Yves here. Apologies again re my own posting but hopefully this BRICS piece will prove to be good grist for thought. Power was out for 7 hours, and I’d been out for some of the time and came back to a pretty much discharged battery. The staff kept saying the service would be back on “soon” which clearly did not prove to be the case.
To the main event: this article keys off the fact that the EU has taken perilous little official notice of BRICS so far. It does not suggest that this is (yet) remiss because BRICS spans such an extremely diverse group of countries and does not yet have much in the way of formal structures or governance. To put it more simply than the piece does, BRICS has arguably not made enough decisions about how it plans to operate for the EU to know how to engage with it.
The article makes some comments that readers are likely to object to, like harrumphing about BRICS spanning Collective-West designated authoritarian state and feudal systems (Gulf monarchies) to democracies or depicting the EU as having “the capacity for normative influence” as in being on the receiving end of Ursula von der Leyen bromides about European values. It does point out that the looseness of the association can have advantages, such as member states using BRICS as a vehicle for wielding soft power.
By André Gattolin, а former Member of Parliament and researcher at the University of Paris III Sorbonne-nouvelle and Emmanuel Véron, geographer and teacher-researcher at Inalco and the École navale. Originally published at InfoBRICS
Over the last five years, geopolitical considerations have taken an unprecedented place on the European Union’s agenda. Its foreign policy, long in its fledgling stages, is finally beginning to take shape, even if it is still subject to the unanimous decisions of its Member States. The days when trade policy was the only real lever for European foreign policy are over. The increasing bluntness of international relations is obviously no surprise to Europe’s still tentative geopolitical awakening. The European Union’s foreign policy has many potentially dangerous blind spots.
One of the most striking of these ‘omissions’ concerns the BRICS and their rapid development over the last three years. Launched in 2009, this informal forum of four major emerging countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), which was enlarged to include South Africa in 2011 and now includes ten countries, still seems to escape the attention of the European Union. Over the last fifteen years, official European Union documents dealing with this grouping can be counted on the fingers of one hand. More descriptive than analytical, they are a long way from outlining a European position on this significant group of countries.
Oversight, Denial or Missing Competence?
As is often the case when it comes to the European unthinkable, these three dimensions tend to overlap. Foreign policy, introduced by the Treaty of Maastricht and strengthened by the Treaty of Lisbon, is only an additional competence of the European Union. The European External Action Service introduced in 2011 has to contend with the lion’s share of responsibility in this area devolved to the Member States. The unanimity rule that continues to prevail often leads European authorities — when they manage to do so — to produce roadmaps that are so lacklustre that they leave each country a great deal of latitude in implementing them.
When it comes to the BRICS specifically, it has to be said that the European institutions do not have much help: the European Union’s main chancelleries remain just as silent as they are on the subject, merely highlighting the bilateral relations they have with each of the countries that make up this grouping, without defining a clear position on it. While behind the scenes, some are beginning to worry about the creation of a bloc that wants to embody a “global South”, European rhetoric is generally reassuring: the BRICS do not seem likely to affect the policies that the European Union has patiently weaved through treaties of free trade, strategic agreements with countries in the South, aid and support policies for sustainable development. The increasingly scathing criticism of the West voiced by some BRICS is being interpreted above all as an affirmation of their distrust of the United States. Indeed, many Europeans do not consider their demands for a rebalancing of governance within the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to be illegitimate. In short, there is no need to fear for the future, and the challenges posed by the BRICS are “a source of opportunities for Europe”.
A Composite Ensemble and Too Rapid an Expansion?
Since its inception, the European Union has been plagued by questions regarding its enlargement and deepening, and the question of which of these two options should be given priority. The announcement, in August 2023, that six new countries would be joining the BRICS was therefore bound to remind Europe of its own dilemmas. A sign of undeniable momentum (especially as there were dozens of candidates for membership), this sudden enlargement seems to have opened the path to as many doubts as certainties regarding the viability of the operation.
And so, the BRICS, which in their initial version already appeared rather disparate and modest in terms of the objectives and resources pooled, now appear even more heterogeneous in their extended version. Given their internal disparity the BRICS+ can no longer be described as a “club” of major emerging economies. Their differences in terms of political regimes and diplomatic orientations are more marked than ever before. What do authoritarian regimes bordering on dictatorship, such as Russia, Iran and China, whose aim is to overturn the current world order, have in common with feudal regimes such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and more or less advanced democracies such as India, Brazil and South Africa, which have no intention of breaking with the West? The deep-seated rivalries between certain members — such as India and China — are compounded by bilateral tensions between new members such as Egypt and Ethiopia or, to a lesser extent, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Argentina’s decision, despite being accepted as a member of the club, to not join the BRICS afterall, in the wake of the election of Javier Milei as president of the country illustrates the difficulties inherent in a coalition combining long-term authoritarian states with more volatile democratic regimes.
