COVID-19: uncertainty in a mood of anxiety

IR and the problem of uncertainty

At first sight, it may appear that the conception of uncertainty in IR theory is anything but limited. According the Rathbun, uncertainty is ‘arguably the most important factor in explaining the often unique dynamics of international as opposed to domestic politics’. ¹ States are under significant uncertainty in the anarchical environment of international politics as a result of the unknowability of the intentions of other states and the ever-present possibility that those intentions may change. ² However, as recently highlighted by Katzenstein and Seybert, ³ this vast uncertainty that all theoretical perspectives in international relations take note of consists almost exclusively of known unknowns. It captures situations where actors confront known contingencies with unknowable or incalculable probabilities. ⁴ While it is impossible to assign a probability to a particular form of attack from a specific adversary, there are a known set of potential adversaries and a known set of ways of attack. Thus, while interstate behavior certainly presents a greater degree of uncertainty than situations where actors confront contingencies with knowable and calculable probabilities, that is, risks, it constitutes a given space of uncertainty for state actors, and one which can ultimately be managed by known measures, that is, military deterrence. This given space of uncertainty, as physically threatening as it is, provide states with a stable cognitive environment where they can maintain their ontological security. ⁵

Social science in general makes a distinction between risk and uncertainty to capture the difference between situations with known and unknowable probabilities, respectively. However, as Mitzen and Schweller underline, this risk/uncertainty distinction elides the presence of a greater and qualitatively different form of uncertainty, which they refer to as fundamental uncertainty. ⁶ Fundamental uncertainty exists when actors are aware of the possibility that they may not be aware of all relevant contingencies. The scope of uncertainty that individuals are cognizant of expands from a bounded and collectively exhaustive ⁷ space of known contingencies into an infinite realm of possibility. Additionally, according to Mitzen and Schweller, conventional conceptions overlook that ‘the phenomenology of certainty [and uncertainty] are affective’, and that uncertainty is constituted not only by the (un)knowability of probabilities and the range of possibilities, but also by ‘how we feel about the future at present’. ⁸

The literature on anxiety in IR provides a basis to conceptualize the distinctive nature of fundamental uncertainty and to theorize how it arises. Below, by building on existentialist thought and the Heideggerian notion of mood, I will claim that fundamental uncertainty arises through a collective attunement to the world in anxiety and that COVID-19 pandemic, relative to other unanticipated developments encountered in the past decades, had a more distinctive impact on uncertainty because it was cognized within and further catalyzed such a collective attunement.

Fundamental uncertainty: Cognizance and attunement

Despite the many unknown unknowns of the human predicament, we do not live in continuous awareness of fundamental uncertainty. As Giddens has emphasized, from early childhood, we weave a protective cocoon of routines and narratives to brush aside existential questions, such as the nature of reality and the unknowability of the future. Inside this cocoon is a bounded space of uncertainty; what Giddens, drawing on Goffman refers to as ‘Umwelt’, ⁹ that is, the limited set of contingencies we actively anticipate and guard against. Encounters with adverse events included in this bounded space, as harmful as they may be, strengthen our trust in our mastery of the future. In contrast, encounters with ‘unexpected events that intrude into the Umwelt’ ¹⁰ generate existential doubt. Therefore, we seek to situate new events that we encounter within this bounded space of uncertainty in a post hoc fashion as much as possible; we cognize them as related to known contingencies that we have been aware of and anticipating.

Given this human inclination to situate the unexpected within the realm of the expected, even an encounter with a ‘truly unanticipated’ development is not by itself a sufficient trigger of fundamental uncertainty, that is, the awareness that we are not aware of all possible contingencies. Such an awareness, which constitutes the cognitive dimension of fundamental uncertainty, arises only under certain affective conditions, when unanticipated developments also affect our collective feelings about the future and in turn the ways in which we cognize the events we encounter.

I will build on the Heideggerian notion of mood ¹¹ to theorize how different collective affective orientations toward uncertainty develop. For Heidegger, moods are not emotional states that individuals have; they are fundamental ‘modes of existence that are both constitutive and disclosive of the way one finds oneself attuned to the world and of how one is faring in the world with others’. ¹² Because of the ‘ontological structure of its existence in and openness to the world (Befindlichkeit)’, Heidegger’s Dasein is ‘always in a mood’. ¹³ Applying the Heideggerian notion of moods to IR, Erik Ringmar has emphasized that they are collective and public in nature, and vary across time and space, leading individuals to be attuned to the world around them in different ways. ¹⁴

Heidegger singles out anxiety and boredom as two fundamental moods and the ‘ground of other ways of affectively experiencing the world’, but also focuses significantly on the mood of fear as the common way in which the mood of anxiety is evaded. In Heidegger, as well as more generally in existentialist thought, anxiety is rooted in the awareness of mortality – that we know that we will ultimately cease to be but not when, or how, or what comes afterward, and in that sense, it is also fundamentally linked to uncertainty and unknowability of the future. ¹⁵ The object of anxiety is not an entity within the world, it represents itself as ‘the possibility of possibility’. Conversely, fear is directed at the anticipated event and possible causes of death. Hence it is projected externally toward specific threats and concrete objects and serves to suppress and evade anxiety.

