JUST IN: BRICS to announce memberships of new nations at summit, citing major shift in global order.
Countries that have formally applied to join the alliance:
🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia
🇧🇩 Bangladesh
🇻🇪 Venezuela
🇦🇷 Argentina
🇮🇩 Indonesia
🇪🇹 Ethiopia
🇧🇭 Bahrain
🇲🇽 Mexico
🇳🇬 Nigeria
🇩🇿 Algeria
🇪🇬 Egypt
🇮🇷 Iran
There are currently eight nations that have formally applied for membership and 17 others that have expressed interest in joining. The eight formal applicants are: Algeria, Argentina, Bahrain, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The 17 countries that have expressed interest are: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Uruguay, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.
There’s more to this list than just increasing the headcount at future BRICS meetings.
If Saudi Arabia and Russia are both members, you have two of the three largest energy producers in the world under one tent (the U.S. is the other member of the energy Big Three).
If Russia, China, Brazil and India are all members, you have four of the seven largest countries in the world measured by landmass possessing 30% of the Earth’s dry surface and related natural resources.
Almost 50% of the world’s wheat and rice production as well as 15% of the world’s gold reserves are in the BRICS.
Meanwhile, China, India, Brazil and Russia are four of the nine highest-population countries on the planet with a combined population of 3.2 billion people or 40% of the Earth’s population.
China, India, Brazil, Russia and Saudi Arabia have a combined GDP of $29 trillion or 28% of nominal global GDP. If one uses purchasing power parity to measure GDP, then the BRICS share is over 54%. Russia and China have two of the three largest nuclear arsenals in the world (the other leader is the United States).
By every measure — population, landmass, energy output, GDP, food output and nuclear weapons — BRICS is not just another multilateral debating society. They are a substantial and credible alternative to Western hegemony.
BRICS acting together is one pole of a new multipolar or even bipolar world.
When the new currency launch is announced in August, the currency will not fall on an empty field. It will fall into a sophisticated network of capital and communications. This network will greatly enhance its chances of success.
The BRICS are also developing an optical fiber submarine telecommunications system that would connect its members. It is being developed under the name BRICS Cable. Part of the motivation for BRICS Cable is to foil spying by the U.S. National Security Agency on message traffic carried through existing cable networks.
On numerous occasions from 2007–2014, I warned U.S. officials from the Treasury, Pentagon and intelligence community that overuse or abuse of dollar sanctions would lead adversaries to abandon the dollar to avoid the impact of sanctions.
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