On 2026/03/13 18:08, hari kumar via groups.io wrote:
Hi Patrick:
What is your own assessment of the BRICS' future?
I agree with Mark - a lot to wade thru' in this compilation.
As usual Arundhati Roy's notes are clear.
The rest take steps... but do not come to a conclusion.
Simply too soon until the next meeting in Delhi is done?
Maybe - but what is your own take?
Hi comrades,
Yes, surely the BRICS' future is, like its past, entails a general
loyalty to global corporate power structures, although with
'antagonistic cooperation' that allows for obvious intra-capitalist
conflict. There are good debates about whether and how we should deploy
Ruy Mauro Marini's term subimperialism in this context. The RCP and
Tricontinental comrades disagree with this term from Trotskyist and
multipolarist standpoints, respectively.
I hope we can keep debating because it's terribly important to consider
rare anti-imperial politics (closing the Strait of Hormuz or banning
exports of rare earth minerals to the U.S.) and contrasting these
moments with the more durable features of global capitalism's
reproduction, in which BRICS corporates and parastatals are increasingly
vital.
If indeed we have seen the BRICS set up /nothing /worthwhile, and in the
process misguiding activists first with hype, then hope, then
helplessness, then we need to move on, right? That's my take.
A draft of a longer article below makes the case in more detail...
Ciao,
Patrick
PS, I do compilations to have not only lefty critiques but the
mainstream narratives, too, just so we can pick up the wide range of
views and identify the interests behind them with as much raw data as
possible.
*Which BRICS bark at imperialism – and which are its running dogs? *
By Patrick Bond (draft, 15 March 2026)
Three months before taking power in 1949, Mao Tse-tung wrote
<https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-4/mswv4_65.htm>
of the solidarity required for the Chinese people’s revolution,
remarking that a “principal and fundamental experience” was to “unite in
a common struggle with those nations of the world which treat us as
equals and unite with the peoples of all countries.”
Mao warned, though, of “domestic and foreign reactionaries, the
imperialists and their running dogs.”
Fast forward to last week (March 9), as Indian writer Arundhati Roy
rebuked <https://zeteo.com/p/iran-is-not-gaza-read-arundhati-roys> Prime
Minister Narendra Modi’s government: “Some of you will remember how we
used to joke about that florid, overblown Chinese communist term,
‘Running Dog of Imperialism.’ But right now, I’d say, it describes us well.”
*Are BRICS rising? Or spalling? Or running (dogs)?*
Does the critique of Modi’s allegiance to Donald Trump and Benjamin
Netanyahu apply more broadly, when we consider the
Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) bloc, now adorned with
five (or six) others? In 2023 at the Johannesburg summit, new BRICS were
added: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), with
Saudi Arabia an ambiguous invitee (Riyadh has never formally accepted).
In early 2025 another new full member joined: Indonesia.
And at the Kazan Summit in 2024 hosted by Vladimir Putin, there were
more ‘partner’ invitations – a category reflecting the bloc’s
indigestion after the 2023 expansion – offered to Belarus, Bolivia,
Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan and
Vietnam, all of which were accepted. (Only Algeria and Turkiye turned
down partner status.)
As a result of the apparent strengthening of the bloc, by July 2025, the
‘geopolitical economy’ podcaster Ben Norton could remark
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBbmZ17SQe4> with unparalleled
BRICS-/hype/:
“The Non-Aligned Movement was founded in the 1960s by former formerly
colonized countries almost all with socialist governments, the initial
founders of the Non-Aligned Movement, saying that they refused to go
along with US imperialism in the first cold war against the Soviet Union
and other socialist countries. So, BRICS is now bringing back this
anti-colonial mantle. They’ve picked up the anti-colonial mantle and
they’re fighting against US dollar hegemony which is a which is a form
of imperialism. They’re fighting against western imperialism.”
But the BRICS bloc is not up for this fight, it is now apparent. In a
March 9 Johannesburg discussion with leading local political broadcaster
Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, Tricontinental director Vijay Prashad warned
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCnVCnfFbrc>, “If the BRICS countries
don't wake up to the reality of trying to stop this conflict by any
means possible, trying to stop this conflict now, if they don't
recognize this reality, the entire project of peace and development is
in jeopardy.”
Likewise, just after Trumpanyahu began bombing Iran, ambitious/hopes/
for BRICS were promoted <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZZ8FhbuI5I> by
renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs on March 2:
“It’s not only Trump but there’s no brake, there’s no foot on the brake.
