The concept of a paradox suggests that truth lies in but also beyond what is initially perceived. The gift of paradox provides an intriguing capacity: It holds together seemingly contradictory truths in order to locate a greater truth.
John Paul Lederach
But a stable and successful society must take a dimmer view of humankind, leaders especially, and build our systems for the worst of them.
Christopher Blattman
Introduction, and the general thesis of the article
It feels rather surreal to have this discussion, does it not? South Africa, in open hostilities with the United States, based on arguments that range from the bizarre to the contentious. This is the brave new world, a world of terrifying consequences and inspiring possibilities.
Recent weeks have highlighted the escalation of the diplomatic conflict between the United States and South Africa, with events involving the G20 summit in Johannesburg late November acting as a well-illuminated focal point to the increasingly acrimonious relationship between these two countries.
From a few shots across the bow earlier this year, such as the tense meeting between Presidents Ramaphosa and Trump in the White House during May, to public criticism from the Trump administration about a variety of allegations against South African policies involving discrimination, land tenure and the alleged breach of G20 protocol in November, the conflict has now settled in to an open confrontation, with the US playing the role of the aggressor.
This is a conflict of real and urgent consequences for the South African government and the South African people. The stakes could not be higher, and it comes at a time of larger global power alignments. Getting the management and outcomes of this conflict wrong could place South Africa in such a weak position, at a crucial time in world power realignments, that it would never recover its place in building and benefiting from the new world being born around us.
Conversely, if this conflict and its outcomes are managed skilfully and consistently, the conflict itself can be a creative opportunity to position South Africa so that it can benefit from this brief window of reshaping and resettling of the future use of power, and from where it can, at long last, start to reach its full potential. The margins of error are razor thin, and to miss by an inch would be to miss by a mile.
This article briefly analyses the most important aspects of the conflict dynamics themselves, and then suggests a few specific practical conflict strategies that the South African government should implement. The intention is to contribute a series of articles on this crucial conflict as it develops, and to provide a general overview at this early stage.
Assessment of the current conflict boundaries
The SA-US conflict is unusual in many respects. While the US is in perpetual conflict with more than one country globally, including several small and medium countries, the open and focused hostility from the US towards us is unprecedented in recent times, only arguably matched by its stance and policies towards South Africa towards the latter years of apartheid.
The US has, since early in the start of the second Trump administration, criticized the South African government on a range of issues, which include its treatment of the white Afrikaner community, its application of race laws and land distribution, and condoning various levels of threats and violence against minority communities. Pinning down a precise list of offences can be a challenging task, as we have started to see a pattern where President Trump would fire out a detailed post on his Truth Social platform, only for those specific terms and details to be watered down or amended in subsequent posts by members of his administration, such as the recent accusation of “genocide” of white Afrikaners being levelled at the South African government by Trump, with this being refined by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to focus on violence against minorities, farm murders and a range of far more realistic criticisms.
This is of course partly by design. This is, by now, a very transparent strategy used by the Trump administration in several of its attacks on targeted countries. The zone of public attention and news cycles is flooded with a mix of absurdities, insults, threats and more accurate criticisms, a firestorm of attention on social and other media is created around outrage and well-intentioned efforts at refuting some of the more egregious accusations and threats, with the result that attention in the spotlight is handed to the US in the pursuance of its own goals. This year has seen several countries being swept away by these rather crude strategies of dominance and self-interest by the US, often rather unfortunately accompanied by reluctant respect for the so-called unmatched skill of these modern day blitzkriegs, these prime examples of the art of the deal.
What should the South African government’s goals be here? We mentioned earlier the opportunity of this conflict being a springboard for the South African government to improve and escape the rut of failure, mediocrity and underperformance that it has dug itself and the country into. An obvious and productive place to start in effectively countering the US attacks would be to take a cold, hard look at the South African government’s own internal policies and diplomatic history of recent years.
We will return to this aspect, and expand on it in the specific conflict strategies discussed below, but here we can simply indicate that the SA government needs to walk a tightrope balancing a few seemingly irreconcilable interests and decisions. This should be a lot easier than sometimes imagined. The simple, golden thread that must run through all strategies and their implementation must be the maximal best interest of the country, short, medium and long term.
A crucial assessment lies at the heart of the accurate roadmap ahead, one that needs to very urgently and very accurately read the trajectories of the developing multipolar world. The SA government needs to read, and aim, not at where that world is at this stage, but where it will be in the next months and years. Planned chaos is the new normal in some of these developments.
