All the details from the Kazan Declaration
October 28, 2024
Source: Planet Critical
Sovereigntwas the theme of this year’s BRICS Summit, the 16th annual conference of major oil producing and rapidly developing countries. BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—are now fielding membership applications from all over the majority world, including one NATO member: Turkey.
The alliance is now undeniably formidable, hosted in the heart of Moscow by the supposedly isolated Putin who looked anything but. Western economists and policy-makers have shrugged off the goals of BRICS, including de-dollarization, as merely ideological noise, thinking the resource-holding group would splinter either in their relationships or at least under the pressure of Western hegemony. This, of course, is because neoclassical economists mistake wealth for the result of political power and innovation, not energy exploitation. With immense resources for energy production and exploitation within their own borders, BRICS can readily challenge that Western hegemony which depends on them to survive.
The only thing keeping resource-rich nations in line has been the USD. As the world’s reserve currency, nations have been forced to scramble to attain USD in order to trade with other nations. This has granted the USA enormous power to make the world order according to how it sees fit, which is now being directly challenged by BRICS who propose to facilitate trade in nations’ own currencies. I wrote about this in depth a few months ago and, despite the conference held last week, there has been little news on that front. What was striking about the conference, and the Kazan Declaration (read the original document or my highlighted version here) was the extent to which BRICS have been busy creating other parallel infrastructures and institutions in response to Western dominance over global trade and policy, from the creation of scientific journals to an online trading platform for grain.1
Yet, behind each of these collaborations is a continued affirmation of national sovereignty, a boast in response to the iron grip with which the USA has ruled the world. National sovereignty is of course important, but the Kazan Declaration should also serve as a warning that, in a BRICS world order, international scientific agreement will come second to national jurisdiction when it comes to climate and environment. What begins as a series of nuanced statements in the document, such as stressing the importance of “honouring” the Paris Agreement (a misleading statement in itself given we have overshot 1.5 degrees already) but also the differentiated responsibilities “in the light of different national circumstances”, becomes an outright rejection of global emergency measures or sacrifices2: “We oppose unilateral measures introduced under the pretext of climate and environmental concerns and reiterate our commitment to enhancing coordination on these issues.”3
BRICS states they are committed to a just energy transition but use the shield of national sovereignty to avoid defining what that transition looks like—ensuring each member can continue extracting and consuming whatever fuel source they so choose under the guise of intra-border sustainability.
“We reiterate the need to take into account national circumstances, including climate and natural conditions, the structure of national economy and energy mix as well as the specific circumstances of those developing countries whose economies heavily depend on income or consumption of fossil fuels and related energy-intensive products to achieve just energy transitions.”4
Whilst the second half of the above sentence would not be out of place in an article on degrowth, it only serves to obfuscate that the first half is a permissive clause for developed countries to continue using fossil fuels if they deem said fuels are inherent to the structure of their economy and energy mix. For the moment, almost every country in the world is inherently fossil-fuelled, and thus this misleading statement provides a carte blanche for the continued extraction and exploitation of these fuels.
The real kicker is the very next sentence which openly states the BRICS countries are committed to the continued use of fossil fuels “with [carbon] removal technologies”. The document then lists other energy sources which will be used, from nuclear to biofuels, and includes natural gas on that list. This is alarming because natural gas—methane gas—is a fossil fuel primarily used for heating and which studies have shown to pollute more emissions than coal, yet adding it in addition to “fossil fuels with abatement and removal technologies” suggests that BRICS is attempting both to position natural gas as a transition fuel (following in the footsteps of the Western hegemony they’re so desperate to leave behind) and that its use will not fall under the same mandate of deploying “removal technologies” to mitigate its emissions.
