There is a well-known slight misquotation of Karl Marx: History repeats itself – the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. In the past few weeks, we have seen a novel variation on this theme in international relations: tragic and farcical diplomatic crises happening pretty much simultaneously.

In the northern hemisphere, a literally deadly serious diplomatic confrontation has developed between the UK and the Russian Federation over the attempted assassination of a former agent for Britain, Sergei Skripal, by means of a nerve agent, and the concomitant poisoning of his daughter Yulia and Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey. In the southern hemisphere, South Africa found itself embroiled in a fundamentally farcical diplomatic spat with Australia.

Now, it is important to stress that the farce does not lie in South Africa’s response, but in the fact that the country was forced to respond to a bizarre statement by an Australian federal government Minister. Infamously, Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton publicly proposed that white South African farmers be granted priority status for immigration visas to Australia because they face “horrific circumstances” and are being “persecuted”. Little wonder that new Foreign Minister Lindiwe Sisulu felt impelled to register a strong diplomatic protest with Canberra.

Of course, South Africa does have a very high level of violent rural crime. Black farmers are also murdered. And farm- workers. But that is part of a very high national level of violent crime. Most violent crime victims are black. To select a certain subset of South Africa’s population for priority treatment because of violent crime and disregard everyone else (Asian, black, coloured, and urban whites) really is strange, or shows lack of knowledge, to put it mildly.

But South Africa being forced to give a serious response to a ridiculous comment by a nutty Australian politician does qualify as a farcical situation. Personally, I would have liked to have seen a lot of ridicule and caustic humour from South Africans about Dutton’s comments, but governments don’t, and can’t, do humour and, given the deep offence understandably caused, Pretoria had little choice about how it should respond.

Up in the northern hemisphere, how- ever, the diplomatic row is unlikely to blow over. London’s allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) have rallied to Britain’s support. The UK’s expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats, identified as actually being intelligence agents (followed by Moscow’s retaliatory expulsion of 23 British diplomats) is only the beginning of countermoves by London. These will include new legislation to strengthen Britain’s ability to counter ‘hostile State activity’ within the country and could include the UK increasing its defence budget.

Back in December, UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson described UK (and wider Nato) relations with Russia as a “Cool War”. Talking to journalists after the recent attack on the Skripals, he observed that relations with Moscow were “exceptionally, exceptionally chilly at the moment.”

On top of all this, of course, are US accusations that Russian hackers have been attacking America’s electricity grid, air transport facili- ties and water processing plants. The Federal Bureau of Investigation recently issued an alert that stated that Russian government hackers had been targeting critical US infrastructure and industries for “at least” two years. This was over and above Russian attempts to influence the 2016 US elections.

This situation of ‘Ever Cooler War’ between the Nato powers and Russia is, unfortunately, not just a matter of academic interest for South Africa (or for Australia, for that matter). It will have global repercussions. Core national security issues of major powers are now back in play. These countries all have global diplomatic and trade networks. And, although the US is still the only global military power, the others do have long reaches. I designate countries like China, France, Russia and the UK as ‘hemispheric powers’ because they can all project significant military power halfway around the world from their homelands.

Thus, for many countries, the days of laid-back, automatic piloted foreign policy are over. The renewed stresses and strains between the major powers once more require careful and conscious navigation. South Africa, of course, does not want to take sides. But avoiding alignment will now need a foreign policy that will require continual conscious decisions to steer the South African Ship of State through waters that promise to become increasingly rough.