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BEYOND REALISM: HOW THE GLOBAL SOUTH CAN SHAPE A MORE MORAL
INTERNATIONALISM  
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Zane Dangor
August 22, 2024
Foreign Policy in Focus
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_ South Africa’s experience with apartheid has given its foreign
policy a uniquely moral frame. _

A Parisian demonstrator holds up a sign reading, in French, "Thank
you, South Africa," praising the South African government's genocide
case against Israel's war in Gaza, (Shutterstock)

 

Henry Kissinger, the icon of “realism,” passed away in late 2023.

Kissinger had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in the 1970s for
helping to negotiate a ceasefire in Vietnam, a war he both helped
escalate and then end. Kissinger’s approach was in keeping with the
dominant global political culture which still prevails. The
“realism” Kissinger championed is a fancy diplomatic word for
explaining why we need to accept war and injustice as part of the
management of relations between countries.

Kissinger and those who thought like him supported the idea that the
powerful in the world had to use force to shape the world according to
their interests. He supported wars, irrespective of whether they were
lawful, as long as they achieved some political objective. Kissinger
was a leading advocate for the United States not to be a party to the
Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court, as
he did not feel that the U.S. needed to be accountable for its actions
in the international arena.

Kissinger was just a very eloquent proponent of a centuries old
culture that celebrates violence and warfare. We need to refocus the
locus of international relations on values that prioritize the dignity
and equality of all people.

HUMANITY’S COMPETING IMPULSES

Jonathan Schell, in his seminal book _The Unconquerable World_,
writes about two competing impulses in humanity: the impulse for war
and plunder and the opposing impulse for peace and serenity.

He cites the poetry of Dryden, who glorified the wars of the Roman
Empire through his words, “Of Arms and the Man I Sing.” This
edified a martial tradition and indeed a martial system, where at
best, people and societies stood up for principles using force, but
where generally it exemplified plunder, exploitation, and massacres.

The martial tradition is further edified through forms of popular
culture. This includes film and TV shows that portray those who’ve
been engaged in warfare in foreign lands as heroes, irrespective of
the nature of the particular conflicts.

In the U.S. for example, those who did the most tours in Afghanistan,
Iraq, or any of the many wars that the U.S. has been involved in over
the last few decades are regarded as among the ultimate heroes and
patriots. There is scant attention paid to the reasons for those wars,
whether they could have been avoided, whether they were lawful, and
the destruction to people and critical infrastructure.

Perhaps the most cynical portrayal of this dominant culture is the
Marvel superhero named Sabra, who celebrates the murderous skills of
Israel’s Mossad spy agency, and seeks to make the violence
associated with Israel’s unlawful occupation of Palestine
acceptable.

Schell also writes extensively on the opposing tradition, which is
centered around peace, human rights, and cooperative power, as opposed
to destructive violence. This culture is perhaps best exemplified by
Jesus Christ, who sang about the man without arms and told his
follower Simon (who was about to attack a servant of the High Priests
who subsequently crucified Jesus), “Put back your sword. For those
who live by the sword, shall die by the sword.” Another notable
proponent of this culture would be Mahatma Ghandi and his philosophy
of Satyagraha.

Sadly, as we are witnessing in Palestine, the Augustan tradition that
sanctions and glorifies violence, plunder, and exploitation is
dominant and has subdued the tradition discouraging violence. Humanity
has not learnt lessons from the past. By now we should have learnt
over the centuries — whether during the Napoleonic Wars, the two
World Wars, or colonialism (which includes racism, slavery, and
occupation) — that the use of force lays the basis for hatred that
will only ensure forever wars. It is indeed an indictment on humanity
that the last three decades have been described as the most peaceful
in human history.

How can we mobilise support for a human tradition of peace that is
centred on justice and equality? Or are we wedded to the Clausewitzian
ethos that “war is politics by other means”? In fact, Clausewitz
wrote that the perfect war was one without friction where one’s
enemy is completely subdued. These “frictions” included politics,
which Clausewitz argued tended to moderate the scale and intensity of
wars. The horrors of the World Wars, especially World War II, led the
United Nations to add in some more frictions — that is,
international law, including international humanitarian law.

