Abstract: Foreign policy is often presented as a calculation of national interest, separate from emotion and morality. Yet national interest itself is shaped by history, values and strategic culture, raising a difficult question: when principle, international law and material interests conflict, how should a state decide what it ought to do?
Dr Joan Swart
Keywords: Foreign policy | National interest | Morality | Strategic culture | International law | Jus cogens | South Africa
CAN FOREIGN POLICY BE SEPARATED FROM MORALITY?
Foreign policy is often presented as the realm of hard calculation. States pursue their national interests; emotions and moral judgements, however sincerely held, are secondary. There is good reason for this view. Governments cannot conduct foreign policy according to sentiment alone, and a state that consistently sacrifices its own security, prosperity or strategic position in pursuit of every perceived injustice abroad will eventually become incapable of protecting the people it represents.
Yet the separation between morality and strategy may be less complete — and less desirable — than it appears.
What a country considers its “national interest” is not determined by an equation. It reflects history, identity, values and the strategic culture through which a society understands the world. Even the decision that something is worth protecting at a cost is ultimately a value judgement. The question is therefore not whether morality should determine foreign policy, but what role moral judgement should play in defining the national interest — and where its limits should lie.
This becomes particularly difficult when a country’s perceived interests conflict with what it believes is right. South Africa provides several examples. Its positions on Palestine, Iran and Cuba have at times attracted criticism that historical or ideological sympathies are being allowed to override economic or strategic interests. But that criticism assumes that the two can always be separated. They cannot.
The uncomfortable place of morality
Realism has an important lesson for foreign policy: states exist in a competitive international system and have a responsibility to protect their citizens, sovereignty and interests. Governments therefore have to consider power, resources, alliances, trade, security and the likely consequences of their decisions. A foreign policy that ignores these realities in favour of sentiment alone is unlikely to survive for long.
But the opposite extreme is equally problematic. If “national interest” means nothing more than whatever produces the greatest immediate economic, diplomatic or military advantage, then almost any action can be justified. A valuable trading relationship can excuse almost anything; an important alliance can become a reason to overlook behaviour that would otherwise be considered unacceptable. Few people would accept that principle if it were stated so explicitly.
International law itself recognises that there are limits to what states may legitimately do. At the highest level are jus cogens norms — peremptory norms of international law from which no derogation is permitted. These include prohibitions against genocide, slavery, torture, apartheid and aggression, among others. This is an important distinction because a state cannot simply declare that something it considers morally wrong is jus cogens, nor does every moral conviction create a legal obligation to act.
Yet the existence of peremptory norms demonstrates something important: the international system does not accept that national interest is an unlimited justification for state behaviour. There are things that cannot legitimately be traded away simply because doing so is convenient or profitable. Between these legal boundaries and purely subjective emotion lies a much larger and more difficult space in which governments must decide what they believe is right, what they are legally required to do and what they can realistically afford to do.
We are not as rational as we pretend
The idea that foreign policy should be separated from emotion also rests on a questionable assumption about how humans make decisions. Emotion is not simply an impediment to rational thought. Human societies evolved around emotions such as empathy, loyalty, reciprocity, outrage and a sense of injustice, which help communities identify behaviour that threatens trust and social order and create pressure to correct it.
Over time, some of these moral judgements become social norms, political principles and eventually legal rules. Foreign policy is made by human beings and institutions created by human beings, so it is unrealistic to expect states to operate without values, historical memory or moral judgement. The challenge is not to eliminate these influences, but to understand them and prevent them from becoming substitutes for strategic thinking.
A state can believe that something is morally wrong and still ask what it can realistically do about it. It can also decide that acting on a moral principle is sufficiently important to accept a material cost. That does not necessarily make the decision irrational; it may mean that the moral principle forms part of the country’s conception of its national interest.
This distinction matters because national interest is not necessarily synonymous with immediate material advantage.
A country may decide that its reputation, international standing, commitment to a particular principle or contribution to a particular international order is itself an interest worth defending. It may even accept an economic or diplomatic cost in pursuit of that interest. The question is not whether such decisions are rational, but whether the state has consciously weighed the principle, the cost, the alternatives and the likely consequences.
Cuba makes the problem personal
South Africa’s relationship with Cuba provides an unusually revealing example because it is not merely a question of abstract ideology or distant geopolitics. It is rooted in history and, for many South Africans, in personal experience.
For the ANC and Umkhonto we Sizwe, Cuba was a country that provided tangible support during the liberation struggle. Cuban forces fought in southern Africa, and Cuba subsequently provided medical and other assistance to democratic South Africa. The recent parliamentary dialogue on South Africa-Cuba relations repeatedly described the relationship in terms of solidarity, sacrifice and reciprocity. The Cuban Embassy itself emphasised that the relationship was founded on solidarity rather than short-term political or economic interests.
For that historical memory, abandoning Cuba in its present difficulties can therefore be seen as a moral failure. The argument is not necessarily that Cuba must be supported regardless of cost or circumstance, but that a country which remembers who stood with it when it was isolated has a responsibility to respond when circumstances are reversed.
But there is another South African memory. For many former members of the SADF, their families and others who experienced the Angolan War from the other side, Cuba was not simply an ally of a liberation movement. Cuban forces were a direct military adversary, and South African soldiers fought and died in a war in which Cuban forces were participants. That history cannot simply be erased because the political order changed in 1994, nor should acknowledging it require us to reject the historical experience of those who fought on the other side.