This developing multipolar world has already been born, and we are, in important respects, already late in finding our own best place in this epoch-shaping process. That the process is already on its way is conceded by the US. It is not a question of whether this Cold War 2.0 is happening, but what our specific role and ultimate place in it will be. As with all earlier power realignments this is about the reshaping of the world for, and by, the new centres of power.
The US and China will be the two main architects of these new realities, with countries and interest groupings like Russia, Europe, BRICS featuring prominently. South Africa should aim for that medium player niche in these new power plays. This will be a place where influence can become a currency, and where benefits far outside the normal reach of that individual medium country can be obtained by skilful conflict management and diplomacy.
To get this wrong will quickly relegate that country to the bottom category of nations, those that will end up as resource and data fodder for the new power alignments, the passive victims of a brand new wave of colonization. The tightrope stretching before the South African government is to seek and achieve the best interests of the country while managing these new challenges.
Calls for an unquestioning loyalty and even obeisance to the Trump administration, are outdated and poor conflict strategies. Compromise and appeasement strategies are terrible conflict responses, especially against counterparts such as the present Trump administration. The year is littered with examples of countries who tried the quick and painless capitulation, only to be continually under the hammer of this merciless leadership.
One cannot, and should not, negotiate seeking fairness and respect in an environment purposefully built on chaos and disrespect, and where the sole purpose is for the one party to seek and obtain maximum benefit, regardless of the cost to the counterpart. We return to that below. It is of course an equally unnecessary and short-sighted conflict strategy to purposefully antagonize a powerful and potentially valuable ally. Here the SA government has a lot of introspection to do.
Following the path of our own best interests, as we mentioned earlier, may very well see us forming increasingly important and open relationships with countries like China. There should be no doubt that we should pursue these goals and our own best interests, but the relentless question should remain: is this decision, this relationship, in the best interests of South Africa. Some very hard and difficult decisions will need to be made in the near future, and I have no objection if that process leads us to new relationships.
I believe that the argument for an unquestioning loyalty towards the US is simply not defensible given the modern winds of change, and such arguments are often based on outdated or unexamined dogmatic principles. But exchanging unquestioning loyalty towards one hegemon for the same loyalty towards another is simply lazy and irresponsible leadership. Medium players such as South Africa will need to walk that tightrope by taking principled and reasoned positions, and balancing loyalty and trustworthiness towards one country with sincerity, fairness and a lack of enmity towards others outside that group. But this new political stage is also already a testosterone-filled cage fight. Real or perceived weakness and vulnerability will be punished. The days of discreet and well-mannered diplomacy are, at least for now, completely gone, a liability and not an asset. We will consider what should replace it in the specific strategy session.
These are the cliff edges on which all global international relations, and our own participation therein, will play out in the next few years. It will demand a nimble, highly competent and sustained level of elite political conflict management and diplomacy from our government.
Why not simply wait this out?
One of the very understandable human responses to complex, seemingly overpowering and intractable conflict is to avoid it, to wait, to look away. If I do not play I cannot get hurt, is the thought process that drives such a strategy. Often, conflict avoidance is indeed a good strategy. The avoidance of risk, resource preservation, damaging of relationships and other considerations are often persuasive enough reasons to warrant a strategy of avoidance, which could include a wait-and-see approach.
Given the risks involved, the public unpleasantness of these conflicts, the perceived obvious disparity in size and power between the US and SA, it is understandable that this would be a popular strategy, and it is noticeable how popular a “solution” this is on social media. Wait out the year, and resume normal relations a year later when the UK assumes leadership of the G20. But a year in global politics can be a very long time, and with the speed at which the new world is being shaped a year is an eternity. These are, quite clearly, the formative years of the new power blocs, and relationships are being built that will be crucial in the next few years.
Participating from the side-lines, trying to make progress in bilateral negotiations and working on our relationships with the other members during this year all sound like plausible strategies. This may have been a strong enough argument, had it simply implied our empty chair at those tables for the year ahead. But it does not. In this return to aggression and power politics, an empty chair means weakness, capitulation and a lack of conflict responses. It is passivity when something else is required. It proves that sufficient pressure gets you to comply, and it rewards irrational and heavy-handed conduct.
