eBusiness Weekly
Chris Chenga
In developing countries, we often perceive foreign policy as Governments’ reactive discretion to premeditated attitudes that foreign peers already have towards us. Consider the prevalent notion that Africa or South America’s economic circumstances are determined by developed countries’ attitudes towards us, and not so determined by our own foreign policy strategies that we choose for ourselves.
Popular conviction in Zimbabwe is that the British or Americans have fixed attitudes towards us that hardly change, and as such, we rate our western foreign policy by the reactive discretion to these supposedly held stagnant attitudes.
“The West wants this, so Zimbabwe should do that.” Well, there is an important nuance to understand.
When foreign counterparts such as Britain or America are imagined to hold fixed attitudes towards us, as constituents we are depriving ourselves the evaluation of government’s proactive ability to influence what are in fact the flexible and moldable attitudes of foreign countries towards Zimbabwe.
Consider in developed countries, key amongst election issues of consideration is a candidate’s ability to craft a foreign policy that may extract the most return from foreign counterparts.
The electorate questions whether a candidate can present a palatable plan of engagement that may stimulate the best possible correspondence from foreign counterparts.
Whatever the plan of engagement may be, foreign attitudes will be influenced by it, not the other way round. “Zimbabwe wants to achieve this, how can it get the west to yield?”
This nuance has never been more important than it is today because Zimbabwe is at a moment where the world is actually waiting for us to proactively communicate what its attitude should towards us moving forward.
Contrary to superficial belief, Britain, America, China, Russia, or any other countries do not hold any fixed attitudes towards us. Actually, they are waiting to interpret our proactive communication.
Of the many envoys that have flown into Zimbabwe, none has actually come and set an agenda for Zimbabwe.
In fact all have sought to inquire on Zimbabwe’s own chosen foreign policy discretion.
Indeed, it is this political patience and audience which we must capitalize on to find a potent and realistic resolution to our economic challenges.
Currently, Zimbabwe urgently needs to unlock foreign finance in two categories; fiscal funds that relieve central government’s constraints, and private investment that creates credit into the economy.
But before it does this, it has to find at minimum $1,8 billion to clear its areas to the World Bank and ADB. Merely clearing these arrears will not guarantee any opening to significant funding, however, as it will only mean that Zimbabwe would have settled not what it owes, but the payments that were due for being behind its debt service obligations of another $6 billion.
This is a very dire macro-economic outlook, and the argument starts to occur that to find a solution to its quandary, structural reforms cannot conceivably be enough for Zimbabwe.
It is technically impossible for Zimbabwe to resolve its economic circumstance through structural reforms alone.
Structurally recommended budget adjustments cannot happen without a deep pain that likely raises social disharmony.
For instance, with the recent incidents involving doctors, nurses, and potentially teachers, how palatable are reforms such as civil service rationalisation?
Structural reforms theoretically help, but they are realistically unfeasible, lest one can imagine a harshly deprived generation over the next ten to fifteen years in Zimbabwe.
Case studies are numerous such as Greece, Portugal, Tunisia, and many others that have pursued austere structural reforms since the recession of 2008.
Over a decade nations that have pursued austere programs have averaged less than 2 percent growth, with many countries actually averaging negative growth rates over the decade.
In context, structural reforms are an offer at best for Zimbabwean citizens to commit to more than ten years of zero growth with decreasing entitlements such as civil servant wages, pensions, and reduced social services.
Zimbabweans cannot live through the trade-offs offered by structural reforms alone. Perhaps it becomes clearer that Zimbabwe’s economic situation can only be preceded by a political resolution.
Consider a country that was recently in a similar situation. Myanmar owed the World Bank and its continental development bank, Asia Development Bank, nearly $6 billion. And likewise its government lacked any fiscal capacity to resolve such a crisis.
However, through strategic foreign policy, Myanmar found a solution. The Asian country got a debt relief package of almost $6 billion due its foreign policy persuasion towards Japan, a significant creditor within Myanmar’s institutional debt holders.
Myanmar averted a generation of structural reforms that were not guaranteed to have potent resolution. Why Myanmar achieved a feat of that magnitude is because it crafted and bet on good foreign policy, which proactively influenced and determined the world’s attitude towards its new government.
This is the only path for Zimbabwe, to create a persuasion through foreign policy where foreign attitudes are vested towards relieving an otherwise insurmountable path of structural reform alone.
Indeed, some of our foreign policy of the past has been awful and worsened our economic circumstance. That was largely due to being illiterate to emerging global geo-politics.
If a creditor nation was to come to Zimbabwe’s support in similar manner that Japan did for Myanmar, our foreign policy must be cognisant of foreign geo-political dynamics and the architecture within global financial institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and Paris Club.
We can immediately rule divisive foreign policy strategy such as a Look East policy as per once pursued. Gone are the days of a cold war mentally where developing nations could exploit the divergence of polar opposite forces, such as China and its Western peers.
Developed nations have been working an arduous task of integrating authority in established structures of global governance and their interests have merged more closely.
The solution to our current economic limbo is an intentional foreign policy that will influence and determine favourable attitudes from as many world powers as possible. Whatever foreign policy strategy it is, it must be informed on how geo-politics have shifted the friendship dynamics between what we perceived as alternatives. We can neither play East or West; rather it may be wise to have a multilateral approach to our foreign policy persuasion.
