2015; Join the BRICS, or
Face Wall St. Crash & War
by the Editors
Dec. 29—A new system of economic and strategic relations among sovereign nations, centered on the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and their allies in South America, Asia, and Africa, is poised to dominate the world in 2015. This new arrangement, representing more than half of humanity, holds the promise of freeing the globe from the barbarous stranglehold of the British Empire, and its satrapies, including Saudi Arabia, Wall Street, and the current Presidency of the United States.
“The truth of the matter is, the greatest margin of political power in the world lies in the hands of the BRICS body and its associates,” noted Lyndon LaRouche Dec. 28.
Over the past six months, highlighted by the July Fortaleza, Brazil Summit, the BRICS nations have forged ahead to establish a new set of international agreements for both economic and military security, with an increasingly open self-confidence in their role. Crucial to these agreements has been an emphasis on both basic economic infrastructure, and cooperation on the frontiers of scientific endeavor, especially space and nuclear energy. The latter, as stressed by economist LaRouche, is the keystone for success.
In year-end statements, the governments of Russia, China, and Brazil put forward their perspectives for 2015, in a manner that makes clear their world-historical self-conception, as a counterpole to the current system of geopolitical conflict and economic collapse, as you will see below.
Russia: BRICS To Set the Agenda
On Dec. 27, a statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry on the prospects for 2015 elaborated on the global context in which the government sees its initiatives for the year, including the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). Moscow has prioritized “efforts to transform the BRICS into one of the most important elements of the system of global governance” as part of a major foreign policy impetus, said the statement.
“Crucial progress towards this goal has been made during the Fortaleza Summit (July 15-16)—the decision to establish a multilateral framework of the association of financial institutions—a New Development Bank and a contingent of foreign exchange reserves with a total resource of $200 billion,” it said. BRICS leaders, who met on the sidelines of a G20 summit in November, have instructed their finance ministers to name the new bank’s president by the time they next meet in Russia.
In July 2015, the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), both then under Russian chairmanship, will hold back-to-back summits in Ufa, the capital of Russia’s Republic of Bashkortostan.
Russia has spoken “with one voice with its partners in the BRICS for the promotion of international stability in its various dimensions,” said the Foreign Ministry statement. The Fortaleza Summit condemned “unilateral military intervention and economic sanctions,” the statement noted.
On Jan. 1, 2015, the EEU will begin operation, with the aim of conducting “a coordinated policy in key economic areas such as energy, industry, agriculture, and transport” among a core group of five nations—Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan. The EEU will have three components, with the headquarters in Moscow, the court in Belarus, and the financial institution in Kazakhstan.
At the finalizing meeting of Presidents of the EEU nations on Dec. 23, Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed the benefits of the union for all the nations involved, and that the institution is open to other nations to integrate economically based on mutual benefit. Already, the EEU is in negotiations with South America’s Mercosur (Common Market of the South), Turkey, India, Israel, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for cooperation agreements.
In their summit last May in Shanghai, President Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed on the perspective of cooperation between the EEU and the Chinese Silk Road Economic Belt, especially for creating a new Eurasian transportation grid.
China: A ‘Win-Win’ Vision
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi made his government’s official statement of policy at a Dec. 24 symposium sponsored by the China Institute of International Studies and the China Foundation for International Studies. He began by summarizing China’s accomplishments during 2014, which he sees being extended into “building a global network of partnerships” during the coming year.
China has “promoted the Chinese vision of building a new type of international relations,” with “win-win cooperation at its heart,” Wang said. “As a new approach to managing state-to-state relations in the contemporary world, it will exert a positive and profound impact on the evolution of international relations.”
Wang described China’s approach of forming partners instead of allies, in some detail, noting that “China has established 72 partnerships in different forms and at different levels with 67 countries and 5 regions or regional organizations, which cover all the major countries and regions in the world.
“The partnerships that we are building have three basic features. First, equality. Countries, regardless of their size or level of development, should respect each other’s sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity, as well as each other’s choice of development path and values, treat each other as equals, and show mutual understanding and support for each other.
“Second, peace. What makes such partnership different from military alliance is that it does not have any hypothetical enemy nor is it targeted at any third party, thus keeping relations between countries unaffected by military factors. It aims to handle state-to-state relations with a cooperative rather than confrontational, and a win-win rather than zero-sum approach.
“Third, inclusiveness. The partnership we have initiated seeks to go beyond differences in social systems and ideologies to maximize interests and pursue a common goal.”
Wang pointed to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, projects launched in 2014, as examples of such partnerships. He also underlined President Xi Jingping’s call for an “Asia-Pacific Dream” at the November 2014 APEC conference, and a new security architecture, which he introduced at this year’s Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures. “China has used the CICA [Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building in Asia] platform to champion security cooperation by rejecting the old mentality of seeking one’s own security at the expense of the security of others, and building an open and inclusive new security architecture in Asia. This shows China’s eagerness to take a more constructive part in Asia’s security affairs and provide public security goods,” Wang said.
Wang discussed the extraordinary diplomatic activity by President Xi and Prime Minister Li Keqiang during the year—including meeting with over 500 foreign leaders while creating the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the BRICS’ New Development Bank (NDB). He characterized the principles of China’s foreign policy as the following:
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Upholding the social system and development path chosen by China and supported overwhelmingly by the Chinese people;
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pursuing peace and non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries;
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promoting justice in an even-handed way; and
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making domestic development and reform, and opening up, top priorities.