A Very Modest Economic Record
It has to be said that in spite of a statistically impressive effect of size (46 % of the world’s population, a third of the planet’s land area and 37% of global GDP), the BRICS+, as an association, is hardly dazzling when it comes to bringing their economies and development models closer together. They are a long way from constituting a bloc with an endogenous dynamic that would allow them to set themselves up as a genuine rival to the G7 or the OECD. And with good reason: unlike the period of the Cold War, which was characterised by a clear division between West and East, all the major players on the planet continue, despite an increasingly obvious North-South dialectic, to operate in an environment of extreme interpenetration between economies. Apart from the annual summits organised on a rotating basis by one of the members, the BRICS have hardly any permanent instruments for joint governance. The only real institution attached to it is the New Development Bank (NDB), created in 2015, which is headquartered in Shanghai and has been chaired by Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff since March 2023. This young institution, which aims to be an alternative to the IMF in terms of financing sustainable infrastructure in developing countries, had eight members before the expansion of the BRICS. Welcomed with interest and goodwill by the Europeans, its success remains mixed, and it is struggling to establish itself against the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (BAII) or to the bilateral financing agreements promoted by China as part of the “Belt and road initiatives”. But above all, the NBD is experiencing a veritable crisis in terms of raising funds with Western investors since the war in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed on Russia. China’s current economic difficulties provide little incentive for it to bail out NBD, and it is too early to say whether Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will risk investing heavily in the bank.
An Informality That Is More Structuring Than It Might Seem
From an organisational and political point of view, the BRICS group appears even more elusive. It has no headquarters, no permanent secretariat and even less of a treaty governing its operation and or the establishment of common guidelines. Rather than being a weakness, its informal nature is deliberate and even constitutes an asset that facilitates its expansion and its appeal to third countries. Plural by definition, this forum refuses to make choices that would be binding on all its members, and it clearly has no intention of evolving into a kind of economic or political confederation. In their joint declaration in Johannesburg on 23 August 2023, the so-called BRICS countries declared that they considered “the UN to be the cornerstone of the international system” and expressed “their attachment to multilateralism and international law”. They limit themselves — officially — to criticising the unfair treatment to which they claim to be subjected within the major international institutions.
Comprising non-Western powers, the BRICS could easily be seen as a pressure group for the major states of the South. Extremely vocal in recent months, have they become the new voice of the “global South”, the legacy of the non-aligned movement? In this respect, it is important to avoid any historical shortcuts. While India’s presence within the BRICS seems to be part of this lineage, it also reflects its intention to control the ambitions of its powerful neighbour, China, and to implement a diplomacy that can be described as “pluri-multilateralist”. However, it would be inappropriate to speak of non-alignment with regard to the BRICS as a whole, in a world tending towards a bipolarisation organised around China (a founding member of the BRICS) and the United States (the undisputed embodiment of Western power). On the other hand, it would be insincere not to recognise the BRICS — particularly since their enlargement — as the most visible expression of the “global South”. Highly focused on their relative or emerging power, the BRICS persist in keeping out — with the exception of Ethiopia – the world’s least developed countries (LDC). But clearly, they have succeeded in swallowing up the old dialogue India-Brazil-South Africa (IBAS) and to sideline the G77, the coalition of developing countries created in 1964 to promote the economic and political interests of developing countries within the United Nations. More recently, the initiative taken by South Africa to bring an action against Israel before the International Court of Justice has had a considerable impact in Africa, the Middle East and far beyond.
The strength of the BRICS lies in the fact that they give their members the freedom to take political initiatives, to join in or to keep their distance in order, in the end, to rally new support and, sometimes, to divide Western opinion. This freedom of initiative means that they can embody a form of resistance to the Western world without openly committing the BRICS as a whole and creating potential dissension within them. The most blatant example of this “method” is undoubtedly Vladimir Putin’s declaration of war on the West and its “decadent values”. Without attracting the wrath of the BRICS, he has won the support of many countries in the South. But what undoubtedly appeals most to countries hoping to benefit from development support that is less dependent on Western countries is the principle of political non-conditionality that governs the signing of cooperation or development agreements with certain emerging powers. The nature of the regime, its ideological orientation or its respect for fundamental rights is irrelevant, as long as the financial agreement is honoured. This is what makes all the difference with the aid mechanisms proposed by the United States or European countries.
