Sylvester Sithole asks if there is some measure of clarity and synergy between the US and Russia’s National Interests Framework and the National Security Strageies, what is stopping SA from doing the same.
All states have national interests. And all national interests of a state should be undergirded by a clear and solid national security strategy.
South Africa is swimming in a pool of National Security Strategies (NSS) that serve specific national interests of individual states.
Curiously the National Interests Framework of South Africa seeks sovereign African states that are integrated into the world economy, able to provide for their citizens’ needs, and capable of managing threats to peace and security. This is, of course, easier said than done. But juxtapose this South African approach with China’s clear articulation of “core interests” that include state sovereignty, national security, territorial integrity, national reunification, basic safeguards for ensuring sustainable economic and social development, and China’s political system established by the Constitution and overall social stability.
Indeed, preserving a stable political system and government ranks as a major priority for ruling elites.
It goes further. China’s NSS seeks to safeguard national sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity and security, to safeguard China’s maritime rights and interests, as well as to safeguard China’s security interests in outer space, electromagnetic space and cyberspace, and to safeguard China’s overseas interests.
Balanced set of interests
Russia, not surprisingly, also has a national interest and national security doctrine. Russia’s national interest matrix comprises a combined and balanced set of interests, including the individual, society and the state in economic, domestic, political, social, international, informational, military, border, and ecological security.
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It is interesting how society and the state are both viewed as pivotal players in ensuring Russia’s national interest. The present NSS is founded on the inseparable interconnection and mutual dependence of the national security of the Russian Federation and the socio-economic development of the country.
But national interest doctrines and security strategies often have an outward-looking approach and are articulated in relation to other states. The United States, for example, developed an Integrated Country Strategy (ICS) on South Africa. It vividly states that:
As a diverse, open democracy determined to live up to its founding values and to play a constructive role in its neighbourhood and in the world, South Africa can play an important role in achieving the Biden-Harris administration’s top national security priorities: to protect the security of the American people; to expand economic prosperity and opportunity; and to realise and defend democratic values.
This opening to the ICS on South Africa by the Biden administration clearly shows that the US has taken a strategy for our country that serves the national interests of the US. They place a burden on South Africa for the realisation of their national interests.
With the above said, the key point is that, a National Interests Framework is, or ought to be, a broad policy whose cutting edge lies in its translation into a measurable National Security Strategy that contains domestic, regional, continental and international goals that can be monitored and evaluated, and above all acted upon and implemented.
The “Symposium on the Framework on South Africa’s National Interest and its advancement in a Global Environment” address by Dr Naledi Pandor, Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, on 1 August 2022, at the DIRCO Conference Centre, Pretoria, is correct. There is a need to quickly revise the security strategy to address complex and protracted domestic and international challenges effectively.
The question is whether this has been done or if the perennial problem of the gap between stated policy and actual implementation is frustratingly at play again.
South Africa’s National Interest is defined as the protection and promotion of its national sovereignty and constitutional order, the well-being, safety and prosperity of its citizens, and a better Africa and world.
Crisis of implementation
At face value, there is nothing wrong with our national interest doctrine. It is pretty much in line with those of other powers. The real problem in South Africa may well be the crisis of implementation, of government not taking such an important document seriously. Of allowing a dangerous gap to develop between stated policy and rhetoric and implementation.
The US’s National Interest is defined as matters of vital interest to the United States to include national security, public safety, and national economic security, the safe and reliable functioning of “critical infrastructure”, and the availability of “key resources”. The US NSS is rooted in protecting the security of the American people, expanding economic prosperity and opportunity, and to realise and defend the democratic values at the heart of the American way of life.
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The US’s NSS includes explicit measurable goals such as adding 10 million jobs and cutting unemployment rates to reach near-record lows. Bringing back manufacturing jobs back to the United States. Ensuring historic investments in innovation to sharpen the competitive edge for the future. Boosting American competitiveness globally by drawing “dreamers and strivers” from around the world.
Critically the US’s NSS lays out the future that they seek in clear terms, and provide a roadmap for how this will be achieved. Russia’s NSS lays down the transition to a new technological basis. Making the development of science and technology crucial to raising competitiveness and a chief benchmark to ensuring national security.
If there is some measure of clarity and synergy between the US and Russia’s National Interests Framework and the NSS, what is stopping SA from doing the same? Instead of playing a clever game of strategic ambiguity, vitriolic rhetorical flourishes and hangovers from decades of Cold War handovers are what bedevil our national interests and our international relations in general.
Clinging to the past
Instead of strategically pushing for a desperately needed multipolar, multi-lateral world, our actions and words, in stark contrast to stated policy on paper, sometimes reinforces the very opposite. This politically nostalgic clinging to the past dangerously complicates not only SA’s position in multipolar world order, immediate and complex diplomatic and international relations.
Then there is the very serious matter of ill-discipline in a dangerously fractured ruling party that is tethering on the brink. This ill-discipline, driven by factionalism and infighting, is arguably the major cause of South Africa’s decline. In China, by contrast, the party is the epicentre of society, politically, socially and economically.
In its national security strategy, China is concerned that the West will ideologically infiltrate the CCP to impede its ascent and instigate the regime’s downfall, so to safeguard against this, national security has become a buzz under President Xi Jinping.
While African leaders are hung up on ideology and isms from the past, countries like China are continuing to socialise into their political culture and structures, the history of Chinese leadership styles and building on loyalty to their regime, thus safeguarding their own national interests.
This is not in any way a case for South Africa to model itself after China. Rather, it is about learning serious lessons, and urgently so, from other countries about how they go about threats to states and the lives of their people.
– Dr Sylvester Sithole is head of the Foresight and Strategic Studies Unit (FORSSU), in the Centre for African Diplomacy and Leadership (CADL).
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