Wang concluded with an appeal to his audience to continue on the path laid out by President Xi and the party leadership, and to realize “the glorious mission history has bestowed on this generation of ours.”
Brazil: ‘We Acted’
The Foreign Ministry of Brazil also issued a year-end statement of note on the BRICS perspective.
Flavio Damico, director of the Inter-Region Mechanisms Department, told Xinhua-Spanish on Dec. 17 that the BRICS nations’ decision to found the New Development Bank and a Contingency Reverse Arrangement to protect their currencies, epitomizes the transformation which the BRICS made in 2014. The countries went beyond “discussing the world order, to ‘offering a global public good’ which will support the process of development in the emerging world. Instead of talking, we acted [emphasis added].
“That is the fundamental change. That is the great task of the BRICS from here on out: to carry out the process of institutionalization, establishing those two major institutions,” he said, referring to the new bank and the currency agreement, which are not yet operational.
Damico reported that the BRICS set deadlines for implementation of their program at their meeting on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Brisbane, Australia, in November 2014, with the goal of producing concrete results by the July 2015 BRICS summit. For one, the respective national Congresses are to ratify the creation of the bank within a year, while an interim committee carries out the preparatory work.
Between now and April, when Brazil hands the role of pro tempore head of the BRICS over to Russia, there are additional meetings scheduled, including one of the BRICS Ministers of Science and Technology, of Agriculture, and of Education, and a meeting on “populations.”
“We are going to go ahead with discussion of a long-term project to strengthen economic cooperation among the BRICS. This should basically be measures to facilitate trade and investment among the five countries,” he added.
Progress Underway
The lack of final formal arrangements on the two financial institutions the BRICS are planning, is not holding back progress on closer collaboration. Not a week goes by without the announcement of new agreements both on physical projects, and on currency arrangements to pay for them, among the BRICS nations and their partners. A review of just the last two weeks of December turns up the following items, which are by no means exhaustive.
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China-Egypt: On Dec. 23, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi began a four-day trip to China, with the declared intent of making Egypt “a mainstay in the initiative of Chinese President Xi Jinping to revive the ancient Chinese Silk Road trade route.” El-Sisi mentioned that the new Suez Canal Development Project, which Egypt is financing itself on a crash-project basis, will be a key part of the Silk Road Initiative.
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The two nations signed 25 agreements, mainly in energy and transportation, including plans for construction of a high-speed train to connect Alexandria, on the Mediterranean coast, with Aswan, in the South; an electric railway network in the densely populated Cairo-Nile Delta region; and Egypt’s first nuclear power plant.
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India-Russia: On Dec. 24, the head of the Crimean administration, Sergei Aksyonov, said: “We have reached an agreement with the Indian side that we will jointly build a pharmaceutical plant.”
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Rusia-Brazil: On Dec. 18, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin visited Brazil’s science center in São José dos Campos, and discussed joint work on space launches and other advanced scientific areas: “In a word, we may establish a long-term friendship with Brazil in the area of high technologies,” Rogozin said.
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Russia-Argentina-Spain: On Dec. 19, Argentina’s Planning and Foreign Ministers announced that a Spanish-Argentine consortium, plus Russia’s Inter RAO Export firm, had won the contract to build the Chihuido I hydroelectric plant in Argentina, at a cost of $2.1 billion.
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China-Thailand: Chinese Premier Li attended the triennial meeting of the Greater Mekong Subregion on Dec. 20, where a 10-year development plan valued at over $50 billion was proposed, to be comprised primarily of projects in infrastructure and transportation. The Mekong River Basin water project, which has been sabotaged by the anti-human “environmentalist” policy of the World Bank and Asian Development Bank for decades, would be a crucial boost for upgrading the economies of the six nations in this region—Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.
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China-Eastern Europe: Prime Minister Li, during the second week of December, attended the fourth annual Belgrade Economic Forum of the heads of state and government of 16 Central and Eastern European States—of which he has been made a member. Fourteen heads of state attended this meeting, at which infrastructure, stretching north from Greece’s port of Piraeus, was on the agenda. According to the Greek paper Kathimerini (ekathimerini.com), the project underway to expand the port is now a Maritime Silk Road catalyst for an Athens to Belgrade to Central Europe project (Athens being reconnected with Piraeus by rail).
A Casus Belli?
None of the BRICS nations, nor most of their allies, are under any illusion that their plans for development will proceed unimpeded. Indeed, the leading political representatives of the bankrupt Western nations—especially the United States and the European Union—have constantly deployed to sabotage the consolidation of what they cannot fail to see as an economic superpower, coming together within the BRICS alliance.
Indeed, in LaRouche’s view, the British-Wall Street crowd, who are staring their own bankruptcy in the face, have determined that they are prepared to provoke all-out war, if necessary, in order to crush the BRICS alliance, despite the fact that BRICS leaders such as China and Russia have repeatedly extended offers of collaboration to the United States and the EU countries.
Thus, the pathway ahead in 2015 is a choice between two starkly different alternatives: on the one side, a financial and economic collapse worse than any in history, leading directly into global warfare that threatens mankind’s existence on the planet; and on the other, an unprecedented era of collaboration among sovereign nations for economic progress on the highest level.
Is there really a choice?