The Chinese Elephant in the Room
“If you see everything in grey, move the elephant” is an old Indian proverb. In fact, it would be a demonstration of blindness not to notice that this principle of political non-conditionality was initially conceived and propagated by the People’s Republic of China, in particular at the time of the launch of its famous “New Silk Roads”. It is the same principle that Russia is currently displaying in Africa when it comes to military and security assistance to military or autocratic regimes. The European Union, whose relations with the United States are sometimes ambivalent, would be wrong not to feel targeted. The Chinese rhetoric, which highlights the exemplary nature of its economic success in the Third World and likens Europe’s demands in terms of human rights and the rule of law to a relic of its colonial culture, is now a classic used by several BRICS countries. The European Union, which bases its power on its trade and its capacity for normative influence, must therefore be more vigilant about the impact of this new narrative.
The BRICS, as an isolated entity, are often perceived as a “paper tiger”. But in a world of increasing conflict and where political fantasies tend to take precedence over economic realities, we must not overlook the importance of self-fulfilling prophecies in structuring reality. The notions of “BRIC(S)” or “Global South”, invented by Westerners, have been taken up by the countries concerned to give them more than a symbolic incarnation. Since their informal association in 2009, it is China that has been devising, designing and structuring the BRICS. Its ultimate and now avowed objective is not simply to unite the countries of the South, but to build a new global order with China at its epicentre. A discreet member of the BRICS (China is only the fourth letter in the acronym), China is much more than the largest brick in the edifice: it is the cement and the unobtrusive, but determined worker. Over the last ten years, 80% of the increase in trade between the original five BRICS involved China, either as an exporter or importer. To focus on the informal nature of the BRICS is to forget that they are part of a global approach in which Beijing is weaving a wider and denser web across the board through the New Silk Roads, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, various regional financing banks and a host of bilateral strategic cooperation and economic development agreements. Moreover, because its international image has deteriorated sharply over the past four years, China is increasingly using the more polite perception of the BRICS to implement its new policy of influence with European elites.
Major Challenges for Europe
Europeans would therefore be wrong not to take a more active interest in the BRICS and the implications that their enlargement could have. By bringing together four of the biggest oil exporters (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Russia and Iran) and two of the three biggest oil importers (China and India), the BRICS could be a precursor to the creation of a new OPEC which would push up the price of oil and gas imported by Europe and deal a blow to the dollar as an international trading currency in favour of the petroyuan, local currencies, cryptocurrencies, or even the bilateral bartering already practised by China. If this were to happen, the European Union would no doubt see its hopes of making the euro a major trading currency evaporate. At COP 28 in Dubai, we saw the extent to which the European Union and its policy of rapidly phasing out carbon-based energies drew the disapproval of the major oil producers of the South. The risks of divergence between the European Union and the BRICS have also been heightened by the recent increase in armed conflicts. With regard to the BRICS, another little-analysed, but potentially explosive subject is maritime sovereignty. It is striking to note that almost all of the BRICS are states with a fairly extensive coastline, but with a relatively reduced exclusive economic zone in terms of their land area. The importance of the sea, in terms of commercial and military navigation, ecology and exploitable resources, is one of the major challenges of this century. With 25 million km2, almost six times its land surface, the European Union has by far the largest maritime area in the world. This is the result of Europe’s particular geography, but above all of the legacy of its colonial past. This profound inequality between the European Union and the BRICS could generate embarrassing claims on some European countries in the future.
There is no shortage of risks of conflict between our continent and the BRICS, particularly if we take a realistic view that the BRICS will grow stronger. The current lack of European thinking on this subject is not confined to the European institutions but concerns all the chancelleries of the Member States. This should be seen as an opportunity for the European Union to take up this issue and offer its Member States a framework for reflection that is both open and forward-looking on this new political issue, which still largely eludes traditional geopolitical analysis, that is more accustomed to a regional rather than a multi-continental approach. As in many other areas, Europe’s fundamental vocation is to be much more than the sum of its parts.
41 comments
Comments are closed.
We were warned that some commenters might take issue with elements of the article, no doubt.
US domination and EU vassal status: another Elephant in the Room that EU and the author ignores. Not to mention the economic self-immolation of the EU vassals on the altar of the declining empire.
