BRICS Emerged to Survive, Not Challenge US Hegemony
The rise of economic blocs and an alternative global financial structure is a matter of survival.
Empires confiscated resource-rich countries' (the Global South) wealth and indebted them with unrepayable loans, holding them hostage and impoverishing them for centuries. Yet, discussions about BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) contemplate its potential success or failure instead of considering that the most populous nations created an economic partnership to escape a financial dictatorship.
History is forgotten, rewritten, or unknown, but industrial powers colonized the world until WWII depleted their finances and militaries. Oppressed nations seized the moment, organizing the 1955 Bandung Conference to support decolonization and solidarity, but sovereignty never eventuated. The US overthrew independence movements and leftist governments, installing military dictatorships and the rules-based international order.
Countries borrowed from the colonizers' institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to stabilize after colonization, Western-backed coups, and financial crises disempowered them. The loans strangled economies and impeded national policies by forcing governments to raise taxes, cut public investments, sell…
