The Growth Of BRICS And The Decline Of The Garden

Value judgments aside over what’s good and bad and who’s right and wrong, events of today put a major tear in the U.S. narrative. Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been invited to join BRICS as of January 1, 2024.

It is no surprise that Saudi Arabia has been a crucial component of U.S. foreign policy, being that it is the world’s largest exporter of crude oil. Saudi Arabia was foundational in creating and sustaining the petrodollar, and the petrodollar remains a key to maintaining the strength of the U.S. dollar. With discussion about BRICS creating an alternative to the U.S. dollar as a means of global trade, and with many countries now deciding to do businesses without using the U.S. dollar due to the many sanctions on founding BRIC member Russia and many other countries, the addition of Saudi Arabia to an already powerful grouping of countries interested in cooperative agreements is noteworthy, to say the least.

What’s even more surprising is that Saudi Arabia AND Iran will be joining BRICS together at the same time. Saudi Arabia and Iran have not only been the polar ends of Islamic political struggles, the antagonism between the two countries is something the U.S. has worked hard to cultivate. It is not merely useful to the U.S., it is necessary. With the UAE joining also, BRICS countries will now account for around 80 percent of all the world’s oil. Given the fact that Venezuela is considered to have the world’s largest reserves of oil, and given the fact that Venezuela is anything but on good terms with the United States, and this has to be concerning to the people whose job it is to make sure the U.S. maintains its dominance over the global economy.

You have to understand the grip of fear the U.S. holds over the other nations of this world to appreciate how significant this shift to creating an alternative to the U.S. economic system is. Most nations understand quite well that if you do not do things the way Americans want you to, you may be subjected to crushing sanctions, coups, and even war. Have no doubt, fear and coercion play a major part in U.S. economic relations with foreign nations. That is, if those foreign nations aren’t already trapped in an endless debt cycle by the likes of the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. Read Confessions Of An Economic Hitman to gain some understanding of this. Any nation that is willing to displease the United States, to whatever degree, does so either out of desperation or because it sees a genuine opportunity to get out from under U.S. domination. The fact that there are nations lining up to join BRICS is indicative of something.

What must worry the U.S. also is that their lapdog…I mean ally, France, asked if they could attend the current BRICS conference and were given a response along the lines of “Not now, darling, the grownups are talking.” This is not a position any western European nation has been in for a long time, and perhaps never when dealing with the likes of Brazil, Russia, India, China, or South Africa.

It should be noted that of the 11 nations that will soon make up BRICS, only one of them is European, and that only by non-Europeans standards. Russia has not been a part of Europe in any meaningful way since the time of kings, kaisers, emperors and tsars, and even then Russia was a little too Asian for them. The Germans and British were permitted to be royalty in Russia, but the reverse was never permitted to any great extent.

I mentioned at the beginning that the events of today created a major tear in the narrative. It tears not only at the narrative of the United States, but at Europe’s as well, and all the U.S. and European colonies to boot. We are witnessing the rise of an economic power base that consists almost exclusively of non-Western countries that have found an alternative to a global economy dictated by Europeans and the European colonies that have more or less run the world for the last half-millennium. That is a seismic shift, and in the arena of economics where security is of primary importance, seismic shifts are not appreciated. Expect the significance of this day to be downplayed, scoffed at, ignored. Narrative control is crucial for a country that maintains economic dominance over the global economy not from what it provides for the rest of the world by what it can get others to agree to and believe in. Vladimir Putin calls it the empire of lies, Chris Hedges calls it the empire of illusion, but the almost undeniable fact is, The United States is known for Hollywood, marketing, advertising, flash, and spectacle. Stripped of those things, the U.S. is not so different from a certain emperor from a Hans Christian Anderson story. Stripped of narrative, the current world order is going to appear more than a little underdressed.