‘…The most blatant example of this “method” is undoubtedly Vladimir Putin’s declaration of war on the West and its “decadent values”…’
That pretty much sank the credibility of the author. I was trying to keep an open mind, but the author is so biased, and so far up the EU elite ivory tower, they cant’ see what is happening.
Here’s another whopper
‘… the BRICS could be a precursor to the creation of a new OPEC which would push up the price of oil and gas imported by Europe and deal a blow to the dollar as an international trading currency in favour of the petroyuan…’
Say what?!
The author is either ignorant of some key facts, or is writing for an uninformed, uncritical audience. Or both.
The underlying assumption is that the USD should remain the dominant currency forever, as if sacrosanct. The creation of a “petroyuan” is not going to happen for many reasons discussed on NC. The price of energy has increased dramatically since the economic warfare (sanctions), pipelines blowing up, war against Russia etc.l But the author does not see fit to mention it
You have not been listening to Putin’s speeches and interviews. He HAS called out the West for its decadent values. Putin has repeatedly also been criticizing the West for imposing its beliefs and value and not letting various countries go their own ways. So that criticism is off base.
It was the Putin declared war on the West part. I have followed his speeches, interviews. I think a more accurate statement would be the West declared war on Russia.
And this one is pretty bad too
“…What do authoritarian regimes bordering on dictatorship, such as Russia, Iran and China, whose aim is to overturn the current world order…”
I find it enormously frustrating how many readers insist on indulging in the cognitive bias called halo effect, of needing to see things and people as all good or all bad, when I have already warned them that a piece has some sour notes.
Putin has made more and more pointed criticisms of the West, its values and mode of operating, over time. Go read his speeches. EU leaders are not used to being criticized on that basis, let alone fiercely, persistently, and with details.
On that sour note … how indicative is it that Russia is now a serious economic and military force that both the US and EU are powerless to fiddle with via sanctions and FX games, have had just the opposite effect.
Yet so many Polies in the West are totally rusted on due to social/money dynamics and dominate ideologies.
Russia will come out of this all with the best trained/experienced, same for Mfg, Military on the planet, and better equipped for it on its borders.
Sorry I don’t understand your response, I see no disagreement here.
Hoo boy, and you should see how the Chinese have responded internally, too:
It’s disabled pro-LGBTQ communities online: https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/china-s-forced-invisibility-lgbtq-communities-social-media
It has banned effeminate men from portrayal in tv series: https://www.npr.org/2021/09/02/1033687586/china-ban-effeminate-men-tv-official-morality
It enforces filial piety: https://bigthink.com/articles/children-must-visit-their-parents-says-new-chinese-law/
It limits kids screen time (save for educational material) to 40 minutes per session/3 hours a week: https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/08/09/1077567/china-children-screen-time-regulation/
Also, if you like I can provide translated Chinese language tweets that would blow most people’s mind. More often then not, the Chinese collectively think of Jerusalem as the US’ capitol and sound like late 1950s John Birch Society members. People in the US have NO idea of the regime and people in China and would be absolutely shocked if they ever knew any enough to have them speak openly with you.
I am interested. Please share the tweets.
China is of course a wonderful, a brilliant 5,000 year old civilization of 1.4 billion. Joseph Needham of Cambridge University needed 27 volumes * just to set down the science accomplishments of the Chinese through the 17th century. Me, I celebrate the China.of “The Journey to the West.” **
* SCIENCE IN TRADITIONAL CHINA:
A Comparative Perspective.
By Joseph Needham.
** https://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/06/books/the-complete-monkey.html
March 6, 1983
The Complete ‘Monkey’
By DAVID LATTIMORE
THE JOURNEY TO THE WEST
Translated and Edited by Anthony C. Yu
–is this automatically a horrible thing? The influence of ubiquitous online LGBTQ/gender dysphoria discourse on children and adolescents has been problematized even by gay Glenn Greenwald. I’m live-and-let-live, but I’ve lived in urban and now rural China for close to 20 years, and can at least acknowledge its right to defend its traditional conservative family values, just as it defends its philosophical values from Christian missionaries and neoliberal economists. (This is my same basic response to your next two points.)
–again, is this necessarily a bad impulse? But I have to say that my Chinese high school students in Beijing and Suzhou didn’t experience such a ban. There was a restriction on online gaming, but that’s not “screen time.” So I really question the accuracy and motives of the source.
–while the Chinese (again, I’ve lived and taught here for 15 years, in both international/foreign and mainlander Chinese schools, meaning both my colleagues and students were Chinese) do harp on Jewish power in the US–and given AIPAC and pro-Palestine bans and censorship in the US, are they wrong?–it’s silly to imply they literally “more often than not” think Jerusalem is the US capitol. It’s even insulting.
