The Forest and the Trees

There are advantages as well as disadvantages in being away from one’s office, and I am going to try to put my current isolation in a small town on the South Coast of England to constructive use in respect of the complex, dangerous, highly emotive, yet in some respects rather encouraging situation in southern Africa. I shall try, in fact, to look at the forest rather than the trees.

The “trees,” to pursue the metaphor, are: South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe; the “forest” is the vast and mineral-rich geographical region known as southern Africa. I am aware of next to no evidence to suggest that Western chancelleries are taking a strategic view of the region as a whole. Instead, they seem to be looking at each country piecemeal, indulging in a series of actions or initiatives or responses that are sometimes mutually incompatible and never strategically coherent.

BC

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Brian Crozier

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There are advantages as well as disadvantages in being away from one’s office, and I am going to try to put my current isolation in a small town on the South Coast of England to constructive use in respect of the complex, dangerous, highly emotive, yet in some respects rather encouraging situation in southern Africa. I shall try, in fact, to look at the forest rather than the trees.

The “trees,” to pursue the metaphor, are: South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe; the “forest” is the vast and mineral-rich geographical region known as southern Africa. I am aware of next to no evidence to suggest that Western chancelleries are taking a strategic view of the region as a whole. Instead, they seem to be looking at each country piecemeal, indulging in a series of actions or initiatives or responses that are sometimes mutually incompatible and never strategically coherent.