The first lesson a disaster teaches is that everything is connected. In fact, disasters … are crash courses in those connections. At moments of immense change, we see with new clarity the systems – political, economic, social, ecological – in which we are immersed as they change around us. We see what’s strong, what’s weak, what’s corrupt, what matters and what doesn’t.
Rebecca Solnit
Introduction, and the general thesis of the article
Reading through local media and social media commentary during 2025, one can be forgiven for understanding the current developing conflict between South Africa and the US as a calamitous event of recent origin.
The simplified, and very popular, version of the road to here tells us that the current fractured diplomatic relationship between these two countries was caused by the South African government (or the ANC, in some more particular versions), as a result of their irresponsible relationships with countries like China, Russia, Iran and others, and provocative events such as the ICJ case brought against Israel. Added to this narrative is the axiomatic assumption that the United States is a giant economy, and that our diplomatic relationship with the US must be one of good standing in order for us to survive and thrive.
This popular perception, even at sophisticated levels, tells us that all was well, that the US had a good relationship with South Africa in particular, and Africa in general, prior to all of this, and that the SA government / ANC has now caused immense harm to the country. Voetsek, ANC, right?
As so often with complex conflicts, the historical facts tell a story very different from the currently accepted popular version.
The US and Africa: the early years
The popular perception of the US as the world’s supercop, of a nation exporting order, democracy and prosperity is not a commonly held one. Both internal and global US critics argue that the US has failed to establish and earn the reputation as a global peacemaker and stabilizing force, and here in Africa examples such as the Rwandan genocide and the Somalian conflicts of the 1990s are used in support of such criticism.
If we are to form a clear and comprehensive view of the current SA-US conflict, we will need to understand, as a point of departure, that the US has always approached Africa (and South Africa) as a means to an end, that end being the US’s best interests. I do not mean this as criticism, at all, but it is necessary to emphasize this fact, as it serves to destroy much of the narrative that argues that the SA government destroyed a good, healthy diplomatic relationship during the course of the last year or two.
This is also an important contemporary point missed by analysts arguing that this purported good relationship with Africa has always existed, and that only now, in the December 2025 US National Security Strategy (NSS) document, do we see a significant change, a cooling of that relationship. Getting this first assumption wrong skews the entire lens through which the US-Africa diplomatic relationship in general, and the US-SA diplomatic relationship in particular, are viewed, with crucially important consequences for the South African government’s conflict options.
Politically correct assurances aside, Africa simply never really featured prominently on any US radar screens until the Cold War (say the period of the middle 1950s to the late 1980s). Here, various African nations, regions, systems and resources now mattered to the US, again for no other reason than their own interests in their ideological battle against the USSR. Even seemingly unrelated diplomatic leadership roles such as the US role in ending apartheid, their humanitarian assistance in Biafra and Ethiopia, were ultimately based on their own interests.
US policies towards Africa since the Cold War
What may have been an inaccurate assessment up to the 1990s then gets confirmed by various unambiguous US policy confirmations from then onwards. We can see from President Bill Clinton’s 1994 policy directive that the US would not intervene in any future African crisis unless American interests were “directly threatened” (Presidential Decision Directive PDD-25).
This simple admission was followed in letter and spirit by subsequent administrations, for example President George W. Bush after the events of 9/11 (bringing terrorism front and centre into the calculus), and the first Trump administration (specifically 2018). Maybe the most frank assessment of the developing US diplomatic policy towards Africa at that stage can be found in the words of President George H.W. Bush where, in the National Security Review of the 1990s (NSR 30, as an example), a focused US study concluded that Africa presented “significant opportunities for and obstacles to US interests.”
Good diplomatic, peacekeeping, socioeconomic development and humanitarian work was being done by the US, but through it all ran that golden thread: US interests. These interests were referred to now and then as being involved with geopolitical threats, economic considerations, resources and mineral access, terrorism and so on. During the first Trump administration those interests were largely the combating of the expansion of Chinese and Russian influence in Africa.
During President Obama’s administrations, this coldly commercial relationship was somewhat ameliorated by a growing understanding of Africa as being an important part of an increasingly interconnected world, but not much development of this idea followed since then. US interests in Africa, and South Africa, are important categories in successive US administrations and their application of their global policies.
