Yves here. Despite the enthusiasm over the recent SCO conference and the final cinching of the long-in-gestation Siberia 2 pipeline, getting the SCO and BRICS states enough on the same page to make a difference remains a very big challenge, even with US belligerence and ineptness pushing them together. At the time of the SCO, Conor provided a raft of links, nearly all from non-US sources (including Indian ones) and they itemized a long list of difficult issues between India and China where there was no obvious resolution (as in the underlying interests were at basic odds).
Recall also that Indian’s highly respected foreign minister, Jaishankar, pushed back strongly against US pressure to join US-EU sanctions against Russia, and insisted India would pursue an independent path and resisted being pushed into power blocs. A new Indian Punchline article, India disavows ‘Tianjin spirit’, turns to EU, reviews the idea that India is jumping with both feet into the SCO-BRICS camp is overdone. Key section from that post:
….no sooner than Modi returned to Delhi, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar had lined up the most hawkish anti-Russia gang of European politicians to consort with in an ostentatious display of distancing from the Russia-India-China troika.
Now admittedly, M.K. Bhadrakumar has sometimes given what other commentators have called out as unduly Trump-favorable takes. However, he is a former Indian ambassador and so is very well positioned to read Indian diplomatic moves. And his reading of Jaishanker’s moves seems credible.
By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is The Destiny of Civilization
Eurasia’s Re-alignment in the Face of Late Stage Barbarism
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s meetings in China last week (September 2 and 3) took a remarkable step forward in defining how the world will be dividing into two great blocks as Global Majority countries seek to free their economies not only from Donald Trump’s tariff chaos, but from the U.S.-sponsored increasingly Hot War attempts to impose unipolar control on the entire world’s economy by isolating countries seeking to resist this control with trade and monetary chaos as well as direct military confrontation.
The SCO meetings became a pragmatic forum to define the basic principles that are to replace other countries’ trade, monetary and military independence from U.S. with mutual trade and investment among themselves, increasingly isolated from reliance on U.S. markets for their exports, U.S. credit for their domestic economies, and U.S. dollars for trade and investment transactions among themselves.
The principles announced by China’s President Xi, Russian President Putin and other SCO members set the stage for spelling out in detail the principle of a new international economic order along the lines that were promised 80 years ago at the end of World War II but have been twisted beyond all recognition into what Asian and other Global Majority countries hope will have been just a long detour in history away from the basic rules of civilization and its international diplomacy, trade and finance.
It really should not be surprising that not a word of these principles or their motivation has appeared in the mainstream Western press. The New York Times depicted the meetings in China as a plan of aggression against the United States, not as a response to U.S. acts. President Donald Trump summarized this attitude most succinctly in a Truth Social post: “President Xi, Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America.”
U.S. press coverage of the SCO meetings in China presents a foreshortened perspective that reminds me of the famous Hokusai etching of a close-up tree in the foreground completely overshadowing the distant city in the background. Whatever the international topic is, it’s all about the United States. The basic model is a foreign government’s adversity toward the United States, with no mention of such policies being a defensive response against U.S. belligerence toward the foreigner.
The press treatment of the SCO meetings and its geopolitical discussions has a remarkable similarity with its treatment of NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine. Both events are seen as if they are all about the United States (and its allies), not about China, Russia, India, Central Asian and other countries acting to promote their own attempts to create orderly and mutually beneficial trade and investment. Just as the war in Ukraine is depicted as a Russian invasion (with no mention of its defense against NATO’s attack on Russia’s own security), the SCO meetings in Tianjin and Beijing meetings were depicted as confrontational scheming against the West, as if the meetings were about the United States and Europe.
On September 3 the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, called Putin perhaps the most serious war criminal of our time, as it was Russia that attacked innocent Ukraine, not vice versa from the 2015 coup onward. As Putin commented on Merz’s accusation: “we do not assume that any new dominant states should appear. Everyone should be on an equal footing.”
The military parade in Beijing that followed the meetings was a reminder to the world that the international agreements that created the United Nations and other organizations at the end of World War II were supposed to end fascism and introduce a fair and equitable world order based on the United Nations’ principles. To depict this frame of the meetings as a threat to the West is to deny that it is the West itself that has abandoned and indeed reversed the seemingly multilateral principles promised in 1944-1945.