This is only an accelerator towards expanded war right now. And the only
way that it can stop is if the BRICS countries – and that means India,
that means Brazil, that means Russia, that means China, that means South
Africa and others – and it’s Iran, which is a member of the BRICS, says,
‘This is not the way the world can work.’ They have to stand up to
American hegemony. This is the only way the world can be safe. And so
this is actually a responsibility of the BRICS right now, which is the
only standing bulwark against America’s global empire.”
This ‘only standing bulwark’ is, in reality breaking up, or ‘spalling,’
i.e. (as I’ve mentioned
<https://www.cadtm.org/The-G7-prepares-a-divide-and-conquer-trap-as-BRICS-countries-spall-fall-and-try>
before), a construction-industry term referring to a process in which –
mainly due to the freezing-thawing cycle – “a wall’s masonry and bricks
crack, crumble, flake, and even pop out of the wall.”
*Running-dog India should be expelled, and so should any other
collaborating with Israel (?)*
From hype to hope to /helplessness/
<https://www.cadtm.org/The-BRICS-Johannesburg-summit-s-hype-hope-and-helplessness>
seems like the inevitable emotional slide-away for BRICS-watching
multipolaristas. By March 11, one of the most ebullient of multipolar
journalists, Thailand-based Brazilian journalist Pepe Escobar, despaired
– on Danny Haiphong’s podcast – that the BRICS bloc was now spalling
beyond repair. So Escobar boldly recommended
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwOyPfuppnI> that one in particular be
popped out by the others:
“India betrayed two top BRICS sequentially, Russia and Iran. That’s
extremely serious. This would be grounds for expulsion of India from
BRICS... The problem is what’s going to happen to BRICS this year,
considering that India is the BRICS chair in this year when they
betrayed two BRICS.”
The next day, Escobar told <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GoB8_DOl20>
a podcast hosted by a former Fox News legal commentator Judge Andrew
Napolitano, “BRICS would have grounds to expel India considering that
India betrayed sequentially two top BRICS, founding member Russia and a
new member Iran in several levels because of American pressure. When the
Trump administration told India you cannot buy Russian oil, the Indian
said okay, okay, master.”
(Iran was forgiving <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ0BRkiIJEU>: on
March 14 two tankers carrying liquefied natural gas to India were
allowed through the Strait of Hormuz.)
On March 11, Escobar diagnosed
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwOyPfuppnI> the bloc’s feebleness: “At
the moment, BRICS is in a coma. It’s very painful to admit it, but we
have to be realists. It’s in a deep, deep coma, blown up by one of its
founding members. And obviously, don’t expect anything coming from
Brazil or South Africa.”
Escobar recalled <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwOyPfuppnI> that on
February 26, “48 hours before the decapitation strike that killed
Ayatollah Khamenei and very important people at the top of the
government in Tehran, Modi was in Israel being best buddies with the war
criminal Netanyahu. Because he wanted to clinch weapons deals with
Israel, which they did, by the way. So we have a founding BRICS member
completely aligned with Israel, which for the other BRICS, practically,
all the other ones and the partners as well, this is unthinkable.”
