Rob Hersov: Trump is resetting the global order - Russia is weak, China is cracking, America is strong, and the ANC chose the losing side

You'll be able to catch the full recordings of the addresses and Q&A sessions from BNC#8 across our BizNews channels from tomorrow..Key topics:Trump’s strategy signals renewed American geopolitical dominanceRussia weakens while China faces economic and structural pressuresANC risks economic fallout backing anti-Western alliances like BRICS.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Rob Hersov.The most important dates you need to know are March 31 to April 2.I’ll tell you why.But first, the truth.The real truth is that Trump and the West are winning.Strategically.Militarily.Economically.And above all, psychologically..Because the great myth of the last decade — that America is finished, that the West is declining, that a new anti-Western order is rising — is collapsing in real time.And for South Africa, under the morally vain and strategically brain-dead leadership of the ANC, that collapse will be expensive.Because the ANC backed the wrong side.And the bill is coming due..For years we were told America was in decline.China was the future.Russia was resurgent.Iran was untouchable.BRICS was the new centre of gravity..The post-American world had arrived.It sounded clever.It was rubbish..Because commentators confused noise with power.When things get serious — wars, shipping lanes, sanctions, currencies, intelligence, energy, logistics, hard power — the same truth reappears:America still sits at the centre of the chess board.The West still has the deepest capital markets, the strongest alliances, the most credible militaries, the reserve currency, the best technology stack, and the greatest ability to project power across finance, oceans, airspace, data and diplomacy..That’s not ideology.That’s reality.Now let’s talk about Russia.Too many people — especially fools in Pretoria and useful idiots in Western media — still speak about Russia as if it is an unstoppable colossus.It isn’t.Russia is not the Soviet Union.It is not a global economic superpower.It is not a serious development model.It is a corrupt petro-state with nuclear weapons..Its economy is heavily dependent on commodities.Its industrial depth is thin.Its demographics are awful.Its innovation base is weak.Its governance is mafia politics with flags..And Russia is losing the war in Ukraine by not winning..Its military machine looks less like a superpower and more like a gangster empire running on brutality and lies.But brutality is not strength.Real strength builds prosperity, attracts allies, and inspires confidence.Russia does none of that..Which means regimes like the ANC hoping Russia will protect them are making a catastrophic miscalculation.They are tying themselves to a vicious but limping horse..Now let’s turn to China.China is more formidable than Russia.But even China is nowhere near as invincible as its propaganda suggests.China’s rise was real — driven by exports and property.Both are now under pressure.The export model is being hit by tariffs, de-risking, friend-shoring and diversification.The property model is a slow-motion disaster.China has built tens of millions of empty homes — some estimates suggest 70–80 million.That isn’t growth.That’s debt masquerading as development.Add weak consumer confidence, deflation, a shrinking population, youth unemployment, capital flight pressure and elite tensions signalled by military purges..Authoritarian systems always look stronger from the outside than they really are.China still matters enormously.But it is not ten feet tall.And crucially, China still depends on the West far more than anti-Western fantasists admit.China needs Western markets, Western technology, Western capital and global financial confidence.That gives Washington leverage.Real leverage.Which brings us back to March 31 to April 2, when Trump meets Xi Jinping.Many journalists will frame this as a clash of equals.It isn’t.Trump walks in with advantages..First: energy leverage.Roughly one-third of China’s oil comes from the Middle East — a region where the United States remains the decisive external power.Second: trade leverage.Tariffs place real pressure on Chinese exports.Third: military credibility.America has decades of operational experience and global alliances.China has scale and ambition — but limited combat experience.Fourth: time pressure.China needs stability more urgently than America.Which means Trump can push hard.Trump understands leverage.He negotiates from strength.And right now, strength sits with Washington.The deeper foundations of American power remain extraordinary..America still has:the world’s reserve currencythe deepest capital marketselite universities and research institutionsthe most dynamic entrepreneurial ecosystemimmense energy resourcesworld-leading technology companiesunmatched military logistics.And one more crucial advantage:The American system self-corrects.Authoritarian states look tidy until they suddenly crack.America looks chaotic while continuously regenerating strength.It is also an energy superpower — a continental economy with massive resources, industrial depth and oceans on both sides.That combination is extraordinarily difficult to rival.Internationally, the United States remains decisive.Which country can secure sea lanes, sanction adversaries, dominate aerospace, shape reserve-currency flows and deploy carrier groups across the world?Only one.The United States.That is why the strikes on Iran matter..When America acts decisively, the strategic landscape shifts.Capability separates serious nations from performative ones.Iran learned that.China fears it.Russia understands it.The doctrine has also changed.This is not Iraq 2003.No fantasies about occupying countries for decades..Instead:Hit the threat.Degrade the capability.Avoid occupation.Reshape behaviour.Move on..It is harder, colder and more realistic.And the strikes on Iran send a message not just to Tehran but to Moscow, Beijing, Caracas, Havana, Pyongyang — and yes, the ANC.The message is simple:The adults are back.But what we are watching is not just geopolitics.It is grand strategy.Three-dimensional chess.Look at the board.Venezuela — weakened.Iran — strategically crippled.Both major oil suppliers to China.And when oil prices spike, Russia benefits because high oil funds its war in Ukraine.But weakening Iran weakens Russia.Check..Now imagine