The BRICS Summit will be held in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, a Russian city located at the confluence of the Volga and Kazanka rivers in central European Russia, from 22 to 24 October 2024.
As of January 1, 2024, five more countries have joined the BRICS five-nation coalition which had four members (Brazil, Russia, India and China) at its founding in 2009 and in 2010 South Africa also joined. These countries are Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia, which, however, did not take the final step of entering the “Global South” alliance and participates as a visitor-observer in the bloc’s meetings.
This fact is a strong indication of the growing power of the union and its role in international affairs. BRICS is attracting an ever-increasing number of supporters and like-minded countries that share the core principles and values of the coalition.
BRICS is presented as an alternative to what its members see as Western-controlled institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. New members can potentially gain access to financing through the coalition’s development bank, as well as expand their political and trade relations.
Thus, the BRICS countries collectively now represent 45% of the world’s population with approximately 3.5 billion people, a third of the Earth’s solid surface, 44% of total global oil production as well as almost 1/3 of global GDP, amounting to approximately 29 trillion dollars, having surpassed in terms of purchasing power parity the G7, the group of the seven most powerful economies of the developed world.
Russian President Vladimir Putin noted that the BRICS countries are developing at a very fast pace and these paces will continue to intensify. The economic strength of the BRICS is expressed beyond the others at the IMF level where their quota from 8.4% in 2001 reached 25.8% in 2022, while in the same period the G-7 quota decreased from 64.6% in 42.9%.
The BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) are fighting together against the neo-colonial economic system imposed by the West and at the same time complementing each other, with their main goal being de-dollarization, while at the same time BRICS is expanding with new countries and becoming stronger. And they complement each other because the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) cannot on its own create a single monetary system that will be an alternative to the US dollar.
The BRICS would not exist finally without the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), since the latter is an international community of states that objectively form the core of the confrontation with the US-centric world.
The October Summit in Kazan will confirm the voluntary right of the members of the BRICS coalition to de-dollarize trade and financial transactions with each other and take another step in the direction of creating a currency for the Alliance – although this goal is difficult – which will clearly hit the great monetary weapon of the USA. Russia already conducts 75% of its trade outside the dollar.
There may be some surprise at the summit with the announcement of a new international payment system, an alternative to SWIFT, as reports grow that coalition members are finalizing technical consultations and procedures. The BRICS request for an alternative SWIFT has been a declared goal since 2015. The first problem was and is settlements in national currencies, i.e. exchange rates without the mediation of the dollar. In this context the BRICS committed last year to a possible common currency or something similar.
The desire of several states in the “periphery” to unhook from the dollar is also particularly important. This is how we see, for example, South-East Asian countries, such as Malaysia, Thailand – which is expected to be accepted into the BRICS at the Kazan Summit – and Vietnam moving in this direction. It is worth noting that 60% of trade between Russia and Vietnam is now conducted without the US dollar and the euro.
Positive and constructive cooperation with all interested countries, the approximately 30 countries knocking on the door of BRICS, including Mexico, Bangladesh, Congo, Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, etc., will be a key priority of the coalition, which also aims to strengthen cooperation in cultural and humanitarian contacts, promote cooperation in science, high technology, health care, environmental protection, culture, sports, youth exchanges and civil society.
It is worth noting that the BRICS alliance extended its first invitation to resource-rich Venezuela to participate in the 16th Kazan summit, which if it joins BRICS and stops selling oil quotas to US companies, the consequences could be disastrous for the United States.
Building a fairer and more democratic system of international relations, which is free from dictation, violence and the pressure of sanctions and is based on real equality is at the same time the clear goal of the BRICS coalition.
The countries of the Global South must shake off economic colonialism and control their own wealth-producing resources through a “decolonization” front. This can be achieved in the first instance by the “de-dollarization” of world trade. This development has started with the sale of oil by major producers in national currencies, or with the expulsion of the French from West Africa, where in Niger they got the uranium for their nuclear plants at a very low price compared to the price of international trade.
The BRICS, however, while dynamically developing cooperation among themselves in several fields, have not acquired the structure and organization of other international organizations, an issue that is likely to be examined at the Kazan summit as the political priorities of the Russian presidency include the “Promotion of institutional development of the BRICS”.
In closing, I would like to emphasize that the Kazan Summit will mark the beginning of the end for the US dollar as the sole global reserve currency, the decline of the dominance of the US and the Western world in general, and the dawn of a new era, a democratic multipolar world.
Isidoros Karderinis was born in Athens in 1967. He is a journalist, novelist and poet. Facebook: Karderinis Isidoros
