BRICS poses a challenge to the US-led global order – but for whom?

The recently concluded BRICS 2024 (acronym for the combined economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summithosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Kazan and attended by many leaders from the South, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, was the most major diplomatic forum in Russia since Putin. ordered the entry of troops into Ukraine in 2022. With the participation of 36 countries, including more than 20 represented by heads of state, the three-day summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies showed that Russia is anything but isolated on the world 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 illegal, and the need for a system of alternative payment. The promotion and development of alternative financial instruments to achieve greater independence from the dollar is perhaps the most important concern of the BRICS group. Yet no concrete resolutions were reached at the 2024 BRICS summit.

Yet there is much more to the 2024 BRICS summit than a grand diplomatic victory for Putin in the face of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. mainstream corporate media chose to frame the summit. First, since Putin came to power, multipolarity has been at the heart of Russia's foreign policy agenda, as it is seen as a counterweight to the global hegemony of the United States and its allies. Beijing, under the leadership of Xi Jinping, is also emphasizing building a multipolar world. And more and more countries in the South are turning to geopolitical alliances to escape the influence and economic dependence on the United States and Europe.

BRICS countries say they seek to offer an alternative to the Western-led global order because they consider it unjust, inequitable and exploitative. And the group grew in strength, size and importance. The BRICS countries are estimated to represent 35 percent of the global economy and 45 percent of the population. In fact, not only has the BRICS countries' share of global GDP surpassed that of the G7, but the global economy is increasingly relying on emerging economies to drive expansion, according to the report. IMF.

Currently, BRICS includes 10 countries – Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Iran, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates – but more than 30 countries have expressed interest in joining. join, including NATO. member Türkiye.

This development speaks volumes about the South's growing discontent with the U.S.-dominated international order and the growing realization by so many in the non-Western world that Washington has no interest in peace, fairness and justice, and that the United States is in fact returning to a unipolar world. That said, however, one must distinguish the discontent of the population of the South with the domination of the United States from the grievances that the ruling classes of these nations express about the current world order, because their own self-preservation is what prime. importance to them.

There is no doubt that the Biden administration's hawkish line towards Russia, waging a proxy war in Ukraine, seeking to expand NATO, continuing the strategic encirclement of China with the construction of defense alliances in the Indo-Pacific (Japan, Australia, South Korea, Philippines and Thailand) and supporting Israel's continued use of brutal force in the Middle East while protect Netanyahu against the reach of international justice, as historian Adam Tooze aptly put it in a recent editorial in Tutorare all part of a US attempt to reassert unipolar global hegemony.

The United States is in decline, but it won't happen without a fight. Too much investment has been made in a Western-dominated world order, and the United States still has the best military in the world. Revealing the mindset of Washington DC's political leaders, of both parties, of course, Kamala Harris said during his keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention that as commander in chief, I will ensure that America always has the most powerful and lethal fighting force in the world.

The question here is whether BRICS can usurp the US-led global order. To achieve this, BRICS countries should overcome the challenges of economic integration and deepen financial cooperation. There is no doubt that greater collaboration and coordination among BRICS countries is possible and has in fact made significant progress over the years. THE share of world trade among current group members, their share more than doubled, to 40%, between 2002 and 2022.

However, becoming a project of global economic integration, with a common currency, which is the kind of necessary step that BRICS would need to take to truly take on the United States, is simply not feasible at this time. , nor even in the foreseeable future.

Indicative of the difficulties surrounding the vision of a global economic integration project, so far only the Brazilian president Lula has spoken out openly in favor of the creation of a common currency for trade and investment between the BRICS economies. Putin, for example, favors a shift in trade between member states from the dollar to national currencies. But even if a common BRICS currency were created, there is no guarantee that it would replace the US dollar. Even the euro has failed to supplant the dollar, although a common BRICS currency would surely weaken the countries' power. American sanctionswhich, interestingly, have grown in importance as a tool of American foreign policy over the past two decades.

Finally, given the enormous differences in forms of governance that exist among BRICS member states (China is a one-party state with a mixed economy; India is a competitive-authoritarian hybrid; Iran is a theocracy ; the UAE is a monarchy) there is no realistic prospect of BRICS transforming into a political and security alliance against a US-led NATO. This perhaps explains the position of leaders like India Modiwho said at the recent summit of emerging economies that BRICS should not be seen as anti-West or even as an alternative to global organizations. A few days before the summit, even Poutine he himself claimed that the BRICS group is not anti-Western, but simply non-Western.

Regardless, the Chinese president Xi Jinping is absolutely right when he declared at the 2024 BRICS summit that the world is experiencing a major change unprecedented in a century and the international situation is changing and chaotic. Both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin seem firmly convinced that the world must move towards multipolarity, even though the belief that multipolarity in a capitalist universe will bring a fairer and more secure world is simply false, as history tells us. showed. At the same time, they seem acutely aware of the grim reality that the United States will attempt to remain atop the hierarchy of world powers by any means necessary.

Indeed, to take a very recent example, how could international law and justice prevail when the United States calls the charges brought by the International Criminal Court against Israeli leaders shameful and scandalous, but justifies similar charges against Poutine ? It is such hypocrisy and the plundering of the international order by Western states, with the United States at the helm, that has led many Southern leaders to call for a new form of multilateral cooperation. For many of these nations, the creation of an alternative world order could indeed be a necessary step for their very survival. Whether such a vision comes to fruition or not, only time will tell.