MARIUS OOSTHUIZEN AND NICK BINEDELL: Security and economic strength vital for middle powers after the rupture

For much of the past three decades countries such as South Africa lived comfortably in what might be called a useful fiction: that global integration would reward good behaviour, multilateral rules would constrain bad actors and raw power and economic openness would reliably translate into shared prosperity.

That fiction is over. What has replaced it is not a transition but a rupture, as recently argued by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at Davos.

Across finance, energy, technology, security and trade, the world has entered an era in which power is exercised without apology, including by the US, and interdependence is increasingly weaponised.

Tariffs are leverage. Supply chains are pressure points. Financial infrastructure is a tool of coercion. For middle powers, nostalgia for the old order is not a strategy and repeating tropes about neo-imperialism is not a useful tactic.

Yet neither is fatalism. As Carney’s speech reminded us with moral clarity, intermediate powers are not condemned to irrelevance. However, their influence no longer comes from invoking rules others ignore.

It comes from three strategic imperatives: a commitment to principle, investment in domestic capability and building coalitions. Middle powers must learn to live in the world as it is without abandoning high ideals of the world as it should be.

Security without self-delusion

The first reality middle powers must confront is security. Military capacity, alliance positioning and strategic credibility matter again and explicitly. South Africa occupies a paradoxical position. It is not a military heavyweight, but neither is it defenceless. It has professional armed forces, regional legitimacy, maritime exposure across two oceans and a strategic location wrapped in key sea lanes. Yet its greatest vulnerability lies not in external threats, but in institutional erosion: hollowed out logistics, declining military readiness and the falsehood that our remote geography alone confers safety.

In today’s environment, security is not only about deterrence. It is about embeddedness: intelligence co-operation, cyber resilience, maritime domain control and selective alignment. Middle powers that are lazy about security thinking, or treat it as politically inconvenient, discover too late that sovereignty is easily lost and difficult to regain.

Economic power is not size alone, but structure and niche capability

The second factor is economic strength, not measured by GDP alone, but by structure and niche capabilities in key industries. While South Africa continues to hold the position of Africa’s largest economy by nominal GDP, globally the country is ranked about 38^th to 40^th, making it important in the squad of middle-income players, but not central to global economic affairs.

Middle powers that depend excessively on imports, that export low-complexity goods, or that lack fiscal and industrial depth or unique endowments and capabilities are vulnerable to pressure. Trade openness only creates leverage when paired with diversification and domestic capability that can be wielded as a bargaining tool for mutual advancement. It is the flywheel that accelerates as societies learn to innovate, economically and in business, but also in how they navigate their social and political fissures.

South Africa’s challenge is not a lack of economic integration per se, but imbalanced integration that disproportionately accrues value to the outside world. An economy reliant on commodity exports, imported fuels and fragile logistics cannot exercise strategic autonomy. By contrast, middle powers that combine trade connectedness with domestic productive capacity — advanced manufacturing, energy resilience, capital markets and skills — gain room to manoeuvre geoeconomically.

This is why economic reform is no longer only about the bedrock issue of growth. It is about strengthening the economic pillars of sovereignty. A country that cannot reliably feed, fuel, finance or digitise itself will find its foreign policy constrained, regardless of rhetoric.

Geography still matters, but differently

Geography, which for a long time was dismissed in a globalised world, has returned with force. South Africa is neither isolated nor encircled. It anchors the Southern African region, serves as a gateway between the Global South and major maritime routes and enjoys distance from direct great power confrontation. These are strategic advantages if understood and cultivated.

However, geography only becomes leverage when paired with diplomacy, infrastructure and trust. Regional instability, porous borders or disengaged neighbours turn our location into a liability. Middle powers that neglect their immediate geography discover distant partnerships cannot compensate for regional fragility. South Africa needs a Southern African Development Community strategy.

Growth is strategy, not statistics

The fourth factor is growth, not as a macroeconomic abstraction but as a key strategic variable. Sustained growth funds defence, underwrites diplomacy, attracts partners and reduces vulnerability to coercion domestically and externally. Stagnation does the opposite. Middle powers that tolerate low growth while asserting moral leadership eventually lose credibility and stability.

However, growth must be inclusive and investable. Growth that depends on debt, extraction or short-term consumption does not produce strategic strength. The Canadian message is instructive: domestic renewal is not inward-looking nationalism; it is the precondition for sustaining outward-looking influence.

Pragmatism without capitulation

What does principled pragmatism look like? It begins by abandoning the ritualised language of a “rules-based order” as if it continues to function as advertised. It also means disabusing oneself of the self-delusion that alternative multilateral forums, such as Brics, can revive a dying world order. Middle powers must name reality clearly: power is uneven, norms are contested and enforcement is selective. Pretending otherwise is a recipe for decline.

Former Chilean ambassador to South Africa Jorge Heine argued principled pragmatism “is far from being ideological” and instead is a “down-to-earth approach shaped by real policy constraints and opportunities”.

However, such realism does not require moral surrender. Middle powers can, and must, act consistently, applying standards to friends and rivals alike. In contrast, selective outrage is performative; it is not useful as principle in practice.

Influence now comes from variable geometry: different coalitions for different challenges. Trade here. Security there. Climate, finance, technology elsewhere. Not one grand alignment, but many overlapping, and some ambiguous ones. Middle powers that act together shape outcomes. Those that compete for favour are manipulated by others.

South Africa is not powerless. It has deep capital markets, institutional memory, regional legitimacy and global relationships across political divides. What it lacks is not potential, but potency, coherence and pragmatic leadership.

The choice is stark. South Africa can continue living within an old story — invoking moral authority while our domestic capability erodes — or it can pursue value-informed realism: rebuilding strength at home, diversifying partnerships abroad and engaging the world without self-delusion.

As Carney said: “The powerful will always have their power.” Middle powers must earn theirs by telling the truth about the world, by investing in resilience and by acting together. In a fractured global order, that is not only the most ethical path. It is the most strategically astute one.

• Dr Oosthuizen, a former faculty member at the Gordon Institute of Business Science at the University of Pretoria, is co-chair for scenarios at the World Energy Council. Prof Binedell is former dean of the Gordon Institute.