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Lovemore Ranga Mataire Senior Features Writer
THE move taken by the European Union to rescind its decision to exclude Zimbabwe from its summit with African countries slated for April presents an opportunity for the country to remodel its international relations towards constructive engagement to safeguard its national interests.
It is prudent that in the post-GNU and post-election period, strategic players shaping the country’s foreign affairs, must be seized with the task of shaking off the “war” spirit around the land reform and direct their efforts towards re-engagement in a manner that should economically benefit the country.
Without doubt, the sanctity of our sovereignty, which forms the foundation upon which our foreign relations may be formulated, including safeguarding the effective utilisation of the country’s resources for the maximum benefit of all citizens, tops the list.
In utilising the country’s resources, foreign affairs strategists are alive to the interdependence of the world economy being anchored on land, labour, capital and technology.
A typical example was given by the Minister of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services in his response to reports that the United States is unlikely going to include Zimbabwe at its US-Africa meeting slated for August.
Prof Moyo stressed the importance of sovereignty over the country’s resources instead of just being at a gathering called at the behest of an individual president.
“That is old politics, old economy because the bottomline is resources. They can have the summit, what we know in America, the business community wants to come and do business with us over these resources under our soil,” Prof Moyo said.
Indeed, it is old politics to suggest that the exclusion of Zimbabwe at a single event organised by a single country will have a substantive effect on the country’s international standing given the anarchic state of the international system without a central controlling authority.
The realisation of economics as a fundamental factor in shaping international relations is the major single factor that motivated the European Union to lift economic sanctions on the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation and the granting of the Kimberley Process Certification.
Belgium, which is the hub of diamond trading in Europe, was compelled to push for the lifting of the sanctions given the fact that Zimbabwe currently has 20-30 percent of diamond reserves in the world.
While the argument given by Europe for relaxing sanctions against ZMDC was the formation of the inclusive Government, the peaceful holding of the constitutional referendum and peaceful harmonised elections, the truth is that the EU felt that economic sanctions were scuttling and depriving them of potential diamond revenues from Zimbabwe.
Besides the apparent capitulation of the EU, credit must also go to the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which fought for the inclusion of Zimbabwe on the global stage through various diplomatic manoeuvres.
Indeed, the country has managed to highlight to the world that the genesis of the economic sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by the EU was a bilateral the land dispute between Britain and Zimbabwe.
This was a purely diplomatic row that had nothing to do with Zimbabwe’s democratic or human rights credentials and slowly other European countries are coming to that realisation.
Zimbabwe must be motivated more by its national interests, and like the Americans, “we must have permanent interests.”
The words of Henry A Kissinger ring loudly event to this day:
“We are stranded between old conceptions of political conduct and a wholly new conception, between the inadequacy of the nation-state and the emerging imperative of global community.”
While the country is encouraged by the EU’s decision to include Zimbabwe in its meeting with African countries, we should not lose sight of the fact that the old conceptions of the West versus the South and East versus the West are slowing diminishing as are the ideological frameworks that defined relations during the Cold War.
Online Reporter