I don’t mean to be rude, but the confidence exuding from your last sentence is totally–and I do mean totally–unfounded. Come visit as long as you want. Hang out with me, my Chinese neighbors, friends, students. Learn from experience, not from Western websites.
Well, he gets to the main concern toward the end:
“With 25 million km2, almost six times its land surface, the European Union has by far the largest maritime area in the world. This is the result of Europe’s particular geography, but above all of the legacy of its colonial past. This profound inequality between the European Union and the BRICS could generate embarrassing claims on some European countries in the future.”
To be fair: yes, the author does recognize the rising power of the BRICS+ and the need for the EU to recognize this. What is missing from the context, however, is the declining power of the US, and the need for the EU to recognize it, accept it, and incorporate that into concrete policy. That would require angering the US, and the kakistocrats in Washington, and recognizing that “overturning the current world order” is baked into the cake, whether they like it or not. The West will need to recognize that India, China, and other countries will return to their historical great power status, and the era of US/UK Western hegemony is coming to an end.
The hubris of extending normative power and influence through “soft power” rings hollow and highly hypocritical in the context of genocide, proxy war, institutional corruption, and provocations of nuclear war.
I’m sure the author would dismiss such criticism as hyperbole and unfair, but the facts are there for all to see and judge for themselves.
The important part of this article is that someone in the EU is waking up to the implications of a talking spot for three of the world’s great powers — China, India, Russia. (Of course, the missing great power is the US) That China and India have decided to settle the border disputes and it was announced at BRICS is significant. The EU/NATO are becoming more isolated and folks are talking without them.
It is important not to underestimate a “neutral” ground where countries can talk about their differences without the presence of the US and its vassals.
It is the trade-dependent EU countries that need a presence at/policy toward BRICS. Is this article a contribution to awakening an understanding by those in the “garden” or more evidence of European lack of awareness of their increasing slide toward a peripheral peninsula of a Eurasian/Pacific world? I think it can be read in many ways.
“The important part of this article is that someone in the EU is waking up to the implications of a talking spot for three of the world’s great powers…”
Important comment, indeed.
>”that someone in the EU is waking up”
Yes.
But it happens in a very delusional way I found.
The text continuously pokes at BRICS´s deficencies but not in one instance gives an example what the EU actually has what BRICS really needs. In the other direction the dependence is obvious.
Lets have a wall between Europe and all of BRICS tomorrow. Nothing gets through. Lets see how long EU holds up.
Oh come on! Inept vdL is now focused on Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine!, distracted somehow but not much by Middle East, and trying hard to understand the meaning of China de-risking. For her to comprehend BRICS is tall order, not to mention for Kallas. (Neither exiting Borrell who having IMO better capabilities never was a diplomat).
It’s a curious article, which reads as though one author was obsessed with the idea of BRICS as a bloc organising to compete with the EU, and the other recognised that BRICS is a kind of extended series of Venn diagrams for cooperation when that seems sensible, and they agreed to include both views. It’s also strange that they make no mention of the Kazan Declaration, which I discussed in an essay a couple of weeks ago and does in fact explain fairly clearly where BRICS is going.
There are two basic problems for Europe in reacting to BRICS. One is that European foreign policy, as it has painfully evolved over thirty-odd years is very much based on collective policies towards states and regions. It finds BRICS hard to deal with conceptually, the more so since it has almost no permanent structures that could become interlocutors. The other is that quite simply it’s hard enough to get a common view on an individual issue or country among 27 states, but to get agreement on something as amorphous as BRICS is next to impossible.
>”It’s also strange that they make no mention of the Kazan Declaration”
Even more so as one would expect them to be obsessed with what the enemy does.
p.s. painful “collective policies” – isn´t the argument that the EU is too big to act in coherent ways just a very convenient one to enforce elitist decisions directed against its own people. If it were up to EU´s populations to decide over how to deal with BRICS EU would go ahead and cooperate. Simple example, energy. Another one, security and minimized defence expenditures. And a million more things.
With increased NATO spending and what comes with its insane infrastructure in Gemany as core country (arms instead of cars will soon be one credo) it will be interesting to see how much of e.g. German cultural institutions and “landscape” will be left in 20 years from now.
There will be no increased NATO spending in Europe. Defence will be cut. U.K. just signed some Defence Agreement with Germany to allow Luftwaffe planes to be on RAF bases. This shows neither country has funds and are pooling illusions.
