Photo Source: Prime Ministry (GODL-India)

If there is one thing that the last BRICS summit in Kazan revealed, it is that when you divide the world into the West and the Rest, the Rest is much larger and quite alienated from the Western oligarchy. Most of the rest want to join BRICS. Ultimately, it’s a good deal: a way to build economic and political connections and adopt sane economic policies without a tyrant like Washington meddling in your affairs. What’s not to like? It goes back generations to archaic American lies about Bolshevism, at a time when Europe has forgotten Bismarck’s slogan – the secret of success in politics is to make a good deal with Russia – and no one in Washington has heard of it. Many in the West have learned the value of such an agreement. And not just with Russia, but also with China and India.

After Kazan, BRICS now has nine members and 13 partner countries, all committed to multipolarity. Another key aim is to promote “more representative and democratic alternative economic institutions that are not dominated by western powers,” according to an Oct. 26 report from Geopolitical Economy. In other words, the Global South is tired of the IMF and World Bank’s debt traps and sees BRICS as a viable way out of what Bolivian President Luis Arce described in Kazan as the “tyranny of the dollar.” According to the Geopolitical Economy report, BRICS provides this hope because its members include more than 40 percent of the Earth’s population, 30 percent of global oil production, and more than a third of world GDP (based on purchasing power parity). G7 countries are much smaller; “less than 10 percent of the world’s population and less than 30 percent of GDP.” BRICS countries are apparently tired of the global aristocracy.

The original five members of BRICS are Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Its four new members are Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. It recently welcomed 13 partners: Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. Argentina, under center-left president Alberto Fernandez 2023, agreed to join BRICS, but reactionary ruler Javier Milei was too busy destroying the Argentine economy, which he accomplished with extraordinary speed, and canceled the bid to join BRICS altogether. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, no doubt under intense pressure from Washington to reject BRICS, remains firmly on the fence.

One word sums up Washington’s hatred towards BRICS: de-dollarization. BRICS, led by Russia and China, is encouraging its members and partners to trade in local currencies rather than dollars as before. This weakens the dollar’s position as the world reserve currency and, if enough, could have serious repercussions in what Fidel Castro calls the heart of the empire. But it’s not just the BRICS. Eighty countries decided to conduct their trade in local currencies. Most of them are not even in BRICS, like many in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Abandoning the dollar has unfortunately come to be seen as a national security move for us Americans.

If the geniuses in Biden’s white house had not weaponized the American currency so that there is no tomorrow, de-dollarization would be out of the question. Between massive sanctions on anyone Washington disliked and the outright theft of foreigners’ financial assets stored in western banks, non-Western money managers became somewhat wary of the previously assumed financial hegemony of the Exceptional Empire. So listen, Washington: The US has had a great deal with the dollar since the end of World War II, but now, thanks to the BRICS and, more importantly, our own foolish and short-sighted foreign economic policies, we are seeing the exact opposite. the beginning of the end. Maybe Trump’s promise to lift sanctions makes sense?

So, apart from the recent backlash of sanctions, what good have they done for us? While Western sanctions against cheap Russian energy are deindustrializing Europe, Moscow is selling its oil and gas elsewhere. Even Biden had to deplete the strategic oil reserve to lower gas prices; He caused inflation with his stupid sanctions on everything coming from Russia (except uranium, oh no, the hypocritical USA is busy importing that from Russia like crazy). And then there is the overall global loss from goodwill sanctions and asset freezes, and the lessons nations like China are learning from them. Relations between Beijing and Washington have been a bit tense lately, and the mindless Sinophobic morons in Congress like to whine about the Taiwan war. Don’t you think the Chinese are smart enough to understand where this is going? Keeping a lot of dollars and US treasury bonds is a big responsibility, because after a lot of hot rhetoric, one day they might be taken hostage, even before the missiles fly, right? Of course, the Chinese see this and take action; The gradual de-dollarization of the BRICS is just one step.

However, this threat to the dollar’s reserve currency status will not materialize overnight. There’s a long, long way to go before foreigners are completely de-dollarized, giving Washington time to clean up its act and make amends. After all, do we Americans really want most of the world to be so angry at our heavy-handed behavior that it tears apart the global financial architecture that the United States established 70 years ago? An architecture that protects us as we live beyond our means? Do we really want our debts to come due when we are ruled by an oligarchy where debt forgiveness at the individual or national level is not only a dirty word but is strictly prohibited? Hopefully, the new occupant of the White House will seize this interregnum between now and the time Remainers can abandon the dollar to develop policies that will persuade foreign leaders to pursue it—rather than intimidate them. If you combine such policies with the lost American art of true diplomacy on our multiple military fronts, we inhabitants of the Extraordinary Empire may actually manage to climb out of the hole that many successive Washington administrations have dug us into.

BRICS are not going anywhere. So is the G7. They do not have hostile relations at the moment, but this may change. Remember, as Moon of Alabama shared on October 25, “BRICS is a long-term project.” Realistically, despite the hype, this is neither a replacement for the dollar nor a military alliance, as he observes. As both MofA and Geopolitical Economics note, the truly spectacular BRICS development occurred shortly before the summit. This meant India would abandon US-backed anti-China policies and, according to the Ministry of Finance, “refrain from US attempts to make it an acolyte of US policies in Asia.”

Asia Times detailed the matter on October 24 as follows: “India and China recently agreed to disengage from their long-running border dispute on the western part of the India-China Himalayan border, on the sidelines of the 16th Summit.^This BRICS summit.” In other words, BRICS facilitated a giant step towards peace between two nuclear-armed countries. Even if Washington is not, humanity should be grateful to this institution for this alone.

But maybe it’s time for a different method than Inside the Beltway; a method that is less arrogant and no longer requires allies to approach on their knees. The world is changing, but Washington remains frozen and essentially left behind in its post-1991 dream of being a unipolar global leader and its “my way or the highway” attitude towards everything beyond its borders. This is no longer sustainable, just as one day the mega minds in the White House realize that supporting over 800 foreign military bases is unsustainable. Insanity may be temporary. The mind can regain lost ground. Let’s hope that with Joe “We Rule the World” Biden leaving Washington, the return of rationality becomes safe.