The limits of regional power: South Africa’s security strategy, 1975–1989

ABSTRACT

This article examines the strategic decision-making of the South African regime between 1975 and 1989. Existing scholarship argues that Pretoria was a regional hegemon and that this position underwrote its security strategy. We suggest that scholars have overstated the implications of its regional strength. Using archival documents and interviews with retired military and political elites, we show how Pretoria’s threat perception, conventional military operations, and nuclear strategy were in fact conditioned by an awareness of the limits of its power within the global distribution of power; its isolation in the international system; and fears of conflict escalation vis-à-vis extra-regional threats.

KEYWORDS:

• South Africa
• threat perception
• conventional operations
• nuclear strategy
• regional power

Acknowledgements

We thank Ryan Brutger, Charles Glaser, Brendan Rittenhouse Green, Nuno Monteiro, Vipin Narang, members of the University of Toronto’s Comparative Politics and International Relations Workshop, participants at the 2019 University of Pennsylvania workshop on New Approaches to International Security and Cooperation, audiences at the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association and International Studies Association, and two anonymous reviewers for comments and suggestions on earlier drafts and presentations of this paper. Special thanks to Anna-Mart van Wyk for her invaluable support during fieldwork for this project. All errors remain our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ For an extended treatment, see Gary Baines, South Africa’s ‘Border War’: Contested Narratives and Conflicting Memories (London: Bloomsbury 2014).

² Only white South African men were subject to conscription, although non-white citizens were eligible to serve as volunteers. On military service in South Africa, see Ian Van der Waag, A Military History of Modern South Africa (Oxford: Casemate Publishers 2018), 255–256.

³ For raw data on which these calculations are based, see the Correlates of War Project’s National Material Capabilities Dataset, Version 5.0, first published in J. David Singer, Stuart Bremer, and John Stuckey, ‘Capability Distribution, Uncertainty, and Major Power War, 1820–1965’, in Bruce Russett (ed.), Peace, War, and Numbers (Beverly Hills: Sage 1972), 19–48.

⁴ US National Intelligence Estimate, South Africa in a New Decade, Apr. 1972, 3.

⁵ Jeffrey Herbst, ‘Prospects for Revolution in South Africa’, Political Science Quarterly 103/4 (1988), 665–685.

⁶ Phyllis Johnson and David Martin, Apartheid Terrorism: The Destabilization Report (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1989), vii, 1, 9, 11, 159.

⁷ Piero Gleijeses, Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976–1991 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 2013), 11; Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959–1976 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 2002), 301.

⁸ For works of this sort, see Jannie Geldenhuys, At The Front: A General’s Account of South Africa’s Border War (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball 1994); Magnus Malan, My Life With The SA Defence Force (Pretoria: Protea Book House 2006); Leopold Scholtz, The SADF in the Border War, 1966–1989 (Cape Town: Tafelberg 2013).

⁹ Malan, for example, argues that South Africa’s ‘greatest battlefield victor[ies] […] played a decisive role in the international change of course that occurred in Africa and it also made a contribution to the fall of international communism in 1989’. See Malan, My Life With The SA Defence Force, 286.

¹⁰ See also, Robert I. Rotberg, ed., South Africa and Its Neighbours: Regional Security and Self-Interest (Lexington: Lexington Books 1985); Joseph Hanlon, Beggar Your Neighbours: Apartheid Power in Southern Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1986).

¹¹ Aaron L. Friedberg, ‘Ripe for Rivalry: Prospects for Peace in a Multipolar Asia’, International Security 18/3 (1993/1994), 5.

¹² See, respectively, Michael A. Allen, ‘The Influence of Regional Power Distributions on Interdependence’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 62/5 (2018), 1072–1099; Etel Solingen, Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle East (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2009). For more general treatments of regionalism, see David A. Lake and Patrick M. Morgan, (eds.), Regional Orders: Building Security in a New World (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press 1997); Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (New York: Cambridge University Press 2003).

