Page 27 - bne_May magazine 2023_20230503 BRICS

bne May 2023 Cover Story I 27
Has the US just made a strategic blunder? In leading the military support of Ukraine’s fight against Russia, introducing a massive package of sanctions and weaponising the dollar, Washington has caused a backlash that is rapidly driving the world’s leading emerging markets (EMs) together into a bloc led by the BRICS, who are clubbing together and de-dollarising in case they are next up to face US-led Western ire.
The Western world was outraged by the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the first large-scale war to be fought in Europe since the end of WWII, and acted almost immediately to make Russia
a pariah as well as denigrate its economy.
However, the unintended consequence has been to undermine the basis of international commerce, introduce massive distortions into the global economy and degrade confidence in the dollar. No one approves of Putin’s war, not even his closest EM allies, but they are more concerned about the ferocity of the Western response that has highlighted their own exposure to censure should their relations with the West decay. Now they are being forced to choose sides, many have decided that President Vladimir Putin’s main complaint, that we live in a unipolar world where America calls the shots,
is right and they would prefer to have a multipolar world, where every country makes its own choices and resolves problems collectively.
That is what is driving the EMs into the BRICS bloc, led by China and Russia,
the only emerging markets with a seat in the UN Permanent Security Council, military and nuclear capabilities on a par with the rest and economically large enough to have real heft in geopolitics. Putin and Xi have become the unlikely champions of the now increasingly nervous emerging world.
And Russia and China have four things that draw the other EMs in. The first is the multipolar view includes an implicit promise not to push values on partners. There is no “global policeman” in the multipolar worldview.
The second is the EMs are coming of age but feel themselves under-represented in the current geopolitical set-up. The UN Permanent Security Council only has five members, but three of those
are European, plus the US, born of Europe, as well as China. There are
no representatives at all from Latin America or Africa, and even India, the most populous country on the planet, is not included.
Third, almost all of the rest of the world have suffered from the colonialism of the first world in the past, an abuse that still rankles today. India, Africa and large parts of South America were all captured by one colonial power or other. China was never conquered, but it was flooded with opium by the British and lost two wars trying to ban the trade, leading to the “century of humiliation”. The empires may be forgotten in the West but the scars are still raw today amongst the victims.
Finally, the smaller members of the EM bloc are simply not wealthy enough to afford to take principled stands; they are just trying to earn enough money to build their countries and keep their people happy. Sanctions that cut them off from vital raw materials or drive up
policy goal was to work with the EU to create a single market that stretches “from Lisbon to Vladivostok.” But his demands for a new security deal from the West and his security concerns about Ukraine’s move towards Nato were never addressed until he forced the issue onto the table at the start of 2022 with ultimata and then a war.
New BRICS on the bloc
The war in Ukraine has brought about a polarisation between the developed and the developing world. Three decades ago the world was united into a single market after the socialist experiment collapsed. Three billion capitalists were almost overnight joined by 3bn former communists into a common people united by a common ideology. The first decade was chaotic as the old systems collapsed. The second was a golden
era as the new economies emerged
and grew rapidly to catch up with the West. But now we are in a third period when the newly minted countries, some of them very large and powerful, are starting to flex their political muscles on the international stage.
The developed world is not comfortable with these changes. Rather than embracing China and Russia and
“The smaller members of the EM bloc are simply not wealthy enough to afford to take principled stands; they are just trying to earn enough money to build their countries and keep their people happy”
costs are simply not an option. Unable to face down the G7 on their own, they are looking to the BRICS bloc for support in a common cause that can square up to the West.
It was never in the US interest to drive Russia and China closer together. Putin has always made it clear he would prefer to be part of Europe as he shares the same fears about China’s rise. Putin’s preference and long-stated foreign
welcoming them into the international capitalist community, in his first major foreign policy speech, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called both rivals, and the US has policies designed to contain both.
The war in Ukraine has brought all these tensions to the fore as the US tries to fulfil its self-appointed role as “leader of the free world” and use its considerable power to persuade, cajole or bully EMs
www.bne.eu