Something is happening in world politics that existing frameworks struggle to name. The vocabulary of international relations — great power competition, multipolarity, shifting alliances — captures part of it, but leaves something essential unspoken. What is at stake in the current moment is not merely the redistribution of material capabilities or the renegotiation of institutional arrangements. It is something deeper: a crisis in the shared frameworks of meaning that have made international life intelligible.

 

       This newsletter begins from a premise that may seem counterintuitive: that the most important dimension of contemporary geopolitics is ontological. By this is meant not merely that ideas matter alongside material forces — a claim now commonplace in international relations scholarship — but that the fundamental categories through which states understand themselves, their security, and their place in history are themselves in flux. The ground is shifting beneath the feet of world order.

 

       Geopolitics and Ontology exists to explore this terrain. It offers a space for developing, testing, and refining an analytical framework that takes seriously the existential dimensions of international politics — not as a replacement for material and institutional analysis, but as a necessary complement to it. The aim is scholarly conversation: rigorous engagement with the burning questions of world order, pursued in dialogue with interlocutors who share the conviction that something important is being missed.