But sadly, it’s not so ‘unthinkable’: the reality of economic alignment
can be discerned when BRICS hucksters open their minds – and finally
question – the actual content of supposedly-multipolar ‘thinking’,
/which is merely profiteering./
For since the outset of the BRICS bloc in the late 2000s, and even more
so since the genocide began in late 2023, its capitalists and state
agencies have been lucratively linked to Israel’s apartheid economy
<https://www.cadtm.org/Why-are-the-BRICS-countries-not-condemning-the-ongoing-genocide-in-Gaza>://
* South African coal is sent from mines owned jointly by Glencore
<https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/glencores-israeli-bound-coal-becomes-the-next-test-of-south-africas-anti-genocide-stance/>
and by the richest black South African, Patrice Motsepe
<https://groundup.org.za/article/calls-for-african-rainbow-minerals-to-stop-selling-coal-to-israel/>
(President Cyril Ramaphosa’s brother-in-law and potentially, his
replacement <https://pm27.org.za/who-we-are/> in spite of recent
denials
<https://www.ewn.co.za/2026/03/06/motsepe-denies-presidential-ambitions-amid-pm27-campaign-rumours>)
– resulting in the primary supply for 15% of Israel’s grid
electricity
<https://www.miningweekly.com/article/south-africa-boosts-coal-exports-to-israel-after-colombia-ban-2025-12-17>
by late 2025, after Colombia finally imposed a boycott mid-year –
and yet while the National Union of Metalworkers of SA
<https://www.facebook.com/NumsaSocial/posts/numsa-stands-in-solidarity-with-palestinians-and-we-support-calls-for-south-afri/1588303328795871/#:~:text=Suzanne%20Vega%20South%20Africa%20stands%20in%20solidarity,and%20mothers%20fought%20for%2C%E2%80%9D%20BDS%20South%20Africa>
and SA Transport and Allied Workers Union
<https://politeknik-international.org/pi6500/> are both
/rhetorically /opposed to genocide and some staff do protest with
Palestine-solidarity activists
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po8pNvhwbRw&t=14s>, their members
facilitate the supply by digging and transporting the coal, just as
the /rhetorically-solidaristic Hague Group
<https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/3/5/israel-puts-a-target-on-the-back-of-the-rules-based-order>/
has repeatedly turned a blind eye to co-chair Pretoria’s fuelling of
the Israeli military;
* Russian-speakers in Israel, estimated at from 1.5 million
<https://themedialine.org/top-stories/strained-sometimes-violent-relations-russian-speaking-israelis-face-divide-around-war-in-ukraine/>
to ‘nearly two million’ (according to Putin
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/putin-says-he-considers-israel-a-russian-speaking-country/>),
provide the genocidal military with 15% of its soldiers (around
30,000), and in addition to wheat and metals, Russia sells coal
<https://www.miningweekly.com/article/south-africa-boosts-coal-exports-to-israel-after-colombia-ban-2025-12-17>
and – in just the two years since the genocide began in 2023 – made
105 oil transfers
<https://oilchange.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Behind-the-Barrel-3.pdf>
comprising 30% of the total crude and 45% of refined imported, via
Novorossiysk, originating from BRICS-partner Kazakhstan;
* Chinese drones (tens of thousands by now) made by DJI
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/8/israel-retrofitting-dji-commercial-drones-to-bomb-and-surveil-gaza>
and Autel
<https://www.972mag.com/drones-grenades-gaza-chinese-autel/> buzz
Gaza and the West Bank, in spite of activist
<https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/1/21/i-dream-of-a-quiet-drone-free-gaza>
and human-rights NGO demands
<https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6387/Chinese-companies-must-prevent-their-arms,-drones-from-being-used-in-Israeli-international-crimes>
their supply be halted (even before one helped kill Yahya Sinwar
<https://www.jns.org/hero-drones-part-of-the-platoon/>), and
moreover, a Chinese parastatal owns
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-inaugurates-new-haifa-port-terminal-in-expected-boost-for-economy/>
the new Haifa Bayport and another built
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/china-firm-to-build-new-ashdod-union-buster-port/>
the ‘union-busting’ Ashdod harbour, which together have facilitated
a 5% annual increase in bilateral trade since 2021
<https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-country/chn/partner/isr>,
confirming Netanyahu’s 2017 term
<https://www.kehila.org/p/netanyahu-in-china-i-believe-this-is-a-marriage-made-in-heaven?utm_source=news.kehila.org&utm_medium=redirect&utm_campaign=legacy>
for the two economies, namely, a “marriage made in heaven”;
* Brazilian parastatal Petrobras supplies oil (at one point meeting 9%
of Israeli needs directly, and from 2024 operating via Italian
middlemen
<https://oilchange.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Behind-the-Barrel-3.pdf>);
* New Delhi assures a strengthened Israeli-Indian military alliance
<https://www.plutobooks.com/product/hostile-homelands/>, the
September 2025 Bilateral Investment Treaty
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/8/israel-india-sign-investment-deal-as-smotrich-welcomed-in-new-delhi>,
and Modi’s ‘Special Strategic Partnership’ solidaristic visit to the
Knesset
