Aug. 24—The just-concluded BRICS XV Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, has just proved that there is in fact a new world being born. Tremendous interest in the kind of concrete economic development being offered by the BRICS led to a breakthrough in attendance and the first addition of new members since 2010—including Saudi Arabia and Iran, which until six months ago had cut all diplomatic ties with each other.
Despite this, media pundits in the West insisted on only one thing: It won’t work. “There are too many differences,” “it’s just a desperate attempt by the autocratic Putin and Xi,” or even “it still won’t displace the US dollar” were among some of the noises heard across the US and Europe, when they even commented on it at all. In reality, the actual news these pundits were pushing was the announcement of their absolute irrelevance.
As said by Brazil’s President Lula on Thursday: “Many said that BRICS were too different to shape a common vision. But experience demonstrates the opposite. Our diversity strengthens the fight for a new order which accommodates the economic, geographical and political plurality of the 21st Century.” This theme resonated throughout the halls in Johannesburg: The era of neo-colonial hegemons is over—the future demands sovereignty and equality for all!
As South African President Ramaphosa said when he opened the final BRICS-Africa Outreach and BRICS Plus Dialogue: “When reflecting on the purpose and role of BRICS in the world today, we recall the Bandung Conference of 1955, where Asian and African nations demanded a greater voice for developing countries in world affairs. The Conference called for the recognition of the equality of all nations, large and small. We still share that common vision of a fair and just world.”
It is exactly this “Spirit of Bandung” which Helga Zepp-LaRouche referenced in her recently released “Appeal to the Citizens of the Global North,” which she said is rising again within the Global South. These countries “are painfully aware of the fact that colonialism has persisted in its modern form,” as there are still a billion people permanently on the brink of starvation, two billion without clean drinking water, and 940 million with no access to electricity—yet they get lectured about whom to trade with and how to use their resources.
The calm yet passionate response to this from the nations of the Global South—as expressed in the explosive events at this week’s BRICS Summit—is being ignored by leaders in the West, and will relegate them to the trash bin of history if they continue ignoring the demands of so much of the world.
Remarks given by the chairwoman of the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB), Dilma Rousseff, put this reality squarely on the table. “Today, NDB is a well-capitalized bank with very low leverage, and it has all the conditions to expand its role as an important tool to carry out the sustainable development projects that our countries need,” she said. The BRICS bank, insistent on its position of not imposing any “onerous conditionalities,” is becoming a legitimate lender for the development of nations—outside the control of Western-dominated financial system.
The White House’s indirect response to this was embarrassing. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan announced that President Biden will visit India for next month’s G20 summit to “reaffirm the U.S. commitment to the G20 as the premier forum of economic cooperation globally.” Clearly nervous about the growing sentiment exhibited by the BRICS and Global South, Sullivan added that “we need to ensure there are high-standard, high-leverage solutions to the challenges countries are facing, and a way to get the most bang for our buck is through the World Bank and the IMF.” Does anyone actually believe him?
Rather than try to ignore—or worse, try to stop—what is actually an unstoppable process, nations of the so-called Global North should instead join hands with the BRICS to bring about a better and more just economic order. This is the urgent task citizens must take up today.
As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in response to India’s recent landing of a lunar rover on the south pole of the Moon: This was not a success merely for India, “This success belongs to all humanity.”
Sign and circulate Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s “Appeal to the Citizens of the Global North: We Must Support the Construction of a New Just World Economic Order!”
