More than 240 years back, when there was an actual war of arms, not words, between America and a European power, famous Scottish economist, Adam Smith, received an alarmist letter from a young MP.
British parliamentarian John Sinclair wrote to Smith: “If we go on at this rate, the nation must be ruined (the author emphasising this prediction). He was writing to the economist on the looming defeat mighty Britain faced at the hands of its rebellious colonial subjects in the American War of Independence.
Smith responded: “Be assured, my young friend, that there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.”
Recently an ardent Smith follower, Ryan Young of the Human Achievement Hour podcast series, described this riposte, that all turns out OK in the end, as “one of the wisest things [Smith] ever said”.
The counsel to complacency or just shrugging your shoulders or escaping into the agreeable distractions on offer in the latest episode of The White Lotus might be one response to the blow-up between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelensky, the excruciating detail of which was televised to the world.
Of course, objectively, at the time of the 18th-century exchange of letters between Smith and Sinclair, despite the humiliating loss of its colonies, the British Empire would go on, with its naval and manufacturing power, to rule the waves and a lot of the world for the next 150 years or so. The era 1815 to 1914 was aptly termed “Britain’s Imperial Century”.
Now that British power is so diminished, we have one huge superpower in the world, and all its overbearing and brutal transactional nature, in the version presented to the world last week by Trump, is in plain sight.
Still, I would not bet on America’s decline any time soon. This is despite Trump tariffing his friendly neighbours, stiffing his European allies, repeating the Kremlin’s talking points on Ukraine and tearing up the post-Second World War consensus and much of its architecture.
Economic powerhouse
Just how powerful the US is, and “the great deal of ruin” left in the nation was forcibly brought home in a recent analysis in the influential journal, Foreign Affairs.
US scholar Professor Michael Beckley, writing in the January/ February 2025 edition, headlined his article “The Strange Triumph of Broken America”. To back this takeaway with data, he offered these metrics:
“The United States remains an economic powerhouse, accounting for 26% of global GDP, the same as during the ‘unipolar moment’ of the early 1990s. In 2008, the economies of the United States and the eurozone were nearly equal in size, but today, the American economy is twice as large. It is also 30% larger than the combined economies of the so-called global South: Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia. (my emphasis). A decade ago, it was just ten percent larger.”
Well, there is always China as a counterweight, the new Athens to the declining power of old Sparta, a.k.a. the US. Here, too the author punctures one basic assumption, noting:
Here in the far South, we face a world of pending pain from the new (dis)order unleashed by Trump. Especially since our borrowing exceeds all other state expenditure and we rely on the “comfort of strangers” in the bond markets to pay our way, or need the IMF to bail us out.
Some of it is undirected. For example, one blow South Africa’s health care and community organisations suffered was the closure of USAID globally and the directed suspension of aid to this country specifically. Yet, to meet the new reality of a Trump drawdown of US commitments to NATO, the UK has drastically cut its own foreign aid spending and is redirecting scarce resources into defence. This, too will have a devastating effect on aid recipients everywhere, including here.
There is no easy way to respond to these immense changes, except as the saying from Trump’s first administration goes, the world had best take him both seriously and literally.
On the topic of literally, the best response is to stop acting as though words and deeds have no consequences.
Doubtless, with what passes for our international strategy, some blowhards at the Department of International Relations and Cooperation in Pretoria, were complimenting themselves on Trump’s refusal to call out Russian aggression against Ukraine and his demand for a ceasefire there even on grievously disadvantageous terms to the victim state, Ukraine which would be reduced to a shrunken vassal of its former self.
Perhaps Dirco types even drew a Venn diagram showing an intersection of interests between US, Russia and South Africa on topic.
That of course would be a grievous error. While like the stuck clock which correctly tells the time twice a day, there are intersections between our so-called “nonalignment” and Trump’s Putin enablement.
But it stops there. In international terms, there is no intersection at all between our alignment with Iran and its satraps, Hamas and Hezbollah, and our close ties with China.
Beyond the gross and ugly theatrics of the Oval Office shakedown by Trump and his vice president JD Vance of Zelensky on everything from his dress code to his lack of gratitude, there is apparently, on one version, a more serious back story.
This suggests that the US sees its real enemies as China and Iran. And it feels overexposed in its commitments to Europe and Ukraine and underprepared for its looming conflict with both China and Iran. So, it wants to reset and redirect its resources.
Who knows? And perhaps Trump just felt peeved or disrespected by Zelensky. One can imagine how Trump would have reacted if the sainted Mandela rocked up to the White House in one of his famous Madiba batik shirts.
Unpredictable player
But on the more serious question, when you are dealing with such powerful and deeply unpredictable player as Trump, the best idea to use a Mandelaism (a noted amateur pugilist) is to “box smart”.
Boxing smart alas does not appear in our diplomatic toolbox.
In the same journal Foreign Affairs, Cyril Ramaphosa co-authored an article with the president of Columbia and prime minister of Malaysia took full aim at Trump and his hare-brained Gaza plan to decant its population into neighbouring countries.
But Ramaphosa is not a columnist or a journalist. He is a leader with interests to defend and advance. So, it might give him a moment’s satisfaction to write (or have ghosted in his name) that Trump has committed “a grave violation of international law and the fundamental principles of enshrined in the UN Charter”. But words are read and have consequences.
Ditto, the idea of investigating whether to charge AfriForum with “high treason” which is the bizarre response of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), after several political parties filed dockets for their peaceful lobbying efforts in the US, whatever the merits or demerits of their viewpoint. It hardly amounts to, or even vaguely reaches, the threshold of treason. But Ramaphosa called them out one day, and the nodding poodles at the NPA followed up a few days later.
I remain fascinated to see what precisely is in the toolkit of the “international emissaries” Ramaphosa is sending on a long route march to Washington. The same AfriForum was given prime time access on Monday to one of the key Trump whisperers, Tucker Carlson. Meanwhile, the actual ambassador of SA to the US can’t get his foot in the door of either the White House or the State Department.
Writing articles calling out Trump and the NPA considering charging domestic constitutional opponents, who have the ear of his circle, with treason is not boxing smart. It is hitting yourself in the face and hoping somehow this advances your interests to pursue or save trade deals. This with a country such as the US which has a veto power at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Columbia and Malysia are minnows by comparison, but they are the comfort spot for CR.
These are the toughest of times here and in the world. And we need the smartest navigators to bring us into calmer waters. Just a pity few are at the helm right now.