There is no steel-making capacity in Western Europe. There is no explosives manufacturing capacity. Even failed German regime placed orders with payment planned from 2027 !!!
Merz has already cooked a coalition deal with SPD and Greens and agreed to squeeze other parties out of Bundestag business before election. It is a done deal
Starmer has no money and recruitment to military is negative. They sold heavy artillery to Ukraine and have none. Britain is a joke and Germany similar. NATO is a US hobbyhorse
Yeah. Curious. I blame whatever AI program Monsieur Gattolin used to write it up. Or maybe something was lost in AI translation. Or maybe his AI program hasn’t been optimized for French yet.
Say a lot to say a little. If the hegemon rules by divide and conquer, it hardly makes sense to get into anything that can be targeted for disruption, but it makes all the sense to keep the good vibes rolling, getting together, havin a chitchat, in that lovely urbane way they do.
They.
So what if (everyone’s favorite BRICS paradox) China and India “don’t like each other,” neither gains by ignoring each other. Keep friends close, enemies closer, frenemies in the polite respectful middle distance, so you can see the whole size of him. Or her. Or they.
Decadence.
The interesting thing about this is that Aurelien is depicting the EU as really quite similar to BRICS; “no permanent structures” and “hard enough to get a common viiew”.
But, as far as I can see, the EU’s fundamental uniting force is neoliberalism at the behest of the US, the capital of neoliberalism, which is not a very good unifying force in the long run.
No, I said that BRICS has no permanent structures, whereas the EU evidently does, and lots of them. But the need for formal consensus (which BRICS does not have) is a major handicap.
“There are two basic problems for Europe in reacting to BRICS…”
These comments are collectively incisive and important. For instance, China has paired BRICS relations and each pairing can have different purposes or objectives. Russia is forming a core of strategic BRICS alliances.
I have learned much and am grateful.
India and Brazil are advanced democracies but Russia is almost a dictatorship? I’m not convinced but I’ll just take it as part of the authors programming. Neoliberal brainworms are a horrible infection.
::chortle::
#iSeeWotUDidThere
European policymaking elites have invested huge amounts of rhetorical and political capital in a ‘rules based international order’ only to find that its chief progenitor really couldn’t care less about it after all. Not only that, but the US also now sees Europe both as a strategic cost centre and also as a prospective revenue stream. Thus, European welfare systems and surpluses with the US seem set to be crushed between the burden of increased military spending, the increased cost of energy inputs from the US and vanishing extra-European markets.
Having invested so much political capital in the Atlantic relationship, Europe is doubling down on the very thing which is eviscerating it – a striking instance of the sunk cost fallacy. The more it does this, the more the window of opportunity to revive strategic autonomy passes. However, the revival of European autonomy in the 1950s was based to a large extent on leveraging European influence in Africa. That, too, is now over.
So if the US relationship is now a cure worse than the disease, and if strategic autonomy is done, then that only leaves the Sino-Russian bloc. However, given the sunk costs in Atlanticism that, too, is acutely problematic. Europe cannot presently make the psychological leap of faith and, even if it did, at what risk? Trust between Europe and the Sino-Russian bloc/BRICS is now at a nadir and it is not evident that, having lost Africa, Europe has much to offer China or Russia in strategic terms. It is a fading market, and it cannot fulfil the postwar role – of acting as an auxiliary regional policeman – which the US bestowed upon it.
What, therefore, is Europe really for? As I see it, it now exists chiefly to be bled, either by the US or, if it ever revolts against the US, by Eurasia. Given much of the history of the last 500 or so years, some people might consider that justified karma.
Certainly.
There is of course the “loss of Europe” to the US, which EU´s turn towards BRICS would precipitate and that could increase leverage over the US. How significant were that in regard of De-Dollarisation?
p.s. Unfortunately for EU populace that “leap of faith” which the elites will never do is the only way out.
Quite shocking how incompetent our rulers and their media puppets are. Quite, indeed.
However Nordstream demonstrated how drastic steps our failing hegemon is willing to take if pushed into a corner. Imagine EU abandoning Washington for BRICS?! That could mean war & the breakup of the EU.
US bombing Berlin. Material for a fantastic array of movies.
What is Europe really for? It’s a museum for American and Chinese tourists.
Thank you.
I don’t come across Whitehall and EU policymakers as much as before, but what you say resonates.
The odd continental talks of a rapprochement with Russia, but not the BRICS.