¹³ Lake and Morgan, (eds.), Regional Orders: Building Security in a New World, 12.

¹⁴ John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: WW Norton & Company 2001).

¹⁵ Ibid.

¹⁶ Christopher Layne, ‘The “Poster Child for Offensive Realism”: America as a Global Hegemon’, Security Studies 12/2 (2002), 131–132.

¹⁷ Jamie Miller, ‘Things Fall Apart: South Africa and the Collapse of the Portuguese Empire, 1973–74’, Cold War History 12/2 (2012), 183–204.

¹⁸ Gleijeses, Visions of Freedom, 31.

¹⁹ Anatoly Adamishin, The White Sun of Angola, 2nd edition, trans. Gary Goldberg and Sue Onslow (Moscow: Vagrius 2014), 6.

²⁰ Vladimir Shubin, The Hot ‘Cold War’: The USSR in Southern Africa (London: Pluto Press 2008), 72.

²¹ On the Soviet presence in Mozambique, see CIA, The Soviets in Mozambique: Is the Payoff Worth the Price? Feb. 1988.

²² The extent to which these actions were themselves triggered by South African intervention in Angola is disputed. See Scholtz, The SADF in the Border War, 21–22; Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, 254–262.

²³ Gleijeses, Visions of Freedom, 34.

²⁴ US National Intelligence Estimate, South Africa in a New Decade, 2. South Africa’s nuclear programme provided an additional constraint on American support in the 1970s and 1980s, given US nonproliferation efforts. See Anna-Mart Van Wyk, ‘The USA and Apartheid South Africa’s Nuclear Aspirations, 1949–1980’, in Sue Onslow, (ed.), Cold War in Southern Africa: White Power, Black Liberation (New York: Routledge 2009), 55–83.

²⁵ Republic of South Africa, ‘Debates of the House of Assembly’, 17 Apr. 1978: col. 4852.

²⁶ Author interview with Major General Gert Opperman (retired), Pretoria, 23 June 2014.

²⁷ Author interview with Major General Johann Dippenaar (retired), Pretoria, 30 June 2014.

²⁸ Author interview with Pieter Snyman, Roodepoort, 24 June 2014.

²⁹ Quoted in Robert S. Jaster, ‘South Africa and its Neighbours: The Dynamics of Regional Conflict’, Adelphi Papers 26/209 (1986), 19.

³⁰ Ibid., 20. André Buys recalls that ‘the main weapons systems like fighter aircraft were slightly beyond our ability to develop. We could upgrade what we had, and we did that, but we couldn’t replace it totally with a modern fighter aircraft – it was just beyond the means of a country the size of South Africa. So our Air Force was getting into a serious difficulty – the Russians were bringing in MiG-23s, we upgraded our Mirage-3s to the Cheetah, which was not quite on a par with the MiG-23. […] And if [the Soviets] went further – they had much more advanced weapons than that – then we would have been outmanoeuvred there. So because of that, it raised the risk of losing a conventional war’. Author interview with André Buys, Pretoria, 1 July 2014.

³¹ Author interview with Professor Deon Fourie, Pretoria, 16 June 2014.

³² Author interview with Colonel Jan Breytenbach (retired), Wilderness, 20 June 2014.

³³ Author interview with David Steward, Johannesburg, 6 June 2014.

³⁴ Author interview with Ambassador Victor Zazeraj (retired), Johannesburg, 4 July 2014.

³⁵ Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, Final Report, vol. 2 (1998), 14.

³⁶ Ibid., 16. See also, Malan, My Life With The SA Defence Force, 190; Jannie Geldenhuys, We Were There: Winning the War For Southern Africa (Pretoria: Kraal Publishers 2012), 19.

³⁷ On the intellectual origins of ‘total strategy’, see van der Waag, A Military History of Modern South Africa, 250–253.

³⁸ Gleijeses, Visions of Freedom, 117.