Alarmingly, this entire paragraph is framed as the principle of “technological neutrality” and that any and all energy mixes can thus be used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: “We believe that the efficient use of all energy sources is critical for just energy transitions towards more flexible, resilient and sustainable energy systems and in this regard we uphold the principle of technological neutrality, i.e. using all available fuels, energy sources and technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions which includes, but is not limited to fossil fuels with abatement and removal technologies, biofuels, natural gas and LPG, hydrogen and its derivatives, including ammonia, nuclear and renewable power, etc.”5
Unsurprisingly, then, for a group keen on extracting fossil fuels well into the future, they declare the wild assertion that policies such as carbon taxes and due diligence requirements are punitive and discriminatory:
“We reject unilateral, punitive and discriminatory protectionist measures, that are not in line with international law, under the pretext of environmental concerns, such as unilateral and discriminatory carbon border adjustment mechanisms (CBAMs), due diligence requirements, taxes and other measures and reconfirm our full support for the call in COP28 related to avoidance of unilateral trade measures based on climate or environment.”6
Now, I understand that the USA has been a ferociously hostile and unapologetically dominant world power which has mowed down lives, cities, nations, democracy for its own gain. Nonetheless, this Declaration makes me want to bang my head against my desk because it is yet another grand affirmation of our political leaders’ inability to lead, surely a key tenet of their position. Yes, the USA has a well documented history of weaponising just about any institution, policy, or even crisis to advance its political agenda—and is undoubtedly doing the same with regards to the eco-crisis—and so it is unsurprising that nations who now have the power and networks to insulate themselves from such behaviour will do so. However, national sovereignty must not take precedence over scientific acumen. In prioritising protectionism, the BRICS countries have missed the opportunity to create a politics for the new world they’re determined to midwife; their offer is one of hierarchy—of world order—which, in truth, is nothing new.
We are once again faced with another iteration of the same old story, this time with different players. The whole point of the eco-crisis is we need to change the board we’re playing on—or even admit that this is not a game. Citizens all around the world are eagerly looking for reassurance and leadership in this time of crisis, hence the rise of authoritarian and fascistic father figures. BRICS could have secured their place in history as leaders by listening to their citizens concerns and deploying genuine, emergency collaborative efforts to ramp down fossil fuels, ramp up decarbonisation, redistribute power and wealth, invest in equitable development, and choke off the USA’s power by reducing the amount of money flowing through its markets. Instead of using their network to seed a radical shift towards the future, they’re hiding behind their network to bulwark any American aggression towards self-fortification.
And what will that aggression look like? Trump has said he will put a 100% tariff on any country that de-dollarizes because “that will be a hit to our country just like losing a war.” America doesn’t like to lose, Trump even less so. If neither of these power blocs assert real leadership to navigate us into a changing world we are all set to lose.
1 BRICS Health Journal, BRICS Economics Bulletin, BRICS Grain Exchange
2 Kazan Declaration, paragraph 15
3 Kazan Declaration, paragraph 85
4 Kazan Declaration, paragraph 81
5 Kazan Declaration, paragraph 81
6 Kazan Declaration, paragraph 83
Rachel Donald is a climate corruption journalist investigating what keeps the world in crisis—and what to do about it. She writes for Planet: Critical on substack.
BRICS Breakthrough? Economists Richard Wolff & Patrick Bond on Growing Alliance, Challenge to U.S.
Sovereigntwas the theme of this year’s BRICS Summit, the 16th annual conference of major oil producing and rapidly developing countries. BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—are now fielding membership applications from all over the majority world, including one NATO member: Turkey.
The alliance is now undeniably formidable, hosted in the heart of Moscow by the supposedly isolated Putin who looked anything but. Western economists and policy-makers have shrugged off the goals of BRICS, including de-dollarization, as merely ideological noise, thinking the resource-holding group would splinter either in their relationships or at least under the pressure of Western hegemony. This, of course, is because neoclassical economists mistake wealth for the result of political power and innovation, not energy exploitation. With immense resources for energy production and exploitation within their own borders, BRICS can readily challenge that Western hegemony which depends on them to survive.
The only thing keeping resource-rich nations in line has been the USD. As the world’s reserve currency, nations have been forced to scramble to attain USD in order to trade with other nations. This has granted the USA enormous power to make the world order according to how it sees fit, which is now being directly challenged by BRICS who propose to facilitate trade in nations’ own currencies. I wrote about this in depth a few months ago and, despite the conference held last week, there has been little news on that front. What was striking about the conference, and the Kazan Declaration (read the original document or my highlighted version here) was the extent to which BRICS have been busy creating other parallel infrastructures and institutions in response to Western dominance over global trade and policy, from the creation of scientific journals to an online trading platform for grain.1
Yet, behind each of these collaborations is a continued affirmation of national sovereignty, a boast in response to the iron grip with which the USA has ruled the world. National sovereignty is of course important, but the Kazan Declaration should also serve as a warning that, in a BRICS world order, international scientific agreement will come second to national jurisdiction when it comes to climate and environment. What begins as a series of nuanced statements in the document, such as stressing the importance of “honouring” the Paris Agreement (a misleading statement in itself given we have overshot 1.5 degrees already) but also the differentiated responsibilities “in the light of different national circumstances”, becomes an outright rejection of global emergency measures or sacrifices2: “We oppose unilateral measures introduced under the pretext of climate and environmental concerns and reiterate our commitment to enhancing coordination on these issues.”3
BRICS states they are committed to a just energy transition but use the shield of national sovereignty to avoid defining what that transition looks like—ensuring each member can continue extracting and consuming whatever fuel source they so choose under the guise of intra-border sustainability.
