Author: Fabrizio Vielmini – 09/11/2023
The BRICS as Harbinger of a New World, 09-10.11.2023
After Johannesburg, St. Peterburg hosts the next gathering of the countries that are shaping the profile of a new multilateral world
Fabrizio VIELMINI – Specialist of Russia and Central Asia – Vision & Global Trends. International Institute for Global Analyses
2023 has been a remarkable year for the world balance of power, rhythmed by several events which assisted in the further demise of Western hegemony. First of all, over the months, it became clear that NATO proxy war in the Ukraine was doomed to failure. Then, in October, disproportionately reacting to Hamas attack the Israeli onslaught of the Gaza strip against the civilian population marked another turn. The Western world’s acritical reaction to the genocide inflicted to the Palestinians by Israel showed the real nature of this decaying civilisation, effectively spoiling months of propaganda demonizing the action of the Russian Federation’s Army in the Ukraine. In fact, Netanyahu’s actions ripped the mask of the Anglo-American West, revealing how beyond the rhetoric of “rule-based order” there is the reality of a supremacist and increasingly aggressive imperialism, at odds with the interests of the majority of the population of this planet.
Humanity is now waiting for the advent of a new rule, an alternative nomos to use a concept introduced by German philosopher Carl Schmitt, to the designate the principles structuring international and other human relations.[1]
No other instance better than the BRICS stands today as a possible bearer of such an answer, as testified by the group’s summit in Johannesburg last summer. The Summit’s final communique was a real manifesto to the Global South to gather in order to build a post-Anglo-American world order.[2] To this, the document stresses key concepts as the importance of inclusive multilateralism and the right to development for every country. To stop leave such ideas on paper, the participants called to the international organisations to stop paying mere lip service to the expanding global inequalities and abuses allowed by the West. The BRICS warning included an address to Israel to end the enslavement of the Palestinian people [3]. This declaration was of paramount importance since it came from a bloc in the rapid expansion: at the summit, the members switched from 5 to 11. The historic (as it was termed by Chinese president Xi) expansion concerned Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Argentina, the UAE and Ethiopia and spoke tons of volumes about the direction world affairs have taken to distance themselves from the policies pursued by Washington and its satellites. Next, 14 other countries are on the membership’s waiting list.[4] By this way, starting from January 2024, the grouping will account for almost half of the population and one third of the world’s GDP. Soon, given higher demographic and economic growth rates, the expansion will lead the BRICS to surpass the G7 economic potential.
The next important stage in BRICS development will take place on 9th November in St. Petersburg, where Russia will organize the V International Municipal Forum of the BRICS+ . On the eve of the BRICS summit, the Anglo-Americans made an attempt to disrupt the meeting pushing the ICC (International Criminal Court), a structure under London’s influence, to issue an “arrest warrant” for Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader conveyed nevertheless his message from remote to the summit, receiving ovations while one of the leaders of the “free world,” namely French President Macron, was denied to attend. The gathering in Saint Petersburg is relevant to Russia, since it will host next year’s BRICS summit. Such initiatives are very important to Moscow in offsetting Western attempts at isolating it. The main emphasis is on building relations with countries that the Anglo-Saxons arrogantly call the “Third World”. In this context, there was the Russia-Africa summit (July 2023, St. Petersburg) and the technological development forum Technoprom 2023 (Novosibirsk) and many other events. Moscow’s strategy is to expand the network of contacts (primarily economic) between the BRICS+ countries not only at the level of capitals, but also at the regional level with all those who are fed up with the “rule based international order” of Washington.
For other BRICS members, the current situation of open confrontation of Russia vis-à-vis of Washington’s camp has a double face. From one side it is not welcomed since it complicates the international environment of trade exchanges. From the other, given the increasing contradiction of American world (dis)order, Russia resistance is welcomed as a kind of battering ram. In the current situation, the Kremlin has nothing to lose and with its increasingly defiant actions is accelerating the transition that will inevitably come.
Against such a background, themost important new BRICS entrance is doubtlessly that of Iran. Constantly under the blows of Western imperialism, the country will now find in the bloc additional resources to withstand. This enlargement comes after the no-less historic reconciliation between Teheran and Ryad mediated by Beijing, a concrete example of how a BRICS-led world will be based on dialogue negotiations and the conflicts fomented by the Anglo-Americans will be overcome.
The entrance of Iran is also relevant since it buttresses the logistic potential of the platform. An important BRICS asset is the members’ control of the vital routes of world trade. The international transport corridor “North-South”, the implementation of which Russia, Iran and India have been preparing for a long time, can now also be attributed to the sphere of control of the BRICS bloc. The transport corridor will connect India with Russia through Iran and the Caspian Sea and through the Russian Baltic ports west to Europe. This is a huge market and huge transit income. The US have detected this aspect of BRICS potential and, on the sidelines of the G20 summit in New Delhi, they announced the IMEC’s logistical path. This is a project for a corridor connecting India to Europe through the Persian Gulf. The project was designed as a wedge among the BRICS and a challenge to China’s “One Belt, One Road”. However, following Israel aggression on Gaza, the US logistics megaproject will find itself in a deadlock.[5] Now the US can expect challenge to their dominance pretentions not only on the Eurasian continent but also on global the sea lanes’ potential chocking points as the Suez Canal, the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf, as well as the Strait of Hormuz. Speaking in the terminology of Anglo-Saxon geopolitics of the beginning of the XX century, one can say that the challenge to the US is expanding the from Heartland to the Rimland. The nightmare scenarios of the British strategy informing Washington’s moves is becoming a reality. Of course, the situation is much more complicated and it would be unwise to say that Beijing or Moscow are now on control of key oil supply routes, but this reality is surely a factor of leverage on the Western powers.
