Paulo Cannabrava Filho

Danger of Nuclear War—The Alternative
Is Being Built by the BRICS

This is the edited transcript of the presentation of Paulo Cannabrava Filho to Panel 1, “Stopping the Doomsday Clock—The Common Good of the One Humanity,” of the Schiller Institute’s Nov. 22 conference, “For World Peace—Stop the Danger of Nuclear War: Third Seminar of Political and Social Leaders of the World.”

Mr. Cannabrava is a veteran Brazilian journalist and political activist who, over six decades, has written for many publications across Ibero-America. He currently is the editor of Diálogos do Sul (Southern Dialogues), and is an ardent supporter of the sovereignty, economic development, and integration of the nations of the Global South. He spoke in Portuguese, with simultaneous English interpretation and subtitles. The full proceedings of the conference are available at the Schiller Institute website.

A call to peace is being made here, a mobilization of public figures worldwide in order to stop the danger of nuclear war, now! As I see it, there is only one way to stop this danger, the danger of all wars: Stop the expansion of United States hegemony.

There is an imminent risk of nuclear war; it is real, as real as the insanity which affects certain leaders subservient to the great lords of capital, who have raised themselves up as the owners of the world.

This risk must not succeed in diverting attention from the other war, which is being fought against the world’s peoples, especially in the West under the hegemony of the dollar. Here, we mean the cultural, psycho-social war. Media warfare, cybernetic warfare, the narrative war which wields words as weapons.

After less than 40 years, since signing the agreements at Yalta, a militarily and economically occupied Europe [began] another four decades under the aegis of neoliberalism in which finance capital and the Washington Consensus imposes a dictatorship as the model of economic management.

From the point of view of economic and social development, they were four lost decades. The result can be summed up [in such words as] destatization, privatization, deindustrialization, denationalization, deregulation, job insecurity, unemployment, despair, misery, which have spread throughout the European Union, as well as the developing countries.

Engulfed by the terminal crisis of the system and its neoliberal model, Europe finds itself dragged also into a military adventure, by declaring war against Russia. Imposing an economic blockade is an act of war, just as supplying technology, arms, munitions, and intelligence to a belligerent power is, per se, an act of war.

It is surprising that those most harmed by that war are the very countries which ignited it. It backfired. On top of an economic crisis which cannot be solved within the system, the energy crisis is added. Because of the blockade, prices skyrocketed and there has started to be shortages of everything—this, as Winter is coming on.

Soon 20 Nations in BRICS

All of this, for a unipolar world order that does not exist and never existed, because it takes into account a minority of less than a fifth of the world’s peoples. The United States needs to keep Europe colonized to survive; it has to keep Europe a colony for its war objectives in order to stop Russia, stop China.

Despite everything, there is no longer room for hegemonies. The world has changed. China is the greatest economic power, Russia is a military power, and the BRICS are now asserting themselves as a multipolar reality. In a world of cooperation and integration, there is no room for invasions, occupation, and war.

Regardless, the Biden Doctrine makes it clear that, for the empire, both China and Russia as well as the BRICS, are the enemies to be fought. Despite all of that, on China’s initiative, an alternative system is being built, free of the dollar system, which is based on cooperation for development, and the construction of infrastructure to increase world trade. Baptized as the New Silk Road, it includes the BRICS Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and an alternative inter-banking system based on a basket of local currencies whose foundations are the wealth of each country.

The BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—represent more than half of the people on the planet. Since it is attractive because it points to independence, and being free of control by the dollar, it already has candidates who want to join such as Argentina and Mexico in our Americas, Iran and even Saudi Arabia, which until recently was the faithful servant of the British and the Yankees. Soon enough, the BRICS will have 20 or more member countries.

The United Nations says that the Earth’s population has reached 8 billion human beings, and that there is a bomb, perhaps the greatest of all bombs, that is about to explode, and that is the 828 million people who go hungry—and which can become many, many more if the voraciousness of the consumer society continues, along with the predatory occupation of lands; if warming is not stopped, as the experts at COP27 meeting now in Egypt have stated to us.

But the solution for this and the other bombs lies in the proposal of the BRICS. A proposal in which there is no room for hegemony, which is founded on cooperation among peoples for development, building infrastructure, strengthening intraregional trade, the exchange of know-how; without impositions, to benefit all humanity. That is how you build peace. And in that way, we shall win.