This week marks the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a move that disrupted the global order just as we hope to recover from the pandemic. In addition to the economic impact of the war, which caused inflation when energy prices rose, it has opened up a geopolitical fissure between East and West that has been in effect since the end of the Cold War more than 30 years ago.
For South Africa it was at the end of the war, and because of that, it raises a deep question about which side to choose, if history is going to repeat itself.
If the country pitches a tent with the West like the apartheid regime did during the Cold War, then there will be dire implications.
By condemning Russia’s visit, we will make enemies not only of Valdimir Putin in the Brics countries, but will set a precedent that countries should follow China. India under Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi has a long-standing territorial dispute with Islamic Pakistan over Kashmir that is nowhere near a settlement. China and India are among the top five economies in the world and are only getting stronger, especially in the case of the latter.
Going against the West also has its costs as the US, Germany, Japan and the UK make up the top five exporting countries. Although Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher supported apartheid South Africa, the country has the strongest historical ties to countries known as the West.
This is a consideration for the ANC as well as future coalition-led governments.
With spy balloons flying over the US sky, the sound of gunfire and missiles in Eastern Europe, growing discord between Western countries over the future of relations with Putin’s Russia and China, it’s like a Tom Clancy’s Cold War thriller.
This geopolitical event is happening now in what we would imagine is a more enlightened era – we need to understand the cost of war today.
However, despite this enlightenment, the distrust and division that followed the end of World War II was as intense as it is today. In past years, the division was ideological, a conflict between capitalism and communism. Today, only five countries in the world can be called communist, but they are not in the most classical definition, because most of them embrace free enterprise. Democratic capitalism in its many variants around the world is winning.
So what divides the world today?
The destabilization caused by China’s “miracle” economy has affected many major economies in the developed world. The industrial base of the US, Europe has been compromised or destroyed outright by factories across the length and breadth of Asian giants. Populist leaders have found an audience in disenfranchised blue-collar workers, hence the fraught political climate.
Russia’s economic threat is certainly not, but Putin’s romanticism of the Soviet era is a threat to European territorial sovereignty.
The invasion of Ukraine that first began with a military visit to Ukraine’s Crimea province in 2014 can now only be seen as part of a grand ambition to recreate the power of the beloved Soviet Union. The collapse, he once said, was “the greatest geopolitical disaster of this century.”
This is the world the ANC-led government is currently living in. Despite the non-aligned vote, pressure is mounting on President Cyril Ramaphosa to choose sides inside and outside the country.
As a nation, we must fight wars and human rights atrocities in the name of territorial expansionism, but we have no other choice but to maintain a non-aligned attitude. It seems cowardly and morally compromised, but what is the alternative?