Is the BRICS Alliance Really a Threat to U.S. Hegemony?
Article by Scott Lively from WND News Center cross-posted with permission.
In one of the little ironies of history, Edward Gibbons began publishing a six-volume writing project, “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” in 1776, just as what would become the American Empire was being launched with a revolution against a powerful British Empire still in its ascendency. His final book in the series was published in 1788 as America was in the middle of its two-year transition from a confederacy to a constitutional republic. The British Empire peaked around 1914 and was surpassed by the United States as the world’s foremost superpower in World War II, becoming the sole superpower upon the success of the Anglo-American partnership in collapsing its chief rival, the Soviet Union, during the Reagan and Thatcher administrations.
Studying the history of geopolitical upheavals is fascinating, but living through one makes the topic personal and often painful. Today the world is in the midst of a new upheaval involving many of the ancient powers seeking a new global order, led by a coalition called BRICS, which is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. On Aug. 22-24, 2023, the BRICS coalition doubled in size, adding Iran, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Egypt and Ethiopia, effective Jan. 1, 2024.
The dominant powers of this group are primarily Russia and China, with Russia providing the executive and military leadership and China providing both the financial stability of an economic giant and the political leverage of holding most of deeply indebted America’s loans. But all 12 of these countries are developed nations with a common interest in ending Anglo-American hegemony – which largely translates into ending U.S./British control of global trade and banking, and defanging NATO as its global enforcer.
For decades, rival elites on both sides of this divide have been engaged in a global chess-match set mostly along the imaginary boundary line of Europe and Asia – because apparently most of them accept Mackinder’s maxim that whoever controls Eurasia controls the world. But adding to the complexity of this equation, and bringing in other regions, especially the Middle East, is the importance of trade routes, including oil pipelines.
If you start with this premise and look back over geopolitics since WWII, all the subsequent lesser wars and “police actions” initiated mostly by the U.S. fit easily into the chess-match paradigm. Syria is about rival oil pipeline routes. Iraq and Libya were about global banking dependency. Iran is about control of the Suez Canal. The Ukraine war is both about oil pipelines and creating an “Israel” on Russia’s border – meaning a heavily militarized forward base to represent Western interests on a mostly hostile frontier.
It is also about gaining a tighter political and economic grip on Europe through energy dependency, of which the U.S. destruction of the Nord Stream II pipeline was an essential component: to prevent a Russian/German economic alliance that would have also supplied all of Europe with cheap, abundant energy.
U.S. domestic policy is being heavily affected by these geopolitical moves. For example, I contend that the sudden move to ban natural gas stoves is to free more supply for Europe, which is building gigantic transfer terminals to receive liquified natural gas from U.S. tankers to offset the loss from Russia (none of which is getting U.S. media coverage).
Indeed, the entire frantic “climate crisis” over carbon emissions – while also a means of increasing globalists power – seems to be an acknowledgment by “our” elites that the BRICS alliance might very well wrest control of the oil-based global economy away from us, and we need to be positioned to survive a global ban on carbon-based fuels that we would attempt to impose as a counter-measure. While that goal may prove unattainable given the growing clout of the BRICS alliance, it does at least provide an emerging narrative theme to justify future wars and police actions to “save the planet” from “criminally carbon-spewing nations.”
This chess-game framework also explains why we’re being conditioned to prepare for a Great Reset. We already have no ability to pay back China and other holders of our massive debt, but that problem will become exponentially worse if/when the dollar loses its globally exclusive reserve currency status. The best chance for retaining our hegemony would be the announcement of a global debt jubilee in conjunction with the launch of a completely new economic system which we control. Think of the Great Reset like geopolitical chemotherapy: a dose of poison designed to kill off the “cancer” in the world (i.e., non-submissive regimes), which theoretically would not kill the host body in the process but leave it stronger in the end.
