BRICS in Motion To Form the
New 'International Community'
by Michael Billington
Sept. 1—The U.S. and most European governments, and their obedient press outlets, have focused over recent weeks on President Obama's assertions of kingly power to wage war in Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, and wherever else he pleases, and on the dangerous NATO rants about a Russian "invasion" of Ukraine, combined with threats that the "international community" will respond with yet more self-destructive sanctions, and a massive military buildup around the borders of Russia and China.
But who or what is the "international community"? For many years, the British Empire and its underlings (including Presidents Bush and Obama) have waged illegal wars, imposed unilateral and collective sanctions outside of international law, and supplied massive armaments to terrorist forces across Southwest Asia (often through their satrapies in Saudi Arabia and Qatar), all in the name of the "international community"—meaning the Anglo-American financial oligarchy and its "Washington consensus" of free trade, deregulation, and IMF-dictated austerity.
Now, especially since the BRICS Summit in Brazil in mid-July, there is a new "international community" which, this time, actually represents most of the world's nations and the majority of the world's population.
Lyndon LaRouche this week referred to the "old" international community as "a bunch of hysterics who are totally bankrupt, and they are not going to get anywhere. They might as well just sit down and contemplate whether they're going to shoot themselves."
This report will briefly review what the new "international community"—the BRICS (Russia, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa) and their close collaborators (nearly all of Ibero-America, and much of Africa and Asia) have done in the past few weeks alone to transform the world from one of economic and social disintegration to one of large-scale infrastructure development, industrial and agricultural expansion, and multilateral collaboration in space, nuclear technology, and related scientific endeavors.
The creation by the BRICS of a New Development Bank (NDB) to fund infrastructure development worldwide, without the imperial "conditionalities" of the IMF and World Bank, and a Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), to combat currency warfare from the speculators in New York and London, will not become operative institutions for several years. Nonetheless, the simple announcement of intention to create such a new global economic order has dramatically changed the condition of the world, and unchained nations to act upon their true freedom as sovereign nations, in collaboration with other sovereigns, in the interest of their populations, and of all mankind, through scientific and economic development.
Expanding Real Value
Russia is currently being decried as an existential threat to Western civilization, due to its imagined "aggression" against Ukraine, and potentially all of Europe. President Obama repeatedly talks about Russia's and President Vladimir Putin's "increasing isolation from the international community" due to Putin's refusal to back down in the face of the threats and sanctions of the British- and American-dominated NATO, while also refusing to be drawn into a war which would be thermonuclear.
Let's examine the reality.
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Is Russia isolated?
First, President Putin met with 12 Ibero-American heads of state on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in July. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told RT on Aug. 29 that "Latin America will be one of the pillars of the New World Economic Order" under the BRICS initiative. Thus, America's "backyard" has rejected altogether Obama's demand that Russia be ostracized by the "international community." Lavrov particularly pointed to Russia's close collaboration with Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, Chile, Peru, and Venezuela, while noting Russia's "broad program" of cooperation in energy, transportation, defense, aerospace, and heavy industry—areas of great importance in Ibero-America which have been almost entirely ignored by the West.
Particularly important is the role of Argentina, which has heroically stood up to the Wall Street vulture funds, the corrupt U.S. courts, and the old, dying "international community" which demanded its pound of flesh from Argentina. All the BRICS nations, every Ibero-American nation, and most of Asia and Africa have defended Argentina's sovereign right to renegotiate its debts, while Argentina has sent a trade delegation to Russia; Argentina announced on Aug. 21 a series of accords with Russia that pave the way for food exports to that country amounting to as much as $18 billion, to replace the food that Russia refuses to import from Western nations that have imposed sanctions on Russia. -
Africa: South Africa's President Jacob Zuma met with President Putin in Moscow on Aug. 29—their third meeting over the past year. Putin promised to provide Russia's assistance in creating a comprehensive nuclear energy industry in South America, as well as assistance in military and commercial aircraft, and security cooperation.
While the extraordinary role of Egypt in the current global transformation is covered in-depth elsewhere in this issue (see p. 4), several things should be referenced for the purposes of this article: that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's first trip abroad as President included a stop in Moscow; that he issued a letter of support to Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner against the vulture funds; that he will visit Brazil in October; and that he has outlined a series of great projects in Egypt, not seen since the days of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, including a New Suez Canal to be built and funded entirely by Egyptians.
President al-Sisi is also intervening to help clean up the messes created by the London and the Washington in Palestine, Libya, Syria, and Iraq. While not a member of the BRICS (at least not yet), al-Sisi is acting consciously in the context of the new global environment established since the July BRICS Summit. -
Southeast Asia: Russian Economic Development Minister Alexi Ulyukayev visited Myanmar, currently the chairmen of the ten-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on Aug. 28, for ministerial talks between Russia and ASEAN. They discussed both food exports to Russia from the highly productive ASEAN agriculture sector, and expanded Russian investment in the region.
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China and Central Asia: Following private meetings between Presidents Putin and Xi Jinping in April and July, Russian Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov was in Beijing Aug. 28 for discussions with his counterpart, Fang Fenghui. Gerasimov said that Russia-China relations, including military ties, had reached a "new stage." Gerasimov also attended a meeting of the chiefs of staff of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO—China, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan), where the pressing issues of Afghanistan and Iraq were addressed. Gerasimov noted that "forceful actions do not bring the results, and lead to dramatic consequences for the countries in the region."
On Sept. 1, Putin and Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli launched the construction of the mammoth gas pipeline contracted between Presidents Putin and Xi in May. The $400 billion energy deal includes the construction of the longest pipeline in the world, nearly 4,000 km, from the eastern Siberian gas fields to China and the Pacific coast of Russia.