Security and strategic interests, under which we can file real and imagined terrorism threats and resultant instability, can arguably be seen as the most important of such interests. Instability in Africa has consequences elsewhere, and it creates openings for competing countries to develop their footholds and influence. Economic and resource interests would be the second of such US interest focal points, and here we can include data and other resources necessary for the modern digital economy. This category would include natural resources, often so crucially important for a variety of US interests.
The enduring importance of all of these categories make it abundantly clear that the US is not in Africa for humanitarian reasons alone. Even the creation of the US Mission to the AU (USAU) in December 2006, with all of its lofty ideals and promises of a deeper and more meaningful engagement between these two geographical areas fizzled out, with the first Trump administration’s engagement with the AU being nominal and perfunctory. Critics argue, with some merit, that this was a project largely established to combat the expansion of Chinese influence in Africa, which if correct, simply brings us back to the real reason behind the sales talk: that of US interests.
Diplomatic relations since 2018
In January 2018, President Trump, two years into his first administration, publicly complained about the US granting protection to immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti and various African countries. In a conversation that attracted worldwide criticism and shock, he referred to these countries as “shithole countries” (see for example PolitiFact | Donald Trump’s ‘s---hole countries’ remark and its policy history). Despite initially denying the use of those words, President Trump, as recently as December 2025, confirmed his use thereof (see for example Trump Confirms His Disparaging Remark About 'Shithole Countries' at Immigration Meeting - FactCheck.org )
As much as a variety of commentators tried to walk back those incredible words, the comment simply underscores criticism from a variety of sources, American, African and others, as to US leadership and policy failures in Africa in decades past, and the real, at least current, US assessment of Africa in the shaping and application of their foreign policy.
Speaking of interests
As much as US interests in Africa have been well served in all of the categories that we have discussed, and as much as there have been great advantages for specific African countries in their positive relationships with the US, this is also an oversimplified narrative. Even a summarised list of US interventions in Africa that led to less than optimal results for African interests is a lengthy document.
In seeking to establish and develop working relationships in combating terrorism, the US has ended up in effect creating or maintain some of the most repressive regimes and groups in Africa, The US relationship with Cameroon’s President Paul Biya, financial assistance to regimes in Chad, Uganda, the increase of drone strikes involving civilians in Somalia, Niger and other countries, the instability in Libya after the 2011 interventions and many others balance the tales of beneficial assistance. If at this stage the reader still has doubts as to the centrality of US interests in its relationships with Africa, even a brief look at some of the countries and leaders who benefited from US relationships, and comparing their democratic and humanitarian values and lived leadership environments to that of the US, should dispel such doubt.
Narrative meets reality
In the last decade or so, geopolitical realities have been undergoing slow but ever-escalating paradigm shifts, from an unrealistic unipolar world to the more balanced, more sustainable, multipolar world (some might say tripolar world). The idea of the US as world cop, as the sole hegemon and keeper of the flame, was always an exhausting and impractical idea.
While there were certainly efforts in the US to sustain this position, it is good to see even them relinquishing this role (see for example US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s January 2025 statement, and the confirmation in the US December 4 2025 NSS). This changes the role that Africa, and South Africa, play in future world diplomacy in ways that I sense not many have considered thoroughly as yet.
Conclusion
Many South Africans, for an interesting range of reasons, simply assume that South Africa’s best interests will perpetually be served by maintaining a strong and rather exclusive bond with the US. Everything should be done to ensure that this relationship is our primary diplomatic focus, and our other relationships and decisions should be engineered around the primacy of the SA-US diplomatic relationship, as this wisdom would have us believe. But that world is gone, if ever it existed.
The US will continue, during the Trump administration and thereafter, to walk the line they have always followed, as we can see: that of US interests first. But “America First” now, in this new world, will have a far more direct, more blunt, meaning. Small and medium states, as we can identify all of Africa to be, have had a relatively easy diplomatic road to walk with a hegemonic US. Keep them happy, whatever it takes.