“We reiterate the need to take into account national circumstances, including climate and natural conditions, the structure of national economy and energy mix as well as the specific circumstances of those developing countries whose economies heavily depend on income or consumption of fossil fuels and related energy-intensive products to achieve just energy transitions.”4
Whilst the second half of the above sentence would not be out of place in an article on degrowth, it only serves to obfuscate that the first half is a permissive clause for developed countries to continue using fossil fuels if they deem said fuels are inherent to the structure of their economy and energy mix. For the moment, almost every country in the world is inherently fossil-fuelled, and thus this misleading statement provides a carte blanche for the continued extraction and exploitation of these fuels.
The real kicker is the very next sentence which openly states the BRICS countries are committed to the continued use of fossil fuels “with [carbon] removal technologies”. The document then lists other energy sources which will be used, from nuclear to biofuels, and includes natural gas on that list. This is alarming because natural gas—methane gas—is a fossil fuel primarily used for heating and which studies have shown to pollute more emissions than coal, yet adding it in addition to “fossil fuels with abatement and removal technologies” suggests that BRICS is attempting both to position natural gas as a transition fuel (following in the footsteps of the Western hegemony they’re so desperate to leave behind) and that its use will not fall under the same mandate of deploying “removal technologies” to mitigate its emissions.
Alarmingly, this entire paragraph is framed as the principle of “technological neutrality” and that any and all energy mixes can thus be used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: “We believe that the efficient use of all energy sources is critical for just energy transitions towards more flexible, resilient and sustainable energy systems and in this regard we uphold the principle of technological neutrality, i.e. using all available fuels, energy sources and technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions which includes, but is not limited to fossil fuels with abatement and removal technologies, biofuels, natural gas and LPG, hydrogen and its derivatives, including ammonia, nuclear and renewable power, etc.”5
Unsurprisingly, then, for a group keen on extracting fossil fuels well into the future, they declare the wild assertion that policies such as carbon taxes and due diligence requirements are punitive and discriminatory:
“We reject unilateral, punitive and discriminatory protectionist measures, that are not in line with international law, under the pretext of environmental concerns, such as unilateral and discriminatory carbon border adjustment mechanisms (CBAMs), due diligence requirements, taxes and other measures and reconfirm our full support for the call in COP28 related to avoidance of unilateral trade measures based on climate or environment.”6
Now, I understand that the USA has been a ferociously hostile and unapologetically dominant world power which has mowed down lives, cities, nations, democracy for its own gain. Nonetheless, this Declaration makes me want to bang my head against my desk because it is yet another grand affirmation of our political leaders’ inability to lead, surely a key tenet of their position. Yes, the USA has a well documented history of weaponising just about any institution, policy, or even crisis to advance its political agenda—and is undoubtedly doing the same with regards to the eco-crisis—and so it is unsurprising that nations who now have the power and networks to insulate themselves from such behaviour will do so. However, national sovereignty must not take precedence over scientific acumen. In prioritising protectionism, the BRICS countries have missed the opportunity to create a politics for the new world they’re determined to midwife; their offer is one of hierarchy—of world order—which, in truth, is nothing new.
We are once again faced with another iteration of the same old story, this time with different players. The whole point of the eco-crisis is we need to change the board we’re playing on—or even admit that this is not a game. Citizens all around the world are eagerly looking for reassurance and leadership in this time of crisis, hence the rise of authoritarian and fascistic father figures. BRICS could have secured their place in history as leaders by listening to their citizens concerns and deploying genuine, emergency collaborative efforts to ramp down fossil fuels, ramp up decarbonisation, redistribute power and wealth, invest in equitable development, and choke off the USA’s power by reducing the amount of money flowing through its markets. Instead of using their network to seed a radical shift towards the future, they’re hiding behind their network to bulwark any American aggression towards self-fortification.
