The World Today: The End of the Rainbow

The World Today
January 1999

The End of the Rainbow

By Graham Evans

This year sees South Africa’s second round of nation-wide democratic elections and the formal departure from government office of President Nelson Mandela. After a long lifetime in politics — he will be 81 in July — and five hectic years presiding over both the domestic transition and the new South Africa’s re-positioning in international affairs, it is perhaps time to take stock of his singular contribution and to ask what kind of advice he might offer his successors. This is especially so in foreign affairs, an area in which his government’s performance has attracted much criticism at home and abroad.

Taking George Washington’s famous valedictory to the American people in 1796 as a kind of template, what are the foreign policy principles and guidelines that Mr. Mandela might wish to proffer Mr. Thabo Mbeki and succeeding administrations? In 1993, in what could be regarded as his inaugural address to the nation, Mandela was quite clear about the guiding philosophy within which South Africa’s foreign policy would be located:

‘South Africa’s future foreign relations will be based on our belief that human rights should be the core of international relations, and we are ready to play a role in fostering peace and prosperity in the world we share with the community of nations...’ ₁

This was to be the moral reference point of South Africa’s re-entry into international relations and the touchstone by which day-to-day foreign policy decisions were to be made and implemented. After five years as an international statesman of unparalleled moral authority, charged with reinventing South Africa’s place and image in the world, what lessons has he learnt about the nature of diplomacy and international relations?

His ‘long journey’ from jail on Robben Island, to the State Presidency, to deserved retirement in the Transkei hills, has been an intellectual odyssey as well as an historical one. What might he now say about the general orientation of his small-to-middle sized developing state with strong regional interests, existing on the peripheries of world politics, into the millennium?

Further; to what extent can consideration of the American experience at the beginning of the nineteenth century serve as a rough guide for the new generation of post-apartheid decision makers in Pretoria? There are after all, some similarities between the two states. In particular, both have sought a new mode of entry into world politics and both share a firm belief in their ‘exceptional’ historical experiences and a passionate desire to project this exceptionalism to the outside world.

Washington’s Farewell Address

Washington’s speech, which arose ‘out of the concerns of an old and affectionate friend’ was delivered to Congress on September 17 1796. ₂ It was entitled The National Interest in Diplomatic Freedom and was the culmination of a series of intense debates amongst early American opinion formers on the nature of government, politics and foreign affairs. In it, he argues for an essentially ‘realist’ orientation of US foreign policy during its first vulnerable years as an independent, but relatively weak, new member of the Euro-centric international system.

Specifically, he suggests that the US should pursue policies grounded firmly in the national interest, rather than in some abstract moral or ideological ideal which by universalising its interests could prejudice the nation’s choices in the rough, tough market place of world affairs.

Thus, the main task of leadership is to determine the hierarchy of a nation’s interests; diplomacy is therefore a function of interest not a function of a specific ideal. This did not mean that the US should not ‘observe good faith and justice towards all nations’. What it did imply though was that policy makers should at all costs avoid ‘permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world’ be they like-minded states, or indeed all-embracing ideologies and ideas.

This advice from the first president of the US was clearly intended to be America’s declaration of diplomatic independence and in effect elevated its geographical isolation from the main centres of power into a conceptional framework for national policy in the western hemisphere and beyond.

As Washington put it, ‘Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course...why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation?’

Subsequently, this essentially interest-based theory became the grundnorm of US foreign policy throughout the nineteenth century until it was turned on its head by President Woodrow Wilson in his Fourteen Points in 1918.

The Wilsonian grand design, articulated when the US was a truly global power, proceeded to identify American interests with the cause of humanity as a whole And this sentiment of ‘what’s good for America is ipso facto, good for the rest of the world’ has remained a conspicuous feature of US foreign policy ever since and of course forms an essential component of the Clinton doctrine. ₃ However; the earlier foreign policy tradition still retains its vitality in American thinking and twentieth century US foreign policy has unfolded largely in terms of this Washington/Wilson theoretical axis.

The New South Africa

Unlike the US in 17%, South Africa is not a new state in world politics. But the miracle of the peaceful transition to majority rule in 1994 did confer on South Africa aspects of ‘newness’ which continue to inform discussions and debates about foreign affairs. And though there has been no series of documents such as the Federalist Papers to set the parameters of this debate, it is clear that foreign policy remains contested territory in South African political life. Whereas during the apartheid years the debate largely centred on the legitimacy of the state itself, now it revolves around its overall alms and objectives in the region and beyond.

