The roadblocks ahead for the Sovereign Harmonious Multi-Nodal World
The Kazan lab has laid out several geoeconomic road maps, and is seriously taking the inevitable roadblocks into account.
We will need weeks, months, years to fully grasp the enormity of what took place in Kazan during the annual BRICS summit under the Russian presidency.
For the moment let’s cherish arguably the most appropriate definition of BRICS as a laboratory of the future: this lab, against nearly insurmountable odds, is actively engaged in creating a Sovereign Harmonious Multi-Nodal World.
Of course the challenges are immense. In his post-BRICS assessment, when addressing the sustainability of supply chains, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov – the top Russian sherpa throughout the year, performing impeccably – stressed the “unacceptability of illegitimate unilateral sanctions applied by the Western group against many members of BRICS, linking sanctions with the climate agenda and human rights.”
This is only one of several topics of contention that the BRICS insist must be addressed as part of a – possible? – deep reform of the current system of international relations.
The extremely detailed – and quite polite – Kazan Declaration, outlining all that needs to be reformed, may not have been forceful enough to assuage the mounting anger and perennial fears expressed non-stop by the Global Majority.
Criticism that the Kazan Declaration in many aspects just replicates silver-wrapped blah blah blah peddled by the G7 and the G20 (whose summit, next month in Rio, is actually being hijacked by the G7) does proceed.
For a number of reasons, including internal disagreements, the BRICS – defined by President Putin as not an “anti-Western” but a “non-Western” group – are proceeding with extreme caution not to directly antagonize that dangerous cornered animal, the “rules-based international order” Hydra.
The Kazan Declaration is not a revolutionary document; rather it is a letter of intentions for the whole Global South.
It does not go against “global governance” and the “central role of the UN” – as much as the UN has been reduced to an empty shell, coerced by its dodgy deals with the World Economic Forum (WEF), WHO and NATO.
It does not go against the leading role of the IMF in global finance.
It does not go against the UN Agenda 2030 – redacted by the WEF and the Davos gang – for sustainable development supported by hazy “shareholders”, an euphemism for Big Pharma, Big Tech and Big Banking.
It does not go against the WHO and its “central coordinating role” in solidifying the “international pandemic prevention, preparedness and response system” – as in the next pre-planned/predicted pandemic is just around the corner.
And it does not go against the dreaded UN Pact for the Future, which is essentially the softly softly implementation of the Davos-penned Great Reset.
Lab moving to testing models non-stop
What must be scrutinized from now on is the “devil in the details” process of establishing facts on the ground – as in President Putin in Kazan suggesting a new BRICS funding/financing platform bypassing the IMF and the World Bank. That’s what establishing a post-Bretton Woods system means in practice.
It’s still a long way away. Kazan is just the departure station for the journey. When the BRICS+ high-speed train gets there – the current 9, plus still indecisive Saudi Arabia, plus the 13 new partners – it will be imperative to form a BRICS secretariat, and develop a joint, integrated Economic Development, Trade, and Defense policy.
And then, arguably in the next decade, the BRICS may finally agree on a New Reserve Currency – which may be called the virtual BRICS currency -, quite similar to the IMF’s SDR (Special Drawing Rights) mechanism, but totally independent from the IMF and the U.S. dollar: a currency based on the weighted average of all BRICS nations’ currencies.
Yaroslav Lissovolik has been a crack analyst of the BRICS evolution since the past decade. In a working lunch in Moscow nearly six years ago, he offered me a concise presentation of his idea of creating a BRICS currency called 5R – then based on the ruble, renminbi, real, rupee and rand.
Lissovolik has noted how BRICS in Kazan have expressed support to the WTO “as the core of a rules-based multilateral trading system” (translation: not rocking the boat for the moment).
BRICS also expressed support for the IMF “that is at the center of the Global Financial Safety Net of the world economy” – while asking for “expanding the share and the representation of the Global South” (that will fall on deaf Hegemon ears). BRICS also supports the G20 (let’s see what transpires in practice at the summit in Rio next month).
When it comes to the NDB – the Shanghai-based BRICS bank – now that’s where the action should be. Lissovolik noted how BRICS is making the right moves: asking for greater use by the NDB of national currencies (for the moment it’s a pitiful less than 30%); and inciting it to attract more members and finance more projects across the Global South.
When it comes to the BRICS’ Contingency Reserve Arrangement (CRA), Lissovolik correctly notes there’s still too much to do. The CRA, as the joint statement by the BRICS Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors issued a week before Kazan has outlined, offers financial support “during the times of balance of payments crises and safeguards their economic stability”. What the BRICS need to do, fast, is to incorporate all the currencies of the 9 members to the basket.
Finally there’s the Holy Grail: cross-border settlements. As I examined here – and that was plain to see in Kazan – BRICS are still in the stage of discussing and testing models. They are all on the table now – and quite a few will be tested within the next few months.
