In this episode of The Watchdog (a MintPress News podcast hosted by British-Iraqi political analyst and hip-hop artist Lowkey), Lowkey interviews Ben Norton about the significance of BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in relation to the decline of US-led imperialism and the emergence of a multipolar world.
The two explain the dimensions and purpose of BRICS and the significance of its proposed expansion to include Iran and Argentina, among others. Ben mentions Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, in which Brzezinski urges US policymakers to do everything possible to prevent the possibility of a China-Russia-Iran alliance in opposition to US hegemony. With the growing influence of multilateral organizations of the Global South such as BRICS, the SCO, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and others, Brzezinski’s nightmares are being turned into reality.
Lowkey and Ben discuss the escalating New Cold War, in which the US is forcing countries around the world to pick between “the West or the rest”. The US is surprised to find that many countries are unwilling to align themselves exclusively with the West – they want to continue having mutually-advantageous relations with China and they are refusing to join the unilateral sanctions on Russia. Indeed, for developing countries, China and Russia are better and more reliable partners than the West: they don’t mandate a neoliberal economic model, they don’t force privatisation, they don’t impose crippling debt conditions, and they don’t compromise other countries’ sovereignty.
Ben highlights China’s economic successes under its model of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, noting that with over 40 percent of GDP controlled by state-owned enterprises, the major banks owned by the state, all land owned by the state, and the state closely regulating the overall economy, China is showing the world that neoliberalism is by no means inevitable or indeed desirable.
The two conclude that the New Cold War is very unlikely to work in the US’s favor; that BRICS and others are opening up an important space for sovereign development around the world; that dollar hegemony is under significant threat; and that developing countries in particular stand to benefit a great deal from an emerging multipolarity.
The video is embedded below.
Thank you FOSC, Ben & Lowkey, for this very informative video, helping us to answer the question –
Why has European/American liberalism resorted to decades of lies, propaganda and forced regime changes, now being played out in the Ukraine and Taiwan? Liberalism was a fundamentally flawed, top down concept from the get go in that it was defined and promoted by relatively well educated property owners who were already influencing the way society behaved. It was their own privileged individual freedom that gave rise to the idea that individual freedom should be available to the whole of society; providing it was within the law that these relatively privileged members of society also defined and enforced.
Liberalism expressed economically is capitalism, capitalism almost inevitably gave rise to imperialist colonisation, slavery and the exploitation of the vast majority of our human race. Nowadays we are witnessing how modern liberalism, particularly since the time of Thatcher’s UK and Reagan’s US – a so called neo-liberalism, has morphed into ‘finance monopoly capitalism’ and thereby its own demise. Liberalism’s emphasis on individual freedom, private property and the accumulation of privately owned wealth, inevitably gave rise to social inequality and thereby Karl Marx and the emergence of a nineteenth century socialism. Now in the twenty first century, we are witnessing the emergence of a form of neo-socialism, the architecture of which not even Marx could have anticipated during a lifetime that pre dated a revolution of information technology and artificial intelligence.
Socialism empowered by an IT/AI revolution in the form of ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’ is now being very closely observed by the so called ‘global South’ and a rapidly developing multipolar new world order. The pace and scale of an emerging People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the fact that it has done so using a single party form of governance, namely the Communist Party of China (CPC), is a matter of great concern to those who still champion a so called ‘liberal democracy’ and their capitalist ‘rule of law’.
Taffy, you’re right. Most people feel much safer in a world where peace is promoted and guaranteed by China than in a world of US hegemony. The EU should develop ever-closer links with China and the cause of world peace and stop the ideological onslaught against Chinese achievements. Bring on achieving the 2049 goal of a high-income society!!