propose that rather than jettison our disciplinary concepts and frames with their baked-in injustices, we can reorient our teaching about them. Drawing on history and mythology, I focus on the Westphalian myth that anchors IR's central question: Given states, how can international order be produced? I suggest another version of the myth that foregrounds how order and justice, the explanatory and the normative, are entangled all the way down. This revised Westphalian myth urges us to think of recognition of political units—a justice claim—as intrinsic to ordering decisions.

Discussions of the liberal international order, both inside and outside the academy, tend to take its necessity and desirability for granted. While its specific contours and content are left somewhat open in such debates, the idea that this international order is essential for global peace and stability is left largely unquestioned. What is more, the potential loss or end of this order is often taken to mean a return to anarchy, chaos, and disorder. In this essay, I question the presumed necessity and desirability of the liberal international order that most discussions of it seem to share. By rethinking the international order as processual, emergent, and grounded in the social and political contexts that shape its constitution and operation, I suggest that fears about the crisis of international order are less about international order itself and more about the loss of a specific order. This specific order, I argue, constituted in part through processes of racialization, is not so much a rules-based order of sovereign equality but rather an international order of White sovereignty that secures the domination and rule of some over others, of Whiteness over non-Whiteness. Recognizing the role of White sovereignty in the contemporary international order points toward a need to take seriously calls for abolition. Rather than signifying a return to chaos and disorder, the prospect and promise of abolition represents a call to break free from the constraints of the present order and reach into an as-yet-unimaginable future.

This essay focuses on the concept of “international order” and its uses and misuses. It argues that the concept of “order” should not be conflated with the concept of a “system,” and that it makes more sense to speak of world order than international order because the former accommodates political units beyond the nation-state. Drawing on my recent book Before the West (2022) I show how the concept of “world order” travels better in history and also speculate about how it can help us think about the future as well.

The discourse of tragedy has significant value in a military context, reminding us of the temptations of hubris, the prevalence of moral dilemmas, and the inescapable limits of foresight. Today, however, this discourse is drawn upon too heavily. Within the tragicized politics of nuclear and drone violence, foreseeable and solvable problems are reconceptualized as intractable dilemmas, and morally accountable agents are reframed as powerless observers. The tragedy discourse, when wrongly applied by policymakers and the media, indulges the very hubris the tragic recognition is intended to caution against. This article clarifies the limits of “tragedy” in the context of military violence and argues for a renewed focus on political responsibility.