Lissovolik pointed to three “tracks” that should pick up speed as fast as possible: trade liberalization (ongoing); BRICS single currency (still a long way away); and “cooperation among the Central Banks of BRICS economies in the sphere of CBDC inter-operability” (the Russian Ministry of Finance is ahead of everyone on it; breakthroughs expected soon).
Welcome to the BRICS North-South New Silk Road
The big BRICS breakthroughs are on geoeconomics – all revolving around connectivity corridors.
First and foremost, the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC): multi-modal (ship, rail, road); 7,200 km long; crisscrossing Eurasia, de facto connecting the Baltic – and the Arctic – via the Caspian with the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.
Strategically, the INTSC not only connects three top BRICS – Russia, Iran, and India – but further on down the road, also Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkiye, Ukraine (post-war), Belarus, Oman and Syria, with Bulgaria as an observer member. The INSTC will have three major axes: Western (Russia-Azerbaijan-Iran); Trans-Caspian (via the Russian ports of Astrakhan and Makhachkala); and Eastern (Russia-Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran by rail).
Call it the BRICS North-South New Silk Road. It’s no wonder that Putin in Kazan singled out the INTSC – alongside the Arctic Silk Road (that’s the Chinese denomination) – as the top two developing connecting corridors of the future. The INSTC will allow transit time cargo of only 15 to 24 days, compared with 45 to 60 days via the Suez Canal.
Then there’s the East-West Transport Corridor – encompassing Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea and Kazakhstan, based mostly on the 10,000 km long Trans-Siberian Railway, soon to be upgraded. And of course the Mongolian Steppe Road, planned ten years ago and bound to include a 997 km long Russia-China expressway.
On top of all these three corridors, Russia wants to shape a variant: a Central Eurasia Transport Corridor from Russia to Mongolia and Xinjiang in China, in fact upgrading the Trans-Mongolia Railway, a branch of the Trans-Siberian that starts in Russia near Ulan-Ude, in the lands of the Buryats.
The Northern Sea Route – the Russian terminology for the Arctic Silk Road – is totally freaking out the NATOstan sphere and its Nordic Council, which are predictably way behind Moscow in developing Arctic infrastructure and only obsessed with militarization.
Putin has not ceased to stress the Russian federal push for the construction/upgrading of Arctic airports, ports and air defense as well as the astonishing ramping up of the size – and scope – of the Russian nuclear and diesel icebreaker fleet, plus the launch of space-based Arctic monitoring systems.
Last but not least, Russia’s BRICS partners have been heavily encouraged to be on board of economic and scientific cooperation projects across the Arctic.
So in a nutshell, the Kazan lab has laid out several geoeconomic road maps, and is seriously taking the inevitable roadblocks into account. What matters is that the high-speed train has already left the Kazan station; now it’s just a matter of picking up inexorable, irreversible speed.
The roadblocks ahead for the Sovereign Harmonious Multi-Nodal World
datanotation
This article is not based on facts, it’s just the opinion of its author and the embellishment of something that was just a talk show very similar to the WEF talk shows in Davos (with by the way many of the participants going to both talk shows).
While the BRICS talk a lot, nothing concrete has been achieved.
Example: strong “condemnation” of the genocide perpetrated by Israel and their US/EU vassals. Great.
Action? Zero.
And Putin to temper and moderate the “condemnation” right after so as not to upset too much his zionist friends…
Where is the international force made of Russia, China, India, S.A and Brazil armies to force Israel to end its genocide?
All talk, no walk…
Same for the end of the dollar… China has already gone back on making payments in dollars and left Russia with India only paying in local currencies.
As for Brazil, Lula “fell in the shower” (lol)… And therefore excused himself like a child. No wonder, he was never elected, stole the elections and is the utmost US puppet in Sur America after Milei…
As for India, the globalist stooge Modi can’t do more sucking-up to mass murderer Netanyahu and play on all sides for the sole benefit, not of the country he’s supposed to defend, but of the global “elite” that put him in power.
They even called for giving more power to the unaccountable, unelected and undemocratic criminal organization that dares to call itself the UN…
The BRICS are the backdoor of the agenda 2030/great reset project started by Western oligarchies that they pretend to fight.
It’s basically the same thing but presented by the B team…
All those present at Kazan were full to their knees into the covid genocidal operation and that seems to have escaped Mr Escobar.
The problem with communists is that they don’t care about facts and reality, it’s only narrative and propaganda as long as it goes in their direction.
