BRICS Leaders Discuss Need for De-Dollarization, Approve Saudi Arabia and Iran Among New Members

The 15th annual BRICS forum was held this week in South Africa, and the world was watching… so let’s talk about why it was so significant.

First and foremost, interest in the BRICS alliance is unprecedented right now, and as a result, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are set to become official members in January of next year. They’re actually just a handful of the more than 40 countries that have expressed interest in joining BRICS, and the main topics of this year’s forum are a reminder of why so many nations want to join right now.

But in order to understand how we got to this point, we have to start at the beginning… The acronym for BRICS is attributed to Goldman Sachs analyst Jim O'Neill and the paper on emerging economies he published back in 2001. He was referring to Brazil, Russia, India and China, and noting that the four countries had GDP growth that would exceed that of what was then the Group of Eight.

South Africa wouldn’t become an official member of BRIC until 2010, making it the BRICS we know today. But it’s safe to say that the West wasn’t too worried about this new alliance at the time… because all five countries involved are also members of the Group of 20, along with their Western counterparts.

But then a handful of those G20 members supported a violent government overthrow in Ukraine in 2014 that led to the targeting of the Russian-speaking population there. American and European politicians backed the coup because they feared that the democratically elected Government in Kiev was getting too close to Moscow. They would do anything to get Ukraine back under Western control, even if that meant supporting violent neo-Nazi extremists. And it did.

But when the people of Crimea voted to return to Russia in 2014 – amid the threat to their existence as a historically Russian speaking population that was coming from the new leaders in Kiev – the West reacted. They started throwing around terms like “military occupation” and “annexation,” and the media ran with it, creating some sort of fictional “Battle for Crimea” that never happened.

In addition to announcing sanctions against Moscow, the Western-dominated G8 also kicked Russia out of their alliance—making it the G7, with the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK.

The divide that was created between the West and Russia in 2014 only continued to grow, and it has culminated in the current war in Ukraine.

But despite the West making Russia the most sanctioned nation in the world in 2022 and threatening the rest of the world to cut ties with Moscow… Russia has only continued to grow, and the BRICS alliance, which it is a key member of, has continued to attract interest.

So, how is that possible?

Well, for starters, Russia is not Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, or any of the numerous countries where the West has been able to overthrow the government in power with organized protests and a propaganda campaign spread far and wide by the media. If you were to ask officials in the West why, they would argue that Vladimir Putin is such a dictator that the Russian population doesn’t dare question him. But what they won’t say is that in order for the public to revolt, they have to be desperate, and they have to be convinced that everything—from the economy to the government in power—is unstable.

That’s why the West imposed so many sanctions against Russia in such a short time. Their goal was to devastate the Russian economy, while making the Russian people miserable and desperate, and convincing them that Putin’s government was unstable and needed to be replaced.

Of course, if you’ve paid any attention to U.S. Foreign policy, you know that the Western-backed “replacement” always brings instability, death and destruction—but never the freedom and democracy that is promised.

As someone who spent the majority of the last year living in Russia – I can attest to the fact that the economy, and the prices of groceries and everyday items remained stable. Many of the Western businesses that left the country were replaced with Russian versions that sold virtually the same products. I felt safe in the city, and I wasn’t worried about crime. I also didn’t feel like I had to hide the fact that I was an American, and I was never treated differently because of that. The people I met who asked where I was from were genuinely curious about what life was like in the U.S. and how I ended up in Russia.

I say all of that to say, that was my experience. After living in Russia, I understand why the people there—yes, even those who are against the war in Ukraine—didn’t revolt against the government. Many of them remember the instability in Russia in the 1990’s after the fall of the Soviet Union, and they understand that the overthrow of the current central government would lead to an even worse crisis.

So, why didn’t all of those sanctions have the desired effect? Well, if it’s possible for a country to be truly “sanction-proof,” then Russia is arguably as close as it gets. Not only does it have a wealth of natural resources to depend on for itself, but it is also one of the largest suppliers of key natural resources to the rest of the world.

Countries across Asia, Africa and South America knew that if they complied with the demands of the U.S. and they cut off Russia, then that would mean cutting off their access to the coal, oil, natural gas, gold, timber, rare earth metals, and on and on, that Russia provides. They knew that they would be hurting their own stability… and for what? So that the government in Washington of the moment would say “Good job,” without any kind of legitimate replacement for the imports and trade opportunities they just forfeited?

We’re certainly seeing how well that worked out in Europe right now, as the EU and the UK continue to deal with the consequences of their campaign against Russia.

But there’s another aspect of this that comes back to the message of this year’s BRICS forum. The rest of the world has watched as the U.S. has steadily gained more power. They’re well aware that the Dollar is the world reserve currency. And they’re also concerned that they could be the next target of Washington’s wrath. They’re not continuing to work with Russia because they want to see Moscow become the next unipolar superpower. They’re working with Russia because of the message that Moscow, and the BRICS alliance as a whole, is preaching right now, which is centered around the need for a multi-polar world order, where trade is carried out in local currencies for the benefit of the nations involved. They know the power of the Dollar, and they have watched as Washington has increasingly weaponized that power against anyone it doesn’t like.

The potential BRICS+ members aren’t just countries like Iran, Venezuela and Cuba, who know the pain of being suffocated by U.S. sanctions firsthand. It’s also OPEC members like Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Algeria… giving the status of the Petrodollar a literal run for its money.

The more the BRICS alliance grows, the more opportunities there are for its members to reduce their reliance on the U.S. Dollar, and the power it holds over them.

But if there’s anything we’ve learned about the U.S. establishment, it’s that it won’t give up that power without a fight… even though the reason that we’re in this position to begin with is due to reckless U.S. foreign policy that was carried out as if there would never be blowback—and that’s something everyone should be talking about.