BRICS: The Kazan Declaration
De-dollarization and perhaps forthcoming De-UN-ization & De-WTO-ization
Published: 2024-10-24
Updated 2024-10-26: Inclusion of Doctorow article and the prospective partner stats for BRICS.
Updated 2024-10-27: Added John Helmer’s more detailed examination to sources.
Significance
A quick survey of news for the concluding 16th Heads of Government BRICS Summit in Kazan yielded predictable results. A New York Times article included a section titled "What is BRICS?" which confirms that its readers are either horridly uninformed of international affairs or that the NYT likes to treat them that way. Australia's national broadcaster hasn't even covered the event.
The meeting involved a nation which has just defeated all that NATO could throw at it (Russia), the nation with the world's most powerful (Purchasing-Power-Parity or PPP) economy China, the works largest nation (India), the majority of oil and gas producing nations (Russia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE), the second and third most populous nations in Africa (Ethiopia & Egpyt), a NATO member state which is applying to join the group (Türkiye), the nation with the world's largest known oil reserves (Venzuela), the three major Asian nations around the critical Malacca Strait (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand), and another dozen plus nations of varying import. One may have thought that a Heads of Government meeting of this collection might have warranted coverage.
BRICS, however, doesn't produce shiny, English press releases for lazy western journalists. Instead they got the Kazan Declaration, a 134 point document of diplomatese ordered not by geography or chronology, but politics. It is a consensus document describing the unified diplomatic positions of the group of influential nations, many of whose influence is constantly denied by the international instruments constructed after WWII, known as the Bretton Woods system. Opposition to that system and elements of its instrumentation litter the document. But, a western journalist would have to read it to learn of this.
Having done that the journalist may note and their editor may reinforce that this would not yield a newsworthy article. Nothing has changed. The growing group still believes that the current international system is broken. Given the ongoing genocide in Palestine and the invasion and destruction of Lebanon, which the hegemonic US is supporting, the majority of the world's people and governments agree with BRICS.
Bretton Woods is demonstrably broken.
Consensus
Point 20 emphasized the importance of preserving "Big Cats" because India has made some efforts in this challenge. Naturally, the cats were placed among the wider issue of preserving "rare species". The following point, 21 concerned human rights. Point 133 thanked the Russian Federation for its Chairship of BRICS in 2024, followed by point 134 which wished Brazil the best for 2025, which is pro forma for BRICS. Given the obligatory sign-off points and the strange ordering of points 20 and 21, the more salient points seemed likely to be upstream.
Scrolling back from point 20 via the serious issue of desertification (18) and swinging by the impacts of our changing climate (points 17 to 15), we arrive at 14, meeting the backwaters of the economic and institutional points of consensus.
The G7 did not rate a mention. It is infested with warring, imperial, colonial states supporting a genocide. But, for BRICS, the G20 is still "the premier global forum for multilateral economic and financial cooperation". Point 13 asserted the importance of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, but BRICS chose to "condemn the attempts to subject development to discriminatory politically motivated practices, including but not limited to unilateral coercive measures that are incompatible with the principles of the UN Charter". [The italicization is mine. I’ll keep it thoughout, highlighting that BRICS focuses on national development.] Keep your eye on 'unilateral coercive measures'. They'll return, indicating BRICS' universal opposition to them.
We are swimming into the delicate waters of existing institutions which BRICS partially supports, and where they need a little tweaking. A dance is necessary here, for BRICS is a club wishing to encourage membership. Threatening to suddenly tear down the pillars of the old imperial system may be a little alarming for some of the central bankers or other power centers of potential applicant states. At the meeting BRICS noted that:
Particular attention will be paid to the possibility of further BRICS expansion through the establishment of a new partner category, as planned.
Gilbert Doctorow’s post-meeting article offeeds a possible list of parter states.
Algeria, Belarus*, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan*, Malaysia*, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkiye, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam
[Astricies are mine, denoting states I have an extremely high confidence in joining, based on existing membership of the SCO or publicly declared intention to join BRICS.]
Doctorow captured the motivation for partnering in the next phase rather than full memberships.
[They] will give considerable additional political and economic heft to BRICS in the future without sacrificing the cohesion that the original founding members achieved over the course of many years.
