BRICs is Marketing NOT a Threat
BRICs was successful Wall Street marketing that became a disinfo narrative decades after it came to prominence. For years now, we hear noise about BRICs. Articles and opinion pieces suggest BRICs will replace the dollar as the global trade currency; countries claim they will be “joining BRICs;” sometimes with the suggestion that BRICs is a threat to the global trade order. But noise is all it is. This article will discuss some of the history of the term, why it is not ‘a thing,’ and why the measures it would take to become ‘a thing’ are unlikely to occur.
A Long Long Time Ago In a Financial World Not So Far Away
In 2001, investment bankers coined the acronym BRIC for Brazil, Russia, India and China (Spanish Bank BBVA and Jim O’Neil at Goldman Sachs both have claim to creating the term). South Africa was eventually added, making the acronym BRICS. The idea was that these countries would be the engines of global economic growth for decades to come. All of this writing and research turned out to be a fantastic way to sell financial products and services. No hate (so far) - I literally post on twitter as “Finance” and I respect good financial sales work.
However, the research itself on
BRICs turned out to be massively hopeful and not particularly accurate. In 2006, Jim O’Neill said:
“Richard, I think it is both necessary and likely that the wealth will need to be distributed more evenly as the wealth grows in both India and Russia. More policy changes might be needed to accelerate this process, and I think in this regard, China is doing an exceptional job.” ~Jim O’Neill, Financial Times, 2006
The Darkness
Unfortunately, this created a feedback loop. Successful raising of funds and investment banking activity in autocratic nations fed into corrupt politicians, security services and oligarchs. Instead of power devolving and human rights increasing, the opposite has been true. Both China and Russia moved towards increased centralization of power and wealth amongst the very few via restrictions and policy changes.
Trade with autocratic nations led not to their opening up to the world, but to them utilizing our systems of finance and industry for their own means: it allowed significant technological import, stronger militaries, and increased means of internal and external corruption.
The Dumb Part
The success of BRICs marketing for the oligarch and corrupt interests, unsurprisingly, appears to have led to its use as a disinformation narrative. “BRICs” did so well selling financial products and services that Kremlin disinformation vectors paint a narrative of BRICs as a danger to US economic hegemony. And that by lots of imagination (and no action), they would ‘replace’ the US Dollar as the main currency used in global trade. Here's a perfect example of a BRICS disinfo headline:
That headline of Zerohedge is pure bullshit. Sitting at the nexus of Chinese and Russian disinformation outlets: a writer of the Chinese disinformation outlet “Epoch Times” posting in the ZeroHedge website, which is tied to Russian intelligence services and banned from many platforms for its spreading of fake news.
The goal is to make the BRICS threat sound serious. To make people worry that BRICs (ill defined) will somehow replace the US Dollar or the Euro/Yen/etc as currencies of global trade and thus impoverish the West (even if they did replace the USDollar, it would not impoverish the US, losing reserve currency status is overrated; always an effect and not a cause of anything).
Why BRICs is Not a Threat or Even Anything
For an international group of nations to upend the world order, they would need to organize: major trading agreements, political alignment, regulatory harmonization, and defense agreements. “BRICs,” however, have none of these features. It is not a defense group. It is not a free trade zone. There is no regulatory harmonization. There are not even efforts at cultural exchange. So ‘joining’ Brics is joining…. nothing. There is nothing to join and nothing to gain. Leaving BRICs would only mess up the acronym’s ability to roll off the tongue, “BRIs” “RIC” “ICs”...
These are 5 nations that share little in common - 2 are authoritarian regimes and 3 are democracies. They are in different parts of the world and some of them share incredibly racist views towards the others.
For a currency union, or even free trade zone to occur, these nations would need to give up some control over their monetary and trade policy. They would need to work collaboratively taking each others’ needs and concerns into account. That is absolutely against the authoritarian nature of Russia and China. Even the bilateral trade between Russia and India is running into major issues: neither wants to deal in the other’s currency.
In short, BRICs is not a thing, except in the fantasies of disinformation mouthpieces.
So every time you see a bullshit headline about how BRICs will replace the US or the Euro or be a threat to anything, think of this:
