{"id":280093,"date":"2024-11-11T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2024-11-11T12:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=280093"},"modified":"2024-11-10T05:20:14","modified_gmt":"2024-11-10T05:20:14","slug":"everybody-wants-to-join-brics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/11\/everybody-wants-to-join-brics\/","title":{"rendered":"Everybody Wants to Join BRICS"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photograph Source: Prime Minister\u2019s Office (GODL-India)<\/p><\/div>\n

8 Nov 2024 <\/em>– If there\u2019s one thing the recent BRICS summit in Kazan revealed, it\u2019s that when you divide the world into the West and the Rest, the Rest is a lot bigger and quite alienated from the western oligarchy. Much of the Rest also wants to join BRICS. After all, it\u2019s a good deal: A way to forge economic and political connections and to adopt sane economic policies, without a bully like Washington meddling in your affairs. What\u2019s not to like? At a time when Europe has forgotten Bismarck\u2019s motto \u2013 that the secret to success in politics is a good treaty with Russia \u2013 and no one in Washington ever heard of it, going back generations to archaic American lies about bolshevism, while this is the case in the west, much of the Rest has learned the value of such a treaty. And not just with Russia, with China and India as well.<\/p>\n

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After Kazan, BRICS now boasts nine members and 13 partner countries, all dedicated to multipolarity. Another key aim, according to Geopolitical Economy October 26, is fostering \u201calternative economic institutions that are more representative and democratic, not dominated by the western powers.\u201d In other words, the Global South is sick of IMF and World Bank debt traps and sees BRICS as a convenient exit from what Bolivian president Luis Arce described in Kazan as \u201cthe tyranny of the dollar.\u201d BRICS provides this hope because its members contain over 40 percent of Earth\u2019s population, 30 percent of global oil production, and over one-third of world GDP (in purchasing power parity), reports Geopolitical Economy. G7 nations are much smaller, with \u201cless than 10 percent of the world population and under 30 percent of GDP.\u201d BRICS nations have apparently tired of the global aristocracy.<\/p>\n

BRICS\u2019 original five members are Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Its four new members are Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. It recently accepted 13 partners \u2013 Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. Argentina, under center-left president Alberto Fernandez 2023, accepted joining BRICS, but reactionary ruler Javier Milei was too busy destroying Argentina\u2019s economy, which he has accomplished with remarkable speed, and he canceled the BRICS accession bid tout de suite. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, doubtless under intense pressure from Washington to spurn BRICS, remains firmly on the fence.<\/p>\n

One word sums up Washington\u2019s aversion to BRICS: de-dollarization. With Russia and China in the lead, BRICS encourages its members and partners to trade in local currencies, not, as previously, in dollars. This weakens the greenback\u2019s position as the world reserve currency, and with enough of that, there could be serious repercussions here in what Fidel Castro called the heart of the empire. But it\u2019s not just BRICS. Eighty nations have determined to conduct their trade in local currencies. Many of these are not even in BRICS \u2013 like lots in the Association of South East Asian Nations. Abandoning the dollar has, most unfortunately for us Americans, come to be viewed as a national security move.<\/p>\n

De-dollarization, would not even be a thing, had not the geniuses in the Biden white house weaponized the American currency like no tomorrow. Between massive sanctions on anybody Washington doesn\u2019t like and outright theft of foreigner\u2019s financial assets stored in western banks, non-western money managers became a little, well, leery, of the Exceptional Empire\u2019s previously accepted financial hegemony. So listen up, Washington: The U.S. has had a very nice deal with the dollar since the end of World War II, but now courtesy of BRICS, and more significantly, our own idiotic and near-sighted foreign economic policies, we glimpse the very beginning of the end. Maybe Trump\u2019s vow to ditch sanctions makes sense?<\/p>\n

