By Katu Arkonada on August 30, 2023
The recent summit of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, China, India, South Africa) taking place in the midst of several political turbulences between Europe and an Africa that rejects European neocolonialism, has finally left behind the moments of unipolarity (US hegemony) and bipolarity (expressed in the conflict between Russia and the West, Europe, the United States and NATO), to consolidate a multipolar world.
If the BRICS as a bloc were already a political and economic power, the incorporation as of January 1, 2024 of the main oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, together with Iran, Egypt, Argentina, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates, will turn the BRICS+ into a bloc that will represent 42% of the world’s population, with 22% of the continental surface, and 18% of global trade, which nevertheless represents 35% of global GDP. And if we talk about the increasingly scarce and therefore valuable natural resources, the BRICS+ account for 50% of the world’s oil reserves, 40% of gas and lithium reserves, 80% of the world’s rare earth reserves, and 50% of the world’s wheat production.
In addition to the formal incorporations, more than 40 countries have expressed in recent months their intention to join the BRICS, of which 23 have formally applied for membership, 6 of which will join as of 2024. All this in a global context of the dollar losing weight against other currencies such as the Chinese yuan. China is emerging as the winner in this process of not only gradually disengaging from the dollar system, but also gaining more and more relevance in the global context without having to resort, unlike the United States, to an arms race that translates into coups d’état and the installation of military bases. In fact, one of China’s few military bases outside its territory is located in Djibouti, a country with an outlet to the Red Sea, which also provides an outlet, via a Chinese railroad, to Ethiopia. Both Ethiopia and Egypt, which controls most of the Red Sea, are part of the new additions to the BRICS (nothing is by chance).
China, which is already Latin America and the Caribbean’s second largest trading partner, stands to gain from this enlargement of the BRICS in several ways. Economically, it will be part of a bloc that will give it easier access to the natural resources (crude oil, gas, lithium) it needs to continue growing and developing industrially and technologically, while its currency, the yuan, strengthens against the dollar. Likewise, on the commercial side, its commitment to the new Silk Road, a multidimensional project that, following the ancient Silk Road and the maritime routes of the Ming Dynasty, will reconfigure the map of (tele) communications left by the colonial powers and which is still present today in our way of seeing the world. China is already building communications networks, trains, ports, energy and water sources throughout the global south. China already has 5 times the annual GDP growth of the United States, although the US still accounts for 25% of global GDP, compared to China’s 18%, although China already surpasses the US in GDP measured in purchasing parity.
The other big winner of the BRICS summit held in Johannesburg is Russia. Despite the plane crash or bombing that killed the entire Wagner leadership in Russia as the BRICS summit began in South Africa, the summit is a victory for Russia. Like the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipeline in which the entire Western press came to hold Russia responsible, it makes no sense to attribute responsibility to Russia for an attack that could have been carried out in Africa (where Wagner Prigozhin’s leader was days before), or certainly not to cross it with the BRICS Summit and do it afterwards. It seems more, as in Nord Stream, the responsibility of the West, be it the US intelligence services, or the NATO sewers (if I may be redundant). Let us not forget the responsibility, and even leadership, of the Wagner group, and therefore of a part of the Russian army and government, in the African revolts that are happening these days their epicenter in Niger. No one can qualify an organization like Wagner or the Russian government as leftist, but if we look at it from a geopolitical filter, clearly today from Wagner to the BRICS we find anti-colonial and anti-imperialist components ranging from the African people waving Russian flags to the incorporation into the BRICS of a country sanctioned by the United States such as Iran.
The world is changing, faster than the leftist software is programmed to understand, and that is why setting aside our Eurocentrism, and as a good part of what the global south is doing, we must look more to China, Russia, and the expanded BRICS in general.
Katu Arkonada is a Basque political scientist and a member of the Network in Defense of Humanity
Source: El Ciudadano translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English