South Africa today is a normal state only in the sense that a majority of its citizens are not offended by its politics and system of government. They may be disappointed with its post-1994 record—especially its failure to deliver social reconstruction and economic redistribution—but they are not offended. Domestically there is still a consensus that the Government of National Unity (GNU) is broadly on track to consolidate the post-apartheid revolution.

In foreign affairs, by contrast, the GNU appears to have lost its way. Foreign policy-bashing has become something of a national sport. Thus, according to Raymond Suttner, the influential chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs in the National Assembly, foreign policy is almost continuously under fire from columnists, politicians, cartoonists and others to the extent that many observers ‘doubt whether there is a foreign policy at all’. ₄

The disastrous intervention in Lesotho last September has yet again drawn attention to the government’s weak, vacillating and generally ineffectual policy. The invasion of this microstate by over six hundred South African troops backed by two hundred or so from Botswana led to the deaths of at least seventy people. It also resulted in the virtual destruction of the central commercial district of the capital Maseru, the alienation of King Letsie III and of the main opposition parties. In addition it sparked off a wave of populist anti-South African feeling not seen in the region since the days of former President P.W. Botha’s attempts at destabilisation in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

Leading an interventionist force authorised by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and ostensibly of a multilateral character, the new South Africa displayed a heavy-handedness reminiscent of the ancien régime yet without its sure grasp of the principles and purposes of intervention: that it is do-able’, it has a clearly defined political objective, a preponderance of force and an early exit strategy.

Interventions are invariably risky affairs, therefore they must always be hedged about with careful consideration of comparative risk and limited liability.

Human Rights and Intervention

This recent Lesotho fiasco, brings us to the heart of the foreign policy difficulties experienced by South Africa since 1994. As George Washington advised, one of the major problems of an ethical foreign policy is that it condemns the state to adopt the position of would-be intervener. True, South Africa may be doomed to intervene in the region’s affairs simply by virtue of its comparative size and the range of its interests, as indeed was the early US within its own neighbourhood. But these interventions should not be pre-ordained. Intervention should, as Washington reminds us, be a question of ‘choosing peace or war as our interest guided by justice shall counsel’.

A commitment to human rights or ethical principles as the baseline of policy implies an on-going expectation to intervene to prevent or ameliorate wrongdoing. In a region such as Southern Africa which is replete with quasi-states and phoney democracies this is always going to be a dangerous posture to adopt.

One could reasonably ask, if Lesotho why not Swaziland, or Zimbabwe or Zambia or Kenya? Like London buses, in sub-Saharan Africa there will always be another Lesotho, Nigeria, Rwanda, Zaire or Burundi shortly coming down the road. That’s why South Africa badly needs a theory of intervention. This, after all, is a central component of any states’ foreign policy.

It is even more pressing in Africa where there is a strong collectively authorised ideological commitment to the preservation of state sovereignty and to its corollary, the Westphalian doctrine of non-intervention. As indeed South Africa experienced to its cost when Mandela found himself isolated in his quest to impose sanctions on General Abacha’s Nigeria in 1995. The sense of African solidarity on this issue is strong.

The African diplomatic tradition, expressed through the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), is at the very least ambivalent about the ‘rights’ of intervention (Article 3 of the Charter). This is hardly surprising given its general antipathy to anything that might resemble colonial domination and given that any African state can have boundary problems if it chooses to.

South Africa, which shares more than 1,000 kilometres of porous borders with its neighbours, has to be sensitive to issues of this kind. A human rights based foreign policy, implying as it does an open-ended commitment to intervene by force of arms if necessary, is rightly regarded with suspicion in the neighbourhood.

In the final analysis at least for the putative targets, well meaning Monroe doctrines are no different in practice from the Brezhnev variety: they both involve unwelcome imperial forms of domination. Following this path, South Africa could well be accused of acting as a sub-imperial agent on contract to western interests. Hence the charge by a Nigerian government minister that ‘South Africa is a white state with a black leader’.

Intervention is a part of the fabric of international relations; it is one of the instruments employed in any competitive international system. But it is rarely a one-shot affair and it always incurs considerable costs. Policy makers should therefore approach it with caution. The state is not a humanitarian organisation and acts of this kind depend more on circumstances and political interests than on clearly formulated principles codified in advance.