The U.S. and European treatment of the SCO meetings as shaped entirely by antipathy toward the West is not merely an expression of Western narcissism. It was a deliberately censorial policy of not discussing the ways in which an alternative to U.S.-sponsored neoliberal economic order are being developed. NATO head Mark Rutte made it clear that there was to be no thought that there even was such a thing as a policy by countries to create an alternative and more productive economic order when he complained that Putin was getting too much attention. That meant not to discuss what really has happened in the last few days in China – and how it is a landmark in introducing a new economic order, but not one that includes the West.
President Putin explained in a press conference that confrontation was not at all the focus. The speeches and press conferences spelled out the details of what was necessary to consolidating relations among themselves. Specifically, how will Asia and the Global South simply go their own way, with minimum contact and exposure to the West’s economic and military aggressive behavior.
The only military confrontation that is threatened is by NATO, from Ukraine to the Baltic Sea, Syria, Gaza, the China Sea, Venezuela and North Africa. But the real threat is the West’s neoliberal financialization and privatization, Thatcherism and Reaganomics. The SCO and BRICS (as are now being discussed in follow-up meetings) want to avoid the falling living standards and economies as the West deindustrializes. They want rising living standards and productivity. This attempt to create an alternative, more productive plan of economic development is what isn’t being discussed in the West.
This great split is best epitomized by the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline. This gas was planned to go to Europe, feeding into Nordstream 1. That has all ended. Siberian gas will now go to Mongolia and China. It powered European industry in the past; now it will do the same for China and Mongolia, leaving Europe to depend on U.S. LNG exports and declining North Sea supplies at much higher prices.
Some Geopolitical Upshots of the SCO Meetings
The contrast between the successful consolidation of SCO/BRICS trade, investment and payments arrangements and the U.S. destabilization makes it difficult for countries to try and join both the US/NATO bloc and the BRICS/Global South countries. The pressure is especially strong on Turkey, the Emirates and Saudi Arabia. They are observers of BRICS, and the Arab countries are especially financially exposed to the dollar and also host U.S. military bases. (India has blocked Azerbaijan from joining.)
Two dynamics are at work. On the one hand, the BRICS and Global Majority are trying to defend themselves against US/NATO economic aggression, and to de-dollarize their economies so as to minimize trade dependence on the U.S. market. That saves them from the U.S. weaponizing its foreign trade and monetary system from blocking their access to supply chains that have been put in place, and thereby disrupting their economies.
The other dynamic is that the U.S. economy is becoming less attractive as it polarizes, shrinks and de-dollarizes as a result of its financialization and rising debt overhead. It is becoming inflationary, subject to a debt-leveraged financial bubble that is at increasing risk of sudden collapse.
This basic moral contrast catalyzes the contrast of economic systems and policy between oligarchic privatized and financialized markets (neoliberalism) and industrial socialist economies. This socialism is the logical extension of the dynamic of early industrial capitalism, seeking to rationalize production and minimize waste and unnecessary costs imposed by rent-seeking classes demanding income without playing a productive role – landlords, monopolists and the financial sector.
The great problem, of course, is that the Americans want to blow up the world if they can’t control it and dominate all other countries. Alistair Crooke recently warned that the Evangelical Christian movement sees this as an opportunity for a conflagration that will see Jesus return and convert the world to Christian jihadism. The term “late stage barbarism” is now being used throughout much of the internet for the ethnic supremacy fanaticism ranging from Wahabi jihadists and al Qaeda breakoffs through Gaza and the West Bank to the Ukrainian neo-Nazi revival (with its echoes in Germany’s hatred of Russia) not seen since the Nazism of the 1930s and ‘40s, denying that their opponents are fellow human beings. As an alternative to the SCO, BRICS and Global Majority this defines the depth of the spilt in today’s geopolitical alignment.
I certainly agree that the SCO/BRICS talk or agreements haven’t so far supposed a true pivotal moment and there is still much sauce in the game. One of the factors that make me believe that at some point it might become truly pivotal is that the US has demonstrated to be incapable of agreement so many times. Here Hudson is signalling it in some ways. More of that with Trump, the Evangelicals & the Accelerationists. Recently Amfortas linked an article talking, among other things about the Religious side of the American push to control China which was quite interesting. When India is subject to secondary sanctions because Russian oil, if the country was to comply with the rules based order this does not prevent that Trump comes with new tariffs against India for any other new reason or demand that he makes in a question of weeks or days. I don’t know if India has come to the full realisation of how Western niceties come and go but at some point it will be all too obvious if this moment has not yet come.
