SA’s failure to nuance its stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is scary
Japan’s foreign affairs ministry recently invited a group of journalists from the Global South to visit Japan and cover the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Hiroshima. I had the good fortune to be part of it.
The group was fun and fascinating and as much of a highlight as the tour itself. But one takeaway was the extent to which some of these other countries have done “nonaligned” in a way that is so much more strategic and pragmatic than SA has since Russia invaded Ukraine, and so much more aligned with their own self-interest.
Take Turkey, which is heavily dependent on Russian energy and geopolitical goodwill but is also a Nato member. It has played a careful game, maintaining trade and communications with Russia and refusing to support sanctions against it. But it has voted consistently in favour of the UN resolutions condemning the Russian invasion.
It’s sent military drones and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. It used its ties with both sides to broker deals to open routes for Ukrainian grain exports — even if the Russians still sabotaged this. Like India (which was not part of our tour, and which abstained on the UN resolutions) Turkey has managed a careful balancing act.
Both are case studies local foreign policy think-tanks are studying as examples SA should be looking at, even though we don’t have the economic or geopolitical clout of India or Turkey.
Then there’s a country like Sri Lanka, which historically has been close to Russia, a trading partner. Like India and SA, it abstained on the UN resolutions. But it made sure to build ties with the US at a time when its economy nosedived, it defaulted on its debts and it needed US support for a large IMF bailout.
Some small former Soviet Union countries are interesting too, in their nonaligned way. Mongolia is sandwiched between Russia and China so does its best to keep as quiet as possible. But it has, bravely, abstained on the UN General Assembly resolutions condemning Russia’s illegal invasion and upholding the UN Charter. Likewise Kazakhstan.
Most of these countries have not attracted the wall of criticism SA has for abstaining on the UN resolutions, nor have their nonaligned credentials been scorned as have SA’s. It may be, as some have suggested, that SA is judged internationally by a higher standard than other abstainers because of its deeply entrenched commitment to democracy, the rule of law and human rights. If that is the case it’s something to be proud of. Many of these countries don’t have any such commitment.
By any standard, though, SA would find it hard to pass the nonaligned test. Its inability or unwillingness to nuance its stance in a way that would reflect national economic interests is scary. The economic cost is becoming ever more evident as SA faces the threat of losing access to one of its largest export markets, the US. Or worse, secondary sanctions by the US. More immediately, its currency is being trashed as investors grow concerned about its foreign policy missteps.
A first reason SA fails the test is blindingly obvious — its deeds just don’t match the nonaligned words. Nonaligned countries don’t conduct military exercises with Russia on the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and nor do they have Russian ships such as the Lady R docking at the Simon’s Town naval base loading secret cargo. (If they do, they don’t ignore it for six months and then take two more weeks to appoint a commission of inquiry after the
US outs them for allegedly selling arms to Russia.)
Nonaligned countries don’t send high-ranking military officers to swan about Moscow, nor do the youth leagues of their governing parties go off to Moscow to rubber-stamp sham referendums in illegally occupied Ukrainian territories.
A second reason is that the “‘nonaligned” words themselves are far from convincing, or consistent. Instead, we’ve had at least three kinds of narrative in support of SA’s refusal to condemn the Russian invasion. One is the straight “Russia is our friend” narrative, from cabinet ministers including foreign affairs minister Naledi Pandor.
Another is the “blame the US” narrative, with no mention that Russia has done anything illegal such as invade another country’s sovereign territory or perpetrate war crimes on its citizens. The Institute of Security Studies’ Priyal Singh points to the way in which the ANC has framed the US and Western allies as the main culprits behind the Russia-Ukraine crisis, describing it as “primarily a conflict between the US and US-led Nato, and Russia”.
The one clear nonaligned narrative is President Cyril Ramaphosa’s insistence that SA wants to see a peaceful resolution to the conflict and so will not take sides — a commitment he reaffirmed this week. SA has zero leverage, so this is a bit delusional. In any event, it’s taken more than a year for Ramaphosa to pull together a peace initiative by a handful of African leaders. It’s hard to imagine Moscow or Kyiv will care.
A third, more fundamental, flaw in SA’s nonaligned stance is it simply doesn’t articulate any sort of big picture rationale for why it wants to line up with that camp. It’s a legitimate posture, one many countries in the South are opting for as global economic power shifts”between big power blocs and particularly as US-China tensions rise.
“Hedging is the way Brazilian academic Matias Spektor describes it in a recent article in Foreign Affairs, in which he argues the behaviour of large developing countries that have refused to take sides in the war in Ukraine is about their desire to avoid being trampled in a brawl between China, Russia and the US.
These countries are hedging because they see the future distribution of global power as uncertain; they have limited influence and they want to keep their options open to form “partnerships of convenience” so they can profit whichever way it goes. Hedging entails keeping the channels of communication open with all the players, writes Spektor.
Sadly, this does not sound like SA at all. We are paying the price in the markets now for a supposedly nonaligned stance that simply looks silly; the long-term price could be higher. For Japan, Ukraine is far away but the threats to the “rules-based international order” are near, in a region of the world where Chinese aggression is a growing concern.
The attention Japan, and the G7, paid the Global South at the summit suggests that they don’t necessarily have the support of the “hedgers ”— and that they’d better start taking their concerns more seriously. Whether SA will be taken seriously is a question.