By Koffi Kouakou
It is not a conspiracy nor a theory. The talk of US superpower unipolarity and the new cold war is old. Today, the real talk is about the new-new world order.
It’s about redefining and creating a more inclusive geopolitical and geo-economic world order. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia creates more impetus for the coming order, possibly a multipolar world and sets a new turning point in world history.
But the coming new world order, from unipolar to multipolar, is very uncertain and uncomfortable to the US and its allies, rightly so. Peering through a looking glass of this new world, one might ask – so what’s next? Who or which nations will lead the world?
Remember a decade or so ago the BRICS club – the group of nations that is made up of Brazil, Russia India, China and South Africa? Remember how it was viewed as an organised conspiracy or economic secret society with a mythical image to overtake the US and its allies? Yes, it still exists.
But what happened to it in the meantime? It seems to have gone into a coma for the past few years, bereft and fragmented by ideological divisions among its members into global West and global South alliances.
The BRICS nations, as a strategic alliance, were sold to the world as the emerging bloc of power that would challenge the US-led capitalist world hegemony and help establish a new global financial architecture and geopolitical order.
Politically, economically, militarily, technologically, socially and culturally, the BRICS nations represent a powerful bloc in world power status. The combined map of geography, history, demography, population sizes, combined economic outputs, technologically and culture are on their side.
They have an estimated combined population of 3.23 billion people, which is over 40% of the world population, over more than a quarter of the world’s land area over three continents, and account for more than 25% of global GDP for $23.53 trillion, with many of the top and fast-growing nations in the world.
Indeed, leading the fight of the new world order, the BRICS nations, with their strengths and weaknesses, established the New Development Bank to compete with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and bankroll fast paced and large juggernaut infrastructure development projects and the China-led Belt and Road Initiative across the world.
More importantly, the central proposition of the emerging BRICS bloc was and remains the assertion of their independence from a dominated US sphere.
Fast-forward to the Ukraine crisis, clearly the realignment of the BRICS bloc politically, economically, militarily and socially is of great importance given the pre-eminent involvement of two of their key members, Russia and China.
The geopolitics of the new world order is changing rapidly with the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and the possible resurrection of a stronger BRICS could usher in a realignment of nations into new competing ideologies.
In an age of geopolitical disorder, the emergence of a Global South economic bloc is indeed a game changer. What is going on more broadly is the emergence of an alliance of global South nations, led by China and Russia, that seek to break the US dominated hegemony over the world.
The good news is BRICS is realigning on the back of the Ukraine war. The bad news is the uncertainty that hangs over the future of the geopolitics order. There are enormous implications and emerging lessons to learn from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
First, they challenge the current US-led international order. It’s a “violent eruption of the geopolitics tectonic”, says US historian Alfred McCoy. But the world must avoid another world war by escalating war tensions in Ukraine by ramping up sanctions and economic warfare on Russia, China and their allies. And a regime change in either Moscow or Beijing must be out of the question.
Second, during these general uncertainties about the coming newnew world order, the BRICS nations must be more explicit to the world about what they intend to do with their newfound global powers, responsibly, if they emerge as new hegemons.
Third, they unleash new opportunities for a possible just and inclusive geopolitics on how the world might be differently governed again. Finally, traditionally ill-prepared nations in Africa must brace for the coming geopolitical turbulence ahead, understand global affairs anew and carefully find the world order alignment that suits their interests.
The geopolitics of the world has changed with the bold assertion of a brutal Russian hard power invasion of Ukraine. The world is on edge, gasping for what to come next.
As such, the scenarios for tomorrow are daunting to imagine. However, many new “worlds” could arise from the ashes of the uncomfortable geopolitical crisis in Ukraine.
So far, one multipolar-world club is speaking out loudly – BRICS is Dead, Long Live BRICS . But can the BRICS nations pull off one of the greatest geopolitical world power grabs of the century? The answer to this rhetorical question is in the wind.
Hopefully, a new-new world order, led by the BRICS bloc, will not emerge from a crisis to another catastrophic bloody global war. But I doubt it, given the aggressive hysteria and panic driven US-led nations. Let’s trust that sanity prevails for a peaceful world order in the future, new or not.
* Kouakou is the Africa analyst and senior research fellow at The Centre of Africa China at the University of Johannesburg