Jeffrey Sachs: BRICS Summit Should End Neocon Delusions
Jeffrey Sachs: BRICS Summit Should End Neocon Delusions
The majority of the world does not want or accept U.S. hegemony and is prepared to face it down rather than submit to its dictates, writes Jeffrey D. Sachs. By Jeffrey D. Sachs Common Dreams The recent BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia, should mark the end of the Neocon delusions encapsulated
The recent BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia, should mark the end of the Neocon delusions encapsulated in the subtitle of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 book, The Global Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives.
Since the 1990s, the goal of American foreign policy has been “primacy,” aka global hegemony. The U.S. methods of choice have been wars, regime-change operations and unilateral coercive measures (economic sanctions).
Kazan brought together 35 countries with more than half the world population that reject the U.S. bullying and that are not cowed by U.S. claims of hegemony.
A lot of people in the West still think it is natural and good for 12% of the world to dominate 88% of the world. Any other possibility is seen as an existential threat to Western civilization.
I was wondering if the next admin will double down.
The U.S. methods of choice have been wars, regime-change operations and unilateral coercive measures (economic sanctions).
Because of course, China and Russia would never
Just in the last 24 years the US killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions; and now facilitating a genocide.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is nothing compared to the US crimes committed in Afghanistan and Iraq or the genocide it is enabling in Palestine. Not to mention the embargoes and sanctions on multiple countries now. The same sanctions that killed half a million children in Iraq in the 1990s.
You can’t defend the US crimes, so you have to scaremonger that the others will be worst. The thing is most of the world disagrees and knows better.
Remember: just because you believe in European supremacy and American exceptionalism, doesn’t mean that the rest of the world does or that it is even true.
While true to a point, don’t paint Russia as being any better. They chose the war of aggression against Ukraine and are choosing not to stop it.
They were also in Afghanistan before the US, and destroyed it even more than the US has, between the two of them leaving the Taliban as the best local option remaining.
I sure don’t know what the solution is, as everything the world has tried so far has eventually failed, concentrating power in the hands of a few to abuse it.
BRICS could have a potential to control Russia while redistributing power, except that it includes Russia and China and India, all of which have a strong track record of concentrating power into the hands of the few, rejecting the voice of the people while putting on a western facade of being for the people.
Throw into this mix the upcoming results of global warming and neither bloc is going to make things better for the majority of humanity.
China wouldn’t. Russia would if it had its druthers, but since it presently doesn’t, it presently won’t. Putin tried to join NATO once, to join the imperialist club, but that was rejected, because the US wanted Russia Balkanized & plundered instead. Russia has figured out it’s better off allying with Global South countries than attempting imperialist adventures upon them. And this war has accelerated that allyship.
No one has the power to go against corruption because it's endemic to power.
This sounds like capitalist realism. It’s an ahistorical, doomer perspective that the capitalist class is happy to have you believe and promote.
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. ― Ursula Le Guin