BRICS In the Battle for a New World

um The Brick Summit is soon to be upon us in the next few days Brazil Russia India China South Africa and it will be in South Africa this year a lot been happening with the bricks of course and perhaps maybe more relevant uh the brick Summit than it's ever been before given the geopolitical eruptions we are seeing here now and to discuss this we are very very honored to be joined here by Vijay prashad who is the director of The tri-continental Institute and I have to note here they just released their new newspaper that very convenient for us as the title The Bricks have changed the balance of forces but they will not by themselves change the world it's their 33rd newsletter so go to try continental.org and check that out Vijay thanks for being with us I thought we were going to talk about the 50th anniversary of hip-hop well listen if you want to give me your top five hip-hop albums I'm I'm ready I'm ready to take them now I mean Vijay are you ready for this like do you really want to go there we can oh I was the only one amongst all of you who was born already when hip-hop was born so there's that in a soundtrack for most of my life uh except the first six years so there's that Vijay well listen we will we will get your best albums we're gonna we'll do an all music show as you don't know Vijay is a great connoisseur of great music uh maybe they'll have some great music at the brick Summit I really don't know but that being said uh you know obviously there's a lot swirling around this Summit Putin not attending in person you know everything happening with Ukraine China India relations so there's so many different elements to this I guess my first question for you Vijay is I mean what is the significance of the brick Summit this year is it just looming larger because of the news or is it really more significant well it's the 15th break Summit let's not forget that the brics grouping came together um when the detritus of the Western banking system looked like it was going to collapse the world economy and really that was the motivation for these five large countries of the global South and Russia to get together you know start having discussions about South South cooperation particularly in trade you know I don't want to oversell the brics project because essentially it starts out as a trade Alliance as a way to deal with development financing um Mutual trade and so on it then takes on a political role but the political role is really secondary I really don't want to oversell the bricks I think I know there's a lot of conversation about it now this year it's significant for both reasons of Peace on the one side and development on the other both reasons why both reasons well you know after the bricks was formed in 2009 and about three four years later things started to deteriorate for the alliance largely because you saw a long-term lawfare campaign against the government of Dilma Rusev and then you know the arrest of Lula who had been the president before Dilma the arrival of the right wing temer and bolsonaro in Brazil so Brazil began to walk away from the Biggs project a little bit India in 2013 elected a right-wing government still there Mr Modi the Indians began to walk away a little from bricks but it became clear because brics is principally a trade Commerce to some extent development Alliance that despite the political disagreements there was a lot that held them in common and that's why brics continued to meet and that's why they discussed and then created two important institutions the new development Bank also called the brics bank and the contingency reserve Arrangement which was supposed to be an alternative to the international monetary fund contingency reserve agreement really hasn't gone forward but the brics bank has been established the current director in fact is Dilma Rousseff former president of Brazil so for the first thing in terms of um you know why the brics was able to stick together the development and trade issue held it together but this year they are in the thick of debating the question of Ukraine the Cold War on China and so on Lula is back Lula is really back with a bang you know he's up there in the world stage saying let's talk about important issues so they're going to discuss the politics the peace question in particular but also the development issue the international monetary fund has returned after the pandemic harsh development agenda they've placed before a lot of poor countries China has put a lot of money into circulation for development produced a kind of alternative the brics bank also there is an alternative so yeah it's going to be an important Summit some problems which we can talk about but it's going to be an important Summit both for development and trade the anchors of the brics project but also for peace you know Vijay um just there's a few things that you said that I'd like for you to elaborate on and I do think it's important this is also happening in the context of over a year and a half after Russia's war in Ukraine and um it's kind of like made bricks a bigger talking point in the mainstream media in the US at least and one thing I noticed just kind of perusing the coverage that it's receiving before the fact um now is there's been a lot of attention in the corporate mainstream press in the US and in the UK on this like they're trying to make I think a bigger fight about it than it actually is about the idea of oh there's like an internal uh debate inside the brics countries about who to accept right because you