LETTER: Take on Iraq invasion misses the mark

I’m sorry to have to quarrel with highly respected former diplomat Yacoob Abba Omar, especially as I wholeheartedly agree with the main point of his recent column (“SA Should Follow Principled Approach to Ukraine War”, March 15).

The department of international relations certainly does need to address urgently what he calls its “organisational and moral morass”. Like him, I am optimistic that newly appointed director-general Zane Dangor is a good choice to lead this organisational renewal. The ministerial task team I chaired in 2019 with the mandate to explore the design and purpose of a new diplomatic academy, found myriad organisational weaknesses and skills gaps that were undermining SA’s diplomacy, including one of the examples Abba Omar cites — the “flood” of political appointees to ambassadorial positions, not least because it erodes morale among career diplomats.

My quibble relates to his reference to my March 2 column in the Mail & Guardian, which he appears to have misunderstood. While it is true that I suggested, as he quotes, that “sometimes you just need to be on the right side of history as a matter of principle, regardless of pragmatic considerations”, the rest of my column was actually a defence of the department’s stance in the UN on Ukraine, albeit an admittedly carefully worded and nuanced, if not sceptical, one.

Graciously, the senior departmental officials with whom I engaged before and after the piece recognised it to be a fair and balanced assessment. Furthermore, in no way would “being on the right side of history” have led SA, as Abba Omar suggests, to “joining” the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. On the contrary, recognising the illegality of that war, while defending the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq, as SA did, put it on the right side of history.

The more intriguing question that emerges now is why SA would depart from a position of nonalignment in the case of Iraq but not in the case of Ukraine? Pretoria has stated explicitly that Ukraine’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity should be respected, but has not condemned Russia in the same way that it condemned the US nearly 20 years ago.

Again, I would argue that on the basis of a careful evaluation of geopolitics the difference in approach is justified. Discerning whether, and on what basis, SA’s interests would vindicate such “nonalignment” now is an even more interesting assignment, not least because if — as Abba Omar concludes — a principled approach to foreign policy should always lead Pretoria to “resist arrogant unilateralism”, do the facts on the ground not clearly indicate that it is Vladimir Putin who is the arrogant — as well as belligerent — unilateralist who is defying the rules-based multilateral order?

Prof Richard Calland
Department of public law, UCT

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