I’m afraid that Modi is a bit of an Erdogan here in that trying to be too cunning, works against his own country’s interests. So he goes to China and sees that there are a wealth of trade ties to be had and how border conflicts have a chance to be firmly solved. And then he sees what Trump has to offer – the turning of India into a vassal state, the destruction of the Indian agricultural sector and having to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on US weapons to replace their Russian weapons. So Modi seems to be telling himself ‘I know. I’ll go with strategic ambiguity!’ I said in a previous comment that American hegemony will not tolerate a rising power which is exactly what India is. You think that the example of the EU would settle the question for him.
Your glib take looks unduly influenced by gung-ho anti-globalist YouTubers who don’t know much about India.
Had you read the links to Conor’s post, there is a hell of a lot in play besides where China and India are in conflict than the border, and the Indian/not pro-globalist commentators saw them as exceedingly difficult to solve because the underlying interests are fundamentally at odds. So if merely a slightly deeper look says a lasting India-China thaw will be hard to achieve, I would not be dismissive in the absence of having done further research.
Jaishankar is India’s second longest serving foreign minister. And Modi became PM this time with a thinner majority of seats. Modi is not a dictator. He has to be mindful of domestic interests.
Jaishanker wrote a very erudite book on the path for India in a multipolar world. Some extracts from a post by Jerri-Lynn:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/04/india-pursuing-its-national-interest-in-the-multipolar-world.html
Overall, It looks like your comment underlines Rev Kev’s cautious skepticism, rather than disagrees. The gung-ho anti-imperialist (anti “globalists”) You Tubers can indeed be too optimistic, but I don’t see how Rev Kev’s comment falls into that camp. Thanks for the excerpt from Jaishankar and this one from Michael Hudson.
No, I disagree with Rev Kev. He depicts Modi as cunning. That is not the case. Bhadrakumar depicts him as clumsy and over-reacting to the Trump aggression. The money quote from his post:
Again, per Jaishankar’s book, India is not about to become a captive of other countries or power blocs but will follow its own path.
And Modi does not live under a rock. He’s already aware of Chinese investments in Asia and it standing in global trade. Here are India’s major trading partners:
Late in replying here. As flippant as it sounds, there was nonetheless a lot of hard ground truths in that comment. When Jaishankar said ‘India cannot give any other nation a veto on its policy options’ that is exactly what the US is demanding. Lutnick went on TV giving a laundry list of what India had to do to keep in Trump’s good books such as supporting the US dollar, letting the US into India and which included the demand that India leave the BRICS. And it does not matter if you have Republicans or Democrats in power, the US Deep State foreign policy is to destroy any arising powers that might challenge American hegemony and proof of that policy is what is happening to the EU which includes Trump’s demand that the EU stop all Russian oil imports just the other day. India is a rising power so now it is in the US’s gun-sights and either India accepts vassalage to the US or goes it’s own way and I doubt that India can whether the storm alone. This is very much a hang alone or hang together era.
As for Modi, he got where he was by appealing to Hindu nationalists who are shifting India to this movement. My belief is that is why Israel is good buddies with India – Modi wants Israeli’s expertise in suppressing minorities of which India has more that a few. Like with the Russian oligarchs before the war, there are a lot of Indians who want to go with the US, mostly because of the money to be made their by them. But I expect to see Trump shutting down Indians in the US whether on visas or students or whatever to push India to comply. Sure, India and China have a lot of border disputes but so did China and Russia who got into a major shooting war once. India can seek to resolve these disputes through negotiation or they can fortify their borders. It may be very hard to achieve but that makes it even more necessary to achieve – and very much worth the effort. But my overarching comment is that the US will not permit India to follow its own path. They have gotten too big and are getting more powerful. So it is either vassalage or India goes into a group for mutual self-protection.
The point you keep talking past is the Jaishankar move to have meetings with anti-Russia states pronto after the SCO. You keep ignoring that elephant in the room.
This was India choosing or feeling the necessity to water down appearances of Indian weakness. that it had to run to China and Russia for support. This is contrary to what nationalistswould want to see and the independent path that Jaishankar advocates.
See also way down this thread from ChrisfromGA, the bizarre claim in the Indian media that Modi was in Putin’s car for such a long time was to hide from a US assassination attempt. Modi’s trip was made at the last minute, so we are to believe the US has those kind of assets that could penetrate a gathering of heads of state in China, where security would be off the charts stringent, and that they could also infer where Modi would be given his late inclusion? This looks like an effort to make an excuse for Modi being in Putin’s car for so long. And why would that be perceived to be necessary, pray tell?
