The summit they celebrate this week the BRICS in the Russian city of Kazan has shown that in the Global South a common commitment to negotiation prevails to stop the ukraine warin contrast to the West’s efforts to isolate Russia with sanctions and prolong the armed conflict to wear down Moscow, even if kyiv ultimately loses the contest. The BRICS was initially made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, although in January of this year Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia joined.
The meeting in the heart of Russia of the countries grouped under that acronym aims to launch a challenge to Western geopolitical and economic strategy led by Washington at a key international moment: in the final stretch of the American presidential electionsin the midst of a war crisis not seen for decades in the Middle East, with Israel roaming freely in Lebanon and Gazaand with the war in Ukraine mired in the side of Europe.
Russia sanctioned and ostracized for its invasion of Ukraine hosts the Kazan meeting, demonstrating that is not as alone as Washington and its European allies claimand that, on the contrary, together with China Above all, it tries to offer a political and economic alternative to the current world scenario where the US is the hegemonic power that sets the pace.
“This BRICS summit is really a gift” for Russian President Vladimir Putin, Alex Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, told the US network CNN. The message is clear, according to Gabuev, “how can we talk about Russia’s global isolation when (so many) leaders come to Kazan?”
Putin, an autocrat in his country and directly responsible for the aggression against Ukraine, thus appears as the standard bearer of a movement that is growing in strength and that aims to lead the global community towards a more just order. In the capital of the Russian republic of Tatarstan, the Russian president received a twenty leaders from Asia, Africa and Latin America. In this scenario it is certainly difficult to insist that the Russian leader is isolated.
They call for a negotiated exit in Ukraine and condemn Israel
If Putin attended the BRICS summit in Johannesburg last year by teleconference, because he was under an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in Ukrainein Kazan is the host of the event and the world panorama is very different.
The BRICS do not fully agree with what is happening in Ukraine, since The violation of Ukrainian territorial sovereignty bothers by Russia, but there is unanimous condemnation in their ranks of the genocide committed by Israel in Gaza and its flagrant violation of the integrity of a sovereign state such as Lebanon.
China, Brazil and India have demanded in Kazan a negotiated solution to the Ukrainian conflict
China, Brazil and India have demanded in Kazan a negotiated solution to the Ukrainian conflict. And the Kremlin has stressed at this BRICS summit that accepts the mediation of those three countriesin contrast to the bet of Europe and the US that prefer to take the war to its ultimate consequences.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who did not personally attend the summit, defended by videoconference the start of peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the risk of widespread conflict in the Middle East has led the BRICS to focus more attention on this area than on Eastern Europe. The massacres of Palestinians and Lebanese carried out by Israel, without the United States having done anything to stop them, were unequivocally condemned by the BRICS this Wednesday in their joint statement.
It is normal that the conviction grows in these countries that Washington should not lead international societyespecially if it is capable of allowing this genocide to cover the backs of its Israeli partners.
A new model of international relations
This BRICS club, which certainly lacks the cohesion of the European Union or NATO, or the unity of commercial and productive interests of the G7 of the most powerful economies in the world, however, is beginning to form alternatives that underline the growing weight of emerging countriesalso known as the Global South.
After meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Putin stressed that the association contemplated by the BRICS is a “model of how relations between states should be built”.
Founded in 2009 by Brazil, Russia, India and China, with the accession in 2010 of South Africa, the BRICS added Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and Iran to its ranks on January 1, 2024. At least a dozen countries (including Türkiye, itself a member of NATO) have expressed their desire to join the groupwhich already represents almost 50% of humanity. In 2024, the economic strength of the BRICS already represents 36.7% of the world economy.
In 2024, the economic strength of the BRICS will already represent 36.7% of the world economy
In the West, this association is not viewed favorably, as it challenges the predominant European and North American ways of doing things. Furthermore, it includes two of the countries demonized by the West, Russia and Iranas well as the number one global opponent, for both Americans and Europeans, which is China.
With Russia, NATO led by the US is faced with a proxy war in Ukraine and Iran It is the enemy to be defeated by the main Western ally in the Middle East, Israel, which is preparing an imminent retaliation against Tehran that could lead to an unparalleled regional conflagration.
China appears to be a double threat to the US and its allies, with its trade practices that are not very submissive to Western norms and its pressure on Taiwanan island converted into the US aircraft carrier in the Asia Pacific region.
Furthermore, two of the BRICS, Russia and China, dare to deal face to face with the hermit regime of North Koreacondemned to live in a permanent gulag by his own dictatorship and by the unmitigated rejection it produces in the democratic world. Rejection that has turned into concern after learning that he could be sending thousands of soldiers to fight in Ukraine under Russian command.
Objective: overthrow the dollar as an international currency
In the economic sphere, although there are not enough common action mechanisms, there is a common vision on the need to reduce dependence on international trade led by the US dollar and the rejection of Western sanctions against any country that crosses the path of Washington or Brussels despite the damage that such sanctions may cause to the economy of less favored countries.
What there is little doubt about, and this summit has underlined it more than ever, is that there is a will on the part of the majority of humanity (many countries declare themselves more favorable to the BRICS than to the practices of military institutions and Western neoliberals) to model a new “multipolar” world without the hegemony of the richest part of the planet, represented by Washington, Brussels and the G7.
The summit has underlined that there is a will of the majority of humanity to shape a new “multipolar” world
Distrust remains, as China, Russia and Iran do not hesitate to wave the flag of the BRICS and their friends, as a eventual anti-western bloc, which especially upsets countries like India that thrive on trade with the United States, for example.
Rejection of unilateral Western sanctions
But there are other coincidences in their policies that combine the need to oppose the arbitrariness that Western decisions often contain.
In the joint statement, the BRICS heads of state, including the host Vladimir Putin, the Chinese Xi Jinping, the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, and the Iranian president, Masud Pezeshkian , among others, condemned this Wednesday the imposition by the West of unilateral sanctions without the approval of the United Nations and asked for the lifting of those already imposed.
The reference was direct to the sanctions that weigh on Russia and Iran, due to the invasion of Ukraine or the Iranian nuclear program, or on China in the economic sphere. The argument for rejecting sanctions is that they contradict international law and hit the most vulnerable sectors of the population of the punished countries.
“Unilateral coercive measures, including unilateral economic sanctions and secondary sanctions, which contradict international law, have serious consequences for the exercise of human rightsincluding the right to development,” according to the joint declaration.
This statement, with the condemnation of unilateral sanctions, represents a severe criticism of the West and the confirmation that its actions to punish a member of the international community do not evaluate the collateral damage they may have on “the world economy, international trade and the fulfillment of stable development objectives”.
These measures, the text adds, also undermine the UN statutes and negatively impact food security or health, and drive poverty.
It is true that the BRICS members have deep differences between them, for example China and India due to border issues. Furthermore, some of the members are more interested in strengthening a global economy independent of a fickle dollar used as a weapon by the foreign policy of the United States, than in deriving growing cohesion to the ideological issue, as an anti-Western front, as defended by Russia and China.
But the step taken in Kazan, a few days before the US elections, in which the international situation could take a turn new turnaround if Donald Trump came to poweris an evident sign that a good part of international society, in those emerging countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, wants a different direction than that pushed in the world for decades by the West.
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