Botched_Lobotomy
Its amazingly naive to think that all we need is a new system governmental rule and everything will be just fine. Any system run by humans will eventually be corrupted.
shanif
Here are the declarations made in Kazan by the BRICS (compiled and summarized by Edward Slavsquat, if you want the full text, it’s here:
Kazan Declaration – http://static.kremlin.ru/media/events/files/en/RosOySvLzGaJtmx2wYFv0lN4NSPZploG.pdf
Would you like to know what BRICS just declared?
https://edwardslavsquat.substack.com/p/would-you-like-know-what-brics-just
Read it and you’ll know that, as James Corbett already exposed few years ago, BRICS is just a phony opposition:
https://corbettreport.com/phoney-opposition-the-truth-about-the-brics/
Quotes:
“JAMES CORBETT: We have been conditioned our entire lives to expect that anything that opposes a demonstrably evil entity must itself be good. Whether it be the Star Wars Rebel Alliance fighting the Galactic Empire or the heroic Allies fighting the villainous Axis or even the more nuanced case of a valiant Serpico fighting the corruption within his own NYPD, we are almost invariably given narratives with identifiable “good guys” fighting risible “bad guys.”
But when it comes to the machinations of global geopolitics, this is completely the wrong lens through which to understand what is happening.
Much more to the point would be the metaphor of rival gangs competing for territory. It is not the case that the Bloods are the “good guys” and the Crips the “bad guys” or vice versa; they are both criminal networks that use brutality and violence to enforce their control over given areas and to terrorize others.
Similarly, if we understand that rivalries between various international organizations (to the extent that they exist at all) are really only battles between gangsters for control over the global turf, we can more clearly understand that it is not a question of choosing sides in the struggle but of opposing the very ideologies of centralized, hierarchical control that make these institutions possible.”
(…)
AND THE SOLUTIONS :
“DEVON DOUGLAS-BOWERS: What would you say are our alternatives to trusting in these “resistance” forces and how do we keep hope alive?
JAMES CORBETT: If what we are combating is, as I posit, essentially two (or more) gangs competing for turf, then it is self-evident that we gain nothing from supporting one gang over another other than the vague hope that the other gang will treat us more kindly.
The real solution to centralized, hierarchical international institutions created by and for the interests of the oligarchical elite are decentralized, non-hierarchical relations created by and for the grassroots.
One aspect of this decentralized approach is the peer-to-peer economy, i.e., the notion that technology is enabling humanity for the first time to seek out and source answers to their problems instantaneously and internationally without recourse to unwieldy institutions like the World Bank, IMF, BRICS, AIIB, UN, NDB, WTO, WHO, etc.
– Through open-source collaboration people can construct more detailed (and accurate) reports of ongoing events than can ever come from slanted mainstream media journalists who are beholden to corporate interests.
– Through complementary currencies, LETS programs, crypto-currencies, barter exchanges, peer-to-peer lending and other means, both high-tech and low-tech, people can carry on economic transactions even when national (or regional) currencies fail. People are finding economic, social and other forms of support through grassroots community organizations that deliver the type of aid that national governments are incapable of providing. Collaborative learning and internet technologies have enabled a flowering of auto-didacticism that is rendering traditional government-sponsored and highly centralized and authoritarian forms of education all but obsolete.
In short, there is a revolution that is happening all around us, even as we speak. It does not require guns or bombs or pitchforks or protests, only participation.
And it is threatening to turn the ideology of statism and its associated forms of centralization on its head, and international mafias like the IMF/World Bank and the BRICS along with it.
The only question is whether we are discerning enough to perceive it, wise enough to understand it, and brave enough to see it through to its completion.”
kus hovna
“One aspect of this decentralized approach is the peer-to-peer economy, i.e., the notion that technology is enabling humanity for the first time to seek out and source answers to their problems instantaneously and internationally without recourse to unwieldy institutions like the World Bank, IMF, BRICS, AIIB, UN, NDB, WTO, WHO, etc.”
THIS IS NOT TRUE. Just read the kazan declaration here:
static.kremlin.ru/media/events/files/en/RosOySvLzGaJtmx2wYFv0lN4NSPZploG.pdf
And excerpts here for those who want a summary:
https://edwardslavsquat.substack.com/p/would-you-like-know-what-brics-just
” “We reiterate our support to the central coordinating role of the World Health Organization in the implementation of multilateral international efforts to protect public health from infectious diseases and epidemics and commit to reform and strengthen the international pandemic prevention, preparedness and response system. ”
” “We support the initiatives of the BRICS R&D Vaccine Center, further development of the BRICS Integrated Early Warning System”
“We reaffirm our commitment to maintaining a strong and effective Global Financial Safety Net with a quota-based and adequately resourced IMF at its center.”
“We stress the universal and inclusive nature of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals”
“BRICS supports public-private partnerships to help nations achieve their Sustainable Development Goals” (was it in Kazan or Davos?)
“We reiterate that the objectives, principles and provisions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), its Kyoto Protocol and its Paris Agreement”
“We recognise the important role of carbon markets as one of the drivers of climate action”
BRICS supports “digital transformation” using 5G and other “emerging technologies”
Etc…
Cherry on the cake, Russia just announced that they will roll-out the Ruble CDBC from spring 2025 and already menace Russian banks who refuse to be part of it. some propagandists even dare to tell us that it is an anti-globalist move…
IT RESEMBLES THESE STALIN APOLOGISTS IN THE 1950’S WHO COULDN’T FACE REALITY.