another move.Replace hostile oil with friendly oil.If Venezuela and Iran eventually produce under more Western-aligned regimes, a huge chunk of global supply shifts away from sanctioned autocracies.Control the Strait of Hormuz, where roughly 20% of global oil flows, and the West holds one of the key valves in the global energy system.More supply.Lower risk premiums.Falling oil prices.And Russia’s war economy comes under pressure.Another check..But the real strategic resource of the twenty-first century is not oil.It is silicon.Artificial intelligence is the new arms race.And advanced semiconductor chips are the ammunition.Before export controls, China depended heavily on Western semiconductor ecosystems — chips designed in the US and Israel, manufactured in Taiwan, built using Dutch machines and Western software.China is still years behind in advanced AI processors.And AI is not just technology.It is military capability.Which is why advanced chips should be treated like uranium — restricted and controlled.Some ask whether China will invade Taiwan to seize the semiconductor industry.Perhaps.But there is a problem.You can seize oil fields.You cannot seize an ecosystem.If China invaded Taiwan tomorrow, fabs would shut down, supply chains would collapse and the global economy would take a massive hit — with China suffering most.The thing China wants most is the very thing it cannot seize without destroying.Another check..Artificial intelligence is also transforming warfare.AI can identify command structures, track movements, detect anomalies and predict behaviour.Combine that with surveillance, cyber capabilities and precision weapons and war begins to look very different.Not shock and awe.More like “klap and withdraw.”Hit hard.Hit precisely.Use intelligence dominance.Avoid occupation. That is modern warfare.And the decisive resources of this century will be energy, silicon and artificial intelligence.Oil built the twentieth century.Silicon will shape the twenty-first.And here is the irony.Oil wealth empowers autocrats.But silicon thrives in free societies.Places with property rights, innovation and open markets.Places like the United States, Taiwan, South Korea and the Netherlands.Freedom turns out to be an extremely powerful industrial policy..Which brings us back to South Africa.While serious powers are playing three-dimensional chess, the ANC is still arguing about liberation slogans.The multipolar fantasy is dying.Not because Russia, China and Iran will stop causing problems — they won’t.But because they cannot build a superior global system.BRICS, in particular, is fundamentally weak.China wants dominance.India wants autonomy.Russia wants disruption.Brazil wants flexibility.South Africa wants relevance while its economy collapses.And India — the only genuinely rising democratic power in the group — is leaning increasingly toward the United States.Because India understands reality.Its future lies closer to the US-led system than to Chinese dominance or Russian nostalgia.Which means the ANC’s faith in BRICS is not strategy.It is ignorance.Dangerous ignorance.If there were an Olympic event for geopolitical idiocy, the ANC would be on the podium.It has alienated allies, embraced failing regimes, damaged trade relationships and wrapped the entire disaster in moral posturing..It has:condemned US-Israeli strikes on Iranexpressed solidarity with Tehranhosted Hamas-linked figuresdeepened ties with Russia and Chinaconducted joint military exercises with hostile regimesAll while running a country crippled by corruption, collapsing infrastructure, crime, energy shortages and policy incoherence.Instead of fixing South Africa, the ANC performs revolutionary theatre.That is not statesmanship.It is adolescent ideological cosplay.The ANC seems to believe it can insult the West without consequences.That is fantasy.Capital is not sentimental.Investors do not owe the ANC a liberation nostalgia discount.Markets punish stupidity.And the truth is simple:South Africa needs the West far more than the West needs the ANC.We need Western markets, Western investment, Western technology and Western financial credibility.The West can diversify.South Africa cannot easily detach itself from the financial and technological infrastructure dominated by the United States and its allies.Which makes the ANC’s posture not just arrogant.But reckless..Now zoom out.If Trump secures a China deal, if Iran is degraded, if Russia remains stuck and American leverage expands across multiple theatres, then Trump enters the next political phase with momentum.And successful presidents convert foreign policy credibility into domestic authority.That means focusing on:the midterms,the border,economic confidence,energy policy. Foreign policy success buys political space at home.But here is the message the ANC needs to hear.Russia will not save you.China will not save you.Iran certainly will not save you.BRICS will not save you.And if the ANC continues behaving like a revolutionary movement while remaining economically dependent on the Western system it constantly insults, it will collide with reality.Bad choices have consequences.Political consequences.Economic consequences.Strategic consequences.And South Africans are already punishing the ANC through declining trust, collapsing legitimacy and growing anger at incompetence.The tragedy is that the ANC inherited one of the most potentially successful countries on earth.And spent decades squandering it.Sooner or later, that failure will carry a price..Final Word.Trump and his allies are winning.Russia is weak.China is cracking.Iran has been hit hard.The multipolar myth is unraveling.America remains — by a large margin — the central power in the world system.Financially stronger than any rival bloc.Militarily stronger than any challenger.Technologically stronger than any competitor.And in that world, the ANC has chosen — with astonishing stupidity — to align with losers, flatter tyrants and antagonise the very civilization on which South Africa’s prosperity still depends.That is not foreign policy.That is vandalism with diplomatic credentials.The world is resetting.Trump’s America is winning.And the ANC has pushed South Africa onto the losing side.It is time to face reality.Voetsek ANC

Rob Hersov: Trump is resetting the global order - Russia is weak, China is cracking, America is strong, and the ANC chose the losing side

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