Escobar: Date With Destiny – BRICS Offers Hope In A Time Of War

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

This is it. A date with destiny. All set for the most crucial geopolitical/geoeconomic gathering of the year and arguably the decade: the BRICS Summit under the Russian presidency in Kazan, capital of Tatarstan, where Sunni Tatars coexist in perfect harmony with Orthodox Christians.

All the excruciating work by sherpas and analysts throughout 2024 – supervised by the lead Russian diplomat in charge of BRICS, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov – converged to three final, separate key meetings in Moscow before the summit, grouping BRICS finance ministers and central bank governors, working groups, and the Business Council.

All that in a context that is now familiar for the Global Majority. The combined GDP of the current BRICS nations is over $60 trillion, way ahead of the G7; their average growth rate by the end of this year is projected to be 4%, higher than the 3.2% global average; and the bulk of economic growth for the near future will come from BRICS member-nations.

Even before the meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov was stressing that BRICS is keen to bypass “politicized” Western platforms – a subtle reference to the sanctions tsunami and the weaponization of the US dollar – as BRICS work to create their own, Global Majority-friendly international payments system.

The context for what will be decided in Kazan this week is no less than incandescent, as the uncontrolled chaos of the Hegemon’s Forever Wars – from Ukraine to West Asia – has even materially affected the heavy work of BRICS and the necessity to build a new international system of geoeconomic relations practically from scratch.

A credible war escalation scenario may have been thwarted by the leak of secret high-level intel to the Five Eyes on the preparations by Israel-US to strike Iran. The strike will eventually happen – with dire consequences – but probably not this week, when it could have been timed to explicitly, and completely, disrupt the summit in Kazan and expel it from global headlines.

The joint statement by the BRICS finance ministers and central bank governors may not sound too adventurous, but the constraints reflect not only caution when facing a dangerous, cornered Hegemon, but internal contradictions among BRICS members.

The statement recognizes “the need for a comprehensive reform of the global financial architecture to enhance the voice of developing countries and their representation.” Yet it remains clear the US has less than zero interest in a profound reform of the IMF, the World Bank and the Bretton Woods system. Russia and China, especially, are fully aware that what is needed is a post-Bretton Woods.

The statement is more forceful on the BRICS Cross-Border Payments Initiative, dubbed BCBPI, welcoming “the use of local currencies in international trade” and “the strengthening of banking networks” to enable them. Yet everything for the moment is only “voluntary and non-binding.” Kazan is expected to give the process some edge.

‘Not an Anti-Western Group, Just a Non-Western Group’

In his speech at the BRICS Business Council last Friday and in a subsequent roundtable with heads of media groups of BRICS members, President Putin in fact summed up all the major dossiers. Here are the highlights.

On the role of the Shanghai-based NDB, the BRICS bank: Russia “will expand the capabilities of the NDB”; the bank should become the main investor in major technological and infrastructure projects for BRICS members and the wider Global South. That makes total sense, with the NDB financing infrastructure development and commercially involved with local, private companies. Incidentally, the next president of the NDB will be Russian; the top candidate is Aleksei Mozhin, who was previously at the IMF.

On creating a single digital infrastructure for BRICS: already on. Russia is working on “the use of digital currencies in investment processes in the interests of other developing economies.” That ties up with BRICS work on their own version of SWIFT for international financial transactions. And also ties up with BRICS Pay – a debit card whose first trial run happened during the Business Council last week, not dissimilar to AliPay in China, and soon to be rolled out across BRICS members.

A BRICS single currency:

“Not being considered yet, this issue is not ripe yet.”

De-dollarization, Putin stressed, is proceeding step by step:

“We’re taking individual steps, one after another. As regards finance, we did not drop the dollar. The dollar is the universal currency. But it wasn’t us – we were banned and barred from [using] it. And now 95% of all the external trade of Russia is denominated in national currencies. They did it themselves with their own hands. They thought we would collapse.”

The challenge for a unified BRICS currency: That “requires thorough economic integration (…) Apart from high level of integration among BRICS members, the introduction of a single BRICS currency would involve comparable monetary quality and volume (…) Otherwise, we will face even bigger issues than those that occurred in the EU.” Putin recalled that when the euro was introduced in the EU, their economies were neither comparable nor equal.