The US has also unilaterally claimed to removed South Africa as a G20 member, and replaced us with Poland. Allowing this to stand creates a year of momentum in that direction, allows new relationships and friendships to be formed in our absence, and it makes it so much more difficult to undo a status quo that by then has been in place for a year. Even our own allies will doubtlessly see a difference in standing up in support for us now, as opposed to doing so a year later if our readmission should be contentious then.
Our acquiescence now also gives the US a year in which to lobby current members to make our exclusion permanent. I have no doubt that once we are not at those tables, future negotiations will, directly and indirectly, reward support for our continued exclusion. Agreeing to be bullied out of your legitimate chair will also have other adverse consequences for us in the new world being created. It shapes perceptions of our conflict responses, and will doubtlessly be repeated by others in the next few years, in other spheres outside the G20.
Analysis of the US position
Understanding the conflict and diplomatic strategies discussed here brings several benefits to South Africa. One of these will be the fact that the actual reason(s) why the US is targeting South Africa in this way becomes less critical, and we need not spend too much time on speculation in that direction. Whether, as speculation would ascribe it to Israeli involvement, a precursor to obtaining our minerals, securing an unstable home-base or so many other stated reasons, we derive maximum benefit from the conflict whatever the true motivation may be (assuming there is one in this transactional administration), and we need not fear the consequences of getting that aspect wrong.
It is normal, and to an extent, necessary, to defend South Africa against some of the accusations levelled against it. Two categories of complaints can be identified at this stage: (i) the manifestly absurd and demonstrably wrong (for example the white “genocide”) or South Africa being in breach of G20 protocol after the US initially boycotted the event, and (ii) a category of complaints that are more accurate and justified, such as harmful applications of certain laws, the deterioration of our economy and its consequences and so on. Of course we should respond to these allegations, but we can do so once or twice, authoritatively and with a comprehensive explanation of the facts and reasons, and then these accusations can be ignored for the most part. Being dragged into an endless cycle of defensiveness and distraction is a transparent part of this type of attack.
Once we understand that the accusations in themselves are conflict strategies, the instinct to defend ourselves against the absurd and the unreasonable disappears. The accusation is the weapon, it has very little to do with the accuracy thereof. It is designed to confuse, enrage and to destabilize the recipient. It distracts from other issues, it engineers the narrative, it steers the process. More importantly, it uses the mechanics of identity conflicts to energize the in-group and to build and maintain the process of its own agenda. The South African conflict becomes fuel for other goals and projects. While our South African government has so far shown no evidence of an advanced understanding of the mechanics of modern identity conflicts (as distinguished from identity politics, at which they are more adept), modern conflict studies show that the objective truth of a conflict plays a surprisingly unimportant role, especially in IR conflicts such as these.
It is again tempting to think of this as globally important. It is a crucial episode in the history of our democracy, one of the most consequential conflicts that we have had to face thus far, but it is not that important to the US. We are not even mentioned in any of the 33 pages of their “National Security Strategy” (NSS), published a few days ago (see the link to this document in number 1 of the resource list below). This should inform our strategies.
The US is of course very aware of the energies of the new, multipolar world. They cannot continue being the World Cop in a unipolar world, they have significant economic challenges, and internally their polarized country has never been more fragmented than this. Their global policies, and the latest NSS reflect, quite correctly in my view, an urgent sense of contracting, of stepping away from several commitments and forever conflicts, they understand what “America First” really means. Those rather well-founded operating philosophies find good support in the far more selfish and personal interests of some members in the Trump administration.
Conflicts are, to them, not about the merits of the factual background, it is not about advancing the interests of the country involved – it is about American interests, and even this category seems at times to only include a few Americans. To approach negotiations with them assuming mutual benefit and trust as being axiomatic of the process has become dangerously naïve. At least two important conflict principles flow from this understanding.
Firstly, the South African government need not be too exasperated about some of these allegations. Once you see the piano wires of these crude conflict strategies they lose their magic, their ability to enrage or intimidate. Secondly, this enables us to then calmly plan on meeting and dealing with the real intentions behind these attacks. Stripped of its intimidatory value, of its shock and awe potential, we see something else behind these accusations: the selfishness and sheer hypocrisy of those who seek to take the moral high ground against us at the negotiating table. Even if we take the accusations of the Trump administration as correct verbatim, the moral basis for their attacks simply collapse under scrutiny.
