Criticized for its theoretical inertia before the end of the Cold War, the discipline of International Relations has largely escaped similar blame with regard to 9/11. This time around, so the article argues, the discipline tried consciously to keep doing business as usual in the three communities that define the discipline: the learning community in the daily discussions within universities, the academic community and its state of research, and the epistemic community with its place in the public political debate. The universities did respond; relevant research has been going on, although sometimes under other labels and at the margins of the mainstream; and the political resistance against the assumption of a profound change was a way to keep some distance and open rational space in an often very emotional or ideological debate. Yet, there is not one discipline. The strategy of stemming the tide was neither general, nor did it always work. Indeed, the debate about 9/11 shows the extent to which » the « discipline is still defined by the concerns of the major countries.