do have a lot of countries across the global South applying for you know to be a part of brics many in fact um and also there's a little bit of disagreement about how many countries or who should be let in and like I mentioned a lot of like Outlets like AP Reuters the economists are kind of making this a bigger deal than maybe it actually is or maybe it is a big deal I don't know but what's your sense of how important this discussion is uh because there are so many countries including ones that are closely aligned with the US who are actively trying to join uh this organization well look the world is filled with contradictions and I think that's how we need to understand things most important is that many many countries poorer countries developing countries some rich countries like Saudi Arabia many countries see the bricks as significant I mean the fact that they are lining up to join brics I don't want to get into the details I mean one of the countries is Argentina you just had a segment on Argentina with my colleague Zoe Argentina might have a far-right government next I don't think the Brazilians will be particularly happy to have Argentina as a full-fledged member of brics with that kind of government on the other hand because brics Is Anchored in a trade and development agenda even a far-right government is going to have to deal with the brics countries look you know whatever they might say the largest trading partner of Argentina is China you can't get out of that um Australia Japan largest trading partner China they both joined the regional agreement with China called Arsen you know that's the reason why countries that might have some political disagreement with this or that brics country nonetheless want to be in on the action I think that's the first thing it's not about who's going to enter the fact is lots of countries are lining up because they know the brics block is significant but let's also shift Focus for a second brics is going to take place in South Africa currently major developments taking place in the sahil region in Africa these coups in four countries against France major sentiment Anti-Imperialist sentiment you could call it maybe it's just anti-french sentiment but it could expand and develop well it's you know not necessarily because we're not seeing for instance in agadesh protests against the U.S drone Base Air Base 201 it's been largely anti-french um kind of protests you know the French have got to go I'd like to see somebody say well let the yank base also go so far we haven't seen that so but this new mood is there across the African continent and this is going to play in The brics Summit it's it's not possible for the the people coming to to South Africa not to have to engage with a new mood that is sweeping across the continents of Africa Asia Latin America you know there's a new feeling in the air and I think this is going to actually in a way radicalize the politics of the bricks um okay it's not a question of who joins already the bricks is not a coherent political body there's a right-wing government in India and then there's the government of the center left say in Brazil but they have come together to build something together despite their political disagreements and I for one think there's something productive here you know it's a little bit like a mini version of the United Nations 193 countries belong in the U.N but you know that the U.N the U.N system has had its power seized by the five permanent members of the security Council Russia China also members of brics but France Britain and the United States there are no Latin Americans who have a permanent seat in the U.N security Council no African country has a permanent seat in the security Council and part of the reason in my opinion for the emergence of the bricks is that the door was closed by the permanent members of the security Council to expansion of the of the permanent seats there Brazil has long wanted a seat South Africa has long wanted a seat India has long wanted the seat these are the three other countries reason breaks that are outside the permanent structure of the UN you've got to see it in that perspective they have National interest which seem to be converging despite political disagreements no very well taken points especially about Niger I've actually already seen the anonymous sources from the Elysee Palace leaking to the media that the US is abandoning France for uh to try to save their own bases interesting thing to look at but speaking of War and Peace issues uh obviously one of the issues hanging over this is the war in Ukraine it's in South Africa the brick Summit where of course South Africa is helping to lead the African Peace initiative that Russia has been you know at least a little bit more than lukewarm towards Brazil obviously been raising the issue of Peace very aggressively and then India and China at least on the record in favor of it Putin of course will not be there in person but is in close contact with all the leaders of all the countries it seems um so at the end of the day are you expecting there to be any potential movement at all on you know if not the actuality of Peace at least The Narrative of how we could get to to to more substantive talks you know 12 years ago I wrote an article about how four African heads of state including the president of South Africa Jacob Zuma were prepared to go to Libya both to Tripoli to talk to Mr Gaddafi and to go to Benghazi to talk to um you know the so-called Rebellion leaders many of them freshly flown in from the Gulf Arab