Mr. Mandela in his Farewell Address must therefore devote more attention to the ‘sin that dare not speak its name’ in contemporary South Africa the national interest and how best to define and promote it. Good intentions are rarely enough: foreign policy will always involve a balance, sometimes even a trade-off, between promoting values and protecting interests.

‘A Statesman who conducts his foreign policy on firm principles is like a man who attemps to walk through a dense forest with a long pole clamped horizontally between his teeth’ ₅

— Bismark

Confusing Contradictions

To paraphrase Dean Acheson, over the past five years South Africa has lost apartheid but not yet found a role. This problem of a lack of a theory of intervention is part of a general confusion in post-apartheid South Africa as to the nature of foreign policy and the kind of role the state should adopt in the region and in the wider world.

One of the reasons for the confusing policy signals coming from Pretoria since 1994 — especially concerning relations with its neighbours, the EU over access to the Lomé trade convention, the US over solidarity with Cuba, Lybia, Syria and Iran and ambivalence over relations with Sudan, Algeria, Morocco and Indonesia — stems from the fact that South Africa’s post-apartheid and post-cold war identity is still in the process of gestation. The ANC as the ruling party has not yet resolved the basic contradictions that have bedevilled it since it came to power.

The ANC is a very complicated ideological package. Looking at the evolution of its international thinking it is possible to identify at least three distinct developmental phases: liberal internationalist (1912–1960) the socialist(Marxist — 4 Leninist (1960–1993) and neo-realist/neo-liberal (1993 onwards). ₆ While these paradigm shifts correspond to a 4 chronological progression with one phase periodically succeeding the other, usually in response to external stimuli — exile in the 1960’s, the collapse of the cold war in the early 1990’s — in policy terms they overlap. It is therefore possible to discern elements of all three traditions of thought in the formulation and conduct of the GNU’S foreign policy since 1994.

Indeed, the accusations of ad hoccery and incoherence that have been levelled at South Africa’s international relations can in pant be explained by reference to the pull-and-push effects of this competing triad of theoretical perspectives, and the lack of consensus generated by the tensions between them.

Policy is often argued out within a context of competing and mutually exclusive perspectives — for example, pragmatic demands that ties with Europe and North America ought to be paramount, set against socialist and idealist demands that policy ought to be ethical, solidarist and Afro-centric.

These tensions have been evident in virtually all of South Africa’s policy initiatives — the volte face over Nigerian sanctions, the abortive attempt to pursue a ‘two Chinas’ policy’, the fudge concerning the continued production and sale of arms, the unwillingness to articulate a formal commitment to regional integration via SADC, and so on.

Understandably, Nelson Mandela on gaining office in 1994 opted for a moral foreign policy. Given his and his country’s background, it is not difficult to see why. However, platitudes about ‘universality’ ‘African renaissance’ and ‘humanitarianism’ are not substitutes for sound policy. They are deceptively easy to articulate, but very difficult to implement.

The inescapable priority for South Africa at this stage in its development, is a foreign policy which reflects the need for domestic reconstruction and economic growth allied to internal political stability. As such it badly needs an approach that is affordable, supportable and in the best interests of the country as a whole.

Setting the outside world to rights ought to be a sequel not a prologue to setting the inside world to rights. This mitigates against heroic international postures. Mr. Mandela’s parting gift to his rainbow nation should be a decision to abandon a preference for a rainbow foreign policy.

Careful perusal of George Washington’s Farewell Address should guide him in this task and open up valuable diplomatic space for his successors. It would certainly help to avoid the self-inflicted wounds that Bismarck so graphically warned against.

Endnotes

Note 1: N. Mandela, “South African Foreign Policy” Foreign Affairs (Nov/Dec 1993, p.97). Back.

Note 2: J.D. Richardson, ed. Messages and Papers of the Presidents (Washington: 1896) I:221–3. Back.

Note 3: Graham Evans, “The Vision Thing: In Search of the Clinton Doctrine” The World Today (Aug/Sept 1997, Vol. 53, No. 8–9, p.213). Back.

Note 4: R. Suttner, “Foreign Policy of the New South Africa” The African Communist (Third quarter, 1996, p.67). Back.

Note 5: Bismark, quoted in C.V. Crabbe The American Approach to Foreign Policy (U.P. America; 1985). Back.

Note 6: C. Alden “From Liberation Movement to Political Party: ANC Foreign Policy in Transition” The South African Journal of International Affairs (Vol. 1, No. 1, 1993, pp.62–82). Back.