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 “alternative economic institutions that are more representative and democratic, not dominated by the western powers.” 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 “the tyranny of the dollar.” BRICS provides this hope because its members contain over 40 percent of Earth’s 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 “less than 10 percent of the world population and under 30 percent of GDP.” BRICS nations have apparently tired of the global aristocracy.
BRICS’ 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 – 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’s 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.
One word sums up Washington’s 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’s 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’s not just BRICS. Eighty nations have determined to conduct their trade in local currencies. Many of these are not even in BRICS – 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.
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’t like and outright theft of foreigner’s financial assets stored in western banks, non-western money managers became a little, well, leery, of the Exceptional Empire’s 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’s vow to ditch sanctions makes sense?
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 – 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’s 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’t 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’re taking action – gradual de-dollarization by BRICS being just one step.
But this threat to the dollar’s reserve currency status won’t 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 – not browbeat them – 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.
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, “BRICS is a long-term project.” Realistically, despite the hype, as he observes, it won’t 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 “shunning U.S. attempts to make it a sidekick for U.S. policies in Asia.”
Asia Times elaborated October 24: “India 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 BRICS summit.” 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’t.
But maybe it’s 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 “my way or the highway” 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’s hope with Joe “We Rule the World” Biden’s departure from Washington, it becomes safe for rationality to return.
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