And what will that aggression look like? Trump has said he will put a 100% tariff on any country that de-dollarizes because “that will be a hit to our country just like losing a war.” America doesn’t like to lose, Trump even less so. If neither of these power blocs assert real leadership to navigate us into a changing world we are all set to lose.
1 BRICS Health Journal, BRICS Economics Bulletin, BRICS Grain Exchange
2 Kazan Declaration, paragraph 15
3 Kazan Declaration, paragraph 85
4 Kazan Declaration, paragraph 81
5 Kazan Declaration, paragraph 81
6 Kazan Declaration, paragraph 83
Rachel Donald is a climate corruption journalist investigating what keeps the world in crisis—and what to do about it. She writes for Planet: Critical on substack.
BRICS Breakthrough? Economists Richard Wolff & Patrick Bond on Growing Alliance, Challenge to U.S.
October 26, 2024
Source: Democracy Now!
Will the BRICS economic and political alliance change the world’s U.S.-centered balance of power? As the annual BRICS summit wraps up in Russia, we host a debate between American economist Richard Wolff and South African sociologist Patrick Bond over the significance of the conference. This year, the nine BRICS countries invited 13 new “partner states” into their alliance, which Wolff calls “historic” and “a serious economic competitor to the United States and its role in the world.” Bond, on the other hand, argues that BRICS should be considered a “subimperial” formation, which expands and legitimates the existing world economic system rather than truly disrupting it.
Will the BRICS economic and political alliance change the world’s U.S.-centered balance of power? As the annual BRICS summit wraps up in Russia, we host a debate between American economist Richard Wolff and South African sociologist Patrick Bond over the significance of the conference. This year, the nine BRICS countries invited 13 new “partner states” into their alliance, which Wolff calls “historic” and “a serious economic competitor to the United States and its role in the world.” Bond, on the other hand, argues that BRICS should be considered a “subimperial” formation, which expands and legitimates the existing world economic system rather than truly disrupting it.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
We end today’s show with the summit of BRICS nations that concluded Thursday in the Russian city of Kazan as President Putin made a comeback to the global stage, hosting 36 world leaders and representatives from countries including China, India, South Africa, Iran, even Palestine. Israel’s war on Gaza took center stage, with many heads of states demanding an immediate ceasefire. Putin also faced direct calls at the summit from some of Russia’s most important allies for Moscow to end the war in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the BRICS coalition, which was founded by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, officially added 13 new nations to the alliance as partner countries, including Bolivia, Cuba, Nigeria and Turkey.
For more, we’re joined by two guests. Here in New York, Richard Wolff, professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs at The New School, founder of Democracy at Work, author of several books, including, most recently, Understanding Capitalism. And in Johannesburg, South Africa, we’re joined by the political economist Patrick Bond, distinguished professor and director of the Centre for Social Change at the University of Johannesburg, his recent CounterPunch article headlined “Rising Dangers of Imperial and Sub-Imperial Partnering.”
We’re going to begin with you, Patrick. Talk about the significance of this BRICS summit.
PATRICK BOND: I must quickly say thank you for having me. But also, in 10 or 11 days, you may know whether the great teams at Democracy at Work and Democracy Now! need to be in exile because democracy won’t be allowed. And you’ll come to Johannesburg, and we’ll have a very fine site for your production systems. It’s a great address here at the moment.
And I think the fact that we had the BRICS summit just 14 months ago — I was chatting and debating with Vijay Prashad, along with my colleague Trevor Ngwane. And it means that in the current period, where the de-dollarization rhetoric coming up to this BRICS, because Russia hosting it and being shut out of the SWIFT system, having $600-and-some billion seized illegally by the Western banks, and not getting loans, even from the BRICS New Development Bank, suffering sanctions, that meant a lot of attention has been on whether Vladimir Putin and his team can generate a de-dollarization strategy. Unfortunately — and fortunately, that didn’t transpire.