Even on their version of what our government is doing wrong, we are putatively excluded from the G20 while Russia, China and Saudi Arabia escape such censure. To argue that South Africa has a worse human rights record than those countries is to give up all pretence of a sincere debate. During 2025, the Trump administration itself is guilty of perpetrating human rights violations so egregious that some of the loyal GOP members are objecting, such as forced arrest and expulsion of US and other citizens, the killing of alleged drug smugglers outside the borders of the US, victimization of its internal enemies, and a growing list of other offenses that should, at the very least, serve to remove their right to hector South Africa about our governmental failures.
Guiding conflict principles
Modern conflict studies and this year on the global stage alike show us that “bending the knee” to the Trump administration is a most unwise strategy. I have no doubt that countries such as Kenya who try to keep the peace by entering into seemingly advantageous agreements with the US have simply removed their opportunity to effectively deal with such conflicts, and that in future they will rue these agreements as little else than extractive and targeted colonization projects.
Reacting emotionally and trying to slug it out with a country such as the presently led United States is equally a rather unnecessary and ill-advised strategy. What then are the answers that modern conflict studies and practice make available to us? We get into specific strategies in the next section, but here we can start with the simple observation that this conflict, for as long as it lasts, is all about the use of sheer power. Nothing else. There is no superior set of principles or worldview involved here, there is no relationship worth pursuing other than the respective commercial and security interests, and the only concessions that you will get at these tables you will have to earn yourself.
Modern conflict management and diplomacy is not about playing nice, conflict avoidance or compromise. It is not about staying neutral. It is about winning, about maximally looking after the best interests of your own country, but in the wisest and most efficient manner. The art, and the science, of conflict management, especially at this level, is a sword, not a shield.
Specific conflict strategies
The specific conflict strategies that the South African government should follow is of course situational, dynamic and subject to the fine-grained nuance of every new confrontation or engagement, and will need effective daily, hourly monitoring and adaptation. The magic of those strategies applied by skilled individuals, on the foundation of established earlier friendships and alliances further guide these strategies.
For our purposes however, the following examples selected may give an indication of what is available and possible.
1. Thoroughly upgrade all involved personnel’s conflict skills As some other countries do, most of our senior involved politicians rely on their experience and a few general outdated conflict negotiation skills to get them through these challenges, even at the highest diplomatic levels. Vastly outdated assumptions and strategies, designed for the area of mannered compromise, of the Kissinger era, of trade union negotiations of the 1980s, are still openly (and sometimes on live television) on display. This is an unacceptable leadership failure, one with tremendously negative consequences, but one that is easily corrected.
2. Clean your own house, then hold that line
Some of our diplomatic challenges stem from the internal conflicts and indecisive leadership that follow on factional conflicts inside the ANC. This also leads to an outdated, unimaginative approach to modern diplomatic solutions. Hackneyed old dogmas and clichés are bandied about, limiting our understanding of both the problems as well as the available solutions. It also of course makes our decision makers appear incompetent and years behind the new trajectories of change and growth.
The Trump lectures should not all be dismissed. In a few of those accusations lie kernels of truth, accusations that can be taken to heart and used as the source for improvement of South African lives. The sheer mismanagement of what would have been an effective, if limited, engine for growth and equality such as the B-BBEE frameworks, the uncertainty around land appropriation, a scandalous record on unemployment, crime and corruption, the inertia and passive approval of open racially motivated hate speech against the minority white group, to name but a few, are all accusations that hit home. Clarify these aspects internally and externally, clean it up for effective modern application, and then hold that line as a modern, sovereign country. Remove the internal muddling, uncertainty and inefficiency, as this makes external attacks so much more difficult to contend with. As a principled and skilled renewal of the foundations and goals of a country’s policies this is healthy and a good practice, and nothing to do with giving in to external pressure.
3. Prepare a comprehensive presentation opposing the accusations
Complex conflicts, especially those involving malicious or selfish motivations, thrive on uncertainty, and they become increasingly difficult to manage. The government should prepare a comprehensive document, in a technical but readable style, dealing with the accusations, such as the genocide accusations, land grabs and so on. Use objective facts, statistics and interviews from affected parties. This is not to persuade the accuser, but to set the record right and to convince those that are open to such persuasion. This should be easily accessible and used as reference tool going forward. It can be a dynamic document, updated from time to time. Where concessions and admissions are appropriate, make them publicly, including in such a document.