Accordingly, anxiety and fear can be conceived as two alternative public moods which constitute the affective orientation of actors toward uncertainty differently in different temporal and socio-political contexts. In the mood of fear, actors are preoccupied with the anticipation of possibilities, calculation of probabilities, causes of threat and harm, and the search for preventive and defensive measures. Encounters with unanticipated developments, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, constitute a wake-up call for the expansion of the range of anticipated contingencies and better preparation for future pandemics. Conversely, in the mood of anxiety, there is a collective feeling of not knowing the future. In it, actors are aware that they are not aware of all possibilities, hence they are disoriented and unsettled. Consequently, when encountered in the mood of anxiety, the COVID-19 pandemic would drive a fundamental uncertainty, marked by a general apprehension about the future in the form of: ‘if this, what’s next?’

In theorizing how these alternative moods arise and shape collective feelings toward uncertainty, it is important to also underscore two dynamics that ensure the prevalence and perpetuation of the mood of fear: The first is the human inclination, recognized by Giddens, to situate the unexpected within the realm of the expected, and the second is the co-constitutive and mutually reinforcing relationship between how various developments are cognized and the affective orientation developed toward them. Hence, the public mood of fear is perpetuated in encounters with what are taken to be known contingencies, in cases where the external objects of threat, danger, and risk are known. It is in turn productive of post hoc cognitive assessments of various events as known contingencies, which could be more effectively handled with better forecasting, preventive, and defensive measures.

Given these self-perpetuating dynamics, the transition from a mood of fear to one of anxiety is either likely to take place through a shock – the event is so unprecedented that it cannot be cognized as a known contingency, or through the crossing of a tipping point following a drawn-out cumulative process, where ambiguous – partly anticipated, partly not – developments wear out the human capacity to situate in a post hoc fashion the unanticipated within the realm of the anticipated. However, once the mood of anxiety arises, it also assumes a self-perpetuating quality by shaping how subsequent developments are cognized by actors. It produces post hoc cognitive assessments that the occurrence of a particular unanticipated event is proof that we are not aware of all possible contingencies, which in turn perpetuate the mood of anxiety.

Based on this conceptualization of how fundamental uncertainty arises, in the next section, I will claim that COVID-19, although not altogether an unanticipated contingency, may have catalyzed the crossing of a tipping point to a mood of anxiety.

Crossing the tipping point? COVID-19 and fundamental uncertainty

Ulrich Beck, among others, has drawn attention to the impact that repeated exposures to unforeseen and unanticipated contingencies, such as indiscriminate terror attacks, environmental hazards, and financial crises, are likely to have on collective political attitudes. ¹⁶ Certainly, in the past two decades, the world has encountered more than its fair share of such contingencies; however, their impact on our sense of uncertainty, let alone collective political attitudes, has not been immediate. Based on the conceptualization of fundamental uncertainty I proposed above, one possible reason for this may be that regardless of the degree to which the contingencies were unanticipated, they remained apprehended within a mood of fear.

For example, the events of 9/11, by far an unanticipated contingency par excellence, did initially trigger an awareness in the eyes of the US public and policymakers that they are not aware of all possibilities – an awareness that was confirmed shortly after with the anthrax scare. ¹⁷ This initial cognizance of 9/11 within a mood of anxiety, however, was quickly suppressed following its conversion into a known contingency – states harboring terrorism, emanating from a concrete object of threat, Iraq. Thereafter, the uncertainty generated by 9/11 came to be apprehended primarily in the mood of fear. ¹⁸ The subsequent terror attacks experienced in France, the UK, Germany, and Belgium triggered greater cognitive awareness in the West of such a contingency with an incalculable probability materializing possibly at any moment and anywhere. However, this ever-present possibility was attuned to primarily in the mood of fear, and thereby justified the adoption of very extensive security measures based on envisaged ‘worst imaginable’ scenarios ¹⁹ that go far and beyond the level that is warranted by the actual risk. While a comprehensive analysis is beyond the scope of this short piece, increasingly frequent disasters of unseen proportions were also cognized as known contingencies with calculable probabilities. For example, following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of 2011, anxiety remained contained within the immediate vicinity, ²⁰ and countries adopted varying responses depending on how their leaders and publics assessed the probability, with many dismissing the risk with arguments such as ‘it can’t happen here’ and ‘our plants are safest’. ²¹

It is possible that these and other occurrences in the near past – some more within the realm of known possibilities, others less so – had a cumulative effect on people’s attunement to the future, paving the way for COVID-19 to catalyze a transition to a mood of anxiety. A pandemic was not totally unanticipated, but as policymakers scrambled to contain this highly contagious virus with extraordinary measures, the mass disruption caused in economic activity and in people’s lives generated a greater awareness of not being aware of all contingencies and a collective feeling of ‘no longer knowing’ the future. ²² Unlike other partly unanticipated developments encountered in the past two decades, the mood of anxiety triggered by COVID-19 could not be as quickly suppressed and converted into one of fear.

The conceptualization of fundamental uncertainty proposed in this piece thus suggests that the effects of COVID-19 will outlast the pandemic, in that this catalyzed mood of anxiety will continue to shape attunement toward future developments. Arguably, this longer-term effect is already visible in the public reactions to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which was, by all counts, an improbable yet known contingency, but nevertheless further undermined the sense of a ‘mastery’ of future.