There was a time SA punched above its weight in international relations, but that effervescent legacy dwindled during the era of former president Jacob Zuma. With a new, internationalist President Cyril Ramaphosa SA is now in a position to make up some lost ground. But how and where should SA focus? A lot depends on how you imagine global politics is likely to unfold. The most obvious and most key feature of the modern era is that the period of a single, global superpower in the form of the US is fading, and in its place will be the triad: the US, China and India. More than that, the nature of “super-powerdom” is also changing. The idea of “global leadership” is embodied in a single nation is fading rapidly. If the presidency of Donald Trump has demonstrated anything, it’s that in a straight battle between the best interests of the globe as a whole and the US in particular, the answer will be “America first”. Trump has willingly jettisoned the notion of the US as a “force for good” ...

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