BRICS: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The world is changing

BRICS is an economic-commercial association of five nations, which are according to their initials Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. They are states that have a large population and/or territory and that are not part of the dominant Western European American bloc, which is the one that largely controls world finances and geopolitics.

All these nations, in addition to not belonging to the dominant Western world, have in common a large population (China and India above one thousand one hundred million, Brazil and Russia above one hundred and forty million), a huge territory (almost 38.5 million km²), this position gives them strategic continental dimensions, a gigantic amount of natural resources and, most importantly, the enormous figures they have presented for the growth of their domestic product (GDP) and participation in world trade in recent years. .

To a large extent, this new germ of a global geopolitical bloc is being consolidated as a result of the economic confrontation that has lasted more than a decade between the US and China and much more recently, after the war in Ukraine, between the US and the European Union. with Russia. In the latter case, strong sanctions have been triggered on Russia by the Western alliance. These sanctions, which can be considered draconian, prevented the Russian Federation from not only carrying out all trade, including the sale of its products, and sports and cultural boycotts, but even from paying its financial obligations.

For this reason, both China and Russia are promoting the confirmation of this new bloc, also incorporating three other regional powers, such as India, Brazil and South Africa.

In recent weeks, two more countries have requested to join the bloc, Argentina and Iran.

Several states with large population, resources or territory are also likely to want to join in the future like Kazakhstan, Algeria or Egypt or even Pakistan and Indonesia.

In fact this new organization is a continuation, or we can say an extension of the organization of non-aligned countries that emerged in 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia at that time to differentiate itself from the two existing blocs during the Cold War, the Western bloc led militarily by NATO and the Soviet bloc organized in the Warsaw Pact.

This Bandung Conference brought together 29 heads of state of the first post-colonial generation of leaders from the two continents to identify and assess the world problems of the moment, in order to develop joint policies in international relations.

Six years after Bandung, on a broader geographical basis, the Non-Aligned Movement was established at the I Summit Conference in Belgrade, held from September 1 to 6, 1961. The conference was attended by 28 countries (25 member countries and 3 observers), mainly New Independent States. Cuba was the only Latin American country participating as a member.

The movement has continued into the 21st century, in 2012 the 16th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was held in Tehran, the capital of Iran. 120 member countries participated in that summit. In September 2016, the XVII NAM summit was held on Margarita Island, Venezuela, where Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro assumed the presidency. In his inauguration speech, the president established the principles of Margarita's declaration, among which stand out: The refoundation of the UN with the votes of the NAM, the defense of the Palestinian people, the end of the blockade against Cuba, the decolonization of Puerto Rico among other great challenges of today's world.

Since 2019, the presidency of the NAM has been assumed by Azerbaijan.

Parallel to these development processes of the NAM at the end of the 20th century, several events took place that modified the political configuration and balance of power in the world. Surely, the most important fact was the dissolution of one of the two blocs that constituted the geopolitical base of the Cold War, as a direct consequence of the fall of the Soviet Union and the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact.

When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, a unipolar world was created consisting of the United States and other allied states, such as Japan, Canada and Australia, and the European Union, above all organized militarily in NATO without there being any strategic military and financial organization of comparable size to oppose him.

In a way, the BRICS was a reaction to this unipolarity. The five countries began meeting in 2009 and established their headquarters in Brasilia. At that time they began to develop an embryonic organization that today is known by the acronym BRICS.

Everything indicates that the BRICS will tend to increase its economic, financial and geopolitical power as new members join. It is not a minor issue.

In reality we are witnessing a new geopolitical order at the world level and BRICS is clearly a well-defined attempt to challenge the economic, political and financial coalition of the US and the European Union.

It can be foreseen that in the next two or three years, the BRICS will be made up of a dozen countries that are clearly going to compete from the point of view of their economic and military power with the European North American Western alliance.

The world is changing and BRICS can be a fundamental factor in that change.