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MONDAY | MAR 30, 2026

Reality TV geopolitics: The new arms race

T HEY say that only through war and death does great evolution occur. If that is true, humanity must be evolving at the speed of a caffeinated cheetah right now. From the dawn of time, the narrative has been simple –

We see leaders, usually of the self-proclaimed ‘supreme’ variety, who decide to go on a witch hunt against entire nations. And we, the global

The war is being fought with numbers – drones controlled by code, financial systems hacked by ghost accounts and influence campaigns optimised by engagement algorithms. It is a terrible, horrifying spectacle but if you squint through the smoke, there is a darkly comedic irony. You would have realised the superpowers spending trillions on stealth bombers only to be undone by a kid with a laptop and a grudge. This brings us to the ancient adage: “All’s fair in love and war.” Where did this come from? I like to imagine it was coined by a caveman. Og was trying to win the affections of Grugina by bringing her the finest saber-toothed tiger pelts, only to have his neighbour, Thag, steal her by simply being taller. Thag, having won the “love” portion, then proceeded to steal Og’s cave. Og, standing on the rocky beach with nothing but a broken spear, presumably shrugged and said: “Well, all’s fair in love and war.” It is an adage born of bitter experience, a recognition that expecting a referee to show up in the middle of a romantic entanglement or a territorial dispute is a fool’s errand. Yet, here we are, a millennia later, watching that adage play out on a geopolitical scale. And we are doing

despair gets too heavy to carry – is in the absurdity. We live in an age where the most complex problems in human history are being managed by people who struggle to manage their own Twitter feeds. We are told to trust them with nuclear codes, yet they act like they cannot be trusted with a TV remote. And when they open their mouths to explain their latest masterstroke, you can practically hear the soft-serve machine of falsehood whirring in the background. The evolution continues – war is now math, power is now data and leadership? Leadership seems to be devolving into a reality TV show where the winner is simply the one who is willing to say the most outrageous thing while looking sternly into a camera, blatantly. So, as the numbers fly and the drones buzz, we cling to the old adage: “All’s fair in love and war”. But maybe, just maybe, there is still room for a little common sense. Until then, we watch, we wince and we pray! Dr Bhavani Krishna Iyer holds a doctorate in English literature. Her professional background encompasses teaching, journalism and public relations. She is currently pursuing a second master’s degree in

audience, can only watch in horror. – RE U TER SP I C

where the strong crushed the weak and the fittest survived, usually defined as the guy with the biggest club and the least amount of hesitation to use it. But somewhere along the way, we swapped the club for a calculator. Welcome to the new world order. It turns out, the “fittest” no longer means the one who can do the most pull-ups; it means the one who can do the most differential equations. If you look at the current theatre in West Asia – where that sprawling, tragic chessboard we can’t stop staring at – the old superpowers are finding themselves outmanoeuvred by folks who apparently skipped the lesson on “How to Build a Navy” but aced “Algorithmic Trading for Dummies”. We are watching the world’s mightiest militaries being made to look like bewildered elephants trying to stomp out a swarm of quantum powered mosquitoes. It is no longer about who has the most aircraft carriers; it is about who has the best software update.

understands that being the leader is not about being the loudest guy in the room, rather, it is about being the one who knows when to stop talking. But instead, we keep getting the self-centred, lowly-thinking individual – the kind of leader who lies like eating ice cream without qualms, regrets or shame. A scoop of fabrication for breakfast, a second helping of revisionist history after lunch and for dessert, a triple-decker fantasy sprinkled with delusions of grandeur. When we end up with a head of state whose primary qualifications are a strong sense of grievance and narcissism , we don’t have much to say. We just sit there, popcorn in hand or hands over our faces, regretting in muted agony the choices that led to this moment. The humour in all this – and there has to be humour, otherwise the

so while governed by the very species that invented the concept of “fairness” but forgot to install it in our operating systems. We see leaders, usually of the self proclaimed “supreme” variety, who decide to go on a witch hunt against entire nations. And we, the global audience, can only watch in horror. Or, if we are being honest, we watch with the morbid fascination of someone seeing a slow-motion car crash where the driver is honking angrily at the laws of physics. It makes you wonder what exactly are we looking for in a leader? In theory, we want someone respectful, intelligent, savvy and shrewd. We want a human being with the emotional range of a functional adult and the strategic foresight to realise that launching a trade war over a mean tweet is perhaps not clever. We want someone who

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