The state remains at the centre of the war-sovereignty dialectic, but it can be de-centred. The role of the state as the paradigmatic model of the organisation and exercise of power persists regardless of reconfigurations of the concept of sovereignty (jurisdictional gridlock, re-evaluation of the concept’s definition by states) or the relativisation of the state monopoly over regalian activities (privatisation in security, outsourcing in defence). Recent case law produced by the French Constitutional Council and Council of State, as well as the Court of Justice of the European Union, corroborates this fact. The state can nonetheless be relativised within this dialectic: since war, as a social activity, is not exclusive to the state, one can question the state’s quality of sovereignty in the hypothetical scenario of a renunciation of war. While such a perspective may seem absurd for jurists, it can be recognised as valid if one acknowledges that sovereignty is not only a quality but also a quantity. Renouncing war does not necessarily undermine the sovereignty of the state. It is rather a question of the state modulating its own power in this matter. This article builds on such a relativisation in order to reconsider the war-sovereignty dialectic without the state.