Another fundamental asset of the BRICS in the historical mission of taking the world out of the Anglo-Saxon grip is its potential for the demise of the current international financial system born in Bretton Woods.[6] The BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) is working on the feasibility of creating a new currency union to avoid dependence on the US dollar and other Western currencies. After the Johannesburg summit, the pace of getting rid of USD has increased, China, Brazil and Saudi Arabia freed themselves of 17.4 billion dollars of US Treasury securities in one month.
Under the leadership of China, the BRICS bloc is rapidly reaching to all the level of power previously belonging to the Western world only. For instance, recent Chinese technological advances demonstrated that the gap is narrowing in advanced science. Such developments also demonstrate the rising Anglo-American impotence in applying their traditional leverages of sanctions and boycott against rivals.[7] As in the other fields of application, Western decoupling measures and punitive sanctions are backfiring on all the line.
To express an alternative and further the Western demise, the BRICS countries are aware of the need of adopting measures to transform their cooperationfrom the level of an amorphous economic idea into a harmonised platform with a more clearly expressed strategy. Western pundits have so far downplayed the BRICS activities as lacking coordination and being embedded in the contradictions between its members. Apart from the poorly concealed contempt of deeming the BRICS as a team of outsiders and rogue countries from the Third World, these critics have some objective points. A major problem of the BRICS structure is the actually ambiguous position which India has been so far following. On one hand, Delhi ha properly reacted to the Western war’s propaganda on Ukraine, which marked an effective break in the deadlock of Indian strategic submission to the Anglo-Saxon agenda. On the other hand, India has been pursuing a solitary path, looking for national leadership across the Global South and trying to thwart the Chinese standing within fora as the BRICS and the SCO. All in all, India’s position is a serious problem for the future, a fact noted by British strategists who are calling on the Western governments to invest diplomatic resources in the attempt to derail Delhi’s engagement towards a fairer global order.[8]
There are other BRICS members who have problems in withstanding the Western pressure and are forced to pursue policies of accommodation to Washington positions. At the same time, as the tide of history is changing, minor states will also increasingly be capable of “showing their teeth” in defending their national positions. The opposite is unfortunately true with regard of the main European countries. European subordination to US-UK geopolitical interests is generally self-destructive but assume particularly miserable character for Italy and Germany. Italy especially could play a prominent role as an interface for the BRI connection to the European system and a Mediterranean player. Italy’s potential for cooperation with the BRICS’ states, both old and new, it’s huge on the background of the historically strong cultural, economic and trade relations with all the members and on the background of the country position at the crossroad off the Global North and South. Unfortunately, Italy risks losing this role because of the recent political and commercial choices that the current national authorities are implementing under Washington pressure.[9] Nevertheless we remain confident that the turning of the tide of history will soon become so self-evident so that to inspire a radical revision of foreign policy’s priorities in both Rome and Berlin out of Anglo-Saxon zero-sum thinking to join the new, expanding multipolar world.
[1] Carl Schmitt began used the term to denote the socially constructed and historically specific “concrete order” that a people assume to regulate customs of social and political behaviors. See The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of Jus Publicum Europaeum, Telos Press Publishing, 2006.
[2] Johannesburg II Declaration: BRICS and Africa: Partnership for Mutually Accelerated Growth, Sustainable Development and Inclusive Multilateralism, Sandton, Gauteng, South Africa, 23 August 2023. On: https://brics2023.gov.za/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Jhb-II-Declaration-24-August-2023-1.pdf
[3] “We express our deep concern at the dire humanitarian situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories due to
escalating violence under continued Israeli occupation and the expansion of illegal settlements. We call on the international community to support direct negotiations based on international law including relevant UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative, towards a two-state solution, leading to the establishment of a sovereign, independent and viable State of Palestine”. Ibidem, p. 5.
[4] Among them Algeria, Bangladesh, Belarus, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Thailand, Venezuela and Vietnam.
[5] India-Middle East-Economic Corridor is effectively dead’: Fears grow as Israel declares war on Hamas, “Business Today”, 08.10.2023, https://businesstoday.in/latest/world/story/india-middle-east-economic-corridor-is-effectively-dead-fears-grow-as-israel-declares-war-on-hamas-401132-2023-10-08
[6] M. Chirkov, A. Kazelko BRICS New Development Bank: A Second Bretton Woods or a New Trend with its Own Future?, 02.09.2022, https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/brics-new-development-bank-a-second-bretton-woods-/
[7] According to a recent piece “The recent launch of the Huawei Mate60 Pro sent a seismic shiver across the global semiconductor realm. Several years of the most drastic sanctions, culminating last year in the US CHIPS and Science Act, had failed to stop China’s technological juggernaut.. See: L. Low, Face-off on the grand chessboard
The West must get out of its boxed-in zero-sum thinking and join the new, expanding multipolar world, 03.11.2023; https://asiatimes.com/2023/11/face-off-on-the-grand-chessboard/
[8] C. Coughlin, Brics is now a motley crew of failing states. The Daily Telegraph, 24.08.2023.
[9] See an interview with former MP and chair of the Foreign Affairs committee of the Italian parliament, On. Vito Petrocelli, China spearheads the growth of most innovative cooperation formats, Global Times, 22.10.2023, https://globaltimes.cn/page/202310/1300329.shtml
