Valdai Club

BRICS no longer exists: the time of BRICS+ has come. But to make this informal forum into a structured reality, one capable of withstanding bumps and games, a radical rethinking of its purposes and its current skeleton is needed, writes Emanuel Pietrobon.

The Caribbean island country has been living under a US embargo since the early 1960s. With scarce natural resources, but a lot of creativity, the country not only managed to face economic isolation, but also developed some top-tier specialisations, writes Valdai Club expert Emanuel Pietrobon.

In a growingly multipolar world, where the United States is slowly ceasing to be the primary pole of power, it is not strange, but absolutely normal and physiological, to witness a worldwide process of reserve currency diversification, writes Valdai Club expert Emanuel Pietrobon.

The Russian Arctic is as resource-rich as it is inherently weak. It is militarily vulnerable to malicious foreign activities. It is demographically poor, being home to only two million people. Additionally, it lacks a highly developed land-and-sea infrastructure network, although the adoption of a pioneer mindset could give rise to a Russian remake of the American Westward expansion

The key to the multipolar transition is the opening of the Latin American front, that is the shifting of the center of gravity of the great power competition from Eurasia to the Americas. The question is whether America’s challengers will be willing or able to do so, writes Emanuel Pietrobon.

The Ukraine conflict will act as a catalyst of a greater engagement in the region, with an increased support to Japan’s historical rearmament and with increased sales of weaponry and military hardware to Taiwan, South Korea and other American-friendly countries located near the PRC’s near abroad, writes Valdai Club expert Emanuel Pietrobon.

What role will Russia play in tomorrow's world order? The answer is: it depends on Russia's reaction to today's total economic warfare. And Russia itself needs to draw on the past if it does want to pass the stress test, as the past offers a lot of examples of economic wars, like the Nixon's assault on Allende's Chile.

Ukraine is the battlefield where the West, Russia and other major players are verily fighting for an epoch-making event: the multipolar transition. Indeed, it was never about Ukraine. Perhaps, the Ukraine war means Ukraine war only for the post-historical European Union, but this conflict has a different and deeper meaning for the rest of the world. The catalysis of the multipolar transition – for Russia and its partners. The prolongation of the dying unipolar moment – for the US.

In the world in the making, Russia cannot belong to Europe and Asia at the same time, at least not in the years to come. The US is skilfully taking advantage of the Ukraine war to tighten the grip on the EU, hence Russia has no choice but to redirect its agenda on three directions: domestically, Asia, the Global South (Africa plus Latin America), writes geopolitical analyst Emanuel Pietrobon.