South African Foreign Policy Analysis

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International Relation Introduction In this assignment I am going to define the concept of foreign policy then outline the main ideas of Jean-Paul Marthoz for Norwegian Peace building Resource Centre (NOREF) that are based about South Africa’s foreign policy approach and state whether it is realist, liberal or both. I am again going to identify the challenges and ambiguities identified by the author about the South African foreign policy and then include the writings of authors who wrote from an African perspective then provide my opinion based on whether I agree with the author or not. Foreign policy is a study of the management of external relations and activities of nations as differentiated from their own domestic policies. It entails concepts…show more content…
All national governments are obliged to engage in foreign policy directed at foreign governments and other international actors because of the fact of their separate international existence. The foreign policy consists of aims and measures that are intended to guide the government’s decisions and actions with regards to external, particularly relations with other foreign countries. The South African foreign policy dates a long way from the apartheid era, during the time when the Pretoria regime was considered as an international pariah that carried out a cruel foreign policy that was mostly fixed to protect the white minority rule in an increasingly hostile regional and international environment. Jean-Paul Marthoz’s main ideas about the South African foreign policy approach As with accordance to the author (Jean-Paul Marthoz), he explains a foreign policy as a means of solving deep-rooted domestic problems and outgrowing the safe nostalgia of anti-apartheid struggles that have happened in the past. He portrays foreign policy also as a way of correcting a growing imbalance between its commitments and powers in order to…show more content…
A very new foreign policy had to be implemented in South Africa in order to replace/or substitute the prior foreign policy that mostly focused on protecting the white minority rule in an increasingly hostile regional and international environment within a state. It has even taken an active role in trying to forge a new international order, particularly in Africa, where it worked hard to establish the African Union (AU), and at the United Nations, where it is serving as a second term on the Security Council. Currently, the South African foreign policy appears contradictory, torn between ethics and interests, between liberal internationalist and human rights values, on the one hand, and the attachment to a doctrine of national sovereignty that tolerates authoritarian regimes and the failure of successive ANC administrations to profoundly transform South Africa and uplift its black majority from poverty affects its foreign policy. South Africa’s fate is

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