checks USD exchange rates
Yep it's still the only currency that matters.
Checks Indian-Chinese relations
Yep they still have effective visa bans against each other.
So what is this BRICS club exactly? A dictionary club?
replies(6):
Yep it's still the only currency that matters.
Checks Indian-Chinese relations
Yep they still have effective visa bans against each other.
So what is this BRICS club exactly? A dictionary club?
That's what the US govt thought when it sanctioned Russia. It only resulted in Russia falling back to their local currency without any significant problems, while making the rest of the world wary of reliance on the US dollar
Joining BRICS is akin to joining the "third world": joining it means nothing and even the original meaning it was supposed to represent has long been lost and forgotten.
BRICS has been totally absent in the Sino-Indian conflict [1]. Given China and India are its anchor economic heavyweights, and Russia an emerging Chinese suzerainty, it’s in nobody’s interest to bring that issue to the forum.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_border_dispute
Ah yes, the yuan[1].
Though the way this is going, it might as well be the Russian local currency now.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/russia-china-yuan-ruble-1912458
The pig has grown way too big and is drowning in debt. Way too much overhead to keep feeding it. On top of that the US dollar is being used as a club which is an issue for countries that do not want to toe the line. Given a time the world will find a replacement.
This is rapidly turning into a collection of everyone that isn’t strongly west aligned. While it seems directionless for now they do have that in common.
Don’t think it’s safe to dismiss it given direction of travel
I think you're trying to spin reality into a far rosier picture.
Russia is now bounded to do international trade with any currency other than the ruble, and it is famously piling on a huge trade deficit with India while stockpiling rupees without any way of exchanging them for anything. You're talking about a scenario that not even Russia is able to use Russia's currency in direct trades with other BRICS members.
What does this tell you about "significant problems"?
> while making the rest of the world wary of reliance on the US dollar
You're commenting as if no one in the world was aware of the US dolar hegemony, and even if it was anything new. That's not what's happening in reality. Even the eurozone has been trying to leverage the euro as an alternative to the US dolar in markets like oil, and hasn't been that successful. If a trading block and economic powerhouse like the eurozone isn't able to shake that off, what tells you that Russia, whose economy barely matches Italy's, is an exception?
However, there are billions of people within the BRICS context. Billions and billions. I think this is why Western-aligned folks are in such fear of it as a concept for world diplomacy.
It took until May of this year—over 2 years from first sanctions—for the yuan to hit top currency on the Moscow Exchange [1].
Of course sanctions hurt both America and Russia. But they hurt Russia more. Within a year, it will be a total suzerainty of China’s, a dynamic that’s beginning to become apparent in the concessions the latter is already demanding on resource pricing [2].
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/13/investing/us-russia-sanctions...
[2] https://www.ft.com/content/f7a34e3e-bce9-4db9-ac49-a092f382c...
But .. that's nothing less than a huge opportunity for India to start building things the Russians need and want.
The same thing occurred with the Euro, which was doing fine until the energy sources feeding its growth were attacked, recently ..
It's called "blunting".
The best way to undermine alliances is to be a part of them and undermine consensus.
China did this to APEC in the 1990s and the WTO in the 2000s, and India is doing the same in BRICS and SCO.
Because this is a zero-sum competition, this means if one is a member of an alliance, the other needs to join as well to blunt their relative advantage.
How so?
> This war has already been lost by the West.
How are you defining won or lost?
> the effects will be limited and won’t act as deterrent
I don't disagree the effects would or could be limited/targeted, but it has deterred China for example in that large Chinese banks now won't do business with Russia out of fear of US sanctions.
China is taking over Russian car or consumer electronics markets, for example. The trade between two countries is soaring, Western brands are being substituted by Chinese production.
> How are you defining won or lost?
Strategic imperative of the West was that European borders cannot be changed by force and the global order based on rules and international law will ensure that. It is clear now that without direct NATO involvement the best achievable outcome will be a new iron curtain on Dnepr river. No sanctions or military supplies can change that, it is just too late. This in turn means that the old order has collapsed, USA cannot be trusted as a guarantor of security, EU is not a serious power and we already see how other nations are recalculating their alignment.
I see - yes I don't disagree with that, but wasn't entirely sure what you meant. I think on the whole the west doesn't really care outside of the oil and gas which they've managed to put Russia's infrastructure into a desired state. Exports halted, Ukraine is attacking infrastructure, Europe is doing whatever it can not to buy Russian oil (good for US and Saudi Arabia), and what oil Russia does sell is sold at a discounted rate to India last I checked.
