As Simon Barber pithily pointed out in Business Day this week, South Africa is no China . The Germans play an intellectual game in which, in order to assess the importance of a nation, the assumption is made that overnight that nation disappears from the face of the earth and no one is told about it. Most of them couldn't care less about SA and wouldn't notice its disappearance. We should bear this in mind this sort of sobering consideration when we are tempted to cock a snoot at the great powers. If we behave like Ruritania we'll be treated with the derision we deserve.
Incoherence is, in fact, the trouble with our foreign policy.
In the case of the two Chinas hard logic demands agreement with the decision to open diplomatic links with communists at the expense of the Taiwanese in the Republic of China. Here, notwithstanding the inexplicable behaviour of President Mandela in comforting the Taiwanese then a few weeks later dumping them, it is clearly in our long-term interests to deal with the communists even though they are oppressive in their rule. Now, compare the hard-headed realpolitik of the Chinese approach to the mindlessly stupid Cabinet desire to sell Syria equipment that will make their tanks more effective killing machines. What we must fashion is a carefully thought out foreign policy in which a thorough costs and benefits analysis assists in determining our relationships and how we conduct them. We may be a small, inconsequential nation, but we do have moral force flowing from the triumph of President Mandela's life and the manner in which we have avoided a bloody revolution, disappointing the Marxists perhaps but making glorious history.