³⁹ Van der Waag, A Military History of Modern South Africa, 253.

⁴⁰ Jamie Miller, An African Volk: The Apartheid Regime and Its Search for Survival (New York: Oxford University Press 2016), 210.

⁴¹ Ibid., 283.

⁴² Sue Onslow, ‘The Cold War in Southern Africa: White Power, Black Nationalism and External Intervention’, in Sue Onslow, (ed.), Cold War in Southern Africa: White Power, Black Liberation (New York: Routledge 2009), 10.

⁴³ The SACP supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, for example. See South African Communist Party, ‘The Czechoslovakian Crisis’, in South African Communists Speak: Documents from the History of the South African Communist Party, 1915–1980 (London: Inkululeko 1981), 364–365.

⁴⁴ Jeffrey James Byrne, ‘Africa’s Cold War’, in Robert J. McMahon, (ed.), The Cold War in the Third World (New York: Oxford University Press 2013), 107–109.

⁴⁵ Vladimir Shubin, ‘Unsung Heroes: The Soviet Military and the Liberation of Southern Africa’, in Sue Onslow (ed.), Cold War in Southern Africa: White Power, Black Liberation (New York: Routledge 2009), 154–176.

⁴⁶ For an account of the destabilization campaign in Mozambique and Zimbabwe see, respectively, Steven Metz, ‘The Mozambique National Resistance and South African Foreign Policy’, African Affairs 85/341 (1986): 491–507; John Dzimba, South Africa’s Destabilization of Zimbabwe, 1980–89 (New York: St. Martin’s Press 1998). On South Africa’s role in the Angolan civil war, see Gleijeses, Visions of Freedom; Scholtz, The SADF in the Border War.

⁴⁷ Indeed, and in line with ‘total strategy’, Pretoria originally sought to establish a wider ‘Constellation of Southern African States’ that would incorporate Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Swaziland, Zaire, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, as well as Angola, Mozambique, and a nominally independent Namibia. It was expected that these states ‘would be anticommunist, tolerant of apartheid, and eager to persecute the ANC and SWAPO [South West Africa People’s Organization]’ (Gleijeses, Visions of Freedom, 201). In countries with hostile governments, such as Angola, regime change would be necessary. As the State Security Council put it in March 1979, Pretoria’s strategy in that country was ‘to further the establishment of a well-disposed or at least neutral government in Angola and to perpetuate its existence after it has come to power’ (quoted in Ibid., 104).

⁴⁸ N.C. Schofield, ‘Effects of SA Attack on ANC Bases in Maputo’, Mozambique: Foreign Policy and Relations, Folder No. 1/113/7, Vol 2 (9.1.79–31.3.81), 4 Mar. (Pretoria: Department of Foreign Affairs Archive 1981), 1–2. Emphasis in original.

⁴⁹ Author interview with David Steward, Johannesburg, 6 June 2014.

⁵⁰ Author interview with Major General Johann Dippenaar (retired), Pretoria, 30 June 2014.

⁵¹ Author interview with Colonel Jan Breytenbach (retired), Wilderness, 30 June 2014.

⁵² Scholtz, The SADF in the Border War, 247–251.

⁵³ Author interview with Ambassador Victor Zazeraj (retired), Johannesburg, 4 July 2014.

⁵⁴ For a detailed discussion of this point generally, and in the context of South African intervention in Angola specifically, see Noel Anderson, ‘Competitive Intervention, Protracted Conflict, and the Global Prevalence of Civil War’, International Studies Quarterly 63/3 (2019), 692–706.

⁵⁵ Author interview with Major General Gert Opperman (retired), Pretoria, 23 June 2014.

⁵⁶ Author interview with Major General Johann Dippenaar (retired), Pretoria, 30 June 2014.

⁵⁷ Author interview with Colonel Jan Breytenbach (retired), Wilderness, 20 June 2014.

