the West wants to control the BRICS transition

Now don't misunderstand me. The development of bricks and the potential expansion of bricks is a good thing or can be a good thing. No question about it. But we have to understand that this is not something that the global business and investment community is alarmed by or something that has taken them by surprise. They've been anticipating the shift, to the East and to the South for a long time, and they have facilitated it, and they are facilitating it.

I mean, people like Joseph Sullivan, former economic adviser to the White House, has also advised the new development bank, the BRICS Bank, and has promoted, the idea of BRICS creating their own currency. BlackRock created not one, but two ETFs dedicated to BRICS economies. And like I said, a great deal of the repercussions of the Russian sanctions have actually benefited BRICS nations and potential BRICS nations and provided a strong incentive, for dedollarization. The Ukraine war has really been, a vehicle for accelerating this process, this global economic shift away from Europe and away from the West. So they are facilitating it.

They're not opposing it. They are welcoming it. But, of course, they want to control the outcome. The ideal situation for them would be to sort of replicate the Bretton Woods system, but in reverse. In other words, the traditional beneficiaries and victims of the Bretton Woods system would basically switch places.

Western aligned corporate power, the OCGFC of the Western world, do not particularly care about the welfare of their nations, but they care about themselves, and they don't wanna be sidelined, by this inevitable transition to the global South. They want to steer the transition. But the problem is or the challenge is, that the parallel power structure of the private sector that has eclipsed state power in the West has not yet eclipsed state power in the East. The power of the private sector in many of the countries of the global South is still subordinate to governmental control. I mean, much as people like to talk about Russian oligarchs, those oligarchs are not in a position to defy Vladimir Putin, whereas American politicians are not in a position to defy American oligarchs.

And this is to say nothing about the control that China has over their private sector. Business and government are interwoven everywhere in the world, but the relationship between politicians and business outside of the West tends to be more dictated by the state than by the private sector. Whereas in the West, particularly in The United States, government has become little more than an instrument of business. So this poses a challenge for Western oriented owners and controllers of global financialized capital. The fact that most of these countries in the global South still deeply believe in nation states and the fact that the way their governments function is largely drawn from old traditional hierarchical structures and concepts of status and authority, like say in the GCC countries.

There are entrenched cultural factors that make them resistant to subordination, not to mention political factors. I mean, of them don't have the same vulnerability that Western politicians have in terms of continuously campaigning for reelection. So they're not as easily bribed, through political donations. The corruption that they engage in in the global South, tends to be for the purpose of increasing their power, not, for the purpose of being bought off in order to abdicate their power. And they do, to one extent or another, actually do care about what their populations think about them.

I mean, when you have a deeply unpopular leader in the Global South, it's usually a reliable indicator that they are western puppets. The companies of the Global South, the OCGFC of the Global South, are also not quite as anationalistic as their counterparts in the Global North and in the West. There's still a sense of national pride among the business leaders in the Global South. They have some residual traditional values from their societies and from their cultures, that make them care about their nations to one degree or another. And, of course, they're capitalists.

They're ambitious, and they would like to be shot callers in their own countries and in their own regions. So this is not going to be easy for Western oriented owners and controllers of global financialized capital to manage, But they believe they can, and they are certainly gonna try. But this is why I think it's important for us to understand that BRICS does not constitute an uprising against the West. If you don't know what kind of a fight you're in, then you won't know how to fight to win. And it is a fight for sure, but it's not that kind of fight.

If you think it's that kind of fight, like a rebellion against the West, then you're gonna be anticipating, you know, assassinations and wars and invasion in order to stop bricks. But I don't think that that's what you have to be worried about. What you have to be worried about is help. You don't have to be worried about armies. You have to be worried about consultancy firms.

You have to worry about Western companies suddenly flashing huge injections of FDI at you and the promise of them creating jobs in your country. And obviously, you have to worry about loans. Look. The independence and sovereignty that the BRICS project promises is not going to be derailed by political assassinations or military invasions. It will be by contracts and agreements.

It won't be by war, but by treaties. It won't be by opposition. It will be by assistance. To me, I'm not particularly keen on the idea of the creation of a BRICS currency, to be honest. I don't see why countries can't just trade in their own national currencies.

Or for that matter, if you're if you wanna think about creating alternative currencies specifically for cross border trade, why not think about regional currencies like a currency for ASEAN or for the OAU or for the OAS? Or for that matter, why couldn't the OIC start studying the creation of a trade currency for their member states. I mean, if Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, and there's like 10 other Muslim countries that wanna join BRICS. If they all join BRICS, it's almost gonna be a de facto Islamic block anyway, accounting for, like, half of the world's oil trade, oil supply, and, controlling practically all of the most important major ports and maritime routes of global trade in the world. It would make sense at that point to initiate greater integration between members of BRICS, coordinated monetary policies, and potentially then their own trade currency.

Now personally, I don't like the talk about creating a gold backed currency at this time. I'm afraid that the lead up to launching something like that would just see absolutely devastating conflict all across Africa. It sounds great in the abstract, but if everyone knew that there was going to be a gold backed trade currency, I think that violence and destruction would descend on Africa from all sides in a desperate bid to pillage their gold. It wouldn't be a gold rush. It would be a gold genocide.

So for now, I completely support de dollarization, but I would like to see every country trading in their own currency for the time being and to focus on developing regional cohesion and monetary coordination with other global South trading partners. Look, you're in a position now to set terms. Goldman Sachs didn't come up with the idea for BRICS for no reason. It was because of necessity. The West is declining.

The Ukraine war is accelerating that decline. Pivoting to the South and to the East is the only thing they can do. If you decide to shut them out or if you decide to impose capital controls, tariffs, restrictions, and so on, there isn't much they can do about it. They can't afford to destroy two hemispheres, and they can't salvage the one that they're in. The last thing that they want is for BRICS or any other collection of global South economies to take control of this transition.

They're not gonna fight the transition itself. They're gonna fight over who gets to manage it. They want it to conform with the neoliberal program, but they don't really have the muscle to force you to do it that way. They're counting on you having no ideas and on you not understanding what the fight is about. And they're counting on the global South still looking at them with awe and reverence and not actually realizing that the tables are irreversibly turning in your favor.

You know, when slavery was abolished in The United States, the slave master approached his former slaves and invited them to continue working on the plantation for a meager wage because he realized that he had no future without them. And he expected them to have no idea what else to do with their freedom. Well, that's what's happening when multinationals and investors come to your country from the West today. The master's house is burning, and the crops that you've been harvesting all this time for him are yours now. He just doesn't want you to know it.