And then, since we’ve just come out of the Israeli genocide story, not using genocide in the Kazan Declaration on Wednesday night, not calling for sanctions, even though the United Nations General Assembly effectively did last month, and not acknowledging that nine out of the 10 BRICS countries have very profitable relationships, like South Africa, number one coal exporter to Israel, and China and India having companies that run the Haifa Port, you could turn those off and really put pressure on Israel if they really had the guts. But we see them talking left, walking right.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Richard Wolff, your takeaway from this BRICS summit? How historic was it?
RICHARD WOLFF: In my judgment, and even though Patrick is right about a number of his criticisms, this is a historic turning point. I cannot overstress it. Here we have, for the first time in a century, a serious economic competitor to the United States and its role in the world. We’ve never seen this before in the lifetimes you, me and the people watching this program and listening to it. Here are a group of countries that together have a larger GDP, a greater production, than the G7, the United States and its allies. We haven’t had that before. And the gap between them is growing. The economic growth of the United States this year, by the IMF, is scheduled to be 2.8%; in China, 4.8%; in India, 7%. So, they are growing faster than we are. They’ve been doing it for decades. It is a new economic world. And as an economist and an American, I am aghast that our presidential election isn’t putting that front and forward.
This is a new world. Everybody else in the world is adjusting to this reality. The American Empire and our system is in a decline relative to what the BRICS are about. Are there problems among them? For sure. Do they have their faults? Absolutely. This is not good and bad, but it is a radical alteration. And if we continue as a nation to pretend it isn’t happening or it isn’t important, we will continue to make big strategic mistakes, not the least of which is to bring us into a war kind of situation that people are already sensing might be in the air.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, for his comments at the BRICS summit.
PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] We are in touch with the leadership of Iran, in a very close contact. We see our role in creating conditions to settling the situation by finding mutual compromises. I think it is possible.
AMY GOODMAN: Patrick Bond, your response, the Russia-Iranian alliance, and also the latest news that North Korea is sending soldiers to Russia, perhaps to fight in Ukraine?
PATRICK BOND: Well, those conflicts, Russia-Ukraine, are just so tragic, since some several hundred thousand Ukrainian working-class people, and maybe 100,000 Russians, have been killed in what is a power grab, that I think goes outside my line of argument that it’s a subimperial — it’s a rogue subimperial, the way Janet Yellen’s rogue imperial grab of all those assets could be described.
But, you know, if I come back to where Richard was saying that this is an alternative, it’s something new, it’s a real challenge, I must fight you on that, my old friend, because I think there’s not an anti-imperial, but a subimperial, not against, but within. Just think of the global value chain, my phone that has the cobalt from child labor in China, in Chinese mines in the eastern DRC, then coming back into a Western phone. And these are the sorts of relationships we really have to be restructuring, not just a sort of shifting of the deck chairs on a global capitalist Titanic, certainly as the multilateral system expands. Next month, there will be, you know, a G20. Last year in Delhi, the African Union was added. As it expands to have more legitimacy, without changing the IMF and the World Bank and the WTO in any substantive way, the BRICS are playing a greater role, I think, in amplifying the worst aspects.
Just as one final example, 51% of global emissions come from these 10 countries, but they only produce 29% of GDP. What it means is, BRICS next month go to Azerbaijan for COP29. I’m sure Democracy Now!, as usual, will go there and do cutting-edge analysis. You’ll find that the BRICS and the West are tightly allied against the rest of us.
AMY GOODMAN: Last word goes to Richard Wolff.
RICHARD WOLFF: Yeah, history does not happen in a morality play. You’re not going to have the bad disappear and replaced by the good. It’s never worked that way. What you have to have is an analysis of what’s actually going on. And the unanimity, the dominance of the United States is over. And the whole world is trying to figure out, every company in the world, every country: How do you navigate a new international order? The United States is pretending that, as a nation, it doesn’t have to worry about this. And I’m afraid Patrick’s remarks will lead people to think, “Well, there’s problems on their side, too” — which there are, but that misses the larger historical phenomena. This is the first serious economic competition this country has faced, and the consequences of that will be overwhelming to us.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you both for being with us, Richard Wolff, economics professor, visiting professor at The New School, and Patrick Bond, professor at the University of Johannesburg.
Patrick Bond is a political economist, political ecologist and scholar of social mobilisation. From 2020-21 he was Professor at the Western Cape School of Government and from 2015-2019 was a Distinguished Professor of Political Economy at the University of the Witwatersrand School of Governance. From 2004 through mid-2016, he was Senior Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal School of Built Environment and Development Studies and was also Director of the Centre for Civil Society. He has held visiting posts at a dozen universities and presented lectures at more than 100 others.