⁵⁸ Ibid.

⁵⁹ Author interview with Ambassador Victor Zazeraj (retired), Johannesburg, 4 July 2014.

⁶⁰ Author interview with Major General Roland de Vries (retired), telephone, 9 September 2014.

⁶¹ Author interview with Major General Johann Dippenaar (retired), Pretoria, 30 June 2014.

⁶² Author interview with Major General Gert Opperman (retired), Pretoria, 23 June 2014.

⁶³ An additional stipulation was that an independent Namibia could not be ruled by SWAPO, the militant organization fighting for the territory’s independence. See Gleijeses, Visions of Freedom, 180–185.

⁶⁴ The combined use of South Africa’s military and diplomatic capabilities in this way was consistent with ‘total strategy’, which sought to dedicate all dimensions of state power toward reducing both internal and external threats to the apartheid regime. We thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.

⁶⁵ Ronald W. Walters, South Africa and the Bomb: Responsibility and Deterrence (Lexington: Lexington Books 1987), 63.

⁶⁶ See Martha S. Van Wyk, ‘Ally or Critic? The United States’ Response to South African Nuclear Development, 1949–1980’, Cold War History 7/2 (2007), 203–204.

⁶⁷ Jo-Ansie Van Wyk and Anna-Mart Van Wyk, ‘From the Nuclear Laager to the Non-Proliferation Club: South Africa and the NPT’, South African Historical Journal 67/1 (2015), 32–46.

⁶⁸ Author interview with Ambassador Jeremy Shearar (retired), Pretoria, 1 July 2014.

⁶⁹ Author interview with Major General Gert Opperman (retired), Pretoria, 23 June 2014.

⁷⁰ Ibid.

⁷¹ On South Africa’s nuclear posture, see Vipin Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2014), ch. 8.

⁷² Author interview with André Buys, Pretoria, 1 July 2014.

⁷³ Author interview with Waldo Stumpf, Pretoria, 11 June 2014; author interview with Ambassador Victor Zazeraj, Johannesburg, 4 July 2014.

⁷⁴ Or Rabinowitz, Bargaining on Nuclear Tests: Washington and its Cold War Deals (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2014), 106.

⁷⁵ Author interview with André Buys, Pretoria, 1 July 2014.

⁷⁶ Ibid.

⁷⁷ Ibid.; author interview with Waldo Stumpf, Pretoria, 11 June 2014; Peter Liberman, ‘The Rise and Fall of the South African Bomb’, International Security 26/2 (2001), 54; Malan, My Life With The SA Defence Force, 219.

⁷⁸ South Africa’s nuclear strategy was thus consistent with ‘total strategy’ – the use of all aspects of state power in service of its broader goals. On the ways in which nuclear weapons support states’ foreign policy goals, see Mark S. Bell, ‘Beyond Emboldenment: How Acquiring Nuclear Weapons Can Change Foreign Policy’, International Security 40/1 (2015), 87–119; Mark S. Bell, ‘Nuclear Opportunism: A Theory of How States Use Nuclear Weapons in International Politics’, Journal of Strategic Studies 42/1 (2019), 3–28.

⁷⁹ For example, Jørgen Møller, ‘Why Europe Avoided Hegemony: A Historical Perspective on the Balance of Power’, International Studies Quarterly 58/4 (2014), 660–670; Victoria Tin-bor Hui, ‘Toward a Dynamic Theory of International Politics: Insights from Comparing Ancient China and Early Modern Europe’, International Organization 58/1 (2004), 175–205.

⁸⁰ For example, Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.

⁸¹ For example, Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1987).

⁸² See, Daniel H. Nexon, ‘The Balance of Power in the Balance,’ World Politics 61/2 (2009), 330–359.

⁸³ For example, Barry R. Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation for US Grand Strategy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2014).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Noel Anderson

Noel Anderson is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto.

Mark S. Bell

Mark S. Bell is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota.