User:LGreg/sandbox/Approaches to Knowledge (LG seminar 2020/21)/Seminar 18/Truth/Truth in geopolitics

= Truth in Geopolitics = Geopolitics is the study of how geographical factors and power relations interact in international politics. As a methodology, geopolitics is commonly used in the study of international political events.

Truth and geopolitical events
The discussion of truth can be traced back to classical ancient Greece. It was originally stated in philosopher Aristotle’s work Metaphysics that the truth is determined in relation to the reality of the world. Thus, without the context of the world, or the “geo” aspect, the truth could not be determined. In modern international politics, the truth is seen as a tool for proving and disproving legitimacy, by both state actors and individual actors in domestic and international levels, and can have swinging effects on geopolitical events. For example, the leak of the Pentagon papers in 1971 proved the original objectives for the US and the eventual, actual scope of the Vietnam War differed from what the Johnson and Nixon administration repeatedly inform American citizens, and caused public controversy, anti-war movements and protests, and domestic lawsuits, which resulted in the eventual withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam. Illustrated by this example, the truth, or the distortion of truth, as many political philosopher notes, has the potential to invalidate or change the events and discourse of foreign policies, and destabilize political institutions.

Post-truth era geopolitics
It is widely recognized by political sociologists that the world that we currently live in is in the “post-truth era”, which points to the decline and lack of truth in global politics, and the prevalence of “alternative facts” and deception. Most attributes it to the rise of social media and how it gives unprecedented power to the “careless speech”, which is ideas and opinions spawned from a ‘free from care’ position that is not concerned with the common world and indifferent to truth, with creating confusion being its main objective. Its effects can be seen in domestic political events and discourse in both democratic or authoritative states, across the global south-north divide, and has resulted in counter efforts of ‘fact checks’ and specific education in schools on digital literacy in regard to ‘fake news’. This propagation of fake news has increased scepticism in democratic institutions in many nations. The environment of disinformation can thus destabilize democracies through empowering anti-democratic forces and lowering the public's confidence in democracy. The geopolitical implications of informational intransparency are illustrated by, for example, the collapse of Nepal's democracy in 2002, which was partly due to low transparency offered by the government.

Fictional geopolitics
However, political scholars such as Hannah Arendt has long emphasised the lack of truth, or the dominance of deception and fiction, in modern politics. They suggest that the factual truth is always in war with politics and geopolitical power play, and political propaganda, from all positions of the political spectrum, seeks to destroy individual’s oriental sense of the world and make a trade-off on truth for political gain. This represents a more pessimistic and critical view on the role of fiction in geopolitics. An alternative view establishes that fiction, or political fantasies, of geopolitics makes the political reality more tangible by evoking emotional mechanisms that produce geopolitical knowledge for individuals. Going back to current geopolitical development with this school of thought, it is suggested that the rejection of objectivity and rationality in the new mode of global politics is in line with the social constructivist view that lies and fiction becomes incorporated into the political structure, and that explains why efforts on ‘fact-checking’ often end in vain in trying to separate truth from fiction. Instead, this school of thought suggests treating fantastical fiction as a structural part of geopolitics and deconstructing its ‘impossibilities and contradictions’.