As much as the extreme moral degeneracy of our elites makes the thought of a new global order more appealing, I don’t think BRICS can beat the West in this worsening conflict, and I believe the example of Brazil shows why. Brazil’s recently coup-reinstalled President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is as much a creation of the American left as any of our homegrown blue-state tyrants, but he’s also a highly ambitious political animal who presumably would rather not be under the American thumb. He was one of the original founders of BRICS and is the only one of the original heads of state who were in the coalition at its founding.
The BRICS threat to U.S. hegemony during Lula’s first administration was nominal, but by last month’s meeting in South Africa it was massive and growing. Lula’s participation in that meeting suggests to me he now is either serving as a U.S. mole in the BRICS leadership, or he believes BRICS represents a realistic opportunity to break his country free from U.S. control. Perhaps it was only for managing public perceptions but concurrent with the BRICS summit, the Brazilian Supreme Court (which staged the coup that reinstalled him) passed one of the world’s first anti-homophobia laws with actual criminal penalties.
That fascist law was a major bone for Lula to throw to the American leftists who helped rig the Brazilian election for him, in essence saying, “I’m still your boy.” But it also exposes the weakness of the glue holding BRICS together – the LGBT agenda is anathema to Russia and the other members. There is really nothing but a mutual desire to escape U.S. control that keeps them aligned – and THAT makes it extremely vulnerable to the British side of the Anglo-American pact, who are history’s greatest masters of “divide and conquer.” Watch and see.
To the painful personal side of this crisis, it was Lula who, during his first term in 2007 first attempted to criminalize pro-family activism, and my great friend and ally Julio Severo had to flee Brazil for the jungles of Guatemala after leading the defeat of the law. He, his wife and their seven children lived in exile there until he died in 2021. My ministry has ever since provided financial support to keep them together in one home, fed and clothed. My point is that global changes always hit the “little people” hardest – but being aware of what’s really going on helps us to better prepare and adapt.
Note: To help Julio Severo’s widow and children survive and get their legal status resolved, donate here using the Emergency Help for the Severo Family option. To help carry on Julio’s work defending the biblical standard for marriage and family against LGBT bullying, choose the “Carry on his work” option.
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America has, post WWII, lost the respect of too many countries across the globe for all her interference in the business of other countries, including African states, leaving them worse off than before. There are many examples of this but I will mention one that I am familiar with, and that is of South Africa.
When Apartheid ended, De Klerk and Mandela were working out a system of representative rule, until Hilary Clinton and her cohorts arrived, with the blessing of Britain and Australia. They manipulated Mandela to drop negations with de Klerk, and instead opt for one man one vote. With a white population of only 8.9% in 1996, since the transition 1994 the Communist African National Congress, of which Mandela was leader, has ruled the country.
It is now a failed state because of ignorance, incompetence and most of all, corruption. Even the power supply has broken down. Crime and rape is at an all time high and Apartheid is now reversed.
I do blame Apartheid for part of the problem, and do not detract from the good Mandela did in facilitating a peaceful transition. However, South Africa had a well functioning infrastructure, and with representative rule, the country could have continued like a well-oiled machine.
That South Africa is now a member of BRICS is understandable. The ANC has no love for white people and that includes America. The country is bankrupt but has vast wealth in minerals and precious gems. China, who now owns most of African countries who dislike America for reasons mentioned, has promised to bail out and restore SA’s power. They will expect SA’s mineral wealth in return. At the same time President Ramaphosa gains some international status.
We reap what we sow.
Clearly, it is a much more complex world than that of George Washington's time. It is even more complex than that of Dwight Eisenhower's time, although, not as much. Nevertheless, i wish America would mind her own business and stay out of the business of sovereign nations outside. Some might argue that we need to be engaged in order to survive should an enemy aggregate outside forces against us. But, imv, that is a bad argument. We could easily become so powerful militarily that even a powerful group of nations would not attack out of fear of our response being so destructively powerful that they would not survive. Were we to focus instead on our internal politics, and ignore meddling in that of others, we would have better resources to improve our own well-being while at the same time not offending other dangerous terrorists who think of revenge. Send the UN to Haiti, withdraw our aid to the UN, take steps to improve our relationship and business with Canada and Mexico and Central and South America.