At point 12 "the international monetary and financial system" received an acronym (IMFS). It would benefit from a tweak to be "more responsive to the needs of all countries", an area in which BRICS said it will continue to act. Its most signficant actions to date have been to bypass the “IMFS” in a process known as de-dollarization.
We know we've just reached the heart of the document, for acronyms are now dominating adjectives. A most important one (by 10 uses) is EMDC. It is so important that its expansion -- Emerging Market Developing Country -- is ommitted. We have landed in lingua franca.
Point 11 dropped the diplomatese. BRICS "call[s] for the reform of the Bretton Woods institutions" -- the theme of the heart of document. By 10 they return to coercion, and are "deeply concerned about the disruptive effect of unlawful unilateral coercive measures, including illegal sanctions". 9 is a nod to the utility of the WTO as a forum for agreeing on international trade, though it wished to "emphasize the importance of reforming the WTO and strengthening the developmental dimension in its work". 8 is a hat tip to the UN but minces no words by affirming "support for a comprehensive reform [of the UN], including its Security Council".
7 provided the list of fluffy adjectives which BRICS believed needed to be seen somewhere near the top of an important geopolitical declaration: "agile, effective, efficient, responsive, representative, legitimate, democratic and accountable".
Points 1 to 5 were the equivalent of a sender address which one coculd see at the top right of a letter, in the bygone era of postal mail. The lazy press release for western journalists was there below the only headline, at point 6, which was summarized in its first sentence:
We note the emergence of new centres of power, policy decision-making and economic growth, which can pave the way for a more equitable, just, democratic and balanced multipolar world order.
The Kazan summit declaration acknowledged itself.
Purpose
At Kazan, institutions are being redesigned and deals are being made. More concrete consensus statements were not ready to be made, but plenty of projects are under way. The thrashing hegemon and its client states are still running wars to sell their weapons, to maintain disequilibrium, to disrupt and divert. BRICS is working to replace the Bretton Woods' IMFS and to modify the UN and WTO to return to the central issue of development. Wars destroy. Development constructs.
The US and its support for the Zionist genocide in Palestine, and warring and destabilization in southwest Asia are doing more to destroy the Bretton Woods system than any other actors. BRICS is preparing, discussing and negotiating, demonstrating "strategic patience", while the US neo-colonial empire is imploding.
The BRICS Heads of Government meeting is a forum at which agenda, preferences and opinions can be expressed. There are always consequences for these expressions but at BRICS they are nowhere near as dangerous as doing so at the U.N. where mis-speak incurs that wrath of the US hegemon. Diplomacy is at work at BRICS. The summit is a highlight of the detailed work which occurs a lower level working groups.
An outreach panel will discuss the calamity which Israel is imposing on Palestine. The suffering nation was invited to attend because the current BRICS Chair, Russia, along with other BRICS members (China, Iran, and South Africa, for example) wish to hear its voice, its concerns.
The BRICS forum is a demonstration of how broken the U.N. has become. The BRICS group and its member states are being forced to act outside of the U.N. because the U.N. is being hampered by the US and its Security Council veto power. That US veto has been used to defeat resolution after resolution to protect Israel while the US has been gifting, with tax-payer money, the settler colonial state the weapons it has been and continues to use, to murder Palestinian civilians in a yearlong horror of war crime after war crime.
The US constructed Bretton Woods system, which BRICS has again announced it is trying to reform, is threatened of being sidelined. The replacement of its IFMS via de-dollarization is well under way. The U.N. and the WTO have been served notice.
Unless acceptible reforms can be implemented rapidly, de-UN-ization and de-WTO-ization are on the horizon.
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Sources
Second day of 16th BRICS Summit, BRICS Russia 2024, 2024-10-23
Second day of 16th BRICS Summit, Kremlin, 2024-10-23
Kazan Declaration, BRICS, Kremlin, 2024-10-23
The times are a-changing and the BRICS Summit is a major factor, Gilbert Doctorow, Gilbert Doctorow, 2024-10-25
Putin Demolishes Western Meme that Russia is Isolated, Larry Johnson, SONAR21, 2024-10-23
Rag Picking Through The Kazan Declaration - What President Putin Gained, What He Lost From Brics 24, John Helmer, Dances with Bears, 2024-10-26
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