The modern world, still being born and shaped by the Cold War 2.0, is not that simple. Countries like South Africa will have to answer, and continue to answer, complex and difficult questions as to relationships with others, especially the big four power blocs. Those answers will please some and anger others, there is no way out of this apparent conundrum while the new Great Powers settle in. To survive and thrive in this new world will take an elite level of diplomatic and conflict management skills from political leaders. Simply picking and pleasing the only team in town is no longer a wise option. By the logic of that train of thought, exchanging one hegemon for another is obviously lazy and disastrous leadership and conflict skills.
In every diplomatic relationship, and on an ongoing basis, our decision-makers will have to show their work, will have to show why this decision, with these parties, at this time, is in the best interests of South Africa. Gone are the days where the automatic answer to all questions was “The US”.
Of course, our government has made a series of diplomatic errors and blunders, of course it would be wonderful to have the US as an ally and a friend in matters diplomatic, economic and security-related. But we have moved on to chess, from the checkers of earlier decades. The US fortunes are waning, with China in particular becoming a dynamic presence in global diplomacy where they could quite easily become the new sole world hegemon in a decade or two. To continue with the simplistic “US good, China/Russia bad” mantras of the past is unwarranted by simple facts, amounts to irresponsible leadership and poor conflict management.
And while China has exhibited a very restrained and efficient global diplomatic style during the last year or two, it remains naïve to think that the questions and decisions we now have to face with the US will not simply arise later on in our relationships with China, and Russia, and the EU.
And the case can simply not be made that our dedication to the US will automatically bring protection and diplomatic security. One of the most glaring lessons that 2025 has shown the diplomatic world in 2025 is how this US administration is prepared to threaten and discard long-standing friends and allies, with Europe, NATO, Canada and Greenland being illustrative examples. South Africa itself has been treated with scant disrespect since the start of the Trump administration, with a range of accusations and assertions so continuously contrasted by reality that the strategy of a docile and suppliant relationship with the US, whether by Africa or South Africa, is an extremely naïve and poor diplomatic conflict approach.
As we can see, this has always been about interests: that of the US. Africa is, and has always been, a convenient means to a US end. The South African government has not broken up a strong and mutual alliance, and with the exception of a few very debatable instances, it has simply set its sails according to the new winds of diplomatic change.
The accusations levelled at South Africa range from the patently absurd, to the inconsistent, to issues that should rightfully be dealt with by a sovereign nation, acting in its own best interests. Once again, there are other forces, other motivations lurking behind the face value of the accusations, and once again, they are manufactured and used in the best interests of the US. It is then, quite absurd, to argue that the US can, and should, actively pursue its own interests while South Africa should not, or be limited in that pursuit, even though that is so clearly against our own interests.
Summary of main sources, references and suggested reading
1. The US National Security Strategy, a 33 page document published in early December 2025, can be found at 2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf
2. My recent article on the SA-US conflict at https://www.conflict-conversations.co.za/conversations/walking-the-tightrope-the-south-africa-us-conflict and the subsequent interview with Ashraf Garda at https://www.conflict-conversations.co.za/conversations/the-sa-us-conflict-radio-interview-with-ashraf-garda-on-safm
3. Routledge Handbook of Peacebuilding, edited by Roger Mac Ginty, 2nd edition, (Routledge / Taylor & Francis Group, 2025)
4. The conflict consequences and problems of neutrality: https://www.conflict-conversations.co.za/conversations/the-problem-with-neutrality-in-conflict
5. A few specific negotiation strategies with Trump-like opponents: https://www.conflict-conversations.co.za/conversations/effective-diplomacy-in-the-age-of-trump-20-a-few-conflict-management-strategies-for-the-south-african-government
6. Relevant articles for related conflict work, such as identity conflicts, and their source material, can be found at www.conflict-conversations.co.za
7. Contemporary Conflict Resolution. Oliver Ramsbotham et al, 5th edition (Polity, 2024)
8. Routledge Handbook of Conflict Response and Leadership in Africa, edited by Alpaslan Ozerdem et al, (Routledge 2022)
(Andre Vlok can be contacted at andre@conflict1.co.za for any further information.) (
c) Andre Vlok
December 2025