How do we match the Americans and Chinese ideas for ideas, tactics for tactics and strategies for strategies as they go head to head in their mutual global geopolitical struggle to get the best of the situation for our today and tomorrow?
The first thing to do is to look at our weaknesses and our strengths.
As a country we are at present weak in practically all areas of endeavour. Structurally our numerous ethnicities are at different, often mutually antagonistic stages of development. Although we are not the only country in the world with such structural make-up, ours seems to be more markedly centripetal. Over 60 years of independence and existing as a country we seem to be growing apart rather than gradually coming together to make something positive out of our diversities as other countries with similar make up have done.
But this situation may seem daunting and hopeless, what it really means is that we must take it as a challenge to do the needful.
And the needful is to find the necessary will to make the real hard choices to build this country into a nation out of the various nationalities that make it up.
I agree it is not a job for the faint-hearted and it is an endeavour that is fraught with “unknown unknowns’’. But it is a task that must be undertaken because to continue to procrastinate over it as we are doing now is more dangerous than doing it.
In deciding to press ahead, which we must face, one of the hard but inevitable choices we have to face is whether we will continue to yield to the Americans the decision to determine our economic and political life.
Is there a way in which we can get the Yanks to shut up and stop lecturing us on what our economic and political direction should be and listen to us for once on what we need in those areas? Yes there is. And we only need to look at the examples of Turkey and Israel in this regard.
Turkey was for long the classical IMF economy. The Americans were sitting on practically every aspect of Turkey’s life breathing their apple jack sodden breath down the necks of the Turks. Because they wanted to be admitted into the European Economic Community, the precursor of the present European Union, Turkey endured all manner of humiliation from the Americans. The Turks even yielded their national and strategic interests as the vital southern bulwark of southern Europe to the America-dominated North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) such that they allowed the stationing of nuclear bombs in the America-controlled military bases in Turkey which were off limits to Turks. The Americans treated the Turks, who would have suffered the full brunt of Soviet forces in the event of a full blown war, like dirt.
Come the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the admission of former Soviet bloc countries who never offered the same level of cooperation than the Turks and whose economies were not as strong as that of Turkey into EU guaranteed by the same Americans.
And in President Recep Tayip Erdogan, the Turks finally found their mojo and threw the Americans off their backs by pursuing their own independent national and strategic interests. Today Turkey, despite being a member of NATO, reserves the right to partner with even Russia on its strategic interests. And the Americans and the EU are now practically begging the Turks.
The case of Israel is even more significant. Latching onto the dominating presence of Jews in the American system, Israel is virtually the trim tab in the American ship of state. The Israeli lobby using the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee and B’nai Brith the Jewish Anti-Defamation League practically and effectively ensures that the American political, economic establishment dances to the needs of Israel. America practically begs Israel to take its generous offering of aid, grants and assistance. Israel does not need to suffer the inconvenience of IMF conditions and other humiliating run around from America for its development needs.
The lesson here is that we must find a way of getting into the skins of the Americans like the Turks and the Israelis are doing. And one area which we must exploit constructively is the linkage with African Americans who are a neglected but significant part of the American system. In addition to our normal diplomatic engagements with the Americans we must also construct a black to black mutually beneficial diplomatic pathway right into the different levels of the African American communities across the cities of America especially in areas where they live predominantly. Just as the Americans stick their noses into our internal affairs under the guise of human rights and political correctness we must also find ways to give back the favour.
Like the American Jews we must cultivate African Americans as our Trojan horse in the American system in a symbiotic political and economic way; we take up their case internationally and diplomatically on their conditions in America while they push our case for development aggressively and constructively in the American system. That way, new vistas of constructive development paradigms and engagements other than the straightjacketed one we currently have with the Americans will open up. In other words we need to find creative new ways of influencing the American system to work in our favour.
And there can be no opportune time than now as the Americans are at sixes and sevens over the issue of China.
As for the Chinese, how successful we pursue these new engagement paradigms with the Americans will determine how they engage us. If we are able to stand up to the Americans and get our way to a large extent, the Chinese who are currently at the early stages of their foray into Africa and who have a long way to catch up and surpass the Americans, will have no choice but to come to terms with the reality of engaging Africa on a higher level other than they currently do. This will strengthen our bargaining position with Chinese as they look for partners in Africa for their economic expansion and also for their global geopolitical competition with the Americans. And in this way we get the best from both superpowers in their geopolitical struggles against one another.
This is the sure path to secure our today and our tomorrow as the tectonic plates of global geopolitics are changing. (Concluded)
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