BRICS Is Mounting A Challenge To The US-Led World Order — But For Whom?
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa held a summit to counter the unipolar power of the US and Europe.
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa held a summit to counter the unipolar power of the US and Europe.
October 26, 2024
Source: Truthout
The recently concluded 2024 BRICS (an acronym for the combined economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit, hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Kazan and attended by scores of Global South leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, was the largest diplomatic forum in Russia since Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in 2022. With 36 countries attending, and more than 20 of them represented by heads of state, the three-day BRICS bloc of developing economies summit showed that Russia is anything but isolated on the global stage. The meeting highlighted the current geopolitical situation, the sanctions imposed by the United States on China, Russia and Iran, which all participants condemned as “unlawful,” and the need for an alternative payment system. The promotion and development of alternative financial instruments to gain greater independence from the dollar is perhaps the most important concern of the BRICS grouping. Yet no concrete resolutions were made at the 2024 BRICS summit.
Still, there is much more to be read into the 2024 BRICS summit than a big diplomatic win for Putin over Russia’s invasion into Ukraine, which is how most of the mainstream corporate media opted to frame the summit. First, since Putin’s rise to power, multipolarity has been a central focus of Russia’s foreign policy agenda, as it is seen as a counterweight to the global hegemony of the U.S. and its allies. Beijing’s emphasis under the leadership of Xi Jinping is also on building a multipolar world. And more and more countries in the Global South are looking to geopolitical alliances to escape influence and economic dependence on the United States and Europe.
BRICS countries say they seek to provide an alternative to the Western-led world order as they believe it is unfair, inequitable and exploitative. And the grouping has been gaining in strength, size and significance. It is estimated that BRICS countries account for 35 percent of the world economy and 45 percent of the population. In fact, not only have the BRICS countries’ share in world GDP overtaken that of G7, but the world economy relies increasingly on the emerging economies to drive expansion, according to the IMF.
At the present time, the BRICS includes 10 countries — Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Iran, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, United Arab Emirates — but more than 30 countries have expressed interest in joining, including NATO-member Turkey.
This development speaks volumes of the rising Global South discontent with the U.S.-dominated international order and of the increasing realization on the part of so many people across the non-Western world that Washington has no interest in peace, fairness and justice, and that the U.S. is in fact edging back toward a unipolar world. That said, we need however to distinguish the discontent of the Global South population with the dominance of the United States from the grievances that the ruling classes of these nations express about the current world order, as their own self-preservation is what is of paramount importance to them.
There is little doubt that the Biden administration’s hawkish line on Russia, waging a proxy war in Ukraine, seeking NATO’s expansion, pursuing the strategic encirclement of China with the building of defense alliances in the Indo-Pacific (Japan, Australia, South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand) and backing Israel’s constant use of brute force in the Middle East while “shielding Netanyahu against the reach of international justice,” as historian Adam Tooze aptly put it in a recent op-ed in the Guardian, are all part of a U.S. bid to reassert unipolar global hegemony.
The U.S. is on decline, but it won’t go down without a fight. Too much has been invested in a Western-dominated world order, and the U.S. still possesses the world’s top military. Revealing the mindset of political leaders in Washington D.C., from both parties, to be sure, Kamala Harris said during her keynote address at the Democratic National Convention that “as commander-in-chief, I will ensure that America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”
The question here is whether BRICS can usurp the U.S.-led world order. To do so, the BRICS nations would have to overcome the challenges of economic integration and deepen financial cooperation. Undoubtedly, greater collaboration and stronger coordination among BRICS countries are both possible and have in fact seen significant progress over the years. The share of global trade among the group’s current members more than doubled, to 40 percent, from 2002 through 2022.
However, becoming a global economic integration project, with a common currency, which is the kind of necessary step BRICS would have to take to truly go toe-to-toe with the U.S., is simply not in the cards at the present juncture or even in the foreseeable future.
Indicative of the difficulties surrounding the vision of a global economic integration project, so far only Brazilian President Lula has come out in open support for the creation of a common currency for trade and investment between BRICS economies. Putin, for example, is in favor of switching trade between member states away from the dollar to national currencies. But even if a common BRICS currency was to be created, there is no guarantee that it would replace the U.S. dollar. Even the euro has not succeeded in supplanting the dollar although a common BRICS currency would surely weaken the power of U.S. sanctions, which, interestingly enough, have gained more prominence as a tool of U.S. foreign policy during the last couple of decades.
