Page 28 - bne IntelliNews monthly magazine April 2025

28 I Cover story bne April 2025
“The scales have now tipped in favour of the affirmation of three spheres
of influence led by the United States, China and Russia. Europe’s place in this system is at best an afterthought, and at worst up for grabs – and division – between the three,” political scientist Rym Momtaz said in a recent paper for Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Russia has been actively building up
its own network of suzerains in Africa, Eurasia and SE Asia. The two Russia- Africa summits, which were launched well before the war in Ukraine, have been a huge success and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who turned 75 this week, has been constantly touring the world handing grain, nuclear technology and arms deals to cement these relations with some success.
Still, others stress Iran’s participation in an axis that spans Asia, Eurasia and the Middle East. If it comes to war, then the US could be facing troops across three global theatres that will stretch even Washington’s formidable resources.
Geopolitical patchwork quilt
Another more sophisticated way of cutting the world up is to focus on the
www.intellinews.com
rapid development of the proliferating multinational organisations. The pre-eminence of the G7 has been superseded by the G20 that is being mentored by India. At last year’s G20 summit , the 54-member African Union joined the G20, considerably bolstering that organisation's international clout in global affairs. The shift towards the Global South in the geopolitical centre of gravity was highlighted by Trump’s recent offer to the Kremlin to rejoin the G7, which Lavrov turned down, saying it the latter now “irrelevant.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping have
been promoting the expansion BRICS+, which now has ten full members, 17 members in waiting and another
22 countries that have expressed
an interest in joining. From the 51 members of the BRICS+ club perhaps only India, Malaysia and Thailand
can be described as functioning democracies. Many of the rest, such as Syria, Yemen and Sudan, are basket- cases. However, between them, the BRICS countries are home to 42% of global oil reserves, 50% of gas reserves, 72% of rare earth metals and 95% of their processing. And most importantly of all, nine out of ten people on
the plant today live in one of these emerging markets.
But there is a plethora of other organisations that are being developed in parallel to create a patchwork quilt of interlacing relations, most of them excluding the Western powers. China and Russia are both promoting the Eurasian Economic Union (EUU), Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and its security sister, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO). There is ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) in the south and Mercosur in Latin America. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has become more important and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has been very active in his region and increasingly on the international stage.
Everyone is friends with everyone. Many countries are members of multiple associations and meet constantly.
The majority of these institutions are there to promote mutually beneficial economic cooperation, such as
the New Development Bank (NDB, formerly known as the BRICS Bank) and the emerging world’s answer to the International Monetary Fund