news

especially because the material interest of every country trying to join brics is doing so to play as many sides as they can. diplomats and states are not set out towards de-dollarization or ending hegemony as such, but rather towards what they see as prosperity, peace, etc.

This is a really important point historically imo.

The reason why the British Empire became what it did was the combination of its overseas colonies (particularly India), its financial control over large amounts of world trade (e.g. the gold standard), and the fact that it was the first major country to industrialize and it kept far ahead of its potential rivals for decades in that area. What brought down the British Empire wasn't a bunch of powerful enemies ganging up on it; sure, losing America in the late 18th century hurt, but the empire continued relatively unphased for a century afterwards and the US was on generally decent terms after 1812. Instead, industrial and imperial competition resulted in the British gradually losing their advantages, and other countries using protectionist policies to catch up to England by protecting their own baby industries against British competition. Hence the propaganda of Britain being a champion of free trade; to the extent that it was true (and it wasn't especially) it was because it benefited England for other countries to force their industries to compete with more productive and efficient British ones.

The fledgling American Empire literally helped England during WW1 and WW2 - the empire that they were trying to replace! - and so did other on-again-off-again imperial rivals like France. Despite, and even because of this help (America putting Europe into substantial debt), the British Empire fell. It didn't require a ton of countries banding together to form a ye olde principled anti-imperial bloc to combat the tyranny of British financiers and the gold standard; hell, during WW2, even the USSR joined forces with the US and the British Empire. Instead, the British just got outcompeted and chipped away at by a bunch of self-serving frenemies. It's very possible that the American Empire will fall in the same way. Interestingly, we do actually have a relatively principled anti-US bloc in the form of Russia, China, and Iran, but even they aren't doing it for the morality of ending imperialism or whatever (although for Iran and China that might indeed be part of the motivation), it's because the end of empire, and the subsequent loss of international power of American industries and corporations, would strongly benefit them and their industries and corporations.

This is why @shipwreck@hexbear.net (or whatever alt they use nowadays) talks about American control over Europe so much, and why they say that the real purpose of the Ukraine War was to weaken Europe. Somebody who is well-versed in Cold War history might see this as a ridiculous conclusion - Europe and America have been allies for decades! For at least a century, even! Europe had been accepting American military aid to combat a potential Soviet invasion for more-or-less the whole Cold War! The thing is that being allies is insufficient for American aims. It's not just a vague sense of American dishonesty and disloyalty ("it's dangerous to be America's enemy, but it's fatal to be America's ally"). The British Empire didn't need to be allies with India - they owned the subcontinent, and could tell them to set whatever policies and accept British products and told them to eat shit if they didn't like it. Europe, however, has been considerably more resistant to being told to eat shit by America and accept products flooding their markets, and thus are in competition with - and a rival to - the American Empire by virtue of wanting some degree of independence, no matter how many times they state they are very good friends and allies fighting totalitarianism or whatever. Similar thing famously occurred with Japan - they were ostensibly a US ally, and were told to eat shit once they grew powerful enough to be a serious competitor to US industries. Similar thing is occurring right this second with India - they are ostensibly a US ally against Chinese influence in the region, and yet the US is overthrowing neighbouring governments like Pakistan and Bangladesh in order to constraint India's own regional ambitions to ensure they do not become powerful enough to be a serious challenge to the US. Suddenly, the US weakening its own allies makes a ton of sense - the US doesn't really have allies. All it has is rivals, imperial outposts like Israel, and temporary neocolonies. To (unfortunately) quote Kissinger once again: the US doesn't have allies or enemies, it has interests.

So even if you're a leader of a country that is a total piece of shit (e.g. Sisi in Egypt, MBS in Saudi Arabia), if you perform self-serving actions that have some degree of independence from the aims of the US and instead boost your own industries, you are still indirectly acting to weaken the US. That's the reason why BRICS is important, and why, even if Lula and Modi express that they're total besties with Biden and Kamala and would love to have Blinken over for dinner next week, they are still threats to American hegemony. It's also the reason why the American victory in the Cold War was so pyrrhic - the damage to imperialism was already done, China had been set up for success thanks to Soviet help, and colonialism had already been effectively ended (albeit replaced with neocolonialism, which is now China's duty to fight). Shock therapy in Eastern Europe was merely the US trying to recoup some of the losses of that pyrrhic victory.