The optics for the US-led “rules-based global order” could not have been poorer in media coverage of the BRICS summit held in Kazan, Russia last week. Two-and-a-half years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, media headlines gave the lie to the constant refrain of President Joe Biden, his Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and other Western leaders that “Russia is increasingly isolated”.
On the day the summit opening, the headlines declared:
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https://history.state.gov/milestones/1953-1960/khrushchev-20th-congress
Oh for heavens sake!
‘The Party Congress was an organization that included some 1,500 Communist leaders from fifty-six countries around the world, and its twentieth meeting opened in Moscow on February 14, 1956. The Congress convened roughly every four years, and it served as the major forum through which the central leadership in Moscow informed communists from across the world about policies and ideology. In a private session of the Soviet representatives which was closed to foreign delegations, Nikita Khrushchev gave a speech denouncing Stalin.’
56 countries!
How many at the BRICS? Thirty two!
There has never been a unipolar world, only plenty of ‘unipolar’ world leaders……
Multipolarity is a good thing:
‘The paper concludes by examining current U.S. strategy in the context of an emerging multipolar order and argues that the Biden administration’s approach is heavily dependent on potentially inaccurate assumptions about bipolarity, as well as the ability of the United States to re-run the Cold War playbook. Attempts by the United States to build large coalitions in opposition to China are unlikely to be successful in a more multipolar system, and the risk of direct conflict may be higher if the United States engages in a Biden-style “bloc-building” strategy. The authors instead make the case for embracing multipolarity as a core tenet of U.S. foreign policy: cooperating broadly with other countries in bilateral and minilateral formats, striking diverse and mutually beneficial trade agreements, and promoting friendly alternative sources of military power by pushing allies to take greater ownership of their own defense.’
https://www.stimson.org/2023/assumption-testing-multipolarity-is-more-dangerous-than-bipolarity-for-the-united-states/
Biden’s (Obama’s) approach to the world has been driven by big state socialist fascism, an attempt by the U.S. to impose a (U.S.) rules based order on the world. The world will never, does not accept that.
Let’s get back to de-regulated small state international trade where sovereign nations set their own rules, in fact the way it used to be before the incompetent (remember 2008?) ‘Big State’ bozos Clinton, Obama and Blair.
The apparent resilience of the Russian economy is largely illusory, built on a precarious foundation of unsustainable government spending and short-term market factors. The recent ostensible growth spurt masks deep-seated structural weaknesses. As unsustainable stimulus inevitably fades, Russia faces an unenviable perfect storm of challenges: the exhaustion of foreign exchange reserves, an irreversibly strained labor market, rising inflation outside the control of the central bank, and the heavy burden of military expenditures for years to come.
The government’s approach has redirected resources away from productive sectors, cannibalizing the rest of the Russian economy to fund Putin’s war and stifling long-term growth prospects and innovation. With the economy having absorbed the wartime stimulus through credit expansion and increased investment into the defense industry, it now stands at a precipice. A significant economic slowdown or recession appears not just possible but increasingly probable.
Russia is set on a long-term trajectory of structural challenges under the weight of sanctions and elevated government spending—and the true cost of its economic policies is becoming ever more apparent. A looming economic catastrophe driven by the fundamental flaws in Russia’s current strategy will likely set the stage for severe long-term consequences that will play out in the years ahead.
Meanwhile, China’s population growth is done. Chinese entrepreneurs are leaving the country. Optimism is dimming among Chinese youth. The Chinese stock market is tanking. Foreign direct investment is in freefall, as global business seeks alternatives to the “world’s factory” that don’t come with the same geopolitical risk, and Big State political meddling. The economic indicators are so bad that Beijing is pulling many of them from public view.
As for the U.S., it is chugging along as the world’s fastest-growing and most dynamic economy. Inflation is down while jobs, real wages, and productivity are going up.
Russia has tried to accommodate the West since 1991 but it was obvious that Nato had no intention of being “friends” with Russia.
