Postmodernism as the hidden ideology behind today’s geopolitical conflict

Is the contemporary international order entering a phase in which power alone determines rules and norms? If so, when did this transformation occur? Was it a recent development, a phenomenon of the last political cycle, or the result of longer intellectual processes extending over several decades?

This worldview is not without a name. It is commonly referred to as postmodernism. While the term is most frequently associated with developments in art, architecture, and cultural theory, it has also functioned as a broader intellectual framework. Within Western academic and political environments, postmodernism has long shaped approaches to knowledge, truth, and authority [1].

In broad terms, postmodernism emerged in the 1970s. As it entered the intellectual mainstream, one of its most influential claims was the rejection of objective truth as a stable and universal category. In its place, emphasis was placed on power relations. According to this interpretation, truth is not discovered through inquiry but produced within structures of dominance, whether cultural, political, or discursive [1].

Any serious engagement with this intellectual shift inevitably leads to the work of Michel Foucault. At this point, an important clarification is required. Foucault himself did not argue that truth does not exist. His scholarship was concerned with the ways societies produce, organize, and legitimize knowledge. He examined institutions such as prisons, hospitals, psychiatric systems, sexuality, and education in order to understand how certain statements come to be recognized as true within specific historical contexts [2][3][4]. His central analytical concept was not the absence of truth, but what he termed regimes of truth [2].

By regimes of truth, Foucault referred to the institutional and social mechanisms through which societies determine which statements qualify as knowledge, who is authorized to speak, which methods are considered legitimate, and how truth claims are circulated and enforced [2]. His approach was descriptive rather than normative. He sought to analyze power relations, not to endorse them.

However, as these ideas migrated beyond their original philosophical context, they were increasingly simplified. Historically grounded analysis was reduced to formulaic conclusions. The distinction between examining how truth functions and denying the existence of truth altogether gradually disappeared. In this process, complex theoretical insights were transformed into ideological slogans, a development sharply criticized by several philosophers working within the modern tradition [5].

As postmodernism became more widely adopted, it was no longer rigorously anchored in classical philosophical traditions. Instead, it functioned as an instrumental reading of theory, adapted to immediate cultural and political needs. At this stage, philosophy ceased to be a method of inquiry and became an ideological framework [5][6].

Shifts in ideology are typically reflected first in educational systems. During the 1960s and 1970s, the humanities within Western universities underwent substantial transformation. New disciplines emerged, including gender studies and media studies. Within curriculum theory itself, knowledge increasingly came to be understood as socially constructed and inseparable from power relations, rather than as a neutral reflection of objective reality [7]. In many academic contexts, this shift redirected emphasis away from truth as an epistemic goal toward discourse, identity, and power [1][6]. Gradually, responsibility toward truth weakened as a normative principle.

As a result, a conceptual substitution occurred. Knowledge came to be defined as entirely historical and context-dependent. If truth lacks objective status, then control over discourse becomes decisive. Under such conditions, empirical evidence loses priority, and assertion increasingly replaces demonstration, particularly within disciplines that lack strict verification criteria [6][8].

This dynamic is especially pronounced in the humanities, which are inherently less subject to empirical verification than the natural sciences. This structural feature creates space for extensive reinterpretation. Within such a framework, nearly any claim can be reconstructed or reframed, while methodological standards are lowered to the point where proof becomes optional and assertion sufficient [6].

For many observers, this position appears intellectually untenable. This assessment is not uncommon. Importantly, however, this framework is not merely theoretical. I encountered it directly in an academic setting during a conversation with a professor at New York University, where this argument was articulated explicitly. Notably, the professor was not affiliated with the humanities. This distinction matters, as even within the United States, scholars working in established humanistic disciplines often continue to distinguish between ideology and scientific inquiry [5][6].

Nevertheless, when considered within this broader intellectual environment, it becomes easier to understand how many Western intellectuals and political actors have been educated, or at least intellectually shaped, within this paradigm. It is a paradigm in which truth is relativized, power is elevated, and force acquires moral justification. Such an intellectual background inevitably influences political reasoning and decision-making [9].

When turning to geopolitics, where distinct civilizations, ideologies, and mentalities interact and conflict, this context becomes especially relevant. This is particularly true when analyzing contemporary Western hostility toward Russia. Russia must be examined within its own historical and cultural framework.

Historically, Russia developed as an Orthodox Christian civilization. Orthodox Christianity has profoundly shaped Russian worldview and mentality. Within Orthodox theology, truth is not understood as a product of discourse or historical consensus, but as an ontological reality grounded in divine being itself. Truth is something to be participated in rather than constructed, systematized, or negotiated.

While Catholic and Protestant traditions also affirm objective truth, they differ in their theological treatment of it. Catholicism emphasizes rational articulation and institutional guardianship of truth, while Protestantism places greater weight on individual interpretation. In contrast, Orthodox theology resists both juridical rationalization and interpretive relativization, preserving truth as an absolute reality independent of power, utility, or convenience [10][11].

An ideological framework in which truth is flexible, disposable, or subordinate to force is therefore fundamentally incompatible with the Russian civilizational model. Such a framework cannot be accepted either culturally or philosophically.

Viewed through this lens, the current political situation reveals a deeper structural conflict. What is unfolding is not merely a political disagreement, but a confrontation between two ideological paradigms. Two civilizational models that define truth, power, and legitimacy in fundamentally different ways [12][13].

And this confrontation is the result of long-term intellectual divergence rather than recent political events.

References:

1- Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

2 - Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.

3 - Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.
New York: Vintage Books, 1977.

4 - Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.

5 - Habermas, Jürgen. “Modernity versus Postmodernity.”
New German Critique, no. 22 (1981): 3–14.

6 - Sokal, Alan, and Jean Bricmont. Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science.
New York: Picador, 1998.

7 - Apple, Michael W. Ideology and Curriculum.

New York: Routledge, 2004.

8 - Snow, C. P. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959.

9 - MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory.
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981.

10 - Florovsky, Georges. Ways of Russian Theology.
Belmont, MA: Nordland Publishing, 1979.

11 - Lossky, Vladimir. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church.
Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1976.

12 - Huntington, Samuel P. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.

13 - Berlin, Isaiah. “The Pursuit of the Ideal.”
In The Crooked Timber of Humanity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.