Darrell Castle talks about the summit of BRICS nations held in South Africa, which concluded August 24th with a momentous decision regarding expansion. What does that decision mean for the United States and the rest of the world?

Transcription / Notes

SIX MORE BRICS IN THE WALL

Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 1st day of September in the year of our Lord 2023. I will be talking about the summit of BRICS nations held in South Africa, which concluded on August 24th with a momentous decision regarding expansion. The five BRICS consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa decided to add six new members. What does that decision mean for the United States and the rest of the world?

For the first time since 2010 the decision was made to expand membership and six new nations were accepted with full membership to begin January 1, 2024. Saudia Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Argentina, Ethiopia, and Iran were all admitted to membership. Just as the U.S.  is the leader of the rules based international order and the enforcer of the rules, China and Russia are the heavy weights of the BRICS order and their decisions regarding who gets in and who doesn’t seem to be very persuasive.

The full effects of the decision will take time to fully manifest themselves, but one thing is known for certain and that is that BRICS now has eleven members and they are on the way to greater political power and most likely a new currency union. They are all now suffering from the weaponization of the U.S. dollar and they were all under pressure to support the U.S. imposed sanctions against Russia, but none agreed to do so. Weaponization of the dollar and the freezing of dollar-denominated reserves is a real fear as that is exactly what happened to Russia.

Nations are told that the U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve and the safest and best place for their foreign reserves so that is where they put all the reserves that they have. The U.S. then decides that they have not followed the rules of the rules based global order and their reserves are confiscated never to be returned. The freezing of reserves cuts a nation off from international commerce because they must now have cash since the U.S. has frozen them out of the international banking system.

Their answer is to band together and start a new currency union big enough and diverse enough to offer the exchange of goods and services and perhaps even credit that can bypass the dollar. The new currency will not be easy and will take time, but for now the members will explore trading in their own currencies as Russia and China have been doing. India is the world’s largest importer of Russian coal and it has been buying that coal in the Russian currency. China and other oil import dependent members have been buying Saudi and Russian oil in the Chinese currency. No wonder the sanctions on Russia appear to have inflicted more economic harm on Europe and the U.S. than on Russia.

If I had control of the expanded BRICS I would use the membership and coordination to reconstruct the global structure of money, trade, use of military power and other things that would come to mind. To accomplish that, I would focus on energy, especially oil and the international oil trade. If the U.S. demanded or tried to muscle me on the use and development of fossil fuel, I would tell them to go pound sand no pun intended. I would use my dominance in oil to put my members at the center rather than the bottom of the world agenda which would mean the return of a multi-polar world and the end of U.S. dominance and hegemony.

Time will tell whether I could accomplish all that, but time, I would argue is on my side because at least 40 other nations have applied for membership including Mexico. These nations would be considered one by one and year by year as new members were absorbed. I would, in other words,