Author: Alessandro Sansoni – 22/10/2024
BRICS SUMMIT IN KAZAN: A TURNING POINT FOR WORLD POLITICS
In the coming days, the “new iron curtain” of the post-globalized world will gain another piece. Today, in the Russian city of Kazan, the 16th BRICS summit has begun, featuring Russia, Brazil, India, China, South Africa, and the new member states that joined in 2024: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. The meetings will continue until October 24, and alongside full member partners, delegations from at least 32 countries from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America will participate, as well as leaders from several international organizations, including UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
In practice, Kazan will bring together the so-called “Global South” to discuss the numerous ongoing international crises and to envision a new global economic order, alternative to the one based on Western international organizations. Originally established as a dialogue platform for major emerging economies in 2009, BRICS has taken on a different significance over the past two years, resembling an alternative organization to the G7, which has become a spearhead for the so-called “Collective West.” The Russia-Ukraine war marked a paradigm shift, leading to a loss of meaning for the G20, which Barack Obama envisioned as the cornerstone of a new multilateralism.
Western media have tended to downplay the Kazan summit, presenting it as an attempt by Putin to “break free from isolation.” In reality, it is the culmination of a process initiated in 2022 with the Russian attack on Ukraine, reinforced by the economic sanctions imposed on Moscow by the United States and their European partners, and further intensified by the frictions between Washington and Beijing over Taiwan’s status and tariffs on Chinese products. The outbreak of conflict in the Middle East has also contributed to this landscape, resembling a scenario similar to the Cold War (currently very “hot” in some theaters), where a Western bloc, already economically structured through the G7 and militarily with NATO, is gradually being opposed by an alternative bloc that seeks to build its economic alliance through BRICS and aims to establish a military alliance with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
The Kazan summit could mark a crucial milestone in the ongoing dynamics: in addition to increasing the number of member countries, many attracted by the status of “equal partners” guaranteed by the BRICS model, the Russian presidency aims to create a financial system alternative to SWIFT. This is an essential element in the process of de-dollarization triggered by anti-Russian economic sanctions. The globalized economy was based on two pillars: the adoption of the dollar as the international exchange currency and the guarantees offered by Western international commercial law to capital ownership. The seizure of Russian capital reserves deposited in Western central banks has demonstrated how the United States and Europe can, at any moment, use financial levers as tools of pressure and coercion against their adversaries. The weaponization of finance has effectively initiated a decoupling process within the globalized economy. The non-Western world has decided to prepare itself to avoid suffering potential reprisals in case of disputes in the future. Essentially, anti-Russian sanctions have relativized the legal guarantees upon which globalization was based. For example, today, the substantial and rapidly increasing Russian-Chinese trade occurs through national currencies. The BRICS aim to systematize this new framework that rejects the dollar as the world reserve currency.
Another crucial point on the agenda of the Kazan summit is the growing role that the New Development Bank of BRICS (NDB) should assume, progressively constituting an alternative to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, whose financial assistance policies, based on the Washington Consensus, are now considered by developing countries as burdensome and contrary to their national interests.
BRICS asserts its demographic potential as well as the abundance of raw materials in its territory as factors not to be underestimated in the competition with the West aimed at building a New World Order. The challenge is open and deserves thoughtful and non-trivial responses.
The original version of this article was published in the Naples newspaper “Il Mattino” on 22 October 2024. We thank the Author for allowing its translation and publication on the Vision & Global Trends website.