<https://www.mea.gov.in/bilateral-documents.htm?dtl/40828/India__Israel_Joint_Statement_February_26_2026>
featuring ‘immense progress’ in ‘defence, security, and more’;
* the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has since the 2020 Abraham Accords
support – with trade – led by UAE exports including oil and diamonds
<https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-country/isr/partner/are> –
soaring
<https://tradingeconomics.com/united-arab-emirates/exports/israel>
to more than $2 billion;
* Egypt has done recent oil deals
<https://oilchange.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Behind-the-Barrel-3.pdf>
with Israel, agreed
<https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/israels-leviathan-signs-35-billion-natural-gas-supply-deal-with-egypt-2025-08-07/?utm_source=chatgpt.com>
in 2025 to facilitate $35 billion worth of Leviathan gas field
exports, opposes
<https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2026/03/02/egypt-offers-a-mix-of-messages-about-the-u-s-israel-war-in-iran/>
Iran’s firing on U.S. bases in the region, and offers U.S.-German
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241114-the-truth-about-egypts-entanglement-in-supporting-israel/>
military logistical support for the genocidaires;
* Given extremely warm Addis-Tel Aviv relations
<https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-835930>, Ethiopia
abstained in 2024
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/19/un-demands-israel-end-occupation-of-palestine-how-did-your-country-vote>
and 2025
<https://unwatch.org/2025-unga-resolutions-on-israel-vs-rest-of-the-world/>
UN votes condemning Israeli’s occupation of Palestine, while 170,000
Israelis of Ethiopian descent serve as IDF soldiers – losing lives
<https://themedialine.org/top-stories/everyones-sons-ethiopian-israelis-shoulder-heavy-toll-in-gaza-war/>
at more than double their rate of residency (4.5 to 2%) – not to
mention their role as low-paid workers suffering systemic racism;
* After the genocide began, there was rising Indonesian-Israeli trade
<https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/article-870848>,
especially huge recent palm oil and electronics exports
<https://tradingeconomics.com/indonesia/exports/israel> from Indonesia.
/So they should all be expelled from the BRICS,/by Escobar’s logic of
banishing ‘unthinkable’ alliances with Israeli genocide-capitalism,
especially since nearly all such relations have intensified since 2023,
leaving only Iran in the bloc. The very idea of Boycott Divestment
Sanctions against the genocidaires, has been expelled by the BRICS elites.
*Board of war, genocide and recolonisation*
Even more unthinkable would be formally joining Trump’s sordid new
‘Board of Peace,’ a network of 28 imperialist, subimperialist and
peripheral rightwing-ruled states, all of which are guilty of
substantial human rights violations, according
<https://theintercept.com/2026/03/02/trump-board-peace-human-right-abuses/>
to /The Intercept’s /Nick Turse. Yet six of these are BRICS members and
partners.
Trump announced the Board last October – and tellingly launched it at
the Davos World Economic Forum on January 22 – in order, first, to
recolonise Gaza under conditions of ongoing Israeli genocide and
displacement, and to then extend its tentacles across the world as a
mafioso-type enforcement gang. The Board may become an anti-UN
run-around strategy
<https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/trump-launch-board-peace-that-some-fear-rivals-un-2026-01-22/>
in case the General Assembly belatedly grows hostile to Washington’s
brazen imperialism, e.g. one day perhaps even attempting a ‘Uniting for
Peace <http://un-documents.net/a5r377.htm>’ (U4P) strategy to counter
U.S.-Israeli warring.
As Naomi Klein observed <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu1k_mzzwnU>,
the Board of Peace is a ‘parody of a colonial body’ and a form of
‘disaster capitalism.’ It’s obvious why the Board of Peace was invented:
“They don't want there to be a UN, because the UN represents as weak and
disappointing as it is, it represents the possibility of accountability,
whether it's on a climate change, whether it's on genocide.”
The UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague is one site
for such accountability but on March 12, Washington joined
<https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/united-states-declaration-of-intervention-genocide-in-the-gaza-strip-icj.pdf.pdf>
Israel in opposing the South African case there – originally filed at
the end of 2023 – because the slowpoke “Court should maintain its
standard for inferring intent. Lowering the standard risks broadening
the application of the term ‘genocide’ such that it no longer carries
its original weight and meaning, and invites attempts to misuse the
Genocide Convention as a gateway for bringing extraneous disputes before
the Court.” (In reality, South Africa’s original statement
<https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/South-Africa-v-Israel.pdf>
to the Court proved genocide intent beyond a doubt.)
Trump’s genocide-denialism was, of course, expected. But perhaps as also
would be expected, Pretoria found very limited support from the other 19
BRICS members and partners: only Brazil, Cuba, Egypt and Malaysia made
official submissions backing the genocide charge.
