Abstract International orders need shared knowledge and understandings: constructivist scholarship has established this much. Yet orders depend equally on what remains systematically unknown. This article argues that ignorance-production practices—what Peter Galison calls ‘antiepistemology’—are vital for making order. Building on the sociology of ignorance, I approach ignorance not as an aberration but as a productive social force constitutive of international order. Ignorance functions through two key pathways: it enables the intelligibility of ordering norms, and it manages the dissonance between proclaimed norms and actual behaviour. All international orders require an antiepistemology, yet they deploy distinct combinations of ignorance-production practices: positive (e.g., the fabrication of falsehoods), negative (e.g., the dismissal of uncomfortable knowledge), and subtle, grey-area practices (e.g., strategic ambiguity). Examining how the liberal international order, the China order and the ‘Make America Great Again’ order sustain their respective claims about human rights, sovereignty and ethnonationalist civilizationism reveals how proponents of each vision employ different ignorance regimes to preserve coherence in domains central to their legitimacy. The stakes of this analysis extend beyond theoretical reframing: artificial intelligence threatens to disrupt existing antiepistemologies by collapsing the distinction between knowledge and ignorance altogether. Recognizing ignorance as constitutive of order reframes our understanding of the current moment and the future possibilities for world politics.

Abstract Recent US/Israeli attacks on Iran and retaliations by Tehran have created new uncertainties for the future of the Middle East, and for the fate of the US 20-Point Plan for Gaza. These disruptions are occurring as the United Nations, a longstanding actor in the region, is retreating from its historic peace and security role. The Plan reflects a compelling logic of confluent regional interests and incentives, and also presents shortcomings, from which the UN can take a cue. With the US again a direct belligerent in the region, the space for US-led mediation efforts may become more restricted. The UN's role as a facilitator of long-term peace and stability may again become more relevant. Current mandate reviews and an upcoming change in leadership present the UN with an opportunity to re-engage. If the UN is to do so, the next Secretary General should consider moving along three related tracks: 1) Initiate high-level consultations with regional partners to gauge demand for its services and reassess its regional role; 2) Review its organisational footprint to establish a whole-of-region engagement; 3) Propose a structured, region-wide framework for dialogue and long-term cooperation in areas of collective security, economic, scientific and societal interest.

Abstract This article examines the United States' strategic reorientation toward the ‘Indo-Pacific’, arguing that it signifies a deliberate geopolitical recalibration. Anchored in neo-classical realism's structure–agency synthesis, this recalibration fuses classical geopolitical logic with adaptive state agency to counterbalance China's systemic rise and manage Eurasia's contested power dynamics. This article contends that the US Indo-Pacific strategy reflects a ‘back to the future’ approach, reinvigorating Nicholas Spykman's ‘rimland’ thesis, which underscores the importance of controlling Eurasian coastal peripheries. This historical logic is adapted for the contemporary multipolar context, underpinned by reconfigured US-led alliance networks and sophisticated technology–economic statecraft. Through a geopolitical genealogy of the Indo-Pacific concept and an analysis of US strategic practices, this article explores how Washington endeavours to reconcile its relative decline with its aspirations for continued primacy by leveraging Eurasia as a decisive theatre for strategic competition. By bridging the gap between enduring geopolitical structures and dynamic strategic agency, this article proposes neo-classical geopolitics as a hybrid analytical framework, contributing to scholarly debates on the US–China competition, spatial re-territorialization and the durability of the US-led international order.

Abstract This article seeks to enrich understanding of Amitav Acharya's formulation of the multiplex world order in two novel ways. First, it recentres violent extremist actors as being among the architects of such multiplexity and, second, it highlights their contribution to multiplexity's temporal pluralism. The article makes a theoretical contribution in conceptualizing temporalities as a defining feature of the multiplex's complexity and diversity; a methodological contribution in conceptualizing timelines as a framework to study the temporal element of extremist politics; and an empirical contribution through an original and comparative reading of the fictions, manifestos and newsletters of Islamic State and a selection of white power terrorists. The reading focuses on three elements: crisis discourse, accelerationist logic and millenarian visions. As meta-narratives of world political time, extremist timelines not only shed light on the world-views of their purveyors but also the phenomenological quality of their politics. Besides enriching and endangering its diversity and complexity, these radical timelines also historicize the multiplex as emergent within a collective mood of alienation, apocalyptic urgency and crisis.

Abstract The concept of multiplexity describes an emerging world order in which non-western powers play an increasingly important role and US-centred western dominance is waning. Given the centrality of ‘the West’ to economic globalization since the Second World War, the geoeconomic turn and shift towards more nationally-oriented economic strategies in the 2010s and early 2020s could be considered a development that further accelerates the emergence of a less globalized and less western-centric world order. This article empirically re-examines these trends from an international political economy perspective. At odds with the deglobalization thesis, our assessment shows that across the spheres of trade, production and finance, western-led globalization continues to thrive. In terms of a redistribution of power, we find relative shifts in global economic power away from the United States—and the West more broadly—to be mostly restricted to international trade and largely concentrated towards China, whereas the West's structural power over global production and finance remains formidable. At the same time, China is rapidly catching up in some critical technologies, which in turn might account for the West's recent attempts to constrain China in its technological ambitions. From this perspective, we propose that the hidden purpose of the West's deglobalization agenda might not be a retreat from globalization, but an attempt to push back against and exclude potential rivals from the system. Hence, rather than accelerating, the geoeconomic turn may in fact be aimed at preventing a transition towards a more multiplex order.

Balancing pressures: the politics of governing the European economy. By Fabio Franchino and Camilla Mariotto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2025. 274pp. £90.00. Isbn978 1 00959 581 0. Available as e-book.Crisis cycle: challenges, evolution, and future of the euro. By John H Cochrane, Luis Garicano and Klaus Masuch. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2025. 328pp. £30.00. Isbn978 0 69127 160 6. Available as e-book.