I get very annoyed when people tell me that BRICS will fail, not because they are wrong, but because I assume they want BRICS to fail. Either they are extremely ignorant, I think, or they are – forgive my French – callous bastards. Maybe I’m unjust. Allow me to explain my position.
Throughout history, underdogs have revolted in various ways and almost invariably been crushed as a result. Successful revolts, or revolutions, are a rare exception. So BRICS is not blowing trumpets, not marching proudly through the streets shouting slogans and waving flowing banners. BRICS is going about its business quietly – no slogans, no insults.
The preamble to BRICS started in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955, when the Non-Aligned Movement was founded by countries that refused to be pawns of either the USA or the USSR. In retaliation, the hosts of the Bandung Conference, the Indonesian people and Sukarno, were crucified by US minions in 1965-66, cf. The Jakarta Method (2020) by Vincent Bevins. Quoting Wikipedia:
The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World is a 2020 political history book by American journalist and author Vincent Bevins. It concerns U.S. government support for and complicity in anti-communist mass killings around the world … The title is a reference to Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66, during which an estimated one million people were killed in an effort to destroy the political left and movements for government reform in the country.
I add for the record, that the book reads almost like a gripping novel, as it follows the author’s painstaking search for an understanding of what happened.
The title of the book says it all. Many of the promising leaders of global south countries died mysteriously or were not so mysteriously murdered in the years following de-colonialisation. Nevertheless, the newly liberated colonies continued to see GDP growth for some years because, as Jason Hickel writes in The Divide, “Governments across the region realised that because they controlled most of the natural resources and raw materials that Western powers needed for their industries, they didn’t have to accept the shoddy terms of trade that the West offered.”
Have you heard of NIEO? Personally, I find it interesting that I had heard of so many acronyms, WHO, WTO, GATT, G7, G20, OECD… but not of NIEO, not until I read The Divide. Yes, the NIEO was the Global South’s previous attempt to prevent the Western block countries like my own from continuing to help themselves to dirt cheap labour and raw materials (“cash crops”) and debt service at compound interest.
Needless to say, nothing came of the main reforms required by the original NIEO, although they were endorsed by the UN General Assembly in 1974.
Why? Because the former colonial powers and the new bully on the block, USA, were not imbued by the Christian spirit of sharing. They formed the G7 and systematically set out to undermine the NIEO. If you don’t believe me, read Chapter 5 of The Divide.
Or read this paper on Unequal exchange of labour in the world economy from 1995 to 2021 And that’s just labour!
Or this paper Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015.
I have tried to find videos about “neocolonialism” and have looked at a handful of them. They all stress that the former colonies were dependent, poor dears, on their former masters and that is why they are doing so poorly. Fie! The truth is that the former masters were determined to continue to exact maximum profit from the global south.
The Western block’s treatment of the global south has not improved, according to Paulo Nogueira Batista Jr. former Executive Director at the IMF (2007-2015) and a founding Vice President of BRICS’ New Development Bank:
The Western bloc has been holding on to its privileges and using it increasingly as a political weapon… It’s weaponised the dollar, weaponised the euro, weaponised the SWIFT payment system, weaponised the IMF, weaponised the World Bank… .The United States is willing to use all instruments in a harsh and violent way to preserve the power it has…
We, the general public in the “Western block” want to believe our (Western) governments are just. We want to believe we don’t do slavery anymore. After all, we all believe in equality, don’t we?
So why do we allow “our” banks to impose Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) that literally sap the blood out of each and every country they harass? SAPs deliberately preclude industrial development and strap their victims in a condition of perpetual destitution, cf. Plundering Africa – Income deflation and unequal ecological exchange under structural adjustment programmes.
We pretend we don’t know, pretend we don’t understand. Sorry, I’m being unfair: Actually, we honestly don’t know, don’t understand. Because our media tells us that we give aid and that we comply with international law. And laws are just aren’t they? Law is the English word for the Latin “juris”, which is closely related to the English word “justice.
With good reason we accuse our politicians of making false promises during election campaigns, of betraying their voters. We ask: Is this Democracy? Voting for Tom, Dick or Harry so that he (or she) can have a four-year field day? Many of us in the “Western block”are angered by the steady deterioration of our living conditions. Many of us actually freeze in our homes during winter and/or die of overheating in summer for lack of air conditioning.
But we cannot feel the hunger of the global south and our media does not tell us that the global south pays our financial oligarchs infinitely much more (thanks to compound interest) than it ever received in the shape of aid + loans.
Even AI services recognise this:
Q: How much have the African countries paid servicing debt over the past 10 years?
AI: Debt‑service has more than doubled compared with the early‑2010s level. ….
African nations have paid on the order of one trillion US dollars in external debt‑service over the past ten years, with the annual burden accelerating sharply and now exceeding $150 bn per year. This scale underscores why debt‑sustainability reforms and concessional financing remain central policy priorities for the continent.
Alas, debt‑sustainability reforms have been on the African agenda since day 1 . All our talk about “equality”, “liberalism” and “justice” is window dressing. What is real is something else, something rather ugly. I’ll leave that for another day.