> Strategic imperative of the West was that European borders cannot be changed by force and the global order based on rules and international law will ensure that. It is clear now that without direct NATO involvement the best achievable outcome will be a new iron curtain on Dnepr river. No sanctions or military supplies can change that, it is just too late.
Well the war isn't over yet is it? The US and EU just gave Ukraine around $100bn which is 2x the official Russian military budget. It seems that things in the east have sort of stabilized with neither side able to do much, so perhaps the west will have "lost" because Russia took over that part of Ukraine and no more? If so I mean it's not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things given the cost imposed on Russia.
> This in turn means that the old order has collapsed, USA cannot be trusted as a guarantor of security, EU is not a serious power and we already see how other nations are recalculating their alignment.
This I would strongly disagree with. I don't think Russia throwing body after body into Ukraine which is much smaller in every aspect only for it to be stopped at the Dnepr River means that the entire western order has collapsed.
I would also strongly disagree with your assessment that the EU is not a serious power. The EU as a whole sure in the sense that the EU doesn't have the ability to unilaterally field an army, but both France and the UK have quite serious militaries and are able to project power at least as well if not better than Russia with or without American help. USA not being trusted doesn't make much sense to me either. Trump scares our partners (rightfully so) but almost everyone in Congress and in the military and intelligence establishment recognizes the US's need to defend allies and shore up alliances.
Frankly, if you take a look at troop deployments and training exercises, both Sweden and Finland joining NATO (and NATO troops heading to Finland), it's pretty clear the US is committed to the defense of Europe. Actions speak louder than words.
OP asserted that Russia switching away from US dollars to rubles had no significant impact.
The fact is that Russia cannot even use rubles in international commerce. That is a major impact. They cannot buy stuff.
Nevertheless, you are commenting on hypothetical advantages for India. Not Russia, but India. And merely hypothetical in the sense that hypothetical indian companies might have a potential market now that Russia cannot use rupees. How's that a real advantage?
Everyone just points out major blockages and barriers when switching away from the US dolar accompanied with absolutely no upside at all, and we are expected to believe this change should not have any significant impact?
BRICS gets strong feelings because it's an made-up economic bloc created by Goldman Sachs in 2001 as a way to describe powerful developing economies. A few ETFs / Index funds were created based on that... and mostly fell apart, since all of the growth was in China.
Brazil is something of a high-tariff basketcase, South Africa is a borderline failed state and can't keep the lights on, Russia is eviscerating itself in Ukraine and looking at demographic collapse regardless of how many Ukrainian kids they kidnap, and China v India isn't cooling down -- they just had a sword & rock fight in the mountains not too long ago. Like, one of my big bets for 2000-2100 AD is a Chinese-Indian War, which has the potential to end life on Earth, much like US-USSR MAD fears did 90 years ago.
This is false. They can't buy things from American-dominated states, but that is also changing.
The singularity is near.
It has nothing about domination. This is a matter of having an international currency, and using it to do international trade.
Think about it for a second. Nothing stopped Russia from dealing with India, and Russia is selling Russia's oil to India in exchange for ruppees. That's fine for India, but Russia found itself with a massive volume of rupees without any way to exchange them for stuff it needs.
With an international currency such as the US dolar, Russia would be able to exchange them for anything at all, because that's the whole point of money. As barely anyone in the world deals with rupees, Russia either buys anything at all from India, which so far has been a no, or scratches off it's oil deals as a loss because not being able to buy anything with rupees is as good as giving their oil away for free.
I mean, a currency that no one uses is like buying arcade tokens: sure, you can play video games in the only store that accepts them, or you're stuck with a useless token thatyl you can't do anything about it as it is worth nothing.
And the brain-dead idea of complaining about arcade-dominated stores because you can't buy shit with arcade tokens is simply absurd. You're the one unilaterally trying to trade with a medium of exchange that no one uses. How is this anyone's fault other than yours?
I think you better explain that to the politicians in Washington who have long since weaponized the petrodollar.
>You're the one unilaterally trying to trade with a medium of exchange that no one uses.
The assumption that there aren't alternatives to the petrodollar actively being used today is entirely false. You may not see it - perhaps because of your own investments in the petrodollar - but it is definitely happening.
And then, there is Bitcoin. You might want to see which weapons manufacturers accept bitcoin in payment, and which only prefer the blood-stained petrodollar.
That might give you a clue as to your own myopia.
>Russia either buys anything at all from India, which so far has been a no,
You are aware that there is a rail line from Moscow to India, right, and that it operates entirely outside the scope of Western control?