Putin will have at least 17 bilateral meetings in Kazan. He emphasized, once again, that “BRICS is not an anti-Western group, it’s just a non-Western group.”

And he named the key economic drivers in the near future: Southeast Asia and Africa. Development “will objectively take place primarily in BRICS member countries. This is the Global South. This is Southeast Asia. This is Africa. Positive growth will exist in powerful countries such as China, India, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, but the countries of Southeast Asia and Africa will show faster growth for several reasons.”

He also highlighted the top infrastructure development projects among BRICS and the Global South: the Northern Sea Route – which the Chinese define as the Arctic Silk Road – and the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), with the BRICS triad Russia-Iran-India as the key partners. On the Northern Sea Route, Putin highlighted how “we are building an icebreaker fleet that has no peers in the world. It’s going to be a unique fleet, seven nuclear icebreakers and 34 diesel-propelled, high-class, heavy-duty icebreakers.”

On the Russia-China strategic partnership: it’s one of the key factors of stability in the world; in the relations between the two, “there are no elders or youngers.”

On the Great Chessboard, “Russia does not interfere in relations between the USA and China,” even as “Europeans have been dragged into Asia through NATO. Nobody is asking the Europeans whether they want to spoil their relationship with China, whether they want to use NATO entities to enter Asia and to create a situation that would cause concern for the region, for China specifically. Still, they are dragged like puppies.”

Forever Wars Target BRICS

There will be a special session on Palestine in Kazan with BRICS members plus BRICS Outreach – as in partners (Turkiye is included). Putin believes that “dissolving the Middle East Quartet was a mistake.” The Quartet included Russia, US, UN, and EU. In theory, it should have mediated the Israel-Palestine peace process. In practice, it didn’t.

The notorious warmonger Tony Blair was part of the Quartet. Diplomatically, Putin said, “I do not intend to accuse the United States in every aspect here, but unfortunately it was a wrong thing to do to disband the four [the Quartet].”

He re-emphasized that “Russia has consistently maintained the view that the United Nations Security Council’s decision to establish two states – Israel and Palestine – should be implemented.” And, significantly, he added that “Russia is in ongoing contact with both Israel and Palestine.”

That may be interpreted as strategic mediation, and serious back-channel exchanges. Yet he did not venture head on into the fire, just saying he hopes the “endless exchange of blows” between Israel and Iran will stop, while adding that “searching for a compromise in the Arab-Israeli conflict is possible, but this is a very delicate area.”

All of the above is highly significant for the BRICS context because the Forever Wars in West Asia have been seriously interfering with the work within BRICS. And on top of it, the Forever Wars, cold, hybrid, and hot, are in fact essentially directed against three BRICS members, Russia, Iran and China – not by accident described as the Top Three existential threats to the Hegemon.

And that inevitably brings us to Ukraine. Putin emphasized, “the Russian army has become one of the most combat effective and high-tech armies in the world (…) When NATO will get tired of waging this war against us, just ask them. We were ready to continue fighting, to continue the struggle, and we will have the upper hand.”

Confirming what crack military analyst Andrei Martyanov has been studying for years, Putin explained how modern warfare is the war of mathematicians – something that totally escapes NATO armchair warriors: “I have heard from the people that fight on the ground that today’s war is the war of mathematicians. Radio-jamming devices would be effective against certain delivery vehicles and they would suppress them. The other side has, for example, calculated and reckoned what is the counterforce and reprograms the software of its striking assets in a week or three weeks.”

As for the battleground, with the “rules-based international order” meeting its humiliating demise in the black soil of Novorossiya, Putin could not be more emphatic on the “Nuclear Ukraine” gambit: “It is a dangerous provocation because any step in this direction will face a response (…) I will say it outright Russia will not allow this to happen no matter what.”

The stakes in Kazan could not be higher. By the end of the week, the Global Majority will know whether Kazan will go down in history as the landmark of a new, emerging system of international relations, or if crass divide and rule tactics will keep postponing the inexorable demise of the Old Order.