BRICS; A NEW GLOBAL ORDER?

BRICS; A NEW GLOBAL ORDER?

BP

And the convening of BRICS in Brazil, marks more than just another gathering of non-Western states. It has become a declaration, quiet but unmistakable, that a new global architecture is being formed. Despite years of Western scepticism and efforts at containment, BRICS has expanded its institutional footprint, global relevance, and strategic coherence.

Now, with ten full members, an expanding circle of partner countries, and over 50 countries seeking affiliation, BRICS is no longer merely a diplomatic forum. It is becoming a gravitational force within the emerging multipolar world, and a structural response to the intensifying contradictions of Western-led globalisation.

The BRICS network accounts for around 50% of global GDP on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis. It represents more than half the world’s population. BRICS nations are delivering stronger growth than the collective west. More critically, it commands a vast share of the world’s energy reserves, industrial production, and critical minerals thereby placing it at the centre of the real economy upon which global stability depends.

This influence is not only economic but is systemic. In a world where the material foundations of prosperity are under threat where energy, infrastructure, and food systems are the BRICS model for international cooperation rooted in mutual development, strategic autonomy, and infrastructural interdependence; sovereign and interdependent.

The Real Economy and Systemic Exchange Value are unlike the financialised West, BRICS economies remain grounded in the logic of is termed ‘Systemic Exchange Value’ which is the capacity to generate and circulate real-use values necessary for social reproduction and economic sustainability. Energy is not only a commodity to be speculated, it is the substrate of productive life: the energetic base upon which value is created, stored and exchanged.

The BRICS grouping owns decisive structural advantages. Russia, Iran, Brazil, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are major energy producers. China leads in renewable energy capacity, grid innovation, and energy storage. These endowments allow BRICS members to anchor value in material production, rather than financialisation.

This contrasts sharply with the West, particularly the United States, where value extraction has become divorced from real production. 

What began in the 1970s as the liberalisation of capital markets has matured into a regime of financialisation, where profitability is driven less by technological innovation or productivity growth, and more by asset inflation, debt-leveraged speculation, and shareholder enrichment.

The US Financial Model creates global distortions and domestic paucity. The transformation of the US economy over the last four decades has been profound, and destabilising.

Capital has moved into financial assets rather than physical infrastructure. Corporations increasingly prioritise share buybacks over investment in fixed capital formation. Banks have shifted from lending to productive enterprises to acting as speculative platforms. The result is a bifurcated economy: financial wealth accumulation at the top and stagnation and precarity for the 90%.

Domestically, this has produced extreme inequality, shrinking industrial employment and a decaying infrastructure base. Real wages have stagnated for the majority, household debt has soared, and a generation of Americans face declining life expectancy, unaffordable healthcare, housing, and education. 

Globally, the consequences are likewise corrosive. The dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency has allowed the US to externalise its imbalances by running persistent trade deficits while exporting volatility. Nations are forced to hold dollar reserves to access global markets, tying their monetary policies to the Federal Reserve and exposing them to cycles of capital flight, interest rate shocks, and dollar liquidity shortages.

The decision to sever Russian energy supplies has plunged Europe into a state of structural energy insecurity. 

Natural gas prices have surged. Electricity costs are among the highest in the world. Manufacturing is being offshored or shuttered altogether. German industry, the continent’s manufacturing backbone, now faces an existential crisis. Steel, chemicals, and automotive sectors which were once global leaders are struggling to survive.

At the same time, Europe’s ‘green’ transition has stalled. Over-reliance on intermittent renewables, premature decommissioning of nuclear and fossil infrastructure, and failure to invest in storage or grid resilience have created a perfect storm of vulnerability. What began as an energy transition has become an energy trap.

The Trump Administration has finally realised that BRICS+ is a serious strategic threat and an existential challenge to their unilateral domination of the current system of international relations. They didn’t come to this conclusion by carefully scrutinizing the BRICS annual summit in Rio, or last year’s ground-breaking summit in Kazan, because they have not done their basic homework.

It’s like they have been awakened from their torpor by sensing which way the global wind is blowing as a range of new models are being tested to bypass the US dollar and the iron-clad control of the post-war Bretton Woods institutions.

The conclusion is inescapable: BRICS have crossed the ultimate red line. No more Mr. Nice Guy talk shop. The 130-plus point Rio declaration, released at the first day of the summit, spells it out, politely but decisively: “this is what we are, a systemic alternative; and we’re going to write the rules of the new system our way.”

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