Finally, given the huge differences in the form of governance that exists among BRICS member states (China is a one-party state with a mixed economy; India is a competitive-authoritarian hybrid; Iran is a theocracy; United Arab Emirates is a monarchy) there is no realistic prospect of BRICS turning into a political and security alliance against a U.S.-led NATO. Perhaps this explains the position of leaders like India’s Modi, who stated at the recently held summit of emerging economies that BRICS must not be seen as anti-West or even as an alternative to global organizations. A few days ahead of the summit, even Putin himself asserted that the BRICS grouping is not “anti-West,” but just “non-West.”
Be that as it may, Chinese President Xi Jinping is absolutely spot-on when he said at the 2024 BRICS summit that “the world is undergoing a major change that has not been seen in a century and the international situation is changing and chaotic.” Both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin seem to be firm in their convictions that the world must shift toward multipolarity, although the belief that multipolarity in a capitalist universe will deliver a fairer and safer world is simply not true, as history has shown. At the same time, they appear to be fully aware of the ugly fact that the U.S. will try to remain at the top of the global power hierarchy by any means necessary.
Indeed, to take one very recent example, how could international law and justice prevail when the U.S. labels the charges of the International Criminal Court against Israeli leaders “shameful” and “outrageous” but justifies similar charges against Putin? It is such hypocrisy and the plundering of international order by Western states, with the U.S. at the helm, that have led many leaders in the Global South calling for a new form of multilateral cooperation. For many of those nations, creating an alternative world order may indeed be a necessary step for their very survival. Whether such a vision will materialize or not, only time will tell.
CJ Polychroniou is a political scientist/political economist, author, and journalist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. Currently, his main research interests are in U.S. politics and the political economy of the United States, European economic integration, globalization, climate change and environmental economics, and the deconstruction of neoliberalism’s politico-economic project. He has published scores of books and over one thousand articles which have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers and popular news websites. His latest books are Optimism Over Despair: Noam Chomsky On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change (2017); Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (with Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin as primary authors, 2020); The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic, and the Urgent Need for Radical Change (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2021); and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (2021).
The recently concluded 2024 BRICS (an acronym for the combined economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit, hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Kazan and attended by scores of Global South leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, was the largest diplomatic forum in Russia since Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in 2022. With 36 countries attending, and more than 20 of them represented by heads of state, the three-day BRICS bloc of developing economies summit showed that Russia is anything but isolated on the global stage. The meeting highlighted the current geopolitical situation, the sanctions imposed by the United States on China, Russia and Iran, which all participants condemned as “unlawful,” and the need for an alternative payment system. The promotion and development of alternative financial instruments to gain greater independence from the dollar is perhaps the most important concern of the BRICS grouping. Yet no concrete resolutions were made at the 2024 BRICS summit.
Still, there is much more to be read into the 2024 BRICS summit than a big diplomatic win for Putin over Russia’s invasion into Ukraine, which is how most of the mainstream corporate media opted to frame the summit. First, since Putin’s rise to power, multipolarity has been a central focus of Russia’s foreign policy agenda, as it is seen as a counterweight to the global hegemony of the U.S. and its allies. Beijing’s emphasis under the leadership of Xi Jinping is also on building a multipolar world. And more and more countries in the Global South are looking to geopolitical alliances to escape influence and economic dependence on the United States and Europe.
BRICS countries say they seek to provide an alternative to the Western-led world order as they believe it is unfair, inequitable and exploitative. And the grouping has been gaining in strength, size and significance. It is estimated that BRICS countries account for 35 percent of the world economy and 45 percent of the population. In fact, not only have the BRICS countries’ share in world GDP overtaken that of G7, but the world economy relies increasingly on the emerging economies to drive expansion, according to the IMF.
At the present time, the BRICS includes 10 countries — Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Iran, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, United Arab Emirates — but more than 30 countries have expressed interest in joining, including NATO-member Turkey.
