By Jorge Elbaum on January 7, 2025
The two most disruptive countries for the West, the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, are leading the most significant geopolitical mutation taking place in the last half century. Both countries are facing two different, but at the same time convergent, war operations: Moscow is challenging NATO militarily, after three decades of siege, resisting an incremental encirclement implemented by the Atlantist organization, which expanded from the 12 founding members in 1949, to the current 32. Beijing, for its part, suffers the daily attacks of an economic and commercial belligerence, led by Washington, to curtail its economic growth and obstruct its civilizational model of multipolar, non-interfering cooperation, focused on horizontal articulation, primarily with the Global South.
On the first day of January, thirteen new states joined the BRICS+ as associates: Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. Their acceptance was decided at the 16th BRICS+ Summit held in Kazan, Russian Federation, in October 2024. Full membership adds another nine nations: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and Iran. As currently constituted, the BRICS+ account for about half of the world’s population, 40 percent of global oil production and a quarter of global goods exports.
Turkey’s accession to the collective represents a loss for NATO and at the same time a triumph for the Russian Federation, at a time when Vladimir Putin is trying to guarantee the permanence of his military bases in northwestern Syria. In September 2024, months before the Levant Liberation Organization (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, HTS) seized power in Damascus, with Ankara’s support, Russia became the driving force behind Recep Erdoğan’s admission to the BRICS+. Turkey’s entry is also explained by the refusal of the European Union to accept its membership, after repeated requests to Brussels, since 1959.
Brazil assumed since January 1, 2025 the rotating presidency of the BRICS+ and Lula will be in charge of preparing the Summit to be held between July and August of this year in Brasilia – at that date more additions for 2026 will be announced. The bloc will have to deal with the presidency of Donald Trump, whose government plans include a tariff war against China and Mexico, indifference towards NATO, the massive expulsion of Latin Americans and an abandonment of health agreements with the WHO and international environmental organizations. This protectionist orientation does not seem to be the result of a Trumpist eccentricity: Washington is desperately seeking to overcome the productivity and competitiveness limitations in which it is mired.
Last week, Joe Biden blocked the acquisition of the United States Steel Corporation (US Steel) by the Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel Corporation. The purchase had been agreed for a value of 15 billion dollars. This measure is the continuation of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, approved in August 2022, considered discriminatory by the Europeans, for enabling subsidies and tax credits contrary to the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Brussels does not seem to conceive that – for the United States – the rules of free markets and competition are legitimate only as long as they are presented as convenient and beneficial. When they cease to be so, Washington assumes that it can modify them at will, arbitrarily and inconsistently.
The incorporation of Bolivia and Cuba into the BRICS+ will allow access to investments disallowed by the West and at the same time achieve greater geopolitical autonomy. The top leaders of the nine full members consider that at the Brasilia Summit in mid-2025 the membership of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela will be discussed again and also that of Nicaragua. The network that this cooperation will generate will allow the integration of Brazil and Bolivia with the Port of Chancay, in Peru, with the Asia-Pacific.
The integration of Latin America with Asia will boost the autonomy of the Global South during the same period in which Vladimir Putin will succeed in undermining neocolonial supremacism with his military victory in Ukraine. “Russia’s strength has been one of the great surprises of the war,” says Emmanuel Todd in his recent book The Defeat of the West. NATO’s defeat will most likely be taken up by the West in the same year in which the 80th anniversary of the capitulation of the Third Reich will be remembered. On May 8, 1945, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel initialed the unconditional surrender at 10:43 p.m. in front of Red Army Marshal Georgy Zhukov. Some international analysts affirm that this year’s military parade on Red Square, on the eighth anniversary of that heroic date, may become a great day. They say it will be an excellent moment “to be Russian”. It is very likely.
Source Pagina 12, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English