Fully agree about Jaishankar having to stage those meetings to keep local groups on side. I suspect however as Trump and officials like Lutnick continue to ramp up their demands on India, that India will run out of runway and be forced into making a choice. They won’t want to and I am sure that Modi would like to keep all his foreign options open but he may not be left with a choice.
Fascinating comments, perhaps some fine hairs are being split, but we’ll have to stay tuned and wait for the next episode. The old “have cake and eat it too” comes to mind. But that usually does not work out well. Much comment/speculation has been around regarding India (and Turkiye) trying to play both sides. It remains to be seen if India can navigate the increasingly troubled waters of geopolitics without alienating either the US camp and the SCO/BRICS. As usual we have the two-level games of domestic perception and intl. relations. Not to be too pessimistic, but events and unintended consequences may well come into play. The powder keg could go off at any time.
I agree that unless there is some miraculous change on the US end, it will continue to push the Global Majority states together. But there does not seem to be much appreciation as to how hard it is to set up meaningful new international institutions with many members, because large number = more divergent interests. NATO is a weak alliance because prospective members would not sign up for anything that impinged too much on their national sovereignity. Ditto the UN. The post WWII institutional architecture was possible due to the US representing more than half of global GDP and Europe being greatly weakened as a result of the conflict.
Indeed. The complexities of foreign relations are enormous. If bilateral agreements aren’t easy (Siberia 2), multilateral stuff can get nearly impossible. Below the surface of BRICS there might be ongoing bilateral progress between some of the parties and this is how i see things are being pushed by US unilateralism. BRICS works only as a framework facilitating contacts rather than an international organization.
As I’ve stated earlier, to me the very idea of BRICS is all about accommodating divergent interests. It’s just after 80 years of Block Mentality and 34 years of Hegemon’s rule-based international relations, we in The West lack the proper frame of reference to really understand this.
In other words, we’re still more in the “You’re with us or against us” end of the spectrum than “what two consenting nations do together is nobody else’s business”. We’re stuck with the idea that if there’s no perfect alignment of interests, there’s no alignment at all, while BRICS, SCO, CSTO, EAEU etc use the “if we have one shared interest, we can work together on that”.
From “our” perspective Turkiyet or India may seem like flip-flopping, overly-cunning, double-faced bad faith actors, but in the BRIC’s context they just try to do what’s best for them (often called as “sovereignty” in the international parlance) and that’s ok.
You cannot “accommodate divergent interests” without surrendering sovereignity and be able to get anything terribly significant done. That is a contradiction at the core of multipolarity. More state independence inevitably results in weaker collective action.
BRIICS does not even have a budget. That should tell you something.
…but it sure looks like the Global South, and it’s predominate world GDP, is moving away from the “West” (the US in particular). Soon enough high energy costs will cripple the Euro’s. And the US debt problem will create persistent inflation (stagflation) where even the ‘middle class’ are sucked under. It’s not that the BRIIC’s need to win; they just need to let the West lose.
GDP per capita is still far lower in the Global South than in the West. Less economic surplus means less freedom of maneuver. And I don’t know what you mean about “global South energy costs”. The Russia-China tie-up won’t help Africa or Southeast Asia or Latin America. Europe suffering due to self-inflicted wounds does not mean anyone ex China (who is getting a lot of the redirected Russian gas) benefits.
The UK, EU and US are on their way to massive social upheaval as citizens are not willing to pay for more militarization via lower standards of living. But the Global South is set to be hit much harder and sooner with climate change damage, particularly lower food production and water shortages, which is not just destabilizing but deadly.
I think we shouldn’t overlook the strong possibility of direct blackmail by the CIA (USA) and/or Mossad. Given indisputable factors like US military bases on European soil, I’m not convinced that it was “self-inflicted” (at least not entirely).
Too many leaders are on board with the program for that to be the case. And the views extend all across the mainstream media and into academia. This is cognitive capture plus many career advancement opportunities within the US influence sphere in Europe. You don’t need to look to nefarious influences.
I guess we have a different definition of “accommodate”, then. To me it means being able to tolerate that nations indeed do have divergent interest, and they should not be coerced to act against their interests.
This is too short a comment to address the reality that sometimes sacrificing short term interest (or even a part of sovereignty) can have huge long term payoffs for nations, or that there is no absolute sovereignty in international relations.
As for getting anything significant done, I’d say Russia being able to survive the “sanctions from hell” qualifies as significant. I’d say China and India being able and willing to stare USA down qualifies as significant.
Or, to quote Prof. Hudson on this very same site:
To me that is significant. Even if it has been achieved without a budget.
