Of course, the United States is using its go-to newspaper, the New York Times, to downplay its anxiety about the rise of BRICS and their push to rise against Western economic powers. In an attempt to pacify US citizens, the following article assures Americans that their exceptionalism remains strong and their divide and conquer strategies are still at work around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What<\/a> is BRICS, which countries want to join and why?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The article entitled, “American Power Just Took a Big Hit<\/strong>,” is the latest pacifist propaganda to reassure American exceptionalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “For more than a decade, the United States mostly ignored BRICS. The grouping, formed by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, rarely registered on Washington\u2019s radar. When it did, the impulse \u2014 as shown by Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser,\u00a0recently stressing<\/a>\u00a0that the coalition is not \u201csome kind of geopolitical rival\u201d \u2014 was to downplay the group\u2019s significance. Western commentators, for their part, largely painted BRICS as either a sign of Chinese attempts to dominate the global south or little more than a talking shop. Some even called for its\u00a0dissolution<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such complacency looks less tenable now. At a summit in Johannesburg<\/a> last week, the group invited<\/a> six global south states \u2014 Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates \u2014 to join its ranks. In the aftermath of the announcement, indifference gave way to surprise<\/a>, even anxiety. Yet there\u2019s no need for alarm. BRICS will never run the world or replace the U.S.-led international system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It would be a mistake, though, to dismiss its importance. After all, any club with such a long waiting list \u2014 in this case, nearly 20 nations<\/a> \u2014 is probably doing something right. BRICS\u2019s expansion is an unmistakable marker of many countries\u2019 dissatisfaction with the global order and of their ambition to improve their place within it. For America, whose grip on global dominance is weakening, it amounts to a subtly significant challenge \u2014 and an opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since the Soviet Union\u2019s collapse in 1991 and despite the disastrous interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, America has been able to portray itself as speaking for the values of freedom and democracy everywhere. In fact, the disproportionate sway Washington holds over the articulation of global norms is a major source of its power. It\u2019s not for nothing that the Biden administration repeatedly claims that the world is divided between rules-following democracies and rules-flouting autocracies, with the United States at the head of the former.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This \u201cdemocracy vs. autocracy\u201d framework has already been partly discredited by Washington\u2019s own embrace of authoritarian<\/a> governments<\/a>. A bigger BRICS would deal it another blow from a different angle. Of the 11 states that will make up the expanded group, four can be said to be democracies, four are autocracies, two are monarchies and another a theocracy. It is further evidence that a country\u2019s political system is a poor indicator of how it frames its interests and with whom it decides to build a coalition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s more, the expanded group will include two pairs of fierce rivals \u2014 India and China, Saudi Arabia and Iran \u2014 as well as the acrimonious pairing of Egypt and Ethiopia. Shared BRICS membership alone will not solve the serious problems between these adversaries. But it will create unique opportunities for direct, two-way conversations between states that dislike each other in a relatively safe multilateral environment. Washington has historically found advantage in exploiting divisions for its own ends, most notably in the Middle East. By reducing the distrust between countries, BRICS could help counter this unhealthy cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To perpetuate its primacy, Washington also tends to divide the world into regions. U.S. allies and partners, in the global south especially, are typically urged to counter a U.S. adversary or forge deeper ties with local U.S. partners in their region. India and the Philippines are encouraged to counter China, for example, while the Gulf States are nudged to focus on Iran and build links with Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This divide-and-conquer approach acts to limit middle powers\u2019 horizons to their own regions.\u00a0More than anything, the growing attraction of BRICS is a signal that American global dominance is waning. America, facing its own intractable domestic problems, should view BRICS expansion less as a threat and more as an opportunity. It offers a chance for the United States not only to relearn the practice of cooperation but also to let go some of the distant burdens and notions of exceptionalism that do not serve its national interest.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Of course, the United States is using its go-to newspaper, the New York Times, to downplay its anxiety about the rise of BRICS and their push to rise against Western economic powers. In an attempt to pacify US citizens, the following article assures Americans that their exceptionalism remains strong and their divide and conquer strategies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1716,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85,73,74],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1715","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economics","8":"category-us-news","9":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/proliberation.com\/underthesun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/proliberation.com\/underthesun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/proliberation.com\/underthesun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proliberation.com\/underthesun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proliberation.com\/underthesun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1715"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/proliberation.com\/underthesun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1717,"href":"https:\/\/proliberation.com\/underthesun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1715\/revisions\/1717"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proliberation.com\/underthesun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/proliberation.com\/underthesun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proliberation.com\/underthesun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proliberation.com\/underthesun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}