THE MARTIAL LEGACY OF COLONIALISM

We may no longer have philosophers to guide us to peace, but we do
have the frictions that we have developed to determine when wars can
be waged lawfully (_jus ad bellum_) and how to conduct ourselves
during war (_jus en bellum_).

Recently Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was warmly welcomed
on Capitol Hill in the United States. This is despite a request by the
Chief Prosecutor of the ICC for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his
Defense Minister for crimes against humanity. Netanyahu’s welcome by
public representatives on the Hill and in other so-called
“responsible states” that profess to respect international law and
human rights has created a significant crisis in international
governance. Is this disregard of norms and laws because Palestinians
are the victims, and Israel the perpetrator?

These are the same norms and laws that were supposed to frame the
recent discussions at the Peace Summit on Ukraine. South Africa helped
shape those agreements since the so-called “Ukraine Peace Formula”
talks began in Copenhagen. These values that are centered on human
rights and international legal norms were negotiated and agreed to at
the G20 in New Delhi, India in September 2023. They included explicit
prohibitions on the annexation and acquisition of land through the use
of force. Western countries supported this at the time, as they
largely negotiated in the context of the Russia/Ukraine war.

Not surprisingly, following the events in Palestine after October 7,
2023, the Western diplomatic default position was restored. That is,
that these laws and norms do not apply to Israel or any actors that
are deemed to be part of the West’s sphere of influence. Diplomats
from countries of the South have long pushed back against the double
standards in the implementation of international norms and laws. The
most recent differential approach taken by the West, in which they
have been outraged by the military onslaught on Ukraine but far less
so about the genocide underway in Palestine, has been so crude that it
has the potential to completely dismantle the international legal
order.

At the root of this differential approach to international legal norms
is the global martial culture that is in lock-step with the political
traditions of former colonial powers. This was discussed by the South
African legal team at the ICJ hearings in the Hague.

Earlier in May, Vaughn Lowe KC, acting on behalf of the South African
government at the ICJ, told the court the following:_ _

_“We have heard expressions of outrage that anyone could accuse
Israel of acting in this way. We have heard sober assurances that
Israel was doing and would do everything in its power to avoid
civilian deaths as it exercised its claimed right of self-defense. We
have heard boasts that Israel’s army is the most moral army in
history. We have heard flat denials that there is famine in Gaza. For
months people, particularly in the West, have appeared unwilling to
accept that the accusations are true. How could people who look like
us and sound like us possibly engage in anything like genocide?”_

The answer to the question we posed was offered to the Court as part
of pleadings by Ambassador Vusi Madonsela:

These questions “_stem from a form of amnesia and denial by former
colonial powers in relation to the crimes associated with colonial
violence perpetrated against indigenous peoples. This includes the
denial of genocide. This denial is clearly at play in Palestine.”_

This denial of atrocities by Israel, and the tacit condemnation of the
horrific killings of Palestinians, has led to the question: Does the
West believe that Palestinian lives matter less than Israeli,
American, or European lives?

By extension, it begs the question whether the ideologies of
superiority that justified colonial conquests, occupations, and
genocides in Africa and other parts of the world still determine which
people are deserving of protection by international human rights law
and the international legal framework. This is not an outlandish
assertion. Recently the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court
stated that in his engagement with U.S. senators and congress people,
he was told that the ICC was not meant to hold the leaders of Israel
accountable, as the Court was designed for Africans and others
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This institutionalised impunity for the powerful is steeped in the
history of colonialism and indicates that the martial culture referred
to by Schell is not only persistent but is condoned when the victims
are the international law sub-alterns — that is, “non-Western”
people and countries. War and international law are only invoked when
the victims are “Western.”