This is grounds shifting and bad faith argumentation. You started your reasoning of shared interest by citing institutions: BRICS, SCO, CSTO, EAEU.
Russia surviving the sanctions had nothing to do with any organization. Each state that decided to do so did so on its own, independent of any action, even so much as a resolution, from any institution. The Russia sanctions example affirms my point: that in a multi-polar world, states give considerable weight to being able to preserve their sovereignity on key strategic issues. They can and do choose to work in parallel or together on an ad-hoc basis.
My apologies. I’m though I was merely clearing my case that Russia having been kicked out of the dollar based international trade was able to continue trading using rubles, yuans and dirhams due to shared interest and that these organisations offering a venue to arrange bilateral deals to sort that mess out sooner than later.
I’m holding the the very idea of your last sentence as the driving principle of the BRICS while you see the two completely unrelated.
So, we are obviously talking past each other, and I’m not here to argue. Especially not with the hosts. So, I bend my knee and exit stage left.
Every contract or simple agreement involves a loss of autonomy by one or more parties whether it is between a boy and his girlfriend or two or more countries. This sees to be a novel idea to, say, President Trump, Senator Chickenshit from the Carolinas and, it seems, the EU Commission.
Many tend to think of the Washington Consensus and the EU aquis as ideal types and find it difficult to imagine that a much looser, almost experimental arrangement might be more effective in helping members secure their interests by making bi, tri or quadrilateral deals within the broader framework of BRICS and adjusting local agreements and the overall shape and scope of BRICS as the situation demands. The question is, does BRICS actually need a formal budget or can it finance itself during the early years informally with a few handshakes?
The SCO seems to be taking on a more tightly structured quality because its purpose seems to be evolving as a counter to Western institutions, providing a defensive structure within which the BRICS trading system can evolve. This implies implies that it will require a more formal budget mechanism. Of course, both BRICS and the SCO are young learning organisations and their roles will be fluid and highly responsive to shifts in the existing economic and security environments and neither is being created in the interests of the likely victors as an imposition on all other nations at the end of a world war.
I think Michael Hudson captures the issues facing BRICS and the SCO very well without getting lost in balancing the details which are likely to emerge as both organisations adapt and develop to meet the needs and interests of their members in the face of a failing a flailing West. Plus both Russia, China and the other principals have made it clear that they wish to take the UN back to its first principles – which are not very far removed from those underlying both BRICS and the SCO – and we need to bear that in mind as a major constraint as we consider how BRICS and the SCO are likely to develop.
The SCO is more tightly structured because it is a military alliance. The fact that it is trying to add a development bank is interesting but we have to see.
The BRICS development bank has widely depicted as a major disappointment. That has been pinned on it being bureaucratic and cautious. Oddly not enough attention has been paid to the fact that loans are limited and are made only in relationship to paid in capital. If the SCO bank adopts this sort of provision, it won’t get far.
And BRICS enthusiasts underestimate the level of influence advanced economies still wield…due to the fact that they have more economic surplus via higher GDP per capita. Even with Western self-destructiveness, that will take some time to overcome.
Even though this YT is a bit sensationalistic, look at this video, which describes how Vietnam, which had been the last holdout in SE Asia, has submitted to OECD demands re bank accounts having to have biometric IDs 86 million (no typo) bank accounts have been cancelled due to this initiative, admittedly the considerable majority being inactive (the 86 million figure is confirmed via search). It mentions in passing that Thailand (the informal leader in ASEAN, when Thailand adopts a policy, the rest of ASEAN tends to follow) has already gone this route:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87lfkLX7CRM
See this also from Asia Times, hardly pro-globalist, Iran’s SCO entry turning into a road to nowhere.
A key point is that all that BRICS has done so far is facilitate bi-lateral trade….which states could have done already so I am not sure what BRICS contributed. John Helmer has reported that Russia and India still don’t have their ruble-rupee systems work well and this has been a sore point. And ruble-rupee has to be having huge volumes given the oil trade.
As yours truly (and Michael Hudson) have pointed out, bi-lateral trade has limits because the surplus country winds up accumulating financial assets of the deficit country. If they get to be large, they become problemmatic, particularly since a chronic debtor country is subject to currency devaluation (as in those financial assets fall in value). This is why Hudson has argued for bancor…which would entail significant loss of sovereignity by participants.
Key bits from the Asia Times piece:
Aside: this reveals remarkable naivete on behalf of Iran, since the SCO was not an economic alliance. But apparently the SCO helped create this confusion:
India has resisted BRICS currency initiatives precisely because so far, they have too clearly been Trojan horses for making the yuan dominant.