With so many policymakers having studied in the US, speaking American and salivating at the prospect of work for US firms and think tanks, I think the doubling down will continue. Whisper it softly, the prospect of not being top dog or, at least, with the US and having to treat those who don’t look like them as equals is unnerving.
re: Mearsheimer in Gemany
The backwardness and huge limitations of German thinking are documented in this 100 min. conversation between Mearsheimer and some German indie blogger who I had not known, Jasmin Kosubek.
(Mearsheimer´s limitations in certain points are already known, albeit I am thankful for his analyses that I can provide to friends who would reject anything more advanced.)
Talking International Politics in Germany
https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/talking-international-politics-in
TC: 48:00 – 59:00 on BRICS
p.s. on Israel she is really really not competent, it´s a bit embarassing in fact. Mearsheimer tries his best here I have to thank him for doing that. Howeve he too seems not to know that genocide had been the main plan for a long time. I dont get it. He is friends with Finkelstein. i.e. they talk.But that just on a secondary point.
Its a basic mindset problem.
EU, US, NATO, UK, Canada, Australia, NZ and maybe Japan, SK ( although I really doubt the last two do) think in terms of blocs.
BIG BRICS is not a bloc. As Aurelien says its a ‘venn diagram’. This is very much a civilisation’ issue, The west thinks in ways not shared by most of the RoW.
Well one thing the new voice is saying is that they are “The Global Majority”.
No more of the “global south” drivel.
Making Shit Up is not on here and your tone is out of line.
Please search the Kazan Declaration, which is the official statement of what BRICS is about. The word “majority” is absent.
http://static.kremlin.ru/media/events/files/en/RosOySvLzGaJtmx2wYFv0lN4NSPZploG.pdf
It is bemusing to see the origins of the EU/EEC ignored. Arthur Salter and Jean Monnet in 1920s wanted to build on the League of Nations model to create a European Integration with EU Commission being akin to the Permanent Secretariat and the Council of Minister being akin to the “Council” of the League.
That it failed like the League itself did not prevent attempts to revive it post-1945 funded first by MI6 then CIA.
However…..it was predicated on pooling of Iron and Steel and Coal resources under Schumann Plan 1950 creating the European Coal & Steel Community – this prevented heavy industry from starting future wars.
The fact is Coal and Steel were the basis of Economic Development in 1950 and Europe had RESOURCES – both steel mills and coal and access to iron ore.
Today Europe imports most of its raw materials.
BRICS is built on a Foundation of Raw Materials – in Russia, in Brasil, in China, in India, in South Africa
What Europe does not have BRICS has in abundance
Russia + Iran have 70% global natural gas reserves
Russia + OPEC have what proportion of oil reserves ?
China + Africa ?
China plus Brasil + Venezuela + Peru ?
“Some 45% to 54% of the world’s semiconductor-grade neon, critical for the lasers used to make chips, comes from two Ukrainian companies, Ingas and Cryoin, ”
and which country will soon control Ukrainian output ?
which country already possesses the bulk of GDP generating capacity in Donbass ?
The fact is RESOURCES ultimately determine economic development.
Europe has squandered its intellectual resources and treated its suppliers with contempt. Simply having EU buy up fishing grounds off West Africa for Spanish trawling has forced indigenous fishermen to trek to Libya to access EU asylum routes……….
BRICS offers respect to African states. Ghana a major gold and cocoa producer lacks a chocolate brand in the West and has opportunity with Russian chocolate brands which are focused on ‘natural’ after Soviet product debasement. Ghana now demands tax payments from miners in gold.
These are antithetical to Western notions of “control” and reflect an advance on Soviet limitations because Russia does not want responsibility for other nations as in the USSR which threatened to overwhelm the Russian population demographically – Russia has preserved its traditional identity.
European nations have destroyed national identity – Italy and Greece and even Ireland have been destroyed – UK is debased compared to 1970s………Germany has no identity having transmogrified in 1945 and in 1990…..and now lacking any cultural identity. Russia is the only country in Europe which has a core identity and it is being forged by conflict with the West for generations.
Just watch “White Tiger” (2012) on YouTube – this was ALL anticipated……..
Unfortunately Europe is disintegrating and it will not exist in recognisable form in future
Thank you! Present EU/UK policymakers persistently ignore the way in which Europe’s bid for revived autonomy after WW2 was founded upon colonial and post-colonial predicates: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/eurafrica-9781780930008/ and https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/project-europe/5931FB3A173CD4770E31D2581BA7F8E7. These policymakers do so either out of ignorance, or because they wish to overlook ugly and inconvenient facts. Now that the EU/UK has lost its remaining influence in the Global South they are doomed. The whole point of European colonial and economic expansion over a 500 year period was to use superior technology to seize mineral inputs at a massive discount in order to produce manufactured goods which could then be bartered in exchange for continuing discounts. What now happens to that entire model once the discounts cease to be available and cannot be coerced?