China in the Lead
China is the driving force behind the new science- and development-oriented paradigm being created in the world today. During the last week in August alone, China sponsored the SCO foreign ministers meeting mentioned above, while an Argentine delegation, including Foreign Minister Axel Kicillof, is in China to consolidate the agreements reached between Presidents Putin and Fernández during the BRICS Summit in Brazil, and to prepare for the Argentine President to visit China later this year. This is in contrast to the insanity of the New York vulture funds, which last week issued subpoenas to the Bank of China in New York, demanding all their data on economic contracts with Argentina—attempting to locate properties that can be deemed to be owned by the Argentine government, intending to seize them under orders of the U.S. court.
China is moving forward on its intention to build a second canal across the Panama Isthmus, this time in Nicaragua. A national mobilization is underway in Nicaragua to rally the population behind the project, as in Egypt for the New Suez Canal. The Chinese company heading the $40 billion project, HKND, is partnered with Changjiang Institute of Survey, Planning Design and Research, the firm that designed the Three Gorges Dam, and is part of the great South-Water-North project in China. China has also agreed to build a multi-purpose terminal at Cuba's Santiago de Cuba port, as well as several "dry canals" (road and rail crossings of the Isthmus).
While Mexico has thus far remained at arm's length from the global revolution set into motion by the BRICS Summit, the Chinese Ambassador to Mexico, Qiu Xiaoqi, published an op-ed in Mexico's El Financiero on Aug. 27, using as a title an ancient Chinese saying: "Better the Prosperity of Many Than of One Alone." Ambassador Qiu said that the new policy emerging from the BRICS Summit "marks a momentous milestone in cooperation between developing countries, improving even more the international financial system, and promoting healthy and sustainable global economic growth." He said that the new institutions will aid the "progress of the developing nations," as well as the "recovery and growth of developed nations."
China is encouraging all nations to join in the new development-vectored process. Iran has expressed interest in joining the BRICS, and Qiu concluded, "I hope that all the countries of the world adhere to the concept of cooperation based on shared benefits."
In Thailand, despite years of paralysis created by anti-development mobs protesting every major development plan, the military junta which seized power in May has worked closely with China (and South Korea and Japan) to activate major water projects, agricultural modernization, and high-speed rail projects—including the crucial connection from Kunming, China, through Laos, Thailand and Malaysia to Singapore—the "Orient Express."
Crucial negotiations are now taking place among business and government groups from Thailand, China, Japan, and other nations to activate plans to build the Kra Canal across the Isthmus of Kra in southern Thailand, bypassing the overcrowded shipping lanes of the Malacca Strait. Together with the second Panama Canal and the New Suez Canal, this would complete the great canal projects promoted by Lyndon LaRouche in his A Fifty-Year Development Policy for the Indian-Pacific Ocean Basins, published in 1983.
India Transformed
Since taking power in May, President Narendra Modi has shifted the direction of India's economy and foreign policy, focused on his campaign slogan: "Development, development, development." Coherent with India's role in the BRICS, his foreign policy is oriented to the rapid expansion of international cooperation in industry, agriculture, and scientific advances in nuclear power and space exploration.
Modi is also intent on facilitating a solution to the festering crisis between Japan and China, which he sees as undermining the urgent development of Eurasia as a whole. One of his first foreign visits was to Japan, where he signed agreements on Sept. 1 including Japanese investments in India of $35 billion over the next five years, especially in high-speed rail lines and new transportation corridors between India and its neighbors, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Myanmar.
Modi has also invited Chinese President Xi to visit India in September, and intends to demonstrate that India can, and must, strengthen ties with all nations, but based on real economic development. As Modi said in Tokyo: "Those who walk the path of the Buddha believe in the path of developmentalism that guarantees peace and progress. But all around us, the world is looking like the 18th Century, and we see expansionism—sometimes encroach on a country, sometimes enter into the seas, sometimes enter a country to take it over. We can see these tendencies."
Efforts in Japan and the West to portray this statement as anti-China, due to China's supposed encroachments on contested territories in the the South China and East China seas, fall flat, by ignoring Modi's crucial role in the BRICS establishment of a new world order based on "developmentalism," contrasted to the U.S./British return to 18th-Century imperial destruction and occupation of nations across Central and Southwest Asia.
Modi is also invited to the White House at the end of the September, after the UN General Assembly.
The Intention Is Clear
Many of the key protagonists in the New Economic Order are aware that this is a revolution in world affairs, which must be successful if the world is to avoid the global thermonuclear war being threatened by London and the White House. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, speaking to a youth camp in central Russia on Aug. 27, said that the U.S. was "going against the course of history" in its demonization of Russia and its attempt to stop the emergence of an "egalitarian international arena," a clear reference to the transformation of history centered on the BRICS developments.
His deputy, Sergei Ryabkov, speaking to International Affairs magazine on Aug 28, referred to the BRICS agreements with Africa and other developing nations: "Russia does not make its policy in these regions on the basis of political canons, so characteristic of our colleagues in the West." He said that the New Development Bank "has arisen due to the fact that the United States' inaction delays the IMF reforms. Certain countries have no influence on the decisions taken by the IMF. This situation does not correspond to the authority and responsibility of these states, primarily BRICS countries."
The world has changed, and a new process of development is coming into being. In a real sense, LaRouche and his movement have served as the midwife to that process—and have committed themselves to provide it with the Promethean gifts of science. Mastery of those gifts is what will ensure that the victory, which is so clearly visible before us, will not slip from mankind's grasp.
Nancy Spannaus contributed to this article.