Hi Lass … if I could proffer its not the details in contracts that matter most in my opinion … its the shaping of the global narrative. Shaping minds has been a long term goal of the West for various reasons.
BRICS as such, regardless of contracts, presents a wedge to the previous rules based/orthodox economic western dynamic.
I would think we both know how whispers can manifest in orgs …
We both watched the GFC manifest and were attacked for pointing out the observable data due to ideological reasons.
I don’t think we are in serious disagreement on fundamentals – trade imbalances and the need for effective financial mechanisms to facilitate trade and fdi in debtor nations by creditor nations, plus some form of accouting device like bancor which, since my student days as a rabid broadbrush Keynesian (as opposed to the apprentice data mainlining econometrists I spent too many hours arguing with), has been my idea of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and a secure and effective messaging system.
I think the last thing the Chinese want is for the yuan to replace the dollar as the dominant trade currency which is why I would bet on China (and Russia) going down the surplus-deficit fdi and infrastructure grant routes in the first instance.
As for BRICS, I think it has helped create a climate favouring bi and tri-lateral deals between countries, much as the final form of the Westphalia Peace rested on a series of seperate deals made between the various kingdoms, principalities and free cities within and without the Holy Roman Empire, and the impulse to make use of mutually favourable bi and tri-lateral deals outside the dollar and the West in general is encouraged simply by the existence of BRICS as a support mechanism and exemplar. At the moment though, neither the SCO or BRICS is fully formed and, hopefully, both grouping will remain highly responsive to circumstance and adapt themselves accordingly.
As for Iran, that presents very difficult issues. For obvious reasons, it is very zealous in defending every aspect of sovereignty and is very conscious on a popular political level of the fact that the emerging groupings have members who have been, and may again be, adversaries. This I see as Iran’s single greatest weakness in any future conflict with the US and the short shelf life settler colony on stolen Palestinian lands, and in settling down comfortably in the early days of the organisational groupings of the emerging multilateral system.
Re China wanting the yuan to replace the dollar, John Helmer, who was one of the few commentators to cover the substance of the Kazan BRICS meetings in depth, says otherwise, that China’s desire to advance the yuan v. the opposition of India (and some others) was the reason the Kazan Declaration was such weak tea on currency matters.
I agree that their ideas probably amount to wanting to be half pregnant, but China seems to face more immediate impediments.
Well yes America became the hegemon as a result of Europe wrecking itself–a very big deal indeed–but isn’t the same process happening again under all these feckless Euro politicians and our own nutty Deep State? BRICS may be jumping the gun but isn’t that gun cocked and loaded? Many are suggesting that it is China that is America made great again since they have replaced our role as manufacturer to the world. Perhaps poverty is a bigger motivator than stock options. In our far different 20th America farmers and immigrants converged to produce an arsenal that Hitler refused to believe. My own aunt and her husband went to Baltimore to help build Liberty ships.
It’s China and other Asian countries that are now producing the value add as we consumers know well. The changeover may not happen quickly but it is happening?
Along with your relatives, farmers, and immigrants, tens of thousands also left rural AND urban poverty to work in the “war production zones” to hold jobs, earn money, and eat in the early 1940s. A friend, who was part of that, said he felt he “saw” the proletariat in the union dining halls where everyone had their first full meals in a long long time.
I”m sure that client oligarchies throughout BRICS will try to hold on to as many of their privileges (that is, economic rents) as possible.
That is why the key ultimately will be tax policy.
All that member countries can do at the beginning is insulate their monetary and balance-of-payments relations with each other, along with mutual investment. (Already I see China apparently driving a hard deal with Russian oil.)
So the real “new civilization” is a way’s off. But US and its European satellite policy is a great catalyst for speeding up the discussion. If only their readers would follow all the links and discussion at NC regularly …
I see no move in that direction whatsoever here. In fact, local banks are requiring customers to come in to get biometric face scans to address US complaints over money laundering and comply with OECD guidelines. See this YouTube on Vietnam, the last holdout in SouthEast Asia, and cancelling 86 million bank accounts, most due to being dormant but some to non-compliance with new rules. That figure is confirmed via internet searches. Even the cancellation of the inactive accounts was driven by OECD guidelines.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87lfkLX7CRM
For what it’s worth, it seems to me that BRICS and the SCO will remain talking shops for some time – and I think that’s just fine. The involved countries don’t (IMO) want to be in a coercive block, but do want some insulation from US / collective west pressure and disruption, and those outfits seem well suited to such a function.
re: Germany labour from India
German-Foreign-Policy-Blog
Labor imports from India
Germany intends to further increase the immigration of Indian skilled workers and nursing staff to meet labor demand and to deport economically undesirable Indians more frequently. The results so far have been mixed.
