Tag: russia

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Toward a foreign policy based on the national interest

ANTHONY BUTLER: Ramaphosa follows Mbeki’s playbook over foreign policy

First published in Business Day and BusinessLive

14 March 2025

Though neither man will appreciate the comparison, President Cyril Ramaphosa has started to resemble his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, at least when it comes to foreign policy.

International relations should be shaped by strategic interests rather than by the president’s personal predilections. Lord Palmerston famously observed that “we have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow”.  

Nelson Mandela did not accept this view, at least not in the idealistic article entitled “SA’s future foreign policy” that appeared under his name in the prominent journal Foreign Affairs in 1993. It emphasised that human rights would be “the light that guides our foreign affairs” and that democracy would be another touchstone.

Mandela, it transpires, had no involvement in the writing of the article, and Mbeki, who vetted it as the exiled ANC’s most accomplished diplomat, thought the human rights emphasis was dangerous. 

Mandela pushed ahead with the idealistic approach, which bolstered his moral stature even as it conflicted with the country’s economic and security interests. His condemnation of human rights abuses in Nigeria, and his push for its suspension from the Commonwealth, soured relationships across the continent.

Meanwhile, Mandela forgot human rights when historical solidarity with Cuba, North Korea and Libya was at stake. When Indonesia’s president Suharto or Taiwan offered big bundles of cash to fill the ANC’s perpetual budget hole, Mandela’s amnesia got even worse. 

Mbeki, in contrast, anchored foreign relations more securely in domestic objectives, pursuing a foreign policy of redress and development and seeking to be a predictable partner for the Global North. His focus on South-South co-operation and the African agenda, through initiatives such as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development and AU, was intended to integrate Africa into the global economy to the benefit of SA citizens. His alliances with Brazil and India amplified the collective voice of emerging democracies. 

OR Tambo’s heir also expressed sympathy for liberation movement friends and resisted Western interference. But his most controversial UN votes were undertaken to maintain support for SA’s growing ambitions in global forums, such as the UN Security Council, and so ultimately to advance the national interest and the closely related interests of the African continent. 

Mbeki cautioned about the dangers of African countries falling into a colonial relationship with China, noting that exporting raw materials to China while importing Chinese manufactured goods would leave Africa condemned to underdevelopment. He held the banana republic with rockets to the East at arms’ length, and maintained civil relations with the more advanced banana republic to the West.

Jacob Zuma immediately accepted China’s invitation to join the four-member “Bric” (Brazil, Russia, India, China) group of fast-growing (soon to be quite slow-growing) countries. A China-dominated Brics was henceforth prioritised over partners who still accounted for most of SA’s trade and investment, and Russia inexplicably emerged as Zuma’s special friend.

The Gupta family’s use of the department of international relations & co-operation as a travel agent, and the deployment of incompetent and crooked politicians to important diplomatic postings, further undermined the use of foreign policy to serve domestic interests. 

Under Cyril Ramaphosa there has been an effort to rebuild SA’s international image, and to deploy diplomacy to address the domestic economic crisis. A neutral stance on the Russia-Ukraine war has finally crystallised, and the case against Israel at the International Court of Justice is now carefully framed in terms of international law and not just emotional solidarity.

For the first time since Mbeki’s departure it is possible to imagine there is an underlying, if implicit, foreign policy strategy at play, based upon the national interest, even if it has not been straightforward in today’s world to realise its objectives. 

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

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SA foreign policy in the time of Trump

ANTHONY BUTLER: SA has chance to rethink foreign policy amid Trump fall out

There is an opportunity to correct the disjuncture between diplomatic priorities and economic interests

First published in BusinessLive and Business Day

28 February 2025

The international relations turmoil wrought by the new Donald Trump administration has brought an opportunity to rethink SA foreign policy.

Trump’s immediate bugbears include SA’s pursuit of the International Court of Justice case against Israel, membership of Brics, anti-Western rhetoric and perceived alignment with Russia, China and Iran. There are also concerns about BEE and expropriation policies, in keeping with the white supremacist leanings of the administration’s intellectual gurus and oligarchs. 

SA will probably distance itself from anti-American rhetoric and present its relations with Russia and China in a less adversarial way, but removal from the African Growth & Opportunity Act and diplomatic boycotts are likely whatever steps the country takes. We can also expect frustration from the Financial Action Task Force and international financial institutions in which the US has a voice. 

While SA’s curious relationship with Russia is presumably of less long-term concern to the US than its relationship with China — and what the US sees as Beijing’s Brics front — Pretoria has long needed clarity about its longer-term goals. Do we want to overturn the existing international system and establish China at its helm, or merely create a more equitable version of the current global system? 

While the naive democracy and human rights idealism of the Mandela period is long gone, the complete abandonment of these values cannot be in SA’s longer-term interests. Since Zuma rose to the Union Buildings, foreign policy has adopted an increasingly binary character.

“Good” states are those that “understand” Western exploitation and the traumas of colonialism, regardless of their human rights record or the character of their political system. “Bad” states, exemplified by the US and the former colonial powers, are defined by their history and lumped together irrespective of their actions. SA now depends on an unthinking enmity with the Global North as a whole, to sustain its sense of stability and its confidence in its own identity. 

Trump’s assault on former US allies in Europe includes threats of swingeing tariffs, the collapse of the Nato alliance on which postwar European security has rested, and the promotion of far- right parties in European elections. This week the US refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the UN, instead voting with authoritarian apologists such as North Korea and Belarus.

This presages a sustained assault on the capacity of the EU — the world’s largest trading bloc — to establish global norms around digital competition, AI, privacy and climate regulation that are inconvenient to American corporations. 

Conflict between the US and Europe presents an opportunity to rethink SA’s binary model of good and bad states, and to correct the striking disjuncture between SA’s diplomatic priorities and its economic interests. European countries are by far the biggest investors in SA: taken together, the UK, Netherlands, Germany and Belgium account for more than 70% of foreign direct investment stock in SA.

The US accounts for just 5% and China less than 4%. The EU is SA’s biggest trading partner by far, with SA exports to the EU, many of them sophisticated goods and services, more than double exports to the US or to China. 

It may not be an easy time to re-engage with European countries, with them being preoccupied with dealing with Russia and likely to sacrifice engagement with the South to the new priority of defence spending. Far-right parties may also continue to strengthen across the continent, bringing more racial populism and hostility to countries in the south.

But this is just a possible future. Europe remains SA’s most important economic partner, shares democratic and human rights values, and remains — when contrasted with the Trump administration at least — a promoter of stability, development and enlightened values. 

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.