SA’s Potemkin foreign policy needs fundamental overhaul

On paper, SA has an imposing foreign policy, covering most of the issues and objectives. However, in many ways it is a virtual “Potemkin" foreign policy, an impressive façade given the fact that few of the stated goals and objectives ever materialise.

This is a pity — an opportunity lost given that after the demise of apartheid the country had the unique opportunity to embark on a new foreign policy doing justice to its key national interests and promoting its status and role in international politics.

Unfortunately, it has squandered the global goodwill of 1994, allowing party interests and anachronistic ideology to overrule national interests. What we got instead is a neither fish nor fowl foreign policy; a policy without thrust or vision, as reflected in the country‘s steady decline in the global and regional pecking order, its greatly diminished international image and role, loss of respect and economic decline.

Former president Nelson Mandela’s wise counsel was that “SA needs to establish a role for itself in the yet undefined world order”. However, this advice was way beyond our diplomats’ reach and competence. Not that they did not try, particularly in making Africa, multilateralism and economic diplomacy the centrepieces of foreign policy. But they failed badly in all of these areas, and Mandela’s quest for international moral rectitude was simply dumped after he left.

An effective knowledge-based foreign policy requires thorough understanding of the history, dynamics and directions of change of global foreign relations. Realpolitik, in other words. However, in SA’s case, ideology, diplomatic incompetence and propaganda have replaced realpolitik, leading to strategic misjudgment of the dynamic balance of forces at play in international politics.

Undaunted by strategic incompetence, SA blithely persists in pursuing a foreign policy based on faulty strategies: first, its misunderstanding of multilateralism, second, the inevitability of the US’s s decline and replacement by China, and third phoney neutralism.

Historically, various global orders have existed; for example, a multipolar system during the 19th century, a bipolar system from the end of the World War 2 until the fall of the Berlin wall — the Cold War, dominated by the US and the Soviet Union — and for the past two decades, a unipolar system where international relations were dominated by the US.

International politics and the global order have always been dominated by the great powers. Eminent international relations scholar Kenneth Waltz refers to the hierarchy of capabilities among states in the international system. The distribution of capabilities is unevenly distributed among the countries of the world at any given period. Countries with a preponderance of power are few, but dominate international politics and particularly the outcomes of interstate wars.

The number of great powers describes the nature of the world order: bipolar (two great powers); unipolar (one); and multipolar (three or more). Renowned experts of power politics like Hans Morgenthau and Waltz — supported by historical evidence, particularly from the 19th century — clearly defined multipolarity as a system dominated by three or more great powers with roughly similar capabilities. We agree with professors Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth that the notion of a multipolar system is largely a myth (see their article in the May/June 2023 issue of Foreign Affairs).

While debunking the US’s global role to justify alignment with Russia and China, Pretoria bets on the inevitable emergence of a new “multilateral" international order replacing the US-dominated unipolar system, and signs up as captive ally of China and Russia. According to this faulty analysis, several new great powers will compete with the US for control of the international order. These include the rise of revisionist states such as China and Russia; the new­found prominent states from the Global South such as India and Brazil; and the global political and economic influence of the EU.

However, empirical evidence of the distribution of economic power in the world indicates that the US is, by some margin, still the dominant power (although applied unevenly). Therefore, as repeatedly warned by various economic experts and business leaders, local and abroad, association with the US/West will benefit SA's national interest best. This fact is simply dismissed by the ANC, which prefers association with Russia/China, following narrow party interests.

SA’s dilemma is that the corrupt and self-serving ANC government no longer represents SA’s national interest. Revisionist Russia and China, both with high levels of domestic corruption, would far rather deal with another corrupt government like the ANC than the more complex national interest of a democratic society. As the headline on columnist Peter Bruce's recent Business Day column put it: “Ramaphosa has lost the West, all because Putin is paying ANC salaries.

Reviewing the distribution of capabilities (hard and soft power) and notable military, cyber and economic power in the current world order, it is patently clear that the essentials necessary for the operation of a multipolar system are absent from the current international status quo — the current world order is still essentially unipolar.

The US and China are undoubtedly the most powerful countries in the world. Below them, by some distance, are France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia and the UK. As far as military power is concerned, according to the Peterson Foundation US military spending ($877bn in 2022) exceeds the combined military budgets of the next nine states. In order of budget size these are China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, UK, Germany, France, South Korea, Japan and Ukraine. Brooks and Wohlforth identify 13 categories that underpin military capability. In all of these categories US capability exceeds that of China by a large margin.

The global economic dominance of the US is supported by World Bank 2022 data: US GDP $23.315-trillion versus $17.734-trillion for China, despite the 17-fold growth of Chinese GDP since 1994. The gap for GDP per capita is even more pronounced: US $70,248 and China $12,556. The dollar also remains the world’s reserve currency. Foreign exchange reserves are dominated by the US (58%) while the Chinese renminbi contributed only 3%.

Unmistakably, the war in Ukraine has been the harbinger of radical changes in international politics. Judging by its track record, it is highly doubtful whether SA has the diplomatic nous and wherewithal to deal with these changes. Indeed, its deplorable response to Russia's brutal and illegal war against Ukraine is an early warning of what may yet follow. Although Pretoria pleads non-alignment, based on the anachronistic discredited Bandung model, it compromised its legitimacy as a roleplayer by conducting joint military manoeuvres with Russia and China, allegedly supplying arms to the Kremlin, and kowtowing to President Vladimir Putin even though he is charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Court. SA's offer to mediate in the war has predictably come to nothing.

So, what are SA's foreign policy options given the global and domestic constraints on its choice to promote national interests? Simply muddling through with “business as usual" amounts to self-destruction. The country deserves far better, particularly in the light of successive failures and fundamental changes in international relations. Redesigning, rearticulation and retooling our costly foreign policy apparatus is urgent and imperative.

As French diplomat Jules Cambon once remarked: “Countries will always have ambassadors and ministers; the question is whether they will have diplomats." Should our defence minister be allowed to be a key foreign policymaker? Is ours, therefore, a case of diplomacy without diplomats? Can the country afford such a waste, costing the taxpayer a whopping R10bn per annum to maintain 125 missions in 108 countries?

In the light of the West’s undoubted economic and military prowess, getting on its wrong side spells disaster for SA’s national interests, as presaged by the present spat over our relations with Russia. At the same time though, given the geo-strategic realities, embracing the West has a downside as it would disempower and isolate the country from the global South. To deal with this thorny issue SA needs crafty diplomacy, which is hopelessly absent at present.

Be that as it may, redesigning and retooling SA's foreign policy in the light of fundamental changes in international relations are imperative. Phoney “non-alignment” while supporting Russia in deed was a critical strategic mistake, bearing in mind that 127 middle powers representing 45% of the world's population with 18% share of the global GDP, have managed to actually sit on the fence, seeking deals across ideological divides and following a “transactional, equidistant" approach based on pragmatism.

The Swahili prover, “When elephants fight it is the grass that suffers” is a reminder for countries like SA, with constrained capabilities, that it pays to remain clinically neutral in great power rivalries. Given the geopolitical realities, this approach remains the best path for SA to follow. Smart diplomacy means embracing neither the West nor China, and certainly not Russia. A foreign policy of pragmatic transactional equidistance is the only way to go.

• Olivier, a former  SA ambassador to Russia and Kazakhstan, is professor emeritus at the University of Pretoria. Van Wyk is professor emeritus at Kelche College of Business at Pittsburg State University in the US.