states where they were financial advisors and so on including Mr Mahmoud jibril um but they were blocked France said you can't take off in fact they were treated in a humiliating way I was interested to see that a few days ago Mr musaveni the president of of uh of Uganda made a public statement reminding the world of how these African heads of state were treated by the West when they tried to enter to negotiate not in Europe not in Asia but on African soil and they were given a mandate by the peace and Security Council of the African Union I mean I'm bringing this up in order to say that there's a lot of frustration among African countries Asian and Latin American and Mr mussovini is not a radical guy although I must say when he was a student at the University of Dar es Salaam Mr musservini was a student of Walter Rodney at the time was a Marxist no longer not for decades he's a man of the right and yet there he is saying look you don't treat us with respect and we can't tolerate this anymore this is the attitude with which they are going to come to Johannesburg and say we can have a role in the discussions around Ukraine this is not an issue only for NATO countries and so on we must have a role we we are member states of the United Nations and I think Mr Musa Vinny's statement about Libya is really in the context of the disregard with which billions of people are treated over their views regarding peace and development on the planet people want to say hey you know that's about it now what they are saying debate them engage them don't silence them but they get silenced and that creates resentment you know Vijay I'm just curious like you talked a little bit in the beginning about some of the limits of bricks and it kind of it sounds familiar to what we've had conversations about on this show and probably other programs um on breakthrough news about the limits of multi-polarity um and you talked a little bit about like the fact that there are some contradictions here right in terms of the different kinds of uh ideological makeups of the governments that are involved where you have like a far right government in India obviously Brazil has changed but you have a definitely a different ideological makeup even in Russia right like Russia is not the same as let's say um as China so that all that said can you talk a little bit about the limits um while bricks is wonderful like what are the limits that we should be aware of especially those of us who do want to see a a much different more socialist world uh where U.S Empire doesn't control everything thing well look you know things might be clearer on the peace side okay there might be more General agreement between say the Indian foreign Ministry and the Brazilian foreign Ministry um they don't want the conflict as an example in Ukraine to continue because this has downside effects economically um you know hunger issues and so on so on peace I think there's much more agreement let's come to the economy here things are interesting um you know the the contingency reserve Arrangement supposed to be the alternative to the international monetary fund the engine for that hasn't been turned on yet it's still uh cold you know it's still sitting there they haven't put it on um the new development bank has been lending and under Dilma there are more promises but I'm yet to see whether these are going to be different from the kind of World Bank projects that we've had now you see you can have any government you want Rania in Brazil or in India but the question is in the government it's the permanent bureaucracy that runs the central banks in Brazil Mr Lula's government is in a really a I mean a tooth and nail struggle with the central bank around interest rates it's not been easy for the Lula government to have their way as it were when it comes to a monetary policy they are playing a rear guard action in India The Reserve Bank of India is fairly conservative um in China you know it's a communist government you know the Communist party is in power People's Republic and so on but the monetary policy there is very much run on neoliberal lines you know in terms of its Central Central Banking um now if you're going to have an alternative to the IMF World Bank you need a non-neoliberal attitude towards money you need a different attitude towards lending and financing um this is just not in uh you know the facts don't show this um thus far the brics project is hampered by the um the the control really that neo-liberals have over economic policy in the brics states and in the project at large now lots of moves to change it to contested but I don't want to you know walk out of here giving anybody The View that this is some sort of easy administrative decision where somebody just signs a piece of paper and says you know now we're going to change policy and this is a huge struggle it's a struggle within the economics profession in these countries it's a struggle within their bureaucracies very important points all of which can be gone into I'm short more deeply in the 33rd newsletter from The tri-continental Institute the brics have changed the balance of forces but they will not by themselves change the world you can check that out at trycontinental.org of which Our Guest Vijay prashad is the director of that's triconal Institute Vijay as always thanks so much for being with us cheers thanks a lot guys

Channel: BreakThrough News

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Id: dbFW_vNHWAQ

Length: 17min 52sec (1072 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 19 2023