4. The most important work gets done away from the table South Africa’s support among the other G20 nations that attended the recent summit was palpable. Support, even personal affection, characterised this event, and while this was good to see, it is unrealistic and naïve to expect that support to translate into open defiance of the US position on excluding us from the G20. These established friendships and relationships must however be fostered away from the formal engagements during the next year. Bilateral engagement, agreements and the relationships themselves will have to be managed carefully and continuously. This will be the primary method of staying in the room if we are physically excluded. It is important that these relationships do not suffer any harm due to our absence. We should not place any public or private pressure on these relationships to publicly defy the US’s decision. This they do spontaneously and of their own accord, or not at all. Do not force them to pick sides, as they will then go with their own best interests.
5. Insist on our place at the G20 table
Make absolutely no concessions on this aspect. While the G20 itself has no really helpful internal constitution or documentation that we can rely on, there is precedent on earlier efforts at excluding countries (Russia, for example). Those processes (voting etc) can be used to build a case on process, and a more elaborate legal case, built around principles such as the US’s putative and ultra vires “decision”, can be developed. South Africa should (as a recent statement by President Ramaphosa seems to do) insist that it remains a full G20 member as before, and that it will attend the summit as a member.
This should include all facets of such membership, and this should all be done publicly and with maximum visibility. The line should remain that we are extending the hand of continued friendship and collaboration, but that we will not accept any part of this effort to exclude us. If this should include any unpleasantness such as refusal to grant visas or public insults, then that must be publicly opposed in the way described earlier. Our involved officials should include President Ramaphosa, and we should throughout remain firm, within legal bounds, dignified and unflinching. If we are physically excluded from participation then that must be the result of a publicly recorded process. This will, in itself, cause harm to the US image in general, and their G20 event in particular. Under no circumstances must we concede to “sitting this one out”.
6. Continue to engage with the US at various levels
Make use of the divisions in the GOP and MAGA camps, the Democrat emerging dynamics, leadership and insecurities, do not lose sight of the majority of Americans who are increasingly appalled at what they are experiencing. Modern news cycles and social media have made advertising campaigns unnecessary. Keep on working with the US, and find ways to stay in the room. Develop and highlight mutual interests, show how cooperating with us can actually establish their goals as we briefly mentioned earlier. Do not sulk and break off engagement, awaiting apologies or new administrations (the Age of Trump can last many years beyond his presidency). Also continue to work with American businesses directly, become more investor friendly and build the case for investment of different types.
7. Engage with Afriforum, Solidariteit and related organizations
So far the South African government has treated the Afriforum and Solidariteit (I see that “Afrisol” is becoming popular) concerns with dismissive disdain, even before the detonations of this year. This is poor conflict management. Whatever the motivation and intent behind these lobbying efforts are, they are mostly legal, standard practice and sincere.
Equally, whether this lobbying is being manipulated and used for their own purposes by the US or not, they are significantly serious events in this conflict for it to be taken seriously and to be managed effectively. Where they are wrong, show them. Where there are misunderstandings, clarify them. If, as is the popular perception, they are maliciously spreading disinformation, that is the more reason to skilfully engage with them. Modern conflict studies remind us that we do not wait for, or expect, to engage with our opponent only once they behave as expected, we engage with them as we find them.
To regard all of their concerns as malicious and treasonous propaganda is to cast serious doubt over the involved leadership, and as we can see this year, it has important external consequences. Some level of collaboration and shared positions between the government and these groups can show enormously beneficial results in the larger conflict with the US, including and beyond the G20 arena. While I can hear the screech of social media objection to engaging with “traitors” and “the enemy”, therein lies a part of the original unresolved conflict causes of our country, extending far beyond the present conflict with the US. If such engagement can benefit the country it must be pursued, that should be the one and only consideration.
The modern global challenges ask not whether you want to engage with those that you disagree with, but whether you want to be successful in your conflicts.
8. Continue to build other bridges
The future of SA – US diplomatic relations will most probably be a limited one, at best, even post-Trump. I anticipate that SA will seek, find and build its own best interests more in the BRICS / China sphere than the more traditional US dominated one. If it can be shown that this is in our best interest, then we should pursue that without apology. While the SA-US conflict develops, we should not appear isolated or unusually dependent. This will, in addition to our position with the Trump administration, harm our negotiation options with other countries. Our government’s main task remains to look after our best interests, and to that end this conflict with the US changes very little.