Still, even without more BRICS allies, the slackers in Pretoria could
and should have done far more on this front: first by going back to the
ICJ for more injunctions against Israeli genocide, as
Palestinian-American journalist Sam Husseini argued
<https://mg.co.za/thought-leader/opinion/2026-02-19-how-the-us-government-sabotaged-the-genocide-convention-orders-against-israel/>
in his recent visit to South Africa, and second, by endorsing and
activating U4P – so as to assert General Assembly jurisdiction (against
the Security Council) – following Colombia’s leader Gustavo Petro
(unfulfilled) promise
<https://truthout.org/articles/security-council-shamefully-grants-colonial-domination-over-palestine-to-the-us/?utm_source=chatgpt.com>
to do so last September.
In contrast to offering Palestine solidarity, a half-dozen BRICS members
and partners joined Trump at the Board of Peace inaugural February 19
conference at the ‘Trump Institute of Peace’ in Washington: Egypt,
Indonesia, Kazakhstan, UAE, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. (On March 2,
Indonesia temporarily paused its participation, yet in late February
Jakarta’s nationalist-populist leader Prabowo Subianto had offered 8000
troops to enforce Trump’s ‘Riviera of the Middle East’
<https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy7mmpljze7o> vision requiring
massive forced displacements of Gazans.)
India was also a formal observer at that Board of Peace session, whereas
– unlike European countries which turned down membership – Brazil, China
and Russia were invited by Trump but did /not /immediately reject his
overtures. Moscow even appeared open
<https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/trump-launch-board-peace-that-some-fear-rivals-un-2026-01-22/>
to spending Trump’s requested $1 billion membership fee – ‘to support
the Palestinian people’ – using funds frozen after the February 2022
invasion of Ukraine.
Worse, Russia and China had let the malignant Board of Peace notion
fester last November 17 at the Security Council, by failing to veto
<https://truthout.org/articles/security-council-shamefully-grants-colonial-domination-over-palestine-to-the-us/?utm_source=chatgpt.com>
the re-colonisation strategy
<https://docs.un.org/en/s/res/2803%282025%29> Trump imposed, on grounds
the deal was then actively supported by BRICS members Egypt, Indonesia
and UAE (and other Arab tyrannies) as well as by the quisling
Palestinian Authority.
(Three other BRICS members – South Africa, Ethiopia and Iran – did not
receive invitations. Here, we are not counting as a BRICS member Saudi
Arabia – which if included would increase the weight of the running-dog
case – because it has an in-again out-again posture.)
*The geopolitical economy of running dogs and their Western canine handlers*
All this leaves an extremely complicated, contradiction-riddled
political terrain on which the BRICS as a whole appears to have simply
slipped from the earlier ‘alternative-to-Western-imperialism’
/rhetorical/ foothold.
In a February 24 podcast introducing his latest book, /The Story of
Capital, /Marxist geographer David Harvey explains
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y7YLX-ASGY> why such geopolitical
fracturing cannot simply be read off countries’ corporate economic
interests:
“The interplay between the capitalist and territorial logics of power is
a defining feature of modern geopolitics. Marx noted that the concept of
national wealth creeps into the work of the economist and its
competition over that national wealth becomes predominant. But under the
regime of competing ethnic nationalisms, the production of wealth by
capital is primarily put to work to serve national interests rather than
those of capital alone. These two logics are not merely competing
forces, but ones that are deeply intertwined, influencing how states
navigate global and domestic challenges. The dual role of the
state-finance nexus becomes particularly evident during crisis. The
state as both an enabler and a mediator of accumulation occupies a
central political position in capital social formation. However, its
dual logics of power, capitalist power and territorial power, create
tensions that shape the trajectory of global and domestic politics.”
In short, even if the BRICS are generally united (excepting Iran) as a
subimperial pack of hounds when profiting from Israel’s genocide,
naturally, there are bound to be major differences between the West and
BRICS given the depth and breadth of world capitalist crisis
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/12/30/africa-deindustrializes-due-to-chinas-overproduction-and-trumps-tariffs/>.
These differences include military and oil alliances, as are being
played out in the Gulf now.
After all, in any imperial/subimperial relationship in which
occasionally-divergent state-territorial logic and corporate expansion
generate all manner of frictions, there exists what Ruy Mauro Marini
termed ‘/antagonistic/ cooperation
<https://internationalviewpoint.org/Imperialism-as-Antagonistic-Cooperation>‘
(as he put it in his classic 1973 /Dialectics of Dependency/
<https://monthlyreview.org/9781583679821/>).
