Critically engaging with Schmitt's notion of 'nomos' through Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy we theorise on the ocean as a desiring-machine whose flows have been systematically repressed into emotionally charged discourses of race and sovereignty.

We map three historical phases of IR, showing how the ocean has been successively 'sovereigntised', 'nuclearised', and 'securitised' , through land-centred notions of power, security, and order