AN ALTERNATIVE TO REALISM

This martial culture poses a danger to all of humanity. Contestation
for power, influence, resources, and territory through the use of
force has the potential to destroy all of humankind and the planet
that sustains us. The potential use of nuclear weapons in the current
wars in Europe and the Middle East cannot be ignored. There is also an
increase in localised violence fuelled by the growth of narrow
nationalism and ultra-nationalist politics. This, together with the
resurgence of the global war system, heightens the risk of regional
war and even a type of World War which will be existential in nature.

We need a reset towards a global political culture that is based on
cooperation, peace, and justice, where diplomatic actions seek to
build global well-being. That is, a world where the use of force is
replaced by dialogue and negotiation, and where force is prohibited.
This will require changes to the UN Charter. The same UN and its
related institutions must be reconfigured so that it is transformed
from protecting previous empires to a system that regards all people
and countries equally and is geared towards being the engine for
inclusive development. This will assist in dealing with the root
causes of conflicts.

This vision is not new. It formed part of the foreign policy vision of
the very first post-apartheid administration in South Africa. In 1994,
our international relations strategic stance was centred on
“progressive internationalism.” This was underpinned by a
commitment to South-South cooperation and approaches to peace,
security, and disarmament that were guided by a commitment to human
rights. We foregrounded the issue of human rights as the experience of
the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and highlighted the
negative impact that collusion with the Apartheid regime had on the
oppressed in South Africa and on the Southern African region. This
collusion took place under the guise of pragmatism and realism. Such
collusion was most visible with Thatcher and Reagan’s
“constructive engagement” policies in relation to the Apartheid
regime.

The impact of this de facto “realism” by Western countries served
to prop up the Apartheid government with disastrous consequences for
black South Africans and our allies in the then front-line states.
This experience compelled us to state, at least on paper, that issues
of expediency and narrow economic considerations in our foreign policy
would not govern a democratic South Africa. We sought to be a country
that would act in solidarity with all peoples who face oppression and
discrimination. This includes raising our voices in opposition to our
allies when they discriminate against their own people based on issues
of gender and sexuality. We continue to stridently support those still
under the yolk of colonialism and occupation.

At some point, this idealism in our foreign policy stance was
supplanted by an unstated “constructivist”’ approach, which was
code for “realism,” that weakened our normative human rights
framework and led to inconsistent actions in the international arena.
Over the last five years, we have recalibrated and have reset the
normative stance. This has led to some in the international community
referring to South Africa as the moral superpower. Whether this label
is accurate or not, the expectation to fulfil this vision is one that
we need to aspire to over the next five years. However, we need many
more so-called moral powers to emerge and seek to shape the
trajectory, moving us from global destruction to cooperation for
peace, justice, and equality.

Perhaps with other middle power countries we can work to transform the
global political landscape to be peace-centered and rights driven. For
South Africa, this will require us to increase our consistency in
diplomatic practice to reflect this normative stance. This is not too
difficult as our mandating environment supports this. The South
African constitution, which outlines our national interests, was
informed by our collective history of struggle against colonialism,
and the denial of rights based on race, religion, gender, sex, sexual
orientation and origin amongst others.

The values embedded in the South African constitution place a duty on
us to aspire to become moral global citizens. This mandate provides us
with a legitimate explanation to our partners from within the
groupings we are active in who may have different perspectives. This
values-based foreign policy stance that we are mandated to execute,
given our history, can help us move away from simplistic definitions
of being constructivist, realists, or idealists.

_Zane Dangor is the Director General of the Department of
International Relations and Cooperation of South Africa._

_Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) is a “Think Tank Without Walls”
connecting the research and action of scholars, advocates, and
activists seeking to make the United States a more responsible global
partner. It is a project of the Institute for Policy Studies._

_FPIF provides timely analysis of U.S. foreign policy and
international affairs and recommends policy alternatives on a broad
range of global issues — from war and peace to trade and from
climate to public health. From its launch as a print journal in 1996
to its digital presence today, FPIF has served as a unique resource
for progressive foreign policy perspectives for decades._

* South Africa
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* International Criminal Court
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* apartheid
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* anti-war
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* United Nations
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* Gaza
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* Israel/Palestine
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* colonialism
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