Such collaboration becomes, ultimately, more durable due to mutual
interest in improving the global terrain for capital accumulation and
profiteering, than might be suggested by multipolar rhetoric or than is
indicated by sporadic sites of struggle:
* the current Iranian fight-back and closure of the Strait of Hormuz;
* China’s brief threat to ban sales of rare-earth minerals to Trump’s
U.S. and its eventual retaking of Taiwan;
* the South African case against Israeli genocide at The Hague; and
* Russia’s 2014 and 2022 invasions of Ukraine.
These /incidents /of apparent anti-imperialism create genuine
antagonisms, to be sure. But the overarching process is cooperation
between imperial and subimperial powers, especially when it comes to
surplus value extraction from the world’s workers, super-exploitation of
the world’s women involved in social reproduction, and the abuse of
nature as a ‘free gift,’ to quote Marx.
*BRICS promote global-corporate power under the cover of multipolarism*
To those ends, the BRICS elites advance the agenda of corporate
imperialism because they are completely committed to strengthening the
tools of /neoliberal /multilateral power on behalf of their largest
firms – especially the deadly fossil fuel industries – and banks.
Consider the case of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, so
vital for the sake of future generations and potential avoidance of
planetary ecocide. But today, the tragic conclusion we must draw
<https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/15/2/92> is that both G7 Western
politicians and BRICS ruling elites continue working closely together to
prevent bans on fossil fuels or greenhouse-gas emissions cuts to the
extent necessary for fending off climate catastrophe.
Starting with the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, then U.S. President
Barack Obama “blew up the United Nations,” as Bill McKibben explained
<https://grist.org/article/2009-12-18-with-climate-agreement-obama-guts-progressive-values/>
at the time. “He formed a league of super-polluters, and would-be
super-polluters. China, the U.S., and India don’t want anyone
controlling their use of coal in any meaningful way. It is a coalition
of foxes who will together govern the henhouse.” (South Africa and
Brazil were also part of formulating that deal in a secret side room.)
Since then, the G7 and BRICS have also been utterly unwilling to
acknowledge polluter-pays climate-debt obligations to poorer countries
and to their own internal victims of extreme weather – even after last
July’s International Court of Justice advisory opinion insisting on the
validity of reparations demands
<https://media.un.org/unifeed/en/asset/d342/d3429237> from 27 youth from
a sinking Tuvalu.
Indeed, given how much the world’s corporations and banks rely upon the
International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organisation
(WTO) for a ‘rules-based order,’ it is no surprise to find BRICS
leaders’ annual statements supporting these agencies of imperial power
<https://www.cadtm.org/The-BRICS-are-the-new-defenders-of-free-trade-the-WTO-the-IMF-and-the-World>.
The BRICS currently lead the calls for their refunding and
relegitimization, even at a time Trump’s (occasional) paleo-conservative
hatred of ‘globalists’ signals
<https://monthlyreview.org/articles/the-trump-doctrine-and-the-new-maga-imperialism/>
his retreat from climate summits, refusal to boost the Bretton Woods
Institutions’ funding, and sabotage of the WTO.
Why, when neoliberal multilateral institutions are more shaky than ever,
do the BRICS give them unwavering support? Simply, for the sake of their
capitalists’
<https://www.cadtm.org/The-BRICS-are-the-new-defenders-of-free-trade-the-WTO-the-IMF-and-the-World>
own accumulation strategies: global value chain exploitation,
raw-materials extractivism, Intellectual Property protection, unchecked
emissions and fossil fuel exploration, sleazy trade and investment
deals, and debt squeezes on poorer economies where BRICS banks stand
exposed.
If Mao warned against “domestic and foreign reactionaries, the
imperialists and their running dogs,” maybe – in spite of select
/surface appearances – /that epithet “describes the BRICS well,” as
Arundhati Roy might also conclude. //
Mostly, though, the subimperial BRICS bloc is the rabies-addled ‘dog
that didn’t bark,’ when confronted by even Trump’s excesses of
imperialism and Netanyahu’s genocide. But occasionally when some in the
pack do bark left, we should not be distracted or surprised when – as
any Palestinian knows – they simultaneously bite right.
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