Putin has done the world a service by speeding up the realization of who the real enemy is.
The US, and its vassals, hegemony and their Unipolar world based on exploitation, greed and manufactured wars is coming to an end for a more equal Multipolar world away from the US and the dollar.
A couple of more countries joining Nato is a price worth paying for Russia.
The whole of the east of Ukraine up to the Dnieper River will become part of Russia and will be welcomed by the ethnic and Russian speaking citizens living there.
West Ukraine’s existence will be at the behest of Russia.
Most countries outside of Nato who are opposed to US hegemony and a US Unipolar world will bring forward a Multipolar world where every country is equal and will strengthen their ties with Russia, China and the rest of the BRICS+ and SCO countries for more peaceful times without US exploitation, interference and manufactured wars.
Well done the USA and their vassals for the beginning of the end of the dollar and their own US and vassal states hegemony.
Russia are winning.
The BRICS Summit was a meeting of 36 governments, 10 being core BRICS members, the other 26 are BRICS aspirants. The 36 countries encompassed 57% of the world population and nearly half of the world output measured in international prices [47%].
Jeffrey Sachs presents his view on the BRICS Summit here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qduLR489dCY
“The entire Kazan declaration was about making the United Nations system work. What these countries were saying was they don’t like the US and its so-called friends and allies operating outside of the UN system, overthrowing governments, putting on sanctions that are not legal by international standards, bullying countries and so forth. So it wasn’t to overturn the UN based system, it was to say behave, live within it: we’re pledged to do so, we will cooperate among ourselves. And it was really tacitly saying to the US and others, you can’t get away with your making up the rules as you go along: we have international rules and processes and you can’t force us to play by your rules.”
The success of the U.S. (and Chinese, German) strategy to weaken Russia so that it can no longer invade its neighbours is blindingly obvious.
The Russian rouble weakened further on Thursday, remaining at its lowest against the U.S. dollar and China’s yuan since October 2023.
The Kremlin, as a result, is in a three-way bind of its own making. The government can’t cut spending as long as the war continues. The war, however, saps the labour force, fuelling inflation and diminishing both welfare and public sentiment. And high interest rates, necessitated by all that inflation, stifle investment in productivity and further distort the economy.
To be clear, Putin can keep this juggling act going for a while longer. Oil sales are keeping the budget sound enough…..while military spending is still much lower as a share of GDP than in the USSR, and state capitalism remains much more efficient than late socialism.
However, with every tick of the clock, Russia’s wartime economy becomes more susceptible to external (or internal, for that matter) shocks.
Putin used to know that the economy was best left to professionals. Indeed, the men and women running the country’s central bank, finance ministry, and ministry of economic development remain highly skilled and saved the country from economic collapse in 2022.
Two years on, they clearly understand the longer-term impossibility of the task they’ve been set. The question is, do they dare tell the boss? And if they do, will he listen?
Nope……
And the USA is in debt to the tune of $36 trillion, with an annual interest of $1 trillion to be paid off. And you think Russia has problems?
How about Europe?
While America’s population increases, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine while facing a catastrophic demographic challenge appears to have been a massive folly for the Kremlin. Hubris based on an astonishing intelligence failure might account for the miscalculation. Another possible explanation is that Putin understood that Russia’s economic and demographic challenges mean the country would not be in a more favorable condition any time in the coming decades.
Every corner of Russia’s economy is experiencing personnel shortages, while war casualties continue to shrink the able-bodied population. Russians and their leaders must learn to value diversity, or Russia will have an increasingly smaller and older population. Either way, there will be fewer ethnic Russians.
The western G7 block are in a spiral of self-destruction and de-industrialization. The Globalists at the UN focus all of their projects like climate change, political globalization, WHO, on destruction of western country independence, wealth and industry. None of this is happening in BRIC countries. Unless the decline of western countries can be stopped, BRICs will become more powerful and eventually dominant.