This week, President Hage Geingob opened
his inaugural International Relations and Cooperation Policy Review Conference
(renamed, along with the ministry, from Foreign Affairs when he assumed office),
and he charted out a new course for Namibian diplomacy – a policy not only in
line with Article 96 of the Namibian Constitution, but also a policy steeped in
realpolitik, and a policy that speaks not only to our Namibian development
goals, but also to the changing dynamics of international diplomacy.
His outline should be seen against the
backdrop of the art of diplomacy itself, which, as a tool of statecraft, is
actually quite a bit younger than most people assume. Up until quite recently,
the main tool of human statecraft was war. But as humanity advanced, wars
became costlier, and more ruinous to states. By the latter half of the 18th
century, events unfolded that would start to change this.
After fighting the Seven Years’ War and
supporting the American Revolution, the French Empire was deeply in debt. King
Louis XVI attempted to salvage the French economy by instituting an onerous tax
regime, but this merely inflamed resentment of the populace, and resulted in
the French Revolution. The First French Republic was formed in its aftermath,
and this disturbed many of the old empires in Europe. The Revolution sowed the
seeds of nationalism, but republics were still a new and untested form of
government, and the French Republic soon collapsed.
Out of its ashes, however, rose a Hero of
the Revolution. Napoleon Bonaparte established a popular dictatorship, and with
the people behind him, led the new French Empire and his Grande Armée on a war
of conquest across Europe, with only Portugal, Russia and the United Kingdom
left standing by 1812. But Napoleon made the fatal mistake of invading Russia,
a move that has brought so many an army to its knees. By 1815, Napoleon was
finally defeated at the Battle of Waterloo, and for the first time in 25 years,
Europe was no longer at war.
In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, Europe
had realised that continual war was threatening to unravel society, and set in
place a system to prevent any further wars of that scale. The Congress of
Vienna was the first massive meeting of ambassadors from all of Europe, dedicated
to the single goal of establishing a lasting plan of peace for Europe. It aimed
to resize the major powers to maintain a balance of power, and so prevent any
single one from attempting to take over another.
This ushered in the era of Pax Brittanica and
the Concert of Europe. With the United Kingdom established as the undisputed
master of the seas, it’s Royal Navy could blockade any Empire that attempted to
upset the balance of power, and the major powers could call a new congress,
like that in Vienna, when any threat to peace arose. But no system is perfect,
and less than 60 years later, it started to unravel.
Prussia rose as the most powerful of the
German States, and in 1870, Prussia provoked France into an attack, and united
the German states in an alliance. Having won, this alliance in 1871 declared
Wilhelm I the Kaiser of the new united German Empire. The balance of power had
shifted in Europe, and it has shifted precariously towards the Germans, and
war. But the German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, was a shrewd diplomat, and
worked tirelessly to maintain a network of alliances to keep the Concert of
Europe intact. In order to prevent Germany’s economic rise from instigating
war, Bismarck called the Berlin Conference in 1884, and the European powers
organised their efforts to colonize Africa. The Scramble for Africa was on, and
through that conference, Germany took control of German South-West Africa, now
Namibia.
But the power imbalance could not be masked
forever. With the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in the
Bosnian capital of Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, War engulfed Europe once again,
and 5 years later, another treaty attempted to re-establish peace. Out of the
Treaty of Versailles came another institution, the League of Nations. German
South-West Africa was transferred under mandate to the British Empire, under
the administration of South Africa. The League of Nations was to prevent wars
by providing for the collective security of its members, and was the first
institution specifically formed to maintain world peace. But with its powers
principally vested in the Great Powers that comprised it, and the United States
declining to join, it was doomed to fail.
The Treaty of Versailles proved too onerous
to provide a lasting peace, and less than 20 years later, the League failed to
prevent another World War. The terrible destruction wrought by World War II,
and the weapons of mass destruction developed during it finally made the world
realise that war was no longer a viable option for statecraft if humanity was
to survive on this planet. The successor to the League of Nations emerged in
the aftermath of this terrible war – the United Nations.
The UN has so far prevented another
worldwide war in the past 70 years, though it is not without its faults. It
successfully led the European nations to decolonize Africa and the rest of the
world by granting the colonies independence, but when it attempted to assert
directed control over Namibia in 1966, South Africa did not comply. It took more
than 20 years to resolve after that, with much bloodshed in between. But
Resolution 435 was finally implemented by 1989, and our country was born in
1990, on the back of diplomacy, not war.
It took people a while to realise that war
is always the same. When you fire that
first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who's going to die.
You don't know whose children are going to scream and burn. How many hearts
will be broken? How many lives shattered? How much blood will spill until everybody
does what they were always going to have to do from the very beginning: Sit
down and talk.
Our President was part of the independence
struggle, but he was also part of the peace that followed. As one of the
architects of our constitution, he had seen what lies down the other path, and
chose a different course for our country. The Harambee Prosperity Plan is a
child of conflict that wishes to live in peace. His International Relations and
Cooperation Policy emboldens not only our country to live in peace and
cooperation with our neighbours, but also invites Namibians to work together,
in diplomacy, with one another and our neighbours.
Henry Kissinger said that diplomacy is the
art of restraining power. President Geingob aims to restrain the power of government,
and give the Namibian people the power to achieve prosperity. When you fight
for something, you’re never quite happy with what you get – you always want to
fight to get more. But when you build something up for yourself, you love what
you’ve built. Our country was born from diplomacy, and built up by Namibians.
That’s why we love it so. Let’s keep that momentum going.
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