This development speaks volumes of the rising Global South discontent with the U.S.-dominated international order and of the increasing realization on the part of so many people across the non-Western world that Washington has no interest in peace, fairness and justice, and that the U.S. is in fact edging back toward a unipolar world. That said, we need however to distinguish the discontent of the Global South population with the dominance of the United States from the grievances that the ruling classes of these nations express about the current world order, as their own self-preservation is what is of paramount importance to them.
There is little doubt that the Biden administration’s hawkish line on Russia, waging a proxy war in Ukraine, seeking NATO’s expansion, pursuing the strategic encirclement of China with the building of defense alliances in the Indo-Pacific (Japan, Australia, South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand) and backing Israel’s constant use of brute force in the Middle East while “shielding Netanyahu against the reach of international justice,” as historian Adam Tooze aptly put it in a recent op-ed in the Guardian, are all part of a U.S. bid to reassert unipolar global hegemony.
The U.S. is on decline, but it won’t go down without a fight. Too much has been invested in a Western-dominated world order, and the U.S. still possesses the world’s top military. Revealing the mindset of political leaders in Washington D.C., from both parties, to be sure, Kamala Harris said during her keynote address at the Democratic National Convention that “as commander-in-chief, I will ensure that America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”
The question here is whether BRICS can usurp the U.S.-led world order. To do so, the BRICS nations would have to overcome the challenges of economic integration and deepen financial cooperation. Undoubtedly, greater collaboration and stronger coordination among BRICS countries are both possible and have in fact seen significant progress over the years. The share of global trade among the group’s current members more than doubled, to 40 percent, from 2002 through 2022.
However, becoming a global economic integration project, with a common currency, which is the kind of necessary step BRICS would have to take to truly go toe-to-toe with the U.S., is simply not in the cards at the present juncture or even in the foreseeable future.
Indicative of the difficulties surrounding the vision of a global economic integration project, so far only Brazilian President Lula has come out in open support for the creation of a common currency for trade and investment between BRICS economies. Putin, for example, is in favor of switching trade between member states away from the dollar to national currencies. But even if a common BRICS currency was to be created, there is no guarantee that it would replace the U.S. dollar. Even the euro has not succeeded in supplanting the dollar although a common BRICS currency would surely weaken the power of U.S. sanctions, which, interestingly enough, have gained more prominence as a tool of U.S. foreign policy during the last couple of decades.
Finally, given the huge differences in the form of governance that exists among BRICS member states (China is a one-party state with a mixed economy; India is a competitive-authoritarian hybrid; Iran is a theocracy; United Arab Emirates is a monarchy) there is no realistic prospect of BRICS turning into a political and security alliance against a U.S.-led NATO. Perhaps this explains the position of leaders like India’s Modi, who stated at the recently held summit of emerging economies that BRICS must not be seen as anti-West or even as an alternative to global organizations. A few days ahead of the summit, even Putin himself asserted that the BRICS grouping is not “anti-West,” but just “non-West.”
Be that as it may, Chinese President Xi Jinping is absolutely spot-on when he said at the 2024 BRICS summit that “the world is undergoing a major change that has not been seen in a century and the international situation is changing and chaotic.” Both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin seem to be firm in their convictions that the world must shift toward multipolarity, although the belief that multipolarity in a capitalist universe will deliver a fairer and safer world is simply not true, as history has shown. At the same time, they appear to be fully aware of the ugly fact that the U.S. will try to remain at the top of the global power hierarchy by any means necessary.
Indeed, to take one very recent example, how could international law and justice prevail when the U.S. labels the charges of the International Criminal Court against Israeli leaders “shameful” and “outrageous” but justifies similar charges against Putin? It is such hypocrisy and the plundering of international order by Western states, with the U.S. at the helm, that have led many leaders in the Global South calling for a new form of multilateral cooperation. For many of those nations, creating an alternative world order may indeed be a necessary step for their very survival. Whether such a vision will materialize or not, only time will tell.
CJ Polychroniou is a political scientist/political economist, author, and journalist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. Currently, his main research interests are in U.S. politics and the political economy of the United States, European economic integration, globalization, climate change and environmental economics, and the deconstruction of neoliberalism’s politico-economic project. He has published scores of books and over one thousand articles which have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers and popular news websites. His latest books are Optimism Over Despair: Noam Chomsky On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change (2017); Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (with Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin as primary authors, 2020); The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic, and the Urgent Need for Radical Change (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2021); and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (2021).
No comments:
Post a Comment