28 Aug 2025
BERLIN/NEW DELHI (Own report) – Germany has so far achieved only mixed results in recruiting Indian skilled workers and nursing staff to meet Germany’s labor needs. This is the result of recent analyses, including a study by the Berlin-based Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). According to the study, Germany is increasingly dependent on third countries such as India to meet its labor needs in fields such as mathematics, computer science, natural sciences, and technology (STEM subjects) as well as in nursing. Despite some successes, however, the proportion of Indian IT specialists, who are in high demand in Germany, is declining. Furthermore, while Germany receives a high number of applications from Indian students, hardly any from India’s leading universities. Berlin also complains about New Delhi’s failure to take back economically undesirable Indian asylum seekers. The recruitment of nursing staff, particularly from the southern Indian state of Kerala, has increased significantly in recent years. This recruitment has its origins in the 1960s and contributes to a serious shortage of nursing staff in India.
https://www-german–foreign–policy-com.translate.goog/news/detail/10092?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp
p.s. Berlin-based SWP is a rabidly Atlanticist think tank strictly anti-Russian. Which doesn´t mean everything they write is incorrect. But as background.
Also: In the city I register a sharp rise in either Indian or Pakistani food delivery servicemen on e-bikes while media report that Germany´s largest food delivery service, Lieferando (75% of the German market), is now facing strikes by its employees. Potentially 9000 could benefit from better working conditions.
It seems if India maintains its independence, thenin a’ multipoloar world’ , it might have the capacity to act as a ‘tiebreaker’ or swing vote between opposing coalitions. Note: Has the US fiugred out that it is entering a new era? With large populations, the driving force beteen China and India is water for argriculture.? It seems that in China, the government is more centralized and in India, there are a lot of small independent farmers. Modi has his hands full in juggling a lot of diversity and geography. In the event, Xi, Putin, and Modi have the megaphone: Hold hands and Cooperation. Trump and Netanyahu: Gunboat diplomacy and Colonial Hegemony.
Late to the party here. Not much to add except:
1. Demographics = destiny? Reality is not looking good for the Colonial Hegemony: Russia, China, and India make up pretty much a majority of the world’s population, don’t they? At least a plurality. The Trump admin is having a tantrum that only guarantees Wall Street will be left with chump change – the deathbed demographic countries such as Europe and Japan.
2. I have an Indian friend who claims that the reason Modi sat in Putin’s limo for 45 minutes was that he got word that there was going to be an assassination attempt on him. Crazy, but who doubts that Trump would try it?
3. Wall Street loses an escalatory trade war with India. India builds their own sovereign cloud, dumps Azure, dumps Coke, Pepsi, etc. Are we sure that Wall Street is just going to let that happen? Maybe some bond auctions start failing real soon, it’s not wise to push the masters of the universe too far (see Truss, Liz.)
Re #2, that comes off like an attempt to excuse the long ride within India. If that is correct, as in Modi feels the need to do so, it suggests that getting much closer to Russia is controversial to at least some power factions in India.
Re #3: India started a sovereign wealth fund in 2015. It’s 1/100th the size of CalPERS, with a goal to get to 1/50th. And its focus is domestic infrastructure, so I doubt it has much if any US investments to dump.
Thanks for the reply, as far as sovereign, I was referring to India’s likely ability to diversify away from direct business with the US, as in building their own IT systems and cloud, rather than US investments.
There was a kerfluffle where MS Azure tried to de-platform an Indian refiner that was using MS Azure. MS eventually backed down when they got sued for breach of contract, but the message was sent. India certainly has the expertise and human resources to build out their own private cloud and keep it safe from the long arm of US sanctions.
There may also be boycotts of US products sold in India. One other thing my friend mentioned is that the Indian community is scared of violence against Indians in the UK (and eventually the US as Trump’s xenophobia hits a fever pitch.) An Indian cultural center was burned down in the UK. Same day, 4 Indians were murdered, and cars were set on fire.
Indians are free to choose who to do business with, and while I agree that dumping US assets in sovereign wealth funds isn’t likely, on an individual level, they can boycott US products and build their own alternatives.
great comments too, thank you
I imagine a big systems dynamics program – setting up variables and interactions and letting it go to see if it could give insight.
