The outcome of the Great War shook to its foundations the idea of the Westphalian state, which existed primarily for itself and its own security. This chapter explores three alternatives to the Westphalian state, at the intersection of political and intellectual history. A ’Wilsonian imperium’ posited a world governed by a transnational community of liberal citizens that would regulate state behaviour. The state would remain an institutionalised locus of sovereignty, but all states would be guided by a common moral compass. At first, a ’Bolshevik imperium’ envisaged world revolution, which eventually would be able to dispense with the Westphalian state altogether. However, in the process of winning the civil war, the Bolsheviks began to turn the former imperial Russia into a unique species of imperial state, which never wholly renounced the ideological goals of the Bolshevik imperium. The successor state appeared to resemble the Westphalian state, in its fixation of borders and security. However, it rested on new and unstable foundations – the imperative to maximise and naturalse both ethnic and historical boundaries. In complementary ways, Max Weber and Carl Schmitt opened up a space in the theory of successor state sovereignty that could be occupied by the race, or Volk. No reimagining of state sovereignty after the Great War did more to disrupt and ultimately overthrow the interwar international system.