Thank you especially for mentioning Salter. It is deeply regrettable that there is no biography of him (though he wrote two volumes of memoirs in 1962 and 1967). He was one of a coterie of British senior officials and bureaucratic entrepreneurs of that period who deserve serious study: others include Josiah Stamp, Henry Clay, Walter Layton, Hilton Young, etc.
Thank you and well said, both.
@ readers: The NC community is blessed to have commentators, on this post, like Aurelien, Froghole and Paul Greenwood.
I was on the periphery of the inaugural G20 and am aware of how insulted China, Russia and India felt at the G8 summit in July 2008. Even now, it feels like the G20 and BRICS are still not registering with many western politicians apart from Dominique de Villepin.
I have not come across British politicians and officials and even EU ones who have these insights, much less understand what Aurelien, Froghole and Paul have written. That is as much a worry.
Well, I am blessed to read your very astute and well-informed comments, Colonel! The whole attitude of the greater part of the Western commentariat and policymaking class reminds me of the acid remark made by Adenauer when Macmillan was limbering up for the first – and fateful – EC accession negotiations, that Britain was still acting “like a formerly rich man who does not realise that he has run out of money”.
Adenauer’s remark was shrewd. Within only a very short period of time breezy self-confidence, entitlement and deeply embedded assumptions of superiority amongst born-to-rule denizens of Whitehall and Westminster suddenly metamorphosed into gnawing introspection, toxic self-loathing and an almost self-reinforcing loss of faith in the capacity of the British state and people to do anything without making a dog’s breakfast of it. That dam started to break with Andrew Shonfield’s searing ‘British Economic Policy Since the War’ (1958), which very quickly became the conventional wisdom within official circles. That, in turn, set the UK up for further policymaking blunders in the period between 1963 and 1973. I strongly suspect that much of the almost chronic and pathological boosterism in the Anglophone press portends a sudden bouleversement and crisis of self-confidence. Another year or two of stagnating or falling living standards and we could well be there. Many thanks again!
Thank you.
I hope and pray Whitehall, political and official, and the media read what you say.
I’ve been to some City events this month, including yesterday evening, and note the gloom, but, equally, no sense of the precipice the UK stands on the edge of.
I still reflect on Bacon & Eltis (1975) „Britain‘s Economic Problem: Too Few Producers“ and how policy over past 50 years simply made problem more intractable and destroyed solutions
Thank you, Paul.
Many thanks Mr Greenwood! So very true, and Bacon/Eltis wrote a very useful pendant to that book in 1996: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-349-24613-7. They concluded that the structural transformation of the British economy between 1976 and 1996 had made the problems which they had identified much more intractable, and had effectively sealed off escape routes.
Although both at Oxford (Bacon at Lincoln College and Eltis at Exeter College) it seemed evident to me that they were hugely influenced by Kaldor and his circle at Cambridge. Kaldor was screaming about the weakness of British manufacturing from the mid/late 1950s, the striking tendency of the UK to suck in cheap imports, and the rise of consumerism with their attendant baleful effects upon current account. Hence his CGT in 1965 (which Jack Diamond and Treasury officials mutilated in committee in 1964/65) and his SET in 1969 (which was a victim of Barber): it was necessary to pour cold water on consumerism and shift resources away from the tertiary sector in order to keep the balance of payments in equilibrium and fight against the natural propensity of the UK towards deficit. Hence also his strenuous opposition to the terms of entry to the EC (though not to the principle of accession), which would increase prices (thanks to the shift from the purchase tax to VAT and from agricultural deficiency payments to subsidies via higher retail prices), cause a wage/price spiral and so price British manufactures out of world markets and lead to a flood of imports – all predictions which turned out to be true, amplified by the inability of the UK as a member state to impose tariffs or quotas in order to restore equilibrium. As accession would (per Verdoorn/Myrdal) lead to ‘circular and cumulative causation’, manufacturing would need to be abandoned in favour of financial services, with all that entailed. In effect, Kaldor predicted almost everything which has subsequently transpired.
Tellingly, Eltis’ death in 2019, like that of such other diagnosticians of British economic decline in the 1970s as Bob Neild in 2018, Wilfred Beckerman in 2020 or Tony Thirlwall last year went almost totally unrecognised in the British press.