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Ukrainian tanks sit at a factory in the eastern city of Kharkiv on February 15. Competing interpretations of the Ukraine crisis and its driving factors are adding to the split between the United States and Russia. Photo: EPA-EFE
Opinion
Nicholas Ross Smith
Nicholas Ross Smith

How competing realities over Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific are muddying the geopolitical waters

  • While geopolitical tensions are rising in well-known hotspots, the fiercest competition is over more abstract notions of truth and reality
  • The assertion of alternative realities has been front and centre in recent interactions between the US, Russia and China, creating even greater confusion
Nicholas Ross Smith
Nicholas Ross Smith
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Much is being made of the changing international landscape and the instability this is breeding. Indeed, it is concerning that the United States and Russia are clashing over Ukraine and the US and China are clashing over the Indo-Pacific region.
Furthermore, the threat of a Sino-Russian united front against the US and its allies has left some people fearing that World War III is starting. However, despite some worrying trends, the US-Russia and US-China relationships are still mediated by the existence of nuclear weapons, trade and financial interdependence and, for now, open bilateral and multilateral channels.

Thus, while the changing international landscape is creating regional headaches, the threat of large-scale war remains remote for now. Conflict and competition are undoubtedly increasing in these relationships, but this is at its fiercest at a more abstract level than traditional security dilemmas: truth and reality.

International relations has always been a complex web of different levels, actors and ideologies. Even so, it has arguably become much more complex since the advent of cyberspace as a key realm of human affairs.

Rather than liberate people, as technological utopians had hoped, cyberspace has merely increased the “sea of irrelevance” to the point where people are less certain what is true or real. Truth and reality are more contestable than ever, and this also seems to be the case with international relations.

02:38

‘We’re scared’: fear and uncertainty on Ukraine’s front lines

‘We’re scared’: fear and uncertainty on Ukraine’s front lines

As the political theorist Andreas Nohr notes, the politics of truth is traditionally “the struggle at the most general level of society where the true is separated from the false and where what gets to count as truth and reality is decided”.

However, competing over truth has become more internationalised than ever before thanks to the “digital blurring of the foreign and the domestic” that cyberspace has enabled. Furthermore, the lack of clear sovereignty or territorial integrity in cyberspace means the state’s power in constituting truth is weakened and open to infiltration by foreign powers.

In the two main competitions of international relations at the moment – US-Russia and US-China – the assertion of alternative realities has been front and centre in recent interactions. In the context of the US-Russia relationship, there is significant divergence in the “reality” each side asserts, and this is clearly exposed by the ongoing Ukraine crisis.

For the US, the Ukraine crisis is a product of a belligerent Russia which does not respect the sovereignty or territorial integrity of Ukraine. In this reality, Ukraine is a free country that is choosing of its own free will to align itself with the European Union and Nato.
For Russia, the Ukraine crisis is a result of the US and its allies engineering a coup in Ukraine in 2014. In this reality, Ukraine is being used as a Trojan horse to contain Russia and help facilitate regime change in Russia, which the Kremlin believes is the ultimate aim of US action in Eastern Europe.

03:18

Ukrainians train in self-defence in face of Russian threat as Western leaders try to defuse crisis

Ukrainians train in self-defence in face of Russian threat as Western leaders try to defuse crisis
The US sees itself as a benign international actor standing up for smaller countries in the name of freedom and fairness. Russia sees itself as a persecuted country trying to protect itself in the face of Western antagonism.
Similar trends are occurring in the US-China relationship, and this has accelerated during the Covid-19 pandemic.
For the US, China is an increasingly untrustworthy country that harbours a desire to assert its dominance regionally and globally. The US sees itself as having given China ample opportunity to prove itself as a reliable partner but has now reluctantly accepted that it has failed.

For China, the US has unfairly sought to contain China’s rise despite Beijing’s insistence that its rise is peaceful. In this reality, the US is rallying an anti-China bloc and seeks to humiliate China, which sees itself as merely wanting to foster a fairer, more balanced international political environment.

Into the grey zone: how the US could change the game with China and Russia

In both relationships, it is clear that these alternative realities are hard to reconcile as they simply cannot both be true. The fear in Western countries is that the more authoritarian Russia and China have an advantage in this ontological competition for three reasons.

First, Russia and China are considered more adept at information warfare than Western countries. Second, Russia and China are seen as having stronger control of their domestic settings than Western countries. Third, Russia and China are now seen as increasingly converging their realities to challenge the West.

Some have advocated for the US and its allies to engage head to head with Russia and China in this information war. In recent weeks, it seems Washington and its allies have heeded this call as they have moved to counteract Russia’s misinformation.

On January 22, Britain’s Foreign Office publicly warned of an imminent Russian plot to overthrow the Ukrainian government and install a pro-Russian one. Earlier this month, the US publicly released information about a Russian plot to initiate a false flag attack in Ukraine that would be used as an excuse to invade Ukraine. US intelligence sources are also giving rolling updates on when Russia plans to invade Ukraine.

The problem with fighting information wars in this way is that it risks undermining US credibility as an arbiter of truth. It also risks inflating the perceived threat of Russia and China, whose success in waging information wars against the West is mixed.

Nevertheless, international relations is experiencing its post-truth moment. How this could alter the nature of the key relationships of international politics moving forward should be concerning for us all.

Nicholas Ross Smith is an adjunct fellow at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand

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