BRICS Plus a dramatic shift in the course of global history

Dear Editor,

 August 24th, 2023, marked a dramatic shift in the course of global history. BRICS, the nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, announced that they were admitting Argentina, Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates into its fold. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has calculated that the larger BRICS Plus formation is worth roughly 30% of the globally economy, that is U$ 30.7 trillion. BRICS Plus is home to 46% of the global population, 3.7 billion citizens. Its share of oil production is now 43.1%; and its share of global exports, 25.1%. However, the significance of this global shift may not be reduced to plain IMF numbers.

For over 500 years the trade, economics and politics of the planet have been dominated by Western Europe, namely Spain, France, Britain, and to a lesser extent Italy, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and the Danes. The militaries of these nations have disrupted the histories of the Americas, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, the Pacific (eg Guam, Hawaii) South East Asia (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia) and Northern Asia (North Korea, China), through conquest, the decimation of human populations, enslavement and the creation of satrap, or puppet, proxy, pawn, pussycat states.

The United States emerged as an industrial power in the 1860s. After its Civil War, it shifted from an agrarian slave-economy, carpetbagging its African labour Northwards, into a proletarian industrial economy. Armed with its edicts of Manifest Destiny, the Monroe Doctrine, gunboat diplomacy, dollar diplomacy, US exceptionalism, and a marauding Navy in the Pacific, Northern Caribbean (Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic), it placed itself in a position of global dominance when Western Europe bled itself out in World War Two. So said so done.

Since 1945, the US and NATO have held in economic thraldom large swathes of human populations in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and South East Asia. Using such institutions as the IMF, the World Bank, its military-industrial complex, CIA, its global surveillance apparatus, its media, and, by dint of its prestige acquired through the impressive and threatening thunder of war, its dollar. No matter how much in debt (now over 30 trillion $US), or how much money it prints, after getting rid of the gold standard, its dollar still retains it worth. Regularly, through its sanctions policies, it absconds with the financial assets of nations it is in disagreement with.

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have had enough. BRICS Plus is the first expansionary retaliation. And in due course, more will be added. More than forty countries had expressed an interest in joining and twenty-three had formally applied to join. The great theme of BRICS has been multipolarity. Multipolarity versus unipolarity. Multipolarity means an existential break from the system of control by the one, the single power. A shift from one voice, one authority, one edict, one hierarchy.

Now, what is the position of the English-speaking Caribbean in this historic movement? Over the last few days, other signal events have occurred. On the same day that India landed its rover craft on the invisible dark side of the moon, at its South Pole, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, an eighteen year-old chess grandmaster was challenging the great Norwegian chess-master, Magnus Carlsen for the World Cup title. He had earlier defeated the world numbers three and two Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana, both from the US. Three of his compatriots had also qualified to play in the quarter-finals, the last eight. The BRICS were hosting their conference in South Africa. And Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former convict and chef, the leader of a mercenary buccaneering army group, Wagner, was reported killed in a plane crash over Russia. 

The quest for technological and intellectual supremacy is no longer the exclusive preserve of Europe or the United States. BRICS made sure that it included another large nation from Latin America, three from the Middle East, and two from Africa: Egypt, and lo and behold – Ethiopia! The BRICS Plus formation boasts three nations from Africa. The permanent UN Security Council (The Big Five: Britain, the US, Russia, France and China) has no nation from Latin America, the Middle-East or Africa.

After news broke of the death of Prigozhin, a Trinidad tv station ticker-taped the news. First, that Prigozhin was killed. Second, it reported the response of US President Joe Biden. He stated that there’s not much that happens in Russian that Putin is not behind. There was no reportage of the many other voices on the subject. The impression given by Biden was that Putin was the person behind the death. This action by our tv station crystallizes the meaning of unipolarity.

Yours faithfully,
Wayne Kublalsingh