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INTERNATIONAL relations can be approached through the lens of political myopia or through the eye of political foresight or strategic vision.
Political myopia denotes the tendency to focus on short-term gains or immediate issues such as securing a re-election and immediate national economic interests.
Conversely, political foresight or strategic vision prioritises long-term goals and sustainability, considering the broader implications of their decisions, and aiming to address underlying issues and prevent future crises. Moreover, political foresight focuses on social, political, economic, gender and environmental justice, fostering long-term peace through diplomacy, and developing comprehensive economic policies that ensure sustainable growth.
Implicit in the differences between political myopia and political foresight is the difference in the forms of power that one enlists to shape international relations.
United States’ political economist, Joseph Nye, delineates three forms of power that can be enlisted in international relations as hard power, soft power and smart power.
While hard power entails the use of coercion and force in the form of military interventions and invasions, occupations and sanctions, soft power involves utilising ideology, culture and institutions for mutual persuasion, understanding and consensus. On the other hand, smart power involves enlisting both soft power and hard power for strategic diplomacy, persuasion, capacity-building and socially and politically legitimate means of influence.
The realities of an interconnected world call for a shift from the political myopia of using hard power to pursue the narrow and immediate interest of one country to the strategic approach of using soft and smart power to mediate intersecting geopolitical interests and prioritise long-term collective interests of the global community of nations.
Strategic diplomacy requires and must enlist the levelling of the playing field through the democratisation of global structures and institutions of power, influence and control. Basically, strategic diplomacy calls for what former SA ambassador to the USA, Ebrahim Rasool, refers to as the Diplomacy of Ubuntu, anchored on gentle, persuasive constructive and dignified truth-telling.
The choice between hard power and smart power effectively translates into a choice between maintaining and reconfiguring prevailing power and social relations away from the culture of competition to the culture of cooperation.
Cooperation by its virtue presupposes the values of equality, mutual respect and consistent application of principles. Contrarily, the high-handed actions of the US government against former SA ambassador to the US, Rasool, underscores the country’s double-standards, characterised by the deployment of quiet diplomacy and soft power against repressive regime where its suits US ideological and political agenda or economic interests and the enlistment of the hard power of sanctions and military interventions or invasions where it suits the US’s narrow geopolitical interests.
The action against Rasool is directly linked to the US carrot and stick approach of using aid and diplomatic ties as a tool to hold governments of the South at ransom. This enlistment of foreign direct aid and diplomatic ties as crude power in service of geopolitical interests of the US is in stark contrast to the so-called constructive engagement / quiet diplomacy policy that the US used in relation to the Apartheid regime in the 1980s, at a time the vicious institutional and structural violence, state repression and police brutality called for more serious action.
The US then adopted this policy as an alternative to the economic sanctions and divestment from South Africa that the UN General Assembly and the international anti-Apartheid movement called for. Constructive engagement basically amounted to quiet diplomacy wherein the US sought to use quiet dialogue with the leaders of the Apartheid state, private inducements and incentives to appeal to the SA government to embrace democratic socio-political reforms instead of applying pressure and sanctions.
The ‘unintended’ consequences of this approach was that it encouraged and indulged the divide-and-rule, and so-called separate development, tactics of the racist regime, which made carrot stew out of the carrots that the US fed it with from 1981 to 1986.
The truth is that even after it officially discarded and replaced the constructive engagement and quiet diplomacy through the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, restricted trade and investment, banned the import of certain South African products, and prohibited new American investments in South Africa, the US did not stop diplomatic and trade relations with Apartheid South Africa in real terms.
There is documented evidence that US companies continued to operate in South Africa during Apartheid, often subjecting the working-class, particularly Black workers, to exploitative working conditions and dehumanising living conditions. To date the US has remained indifferent to calls for companies that traded with the Apartheid regime to account and pay reparation to the victims and survivors of Apartheid.
Ironically, the US is one of the countries that raised the loudest voice in accusing the SA government of complacency in the political repression in Zimbabwe because of the quiet diplomacy policy pursued by the Mbeki administration. Furthermore, the US government spear-headed the ruthless military intervention in Iraq in 2003, based on the unproven existence of weapons of mass destruction in that country. Iraq has not recovered from the destabilisation and devastation caused by this intervention. Libya has also not recovered from the state of dysfunctionality and chaos that resulted from the 2011 US-led intervention to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi.
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DOUBLE-STANDARDS
The US imposed extensive sanctions against Iran, targeting its nuclear programme and alleged support for terrorism, against North Korea, aimed at curbing its nuclear ambitions and alleged human rights abuses, against Venezuela for alleged corruption and human rights violations, and only terminated its Zimbabwe Sanctions Programme in 2024.
In contrast, the US maintains strong diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia despite its accusations of human rights abuses and is the de facto shield and protector of the state of Israel on the globe, despite glaring evidence of genocidal acts and institutional and structural racism committed by the Zionist Apartheid state of Israel. While critical of China’s human rights record, the US engages in extensive trade and diplomatic relations. Despite concerns over human rights abuses, the US maintains strong diplomatic and military ties with Egypt, citing strategic interests in the region.
The U.S. has provided significant military aid to Uganda, despite criticisms of President Yoweri Museveni’s long-term authoritarian rule. The US has supported Cameroon’s military in counter-terrorism efforts, despite allegations of human rights abuses by the government.
In short, the US is bold in declaring, through words and deeds, that its diplomatic and economic ties, and its use of hard power or soft power in international relations is informed by its narrow ‘super-power’ and imperialist agenda or what it calls strategic interests in the region rather than the collective interests of ‘the global community’.
Mphutlane wa Bofelo is a political theorist who focuses on the interface between politics, governance and development.
- This article was first published in the April 25, 2025 print edition of Muslim Views under Mphutlane wa Bofelo’s monthlycolumn, ‘Left Perspectives – Critical opinions on the intersection between politics, governance and development’.
