The return of naked power: What Africa must learn from today’s global conflicts
By Iranloye Sofiu Taiye
The world has entered a phase in which power no longer feels compelled to wear moral disguises. From Eastern Europe to the Middle East, from East Asia to Latin America, coercion has re-emerged as an acceptable instrument of statecraft, and sovereignty has become increasingly conditional, least respected when convenient and violated when costly restraint disappears.
The Russia–Ukraine war, China’s posture towards Taiwan, Israel’s war in Gaza, and the long-standing pressure campaign against Venezuela are not isolated crises. They are symptoms of a systemic transition: the erosion of post–Cold War restraint and the reassertion of raw power politics in a crowded, mistrustful, and increasingly multipolar international system.
For Africa, this moment is not abstract. It is existential. The same forces reshaping Europe, Asia, and Latin America are already present on the African continent through resource competition, security outsourcing, debt diplomacy, sanctions regimes, proxy alignments, and political conditionality. The difference is that Africa often confronts these forces without a unified strategy, relying instead on appeals to history, morality, or international goodwill. That approach is no longer sufficient.
Realist theory, as articulated by thinkers such as Hans Morgenthau and John Mearsheimer, offers a brutally honest diagnosis of the international system. It reminds us that global politics is characterised by anarchy, not law; that survival, not virtue, motivates states; and that power, not rhetoric, ultimately determines outcomes.
Recent conflicts confirm realism’s core claims: Russia acted in Ukraine not because of moral failure but because it perceived a narrowing window to secure its sphere of influence. China’s pressure on Taiwan is driven less by ideology than by long-term assessments of capability, timing, and strategic opportunity. Israel’s conduct in Gaza reflects the logic of overwhelming deterrence in an insecure regional environment. The United States’ treatment of Venezuela illustrates how economic warfare substitutes for direct military intervention in an era of reputational constraints.
In each case, capability trumped legality, and vulnerability invited pressure. Yet realism, while accurate in diagnosing power behaviour, becomes dangerous when treated as destiny. Taken to its logical extreme, it suggests that weaker states have only three options: submission, alignment, or destruction. This is analytically lazy and politically paralysing.
History and current global practice demonstrate that survival is not reserved for the strongest but for the most strategically positioned. The key distinction between states that withstand pressure and those that collapse is not moral standing but strategic architecture.
Ukraine did not survive Russia’s invasion because it matched Moscow militarily. It survived because it transformed a bilateral war into a multilateral stake. By embedding its security dilemma within NATO, the EU, and global norms, Ukraine increased the cost of Russian victory beyond the battlefield.
Taiwan’s resilience lies not only in its arms but also in its economy. Its centrality to global semiconductor supply chains converts any military action into a worldwide economic crisis. Invasion becomes irrational not because it is impossible, but because it is prohibitively disruptive.
Palestine commands unprecedented global sympathy yet remains structurally vulnerable. Without credible security guarantees, economic leverage, or institutional power, moral legitimacy alone has not translated into sovereignty.
Venezuela’s leadership adopted confrontational rhetoric without building defensive alliances, diversified economic networks, or institutional shields. The result has been isolation, sanctions, and internal fragility, confirming that outrage without insulation invites coercion. The lesson is stark: states do not survive because they are right; they survive because they are costly to dominate. Afghanistan’s resilience is a case study.
Africa today occupies a paradoxical position. The continent is: Central to the global energy transition (critical minerals), demographically pivotal, geopolitically courted by rival powers, and numerically powerful in multilateral institutions; alas, Africa remains strategically fragmented. Most African states still approach global politics through the language of gratitude, alignment, or moral appeal rather than through calculated leverage. The continent’s diplomatic posture is often reactive rather than anticipatory.
This is dangerous in a world where: aid is weaponised, debt is politicised, sanctions are normalised, and security assistance comes with strategic strings. Africa risks becoming the quiet theatre of the next great-power contest, not because it is weak, but because it is insufficiently coordinated.
What Africa requires is neither idealism nor cynicism, but strategic realism with agency a doctrine that accepts power politics while refusing subjugation.
Such a doctrine would rest on five pillars.
1. Strategic Indispensability: Africa must move beyond raw resource exportation toward value-chain centrality. Countries that control processing, logistics, and industrial ecosystems are harder to coerce than those that merely supply inputs.
2. Networked Sovereignty: Sovereignty in the 21st century is not isolationist. It is embedded on favourable terms through regional blocs, trade regimes, and security compacts that dilute unilateral pressure.
3. Institutional Power, Not Institutional Faith: Africa must stop treating international institutions as moral referees and start using them as arenas of contestation. Voting blocs, agenda-setting, and procedural leverage matter.
4. Strategic Non-Alignment, Not Passivity: Non-alignment must evolve from rhetorical neutrality into active hedging, diversifying partnerships, avoiding dependency traps, and exploiting multipolar competition without becoming a proxy.
5. Continental Coordination: No African state, regardless of size, can negotiate effectively alone in a hardened global system. Continental coherence in economic, diplomatic, and security-related is no longer aspirational; it is existential.
Conclusively, power will not wait for Africa to be ready; the defining feature of the emerging world order is not chaos, but selective constraint. Power will be exercised where resistance is weak, fragmented, or sentimental and restrained where costs are high, and consequences diffuse. Africa cannot afford another century of learning this lesson too late. The continent must abandon the illusion that shared history, moral standing, or international sympathy will shield it from coercion. Those narratives did not protect Ukraine, Palestine, or Venezuela. They will not protect Africa.
What will protect Africa is a strategy: the ability to anticipate pressure, restructure vulnerability, and convert relevance into leverage. In a world where power has shed its disguises, survival belongs not to the loudest protester, but to the most strategically prepared.
Iranloye Sofiu Taiye is a policy analyst and wrote via iranloye100@gmail.com.
