Whether you support the ANC bigwigs who feel SA ought to stand with its old comrade against the Western imperialists, or you believe Russia attacked a sovereign country in flagrant disregard for the UN Charter and should be ostracised and punished with sanctions, the reality is neither viewpoint is relevant any longer.
The international system’s deck of cards has been thoroughly shuffled since Russia invaded on February 24. Germany and Japan have fundamentally changed their foreign and security stance and are embarking on ambitious rearmament projects. India and China’s stance towards Russia is more nuanced but neither has ever explicitly supported the invasion, despite heckling to the contrary from the Western mainstream media.
We in SA ought to re-examine our international relations posture carefully in this dynamic environment or we may get caught with our pants down. First, Russia is finished as a great power. Putin has failed to effect regime change in Ukraine. His country’s international reputation is tarnished beyond repair and will remain so as long as Putin is in power and atrocity after atrocity is committed against civilians.
Putin will get the land bridge to Crimea and control eastern Ukraine, but for this limited gain he has reunited the West. Poland, the UK and the Baltic states have always been hawkish against Russia, but Germany and Japan fundamentally changing their foreign and defence policies to enter an arms race to secure themselves against the rising Russia threat is a significant change. Japan is Russia’s neighbour in the Far East where there are territories contested between the two powers.
As expected, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey has dropped the veto against Finland and Sweden joining Nato after extracting from the two Nordic states last-minute concessions about not supporting the Kurdish PKK, which Turkey considers a terrorist organisation. Given Finland’s long border with Russia, Putin has in effect succeeded in opening a new 1,340km front with Nato.
Russia does not have a good record fighting with Finland alone, never mind the entire Nato. In 1940, with superior numbers and far better armaments, the Soviet Union’s Red Army lost the Winter War when it failed to hold onto the territory after invading Finland. Like the Russia-Ukraine war today, the Soviet Union was internationally ostracised as a result, and Finland’s international reputation glowed.
The reality is even China is subtly stepping away from Russia. Katsuji Nakazawa, a China watcher based at Japan’s business daily Nikkei Asia, recently noted the demotion of Le Yucheng. Nakazawa notes that Le was China’s first vice-foreign minister, who was in line to become the next foreign minister. A fluent Russian speaker and former Chinese ambassador to Russia, Le had been the architect of the recent blooming of relations between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Putin.
Le’s demotion on June 14 to deputy head of the National Radio & Television Administration is an indication that Beijing is reconstituting its top foreign policy team. Xi needs to fill China’s top foreign policy post with veterans who understand the US and the West, and turn away from the recent diplomatic focus on Russia. After all, China’s top trading partner and economic adversary is the US.
What does this mean for SA? Cheering for Russia and taunting the West is not going to be tolerated for much longer given Russian atrocities committed in Ukraine. There is no need for SA ministers to alienate great powers such as the US, Japan, Germany, the UK and China. They all have embassies in Pretoria with political officers filing notes on official SA attitudes on a range of policy issues. Taking an anti-West attitude only harms SA’s own interests.
I think we should follow China’s lead. SA should redeploy comrades who insist on reminiscing about Russia and focus SA’s foreign policy on getting relationships right with our top trading partners. The US and China are number one and two, followed by Japan and Germany.
• Dr Kuo, a former lecturer at the Shanghai International Studies University in China, is adjunct senior lecturer in the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business.
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