The Global South has had enough of the
US
By
Pepe Escobar
June 22, 2023:
Information Clearing
House
-- "Cradle"
--
On July 4,
at a New Delhi summit, Iran will finally
become a
full member
of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO).
That will be one of the key decisions of
the summit, held via video-conference,
along with the signing of a memorandum
on the path by Belarus to also become a
member state.
In
parallel, Russian Deputy Prime Minister
Alexei Overchuk has confirmed that Iran
and the Russian-led Eurasian Economic
Union (EAEU) should sign a free trade
agreement (FTA) by the end of 2023.
The FTA will expand an interim deal that
already lowers customs duties on
hundreds of categories of goods.
Russia and
Iran – two key poles of Eurasia
integration – have been
getting closer and closer
geoeconomically
since the west’s sanctions tsunami that
followed Russia’s February 2022 Special
Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine.
The EAEU – as much as the SCO and BRICS
– is on a roll: FTAs are expected to be
clinched, from middle to long term, with
Egypt, India, Indonesia, and the UAE.
Overchuck admits negotiations may be
“very difficult” and “take years,”
considering “the interests of all five
EAEU member states, their businesses,
and their consumers.” Yet despite the
obvious complexities, this high-speed
rail geoeconomic train has already left
the station.
This way for a SWIFT exit
In a
parallel track, the members of the Asian
Clearing Union (ACU), during a
recent summit in Iran,
decided to launch a new cross-border
financial messaging system this month as
a rival to the western-centric SWIFT.
Are You Tired Of
The Lies And
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The ACU comprises the Central Banks of
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan,
Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and
Iran: a healthy mix of West Asia,
Southeast Asia, and South Asia.
It
was the Central Bank of Iran – still
under harsh sanctions – that developed
the new bank messaging system, so new
it’s not yet known by its own acronym.
Crucially, the Governor of Russia’s
Central Bank took part in the ACU summit
as an observer, along with officials
from Belarus, which applied for ACU
membership two weeks ago.
Iranian Central Bank Governor Mohammad
Reza Farzin confirmed not only the
interest of potential members to join
the ACU, but also the drive to set up a
basket of currencies for payment of
bilateral trade deals. Call it a
de-dollarization fast track.
As
Iran’s first Vice President, Mohammad
Mokhber summed it up: “De-dollarization
is not a voluntary choice by countries
anymore; it is an inevitable response to
the weaponization of the dollar.”
Iran is now
at the heart of all things multipolar.
The recent discovery of a
massive lithium field
holding roughly 10 percent of the
world’s reserves, coupled with the quite
possible admission of Iran into the
expanded BRICS – or BRICS+ – as early as
this year, has bolstered scenarios of an
upcoming BRICS
currency backed by commodities:
gold, oil, gas and – inevitably –
lithium.
All this frantic Global South-led
activity stands in sharp contrast to the
sputtering deceleration of the Empire of
Sanctions.
The Global South has had enough of the
US sanctioning and banning whoever,
whatever, and whenever they like, in
defense of a hazy, arbitrary
“rules-based international order.”
Yet exceptions are always made when the
US itself badly needs to buy, for
instance, Chinese rare earth and EV
batteries. And while China continues to
be harassed and threatened non-stop,
Washington quietly urges it to continue
to buy American corn and low-end chips
from Micron.
This is what’s called “free and fair”
trade in the US today.
The BRICS
have other ideas to escape this vicious
circle. Much will rely on an enhanced
role for its New Development Bank (NDB),
which comprises the five BRICS members
as well as Bangladesh, the UAE, and
Egypt. Uruguay will be joining soon, and
the membership requests of Argentina,
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Zimbabwe have
also been approved.
According to Brazil’s former head of
state and current NDB President Dilma
Rousseff, decisions on new members will
officially be announced at the upcoming
August BRICS summit in South Africa.
Meanwhile,
in
Astana,
Kazakhstan, the 20th round of
the interminable Syrian peace process
took place, congregating the foreign
vice-ministers of Russia, Syria, Turkey,
and Iran.
That should be the defining step in a
“normalization road map” proposed by
Moscow last month to finally regulate
the role of the Turkish Army operating
inside Syrian territory. Russian Foreign
Vice-Minister Mikhail Bogdanov once
again confirmed that the US is going all
out to prevent a normalization between
Damascus and Ankara – by supporting
oil-stealing Kurdish militias in
northern Syria.
A
“broad integrative configuration”
All
interlinked developments concerning SCO,
BRICS, EAEU, and other multilateral
mechanisms – now happening at breakneck
speed – are converging in practice into
a concept formulated in Russia back in
2018:
the Greater Eurasia Partnership.
And who
better to define it than
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov:
“Our flagship foreign political project
is to [build] support for the concept of
the Greater Eurasian Partnership. What
we’re talking about is facilitating the
objective process of forming a broad
integrative configuration that is open
for all countries and associations
across our vast continent.”
As
Lavrov routinely explains now in all of
his important meetings, this includes
“interlinking the complementary
development plans” of the EAEU and
China’s BRI; expanding interaction
“within the framework of the SCO with
the involvement of SCO observer states
and dialogue partners;” “strengthening
the strategic partnership” between
Russia and ASEAN; and “establishing
working contacts” among the executive
bodies of the EAEU, SCO, and ASEAN.
Add to it
the crucial interaction between the
upcoming BRICS+ and all of the above;
literally, everybody and their neighbor
all across the
Global South is queuing up
to enter Club BRICS.
Lavrov envisions a “mutually beneficial,
interlinking infrastructure” and a
“continent-wide architecture of peace,
development, and cooperation throughout
Greater Eurasia.” And that ought to be
expanded to the whole Global South.
It
will help to have other brand new
institutions jumping in. That’s the case
of a new Russian think tank, the
Geopolitical Observatory for Russia’s
Key Issues (GORKI), to be led by Former
Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl,
and set as a division of St. Petersburg
State University focusing on West Asia
studies and energy issues.
All of these interpolations were
discussed in detail
during the St. Petersburg
forum last week.
One of the
key themes in that
spectacularly successful Global
South-oriented forum
was, of course, the reindustrialization
and reorientation of Russia’s
export-import channels away from Europe
and toward Asia, Africa, and Latin
America.
The UAE had
a strong presence in St. Petersburg,
pointing to a West Asia emphasis, where
Russia’s geoeconomic future is
increasingly developing. The scope and
breadth of Global South-led discussions
only underlined how the
self-marginalized collective west has
alienated the Global Majority,
perhaps irretrievably.
On
Vladimir Solovyov’s immensely popular
political talk show, Russian film
director Karen Shakhnazarov may have
found the best way to succinctly
formulate such a complex process as the
Greater Eurasia Partnership.
He
said that Russia is now reassuming the
role of global champion of a new world
order that the Soviet Union held at the
start of the 1920s. In such context, the
rage and uncontrolled Russophobia by the
collective west is just plain impotence:
howling the frustration of having “lost”
Russia, when it would have been a
no-brainer to keep it on its side.
Pepe's
latest book is
2030.
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