by Stefano Briganti
The fifteenth will take place in South Africa on August 22 BRICS summit. I remember first learning about the BRICS when the American multinational I worked for developed a strategy dedicated to taking advantage of the huge potential offered by those then called emerging economies. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa were countries experiencing significant economic growth and thus Very attractive markets. It was not a wrong prediction if today these five countries alone produce 30% of the world’s GDP, which is more than 40% of the world’s population.
BRICS is not an organization of countries on the model of the European Union or NATO, structures based on unique criteria to which those who belong belong must align. It is organized on a multipolar model for managing relations between member states, with each country maintaining its own full sovereignty and manage their own internal social and economic policies without having to align them with common rules or models. Basically relationships Commercial type One could think of a kind of market between countries like the European Union, but without the monetary and fiscal constraints and with the borders of national sovereignty that characterize the European model.
For ten years, there has been the BRICS Bank, the New Development Bank, chaired today by former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, which does not mint money because (at the moment) there is no single currency used by the BRICS countries, but manages operations and investments in currencies Member States. China is the standard-bearer of the multipolar model supported by the Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative, which opposes the unipolar model of the US-EU matrix. In 1945 A.A Bretton Woods The dollar has become the reference currency used in global trade operations. For decades, the dollar has fueled investment funds from countries around the world, which are managed by US financial institutions. We remember the Saudi petrodollar in 1973 and the oil traded in dollars. This made the United States the economic powerhouse dominant for nearly eighty years.
American foreign policy in recent decades has been widely used Economic sanctions As a soft power tool for conflict management. The system proved very effective for the United States, as it was very burdensome for those who were penalized because major operations and investments in that country were made in dollars. The Russian-Ukrainian conflict and even before that between Libya and the United States and Afghanistan and the United States revealed the simplicity and speed with which those who manage the American currency can. Freeze sovereign wealth funds or prevent interest payments on investments that constitute dollar-denominated debt by causing defaults at the national level.
The BRICS countries, through their strategy of using national currencies for investment and trade, mitigate exposure risks Possible economic blackmail Or sanctions from the United States or the European Union. Perhaps it is precisely this aspect that makes the BRICS group so interesting today, that Argentina and Iran are about to join, while 14 other countries including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have applied for membership. The unipolar paradigm and dollar hegemony are being challenged like never before, the US is trying to hunker down with India cajoling Modi to keep it within its own sphere, they are playing stunts with China to “contain” it without interruption but without forgetting To show off their military musclesaimed at ending the Russian Federation with the war in Ukraine and seeking to the shores of South Africa to increase the American presence in Africa.
BRICS is an evolving reality and one to follow in order to guess what the new world order might be like at the end of the first half century and the outcome of the ideological battle (only?) “democracy against tyranny” that Biden mentioned publicly in March 2022.
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