Of course, it would tell us there is no steady state solution. The answer is dynamic – possibility a discernible pattern of cycles, or maybe chaotic with the system state wandering around solutions it can never find with excursions to infinity, or maybe everything aligning so that a minor shove (a pistol shot in 1914) sets all the dominos falling. Maybe a great collapse is the only way forward except we cannot predict the event or the timing.
So what variables would I add? Climate change or the Polycrisis for sure, plus the link to our economy, which is far stronger than believed by orthodox economists, the violence of the US or is it just the hubris of any declining power?, demographics and something to reflect public and private debt and inequality, and the nature of man, of power and of our leaders including Modi. And of a lonely assassin on the streets of Sarajevo. Complicated isn’t it? And where to even start in modelling the interactions?
In summary, no one can predict the future, especially one that unfolds endless possibilities.
I found the above comments to be interesting but most of my variables were not considered and some of the possibilities were offered as two dimensional.
My observation is that most of my variables are accelerating and the interactions getting stronger. Indeed, we seem to be purposely ramping them up not damping them down.
We are not taking action to reduce climate change or exploitation or economic inequality or preparation for war
Maybe, like Christian evangelists we have to accept that there must be death before there can be rebirth.
And hope for a better future for someone and for what is left?
Thanks for another excellent post!
I also have a huge bias in putting myself into the “shoes” of other countries, but I cannot help but think that both China with it’s century of humiliation, and India with it’s British colonial past are two very large and powerful countries that will not respond well to thinly veiled threats from a hegemon. Nixon’s success at forging new ties with China was predicated on America treating China as an equal, and one doesn’t need to look too far in India’s past dealings to see how it has been very careful to balance it’s engagement between America, Russia, and China and remain at it’s core unaligned.
But I think we’ve seen a powerful signal that something fundamental has shifted. The SCO conference and follow on China WW2 victory celebration certainly seem to have aspects that I would characterize as world leaders collectively flipping the bird at the West. And I have a tendency to trivialize the MSM reaction as the Western oligarchs having a hissy fit as the majority of the world moves away from their control. But I think that it more realistically reflects the fact that those Western foreign policy PMC “thinkers” were largely born and raised in the Western unipolar moment, and have not yet conceived that their every assumption about how the world powers align is outdated and wrong. (I would actually say that the Western domestic policy PMC is similarly outdated and wrong too.)
Here’s an interesting follow on discussion that goes into even more on this – Mearsheimer and Diesen:
John Mearsheimer: West’s Failure to Adjust to a Multipolar World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMgkvvu_pnU
Trump will hurt India especially with the student visas and lucratice back office and business IT work India has a large global markert share in. Trump knows of India’s valuable cash streams and he wont let India keep earning thsese profits( incuding the oil trade). So now what? India’s biggest weakness is it’s lack of domestic energy sources and thus needs to depend on foreign supply to feed its 1B+ population . It needs foreign exchange so it needs to export goods and services. If Trump puts a chokehold on the lucrative IT exports then India would be hurt. On the flip side, since independence India has learnt to make everything domestically-cars to pharmaceuticals so it will weather the storm. Indian students spend billions studying in the US and that is an income stream of worth to American universities. Modi has upped Indian Nationalism and the country seems united against Trump at the moment.
Modi cannot be seen to be taking orders from anyone in the world. The colonial history and the not even 80 years since Independence ensure that. In Indian circles, TACO’s egregious desire for the Nobel Peace Prize (Obamamometer, got it, How cant I) due to the May ceasefire is the driver of the current shit show from Washington, DC. India stopped buying Iranian oil due to Trump 1’s sanctions and if that source or Venezuelan oil can replace Russian oil at a price not significantly higher , it would work as Indian refiners can deal with almost any crude and are not set up for only sweet or sour blends. In India, the war in Ukraine is not the driver. The Indian market cannot handle crude above $80-90/bbl without collapsing the economy. If Lutnick/Bessent were intending to negotiate a deal which included reduced Russian oil purchases, that deal would have been possible a month or 2 back, if the tariff on Indian goods was like 15% or so. Not with the daily tirades on CNBC/Bloomberg and not with just a token reduction from 25% to 20% or so. Modi is waiting for TACO and they have tried taking an off-ramp over the weekend. let’s see where it leads.
A global sea change is happening and as the tide recedes on 500 years of Imperial Naval Empire
The dance of adjusting from the uni polar dysfunction will look like two steps forward and one back, likely for the next six years.
It’s just time and unstoppable.