This is what makes Cuba different from many of South Africa’s other foreign-policy causes. The relationship is not merely ideological or diplomatic. It is deeply personal for different groups of South Africans — but for profoundly different reasons.
Two national interests?
The recent parliamentary dialogue exposed this tension remarkably clearly. Most participants supported maintaining and strengthening the relationship with Cuba, emphasising historical solidarity, the liberation struggle and Cuba’s continuing humanitarian difficulties. The argument was essentially that South Africa has an obligation to reciprocate the solidarity Cuba demonstrated when South Africa itself was isolated and fighting for political freedom.
The Democratic Alliance presented almost the opposite conception. Its representatives argued that the relationship should be assessed according to its contemporary benefits and value to South African taxpayers rather than historical or ideological considerations. They questioned the costs and benefits of the African Renaissance Fund, defence cooperation, Project Thusano and the medical training programme, among other areas.
Both positions can therefore be understood as appeals to the national interest. One defines national interest partly through historical obligation, solidarity and principle; the other defines it primarily through contemporary utility, opportunity cost and benefit to South African citizens. The disagreement is not necessarily between people who care about South Africa and people who do not. It is a disagreement about what South Africa’s national interest actually consists of.
That is a much more difficult question.
Must principle and interest be opposites?
Interestingly, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation attempted to bridge the two positions. DIRCO argued that the relationship with Cuba was not simply an expression of political solidarity. It pointed to economic and developmental benefits, including the R210 million credit facility from the 2012 economic assistance package, of which Cuba had repaid all but one instalment, and approximately R12 million in interest revenue. It also pointed to expanding technical and investment cooperation, including a proposed biopharmaceutical partnership.
This is strategically significant because it suggests that principle and interest do not necessarily have to be opposing forces. A country can support a partner because it believes doing so is morally justified while simultaneously seeking tangible benefits from the relationship. Indeed, that may be the more mature approach to foreign policy: rather than choosing between morality and interest, governments should ask whether principled relationships can also be made strategically and economically useful.
The problem arises when either principle or interest becomes absolute. A purely transactional foreign policy can become morally indifferent and strategically short-sighted, particularly if the country begins sacrificing the international order or relationships it ultimately depends upon for short-term gains. A foreign policy driven entirely by historical solidarity or moral conviction can, however, spend scarce resources on relationships that no longer serve the country’s broader interests.
Neither is sustainable.
A country with a memory
Perhaps the deeper lesson is that foreign policy cannot be separated from the memory of the society that makes it. South Africa does not have a single historical memory. For some, Cuba represents solidarity with a liberation struggle; for others, it represents an opposing military force in a war they experienced personally. Both memories are real, and neither can simply be legislated out of existence.
The same is true, in different ways, of South Africa’s positions on Palestine, Iran and other international causes. They are informed by particular interpretations of colonialism, sovereignty, resistance, international justice and the role South Africa believes it should play in the world. Some of these positions may be grounded in legal principles, others in historical solidarity, and others in a broader conception of South Africa’s place in the Global South.
This is strategic culture at work. Strategic culture does not only influence how a country assesses military threats; it influences what it remembers, what it values, what it considers legitimate and what it believes it owes to others. It therefore influences the definition of national interest itself.
That is why two people can look at the same international relationship and reach entirely different conclusions about what South Africa should do, while both sincerely believing they are acting in the national interest.
The balance is the strategy
The answer is not to replace strategic calculation with morality, nor is it to pretend that moral judgement has no place in foreign policy. A mature foreign policy should be capable of identifying material national interests, recognising genuine international legal obligations, understanding the historical and moral values that shape South African society, and assessing the costs and consequences of acting on those values.
Sometimes these will point in the same direction. Sometimes they will not. When they conflict, there is no easy formula. But the answer cannot simply be that national interest always wins, because we must first decide what we mean by national interest.
Nor can the answer be that moral conviction always wins, because governments have responsibilities to their citizens that extend beyond expressing solidarity. A government may sincerely believe that a cause is just and still have to decide whether a particular intervention will actually help, whether the country can afford it, whether it has the capacity to influence the outcome and whether there are unintended consequences.
The real test of strategic maturity is therefore the ability to distinguish between what we feel, what we believe, what international law requires and what South Africa can realistically achieve — and then decide what price it is prepared to pay for its principles.
Foreign policy cannot be separated from morality. The question is whether a country has the strategic clarity to know when moral conviction is part of its national interest, when international law creates an obligation regardless of immediate interests, and when emotion risks becoming a substitute for strategy.
NONGQAI’S Strategic Security Analyst Dr Joan Swart is a forensic psychologist with an MBA and an MA in Military Studies. Her work focuses on African security, geopolitics, state fragility, substate dynamics, and the intersection between governance, legitimacy, and coercive power. She is the author of several books and regularly publishes long-form analysis and opinion pieces on security and governance issues. Her writing has appeared in outlets including DefenceWeb, Maroela Media, Netwerk24, RSG, Visegrad, and other policy and public-affairs platforms. She has a weekly slot on SAfm The Global Briefing to analyse world affairs. Her work bridges academic research, policy analysis, and applied strategic assessment, and she is currently completing a second PhD at the University of Stellenbosch Military Academy. Follow her on X/Twitter, Substack, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
