OPEC On Steroids
I have for a while now argued that the BRICS, thanks to their expanding membership, were turning into a sort of super OPEC. While the OPEC, now OPEC+ with Russia, is centered around fossil fuels, the expanded BRICS are every commodity exports all at once.
Food: Russia + Brazil + Argentina
Oil: Russia + Iran + Saudia Arabia + Brazil
Gas: Russia + Qatar + Iran
Base metals: Russia + Brazil (iron) + Argentina (lithium)
You can add to the list above a few other countries that might be less formally integrated, but friendly to the overall BRICS goals as well: Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Venezuela, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan. The last missing piece would be Chile and Peru, to tighten control over copper and lithium.
We are already in macroeconomic terms repeating the 1970s. What is (was?) missing is the oil shock triggered back then by OPEC.
We are getting there with the BRICS, except it will not be energy but every raw material.
Real Stuff For Nothing
One consequence of the dollar’s total control over world trade is that the US has been able to exchange printed currency for real stuff. Since the last time the USA had a trade surplus, the main US export has been paper dollars.
IF said dollar had proven a superior and stable means of exchange, it is likely the world would be okay with it. Grumbling a bit, but certainly not taking the risk of challenging it.
But if you are a Brazilian, Vietnamese, Argentinian, Russian, etc… this has proven a terrible system that can destroy the lives of entire generations.
So why keep giving away real and scarce resources for mere paper?
Especially when your main trading partner and a major military and technological power, is now actively saying it will help you change the status quo.
A few people start to understand it, as shown by this speech mentioning a global rebellion of “the rest” against the West:
The U.S. invasion of Iraq universally undercut its credibility and continues to do so. For many critics of the United States, Iraq was the most recent in a series of American sins stretching back to Vietnam and the precursor of current events.
In the so-called “Global South,” and what I am loosely referring to as the “Rest” (of the world), there is no sense of the U.S. as a virtuous state. Perceptions of American hubris and hypocrisy are widespread. Trust in the international system(s) that the U.S. helped invent and has presided over since World War II is long gone. Elites and populations in many of these countries believe that the system was imposed on them at a time of weakness when they were only just securing their independence.
Blood In The Water
Another key factor is that the global anti-American rebellion unfolding is a perception of weakness. When the US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, to occupy then them for decades, a lot of people in the world hated it. But there was a global consensus "We cannot do anything about it”. The same thing Russia admitted during the dismantlement of Yugoslavia. Or for that matter, for Taiwan to become independent and out of the CCP’s reach at the end of the Chinese civil war.
Since 1945 only the Soviet Union had challenged the US power, and it ultimately broke its back.
The first move away from this consensus was Syria. Fated to be destroyed the same way Iraq and recently Lybia had, Syria survived. Barely and with still some of its territory occupied, but still, Bashar Al Assad stayed in power.
Then it was to be followed by the gradual fall out of US control of Iraq, increasingly under Iranian influence even when occupied by US troops.
Then came the failure of a key US ally, Saudia Arabia to win a bloody war in Yemen.
Then came the collapse of the Afghan government in mere days, with the disastrous optics of American troops seemingly fleeing and leaving most of their weapons behind.
Of course, the larger blow is the war in Ukraine, with the entirety of NATO running out of ammunition against Russia alone, with token help from Iranian drones or Chinese trucks, not a major contributor.
If NATO cannot produce enough weapons against Russia, so often described as a weak regional player, previously derided as “a gas station disguising as a country”, how could it even hope to challenge China, the factory of the world?
Soft Power Disappearing
Weakening Wokening Power
Lastly, another key factor is powering the rebellion outside of any economic, military, or strategic consideration. And this is a part that will maybe be exceedingly controversial for some readers.
This is of course the quick acceleration of so-called “woke ideology” in the West.
You might fully disagree that “woke” is even a thing. Or instead, maybe it is anything but the most basic and moral position one can have.
What one cannot honestly disagree with however, is that most of the world rejects woke ideas and very much believes it is a real thing.
Ask any Muslim in the world if men can transition to become women, and tell me how it works out. You already lost soft power on a billion people there.
Ask a Chinese if waking up early or maths is white supremacy and look at him not even computing the question. Another billion and a half people lost there.
Ask a Japanese if massive immigration of tens of million refugees would be a good thing for the Japanese people.
Ask a Russian if Christianity is white supremacy
And so on and so on.
The World Used To Look Up To Us
For the longest time, the West and then the USA were the place everyone wanted to imitate/move to/catch up with.
The Russian aristocracy spoke French to each other, the Japanese hired Europeans and Americans to teach them modernity and reform their country, the Indians modeled their democracy on the European enlightenment, China learned business from America, etc...
Everyone watched Disney and Hollywood movies, brought their dates to McDonald's and Starbucks, drank Coca-cola, equipped factories with Deutsche qualität tools, drove Audi, drank French and Italian wines, and used GPS.
A diploma from a Western elite university was almost a must to be a member of a developing country elite.
In the last 10 years not so much.
And this decline in soft power is accelerating.
Frankly, this is not just a left vs right question.
Trump's style of diplomacy did as much to damage America's image as Biden's wokeisms.
Riots in France are destroying the country’s image quicker than any enemy propaganda ever could.
The truth is that most of the world does not want their children to look or live or think like San Francisco liberals. And for the most militants of them, leaving the West culturally is a matter of absolute survival, of body, mind and more importantly, soul.
This is a great gift to the West’s opponents, as their propaganda can just be a simple as “Look, they have gone insane, we need to protect ourselves”.
So if they have to risk WW3 or an economic collapse challenging the dollar, so be it…
Writing is a creative process so there is different ways to approach it
I like your writing style.