Now, Kitty, let's consider who it was that dreamed it all. This is a serious question . . . [I]t must have been either me or the Red King. He was part of my dream, of course — but then I was part of his dream . . .

‘International studies’ and ‘international relations’, in all their various -isms and neo-isms, are part of a collusive dream in which academics imagine that they are rationalizing the behaviour of those who imagine that they are doing what academics seem to be rationalizing.