Few theories have better withstood the test of time than the ancient Greeks’ contention that the most powerful country, the hegemon, sets the rules and enforces compliance. As Thucydides observed, “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”
The Cold War ended triumphantly as the Berlin Wall fell and Nelson Mandela was released from prison. Perceptions of a new era of multicultural peaceful coexistence were later reinforced by Barack Obama becoming the US president. Idealism was ascendant; realism seemed outdated.
The ancient Greeks discerned that a hegemon was necessary to establish and enforce conventions, such as keeping trading routes open, and that this would benefit all countries. Criticism of US policies mustn’t be discouraged, but it should be balanced by recognising that US global leadership, while routinely controversial, has coincided with extraordinary gains across all regions — aside from Sub-Saharan Africa.
The UN can perform valuable functions but there is no global government and international laws are only as credible as they are enforceable. We live in a world governed by nation states, and some governments are much better at benefiting their populations than others.
As Japan was to Asia during the Cold War, post-1994 SA should have been this region’s economic role model. Instead, ideals were overindulged and ruthlessly exploited to benefit the politically connected, while entrenching a majority of South Africans in poverty.
The ancient Greeks recognised that if the hegemon undermined the interests of other countries a bloc would form to topple the hegemon. China, Russia, Iran and North Korea constitute an autocratic bloc opposed to the Western-determined, rules-based global order shaped largely by the US.
China’s manufacturing competitiveness is as formidable as Russia’s nuclear arsenal is intimidating, yet neither country can gainfully alter the global order if Western nations resist. Unfortunately though, idealism can induce much complacency. Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 was tolerated by Western governments, as were China’s myriad abuses of the global trading system. Then, Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 provoked a significant European response and last year Donald Trump was re-elected.
Former German chancellor Angela Merkel personified idealism-driven complacency. Neither Merkel nor Obama risked their ideals-enthused popularity to meaningfully confront Russia or China when those countries mixed blatant and subtle aggressions.
Trump’s style is off-putting, but his tariff tactics align with the time-tested insights of the ancient Greeks. Ordinary citizens everywhere should hope his promoting US leadership encourages Russia and China to more closely adhere to widely agreed international norms.
Whereas the US has greatly benefited the citizens of its alignment partners, the autocratic leaders of Russia and China routinely favour countries’ leaders at the expense of their people. The long-term weakness of this approach is that leaders come and go. Conversely, nations’ interests tend to evolve quite slowly.
Nearly all of today’s high-growth countries add value to high-volume exports consumed by Western countries, whereas many of those reliant on exporting commodities to China tend to stay poor. Yet ANC leaders prefer to align with China and Russia; those countries don’t pressure them to adopt the structural reforms necessary to uplift the majority of South Africans who are poor.
China benefits the world by lowering the costs of many manufactured goods. However, much evidence validates widespread concerns that they employ unfair trading practices to strategically benefit the Chinese at the expense of workers and companies in other countries.
SA is second to none at demonstrating how politicians can weaponise values to narrowly benefit their patronage networks. It is not Trump’s fault that the leaders of Russia, China and Iran want to topple the world order that lifted billions out of poverty. Nor is it Trump’s fault that ANC leaders seek to benefit from embracing such leaders.
If voters in many countries hadn’t overindulged their fondness for idealised values, we wouldn’t need someone as abruptly transactional as Trump to realistically recalibrate the global order, in keeping with ancient insights.
• Hagedorn (@shawnhagedorn) is an independent strategy adviser.
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