9. Understand the conflict dynamics of the US position, and make effective use of it
The responses from senior South African government leaders these last few days get certain aspects of these dynamics right, and this is good to see. The combination of firm resolve and respectful engagement is a welcome change from domestic skirmishes that we have come accustomed to. But to persuade the right people in the Trump administration to start improving our relationship, and to do so publicly, will require a masterclass in understanding and applying advanced conflict concepts and levers such as the role of face saving, the use of identity conflicts to convince, and how to use the US goals to our advantage. This is a slow and meticulous process, even in the world of politics and the disposable news cycle. The only way to get them to change this open hostility towards us if it is in their best interests.
10. Make use of the US conflict to advance our interests with other role players
Never let a good conflict go to waste, as the saying goes. The US’s open hostilities towards the South African government leaves us free to enter into other agreements and alliances, some of which would have been inevitable in any event. It is important for present and future optics and conflict realities that we try to repair as much as we can in our relationship with the US, but that we are also not seen as the weakest kid on the block. Even without this conflict with the US our world was changing fundamentally, and many of the results thereof that our opponents (of the internal and external variety) now wish to blame on poor leadership would have happened in any event, as a result of the new multipolar realities.
If we are ever going to sit down with the US and negotiate on a reasonable footing, that will have to occur with us as having been successful in other endeavours and agreements. We can never go back to that table as the party without options. This hostility is already causing new relationships to be built, and countries like China is stepping in to benefit from the US’s alienating diplomacy. (For a focused article on specific conflict negotiation strategies in the Trump era, see the link in point 5 of the Resource List below).
Conclusion
If, and only if, our government navigates these stormy waters skillfully, history will show that it was not us that were in the process of being isolated by our decisions, but the US. We tend to take this far more personally than what the facts allow. A few months ago our news channels were showing us public debates about the US invading Canada and / or Greenland. Mexico was going to build a wall. In the new National Security Strategy document Europe is spoken of like a small child, in openly hostile terms. Ukraine is consistently treated like a pawn on the US chessboard. In the same NSS document the concession is made, in so many words, that the war in Ukraine must be stopped so that US relations with Russia could be stabilized. We are not the sole recipient of this level of attention from the US.
Power shifts, builds and breaks. So it has always been. We are going through massive changes in so many assumptions, accepted wisdoms and structures and previous truths. Change is happening to that world, and there is no way to resist or avoid it. The only question in the world of international relations is how we make use of that change to benefit South Africa. The old answers, the old questions, have changed, often beyond recognition. Much of the old East / West paradigms are broken beyond practical use. These last few days we see Narendra Modi warmly receiving Vladimir Putin in India, we see Xi Jinping having an openly constructive meeting with Emmanuel Macron in China, and we know that those tectonic plates are shifting.
We need not, we should not grovel before anyone. We are a sovereign country with immense potential. If we manage this conflict skilfully we need not fear coming to harm through the uncharacteristic and ill-tempered threats of another country.
From my study of and work with conflict, it is good to see South Africa having this rather unique opportunity to achieve meaningful and lasting gains, with and without the US, to learn lessons and acquire skills, reputations and benefits beyond what a safe and peaceful isolation would have been able to produce. But opportunities in this new world do not mean automatically good results. There will be no respect, no room, for passengers, for untrustworthy partners, in these new power silos. These external conflicts can be managed, and we can benefit greatly from them.
At the same time, they should act as mirrors to our internal conflicts, our dysfunctionality, our underachievement, and we should make use of these opportunities to set right those internal errors and unresolved conflicts. We need not fear external harm if we do this right, and as always, we are potentially our own worst enemy.
The US is striding through the world, breaking more than what it is building. What are we going to build with those broken pieces?
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. On negotiating in a lawless, chaotic environment: https://www.conflict-conversations.co.za/conversations/conflict-management-in-a-lawless-environment-conflict-strategies-on-the-effective-application-of-power
3. My book Hamlet’s Mirror: Conflict and Artificial Intelligence (Paradigm, 2023), while dealing with artificial intelligence, sets out in much detail the trajectories and conflict causes of the new power alignments.
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
(Andre Vlok can be contacted at andre@conflict1.co.za for any further information.)
(c) Andre Vlok
December 2025