After all, what have sanctions done for us lately besides backfire? While western sanctions on cheap Russian energy deindustrialize Europe, Moscow sells its oil and gas elsewhere. Even Biden had to drain the strategic petroleum reserve to tamp down gas prices \u2013 an inflation he caused with his imbecilic sanctions on everything Russian (except uranium, oh no, the hypocritical U.S. is too busy importing it like crazy from Russia). And then there\u2019s the general global loss of good will sanctions and asset freezing cause, and the lesson nations like China draw from them. Relations between Beijing and Washington are a little testy of late, and the mindless Sinophobic morons in congress like to yammer about war over Taiwan. You don\u2019t think the Chinese are smart enough to see where this is going? That holding lots of dollars and U.S. Treasuries is a huge liability, because one fine day after lots of hot rhetoric they could be taken hostage, even before the missiles fly? Of course the Chinese see this, and they\u2019re taking action \u2013 gradual de-dollarization by BRICS being just one step.<\/p>\n

But this threat to the dollar\u2019s reserve currency status won\u2019t materialize overnight. Total foreign de-dollarization is a long, long ways off, which bestows on Washington time to clean up its act and mend its fences. After all, do we Americans really want most of the world so pissed at our high-handed behavior that it smashes the global financial architecture the U.S. established 70 years ago? An architecture that has sheltered us as we live beyond our means? Do we really want our debts to come due while ruled by an oligarchy for which debt forgiveness on either the individual or national level is not merely a dirty word but ferociously verboten? Hopefully, Trump will seize this interregnum between now and when the Rest actually can ditch the dollar to advance policies that will persuade foreign leaders \u2013 not browbeat them \u2013 into keeping it. Couple such policies with the lost American art of true diplomacy on our multiple military fronts and we denizens of the Exceptional Empire might actually make it out the hole several successive Washington administrations have dug us into.<\/p>\n

BRICS is not going away. Neither is the G7. Nor, for the moment, is their adversarial relationship, but that could change. Remember, as Moon of Alabama posted October 25, \u201cBRICS is a long-term project.\u201d Realistically, despite the hype, as he observes, it won\u2019t replace the dollar, nor is it a military alliance. As both MofA and Geopolitical Economy note, the truly eye-popping BRICS development occurred shortly before the summit. That was India abandoning its anti-China policies, which the U.S. had nurtured, and, per MofA \u201cshunning U.S. attempts to make it a sidekick for U.S. policies in Asia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asia Times elaborated October 24: \u201cIndia and China have recently agreed to disengage from their prolonged border standoff in the western sector of the India-China Himalayan border on the sidelines of the 16th<\/sup> BRICS summit.\u201d In other words, BRICS facilitated a gigantic step toward peace between two nuclear-armed nations. For that alone, humanity should be grateful to this institution, even if Washington isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

But maybe it\u2019s time for a different method from Inside the Beltway, one that is less arrogant and no longer demands allies approach it on their knees. The world is changing, but Washington remains frozen and indeed left behind in its post-1991 delusion as the unipolar global chieftain and its \u201cmy way or the highway\u201d attitude to everything beyond its borders. This is simply no longer sustainable, just as, someday soon, the mega-brains in the white house may come to realize that supporting over 800 foreign military bases is unsustainable. Insanity can be temporary. Reason can regain lost ground. Let\u2019s hope with Joe \u201cWe Rule the World\u201d Biden\u2019s departure from Washington, it becomes safe for rationality to return.<\/p>\n

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Eve Ottenberg is a novelist and journalist. Her latest novel is <\/em>Booby Prize. She can be reached at her website<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – counterpunch.org<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

8 Nov 2024 – The world is changing, but Washington remains frozen and indeed left behind in its post-1991 delusion as the unipolar global godfather.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":280094,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[180],"tags":[3143,2642,239,272,613,74],"class_list":["post-280093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brics","tag-anti-hegemony","tag-anti-imperialism","tag-brics","tag-cooperation","tag-new-world-order","tag-regions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280093"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280095,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280093\/revisions\/280095"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}