What happened at the XV BRICS Summit in Johannesburg is truly historic. Even if the President of Russia, the founder of BRICS, did not take part in it, it is still a turning point in modern history. The world order is changing before our eyes. Let us parrot the meaning of the ongoing tectonic changes. 

Initially, “BRIC” was an acronym for four countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China – which economist Jim O’Neill proposed in 2001 to summarize the characteristics of countries with actively developing economies that seek to catch up with the developed West in a number of fundamental parameters. In this sense, the BRIC countries have come to be understood as what Immanuel Wallerstein called a “semi-periphery countries”. In Wallerstein’s conception of the world-system, the world was divided into three zones.

1. the core (the rich West)
2. the semi-periphery (namely the BRICs), and
3. the periphery (the poor South).

Wallerstein himself, in the spirit of Trotskyist ideology, predicted the collapse of the semi-periphery countries. The elites, in his opinion, would integrate into the Western system (a typical example is the Russian oligarchy, as well as the financial magnates of India and partly China). And the masses oppressed and ruined by these elites would be forced to slip into the global proletariat, that is, to equalize with the periphery. In this concept, world migration is the main driver of this stratification of the semi-periphery into a colonial elite that aspires to become the core (i.e. to join the West) and an international underclass, where labour migrants will equalize and mix with the impoverished local population.

A different definition of the BRIC countries is the “second world.” Again, the “first world” is the rich West and the “third world” is the hopelessly backward countries. “Second world” is strictly in between — they live much better than the third world, but lag significantly behind the “first world.”

So, the BRIC countries showed signs of self-consciousness and in 2006, at the initiative of Russian President Vladimir Putin, decided to form a club of “second world” or “semi-periphery” countries.

It turned out that the BRICs were based on four civilizations -.

1. Brazil, which is a distinctive Latin American civilization;
2. Russia-Eurasia (after all, Slavophiles and Eurasians understood Russia as an independent civilization, a state-world);
3. India and
4. China, whose civilizational identity and antiquity does not raise any questions at all.

So it turned out that the countries of the semi-periphery or the second world are not just a certain level of economic development or a stage on the path of modernization along the Western lines, but ancient and quite distinctive civilizations. Thus, many saw the creation of BRIC as a multipolar club and hence as a confirmation of the rightness of Samuel Huntington, who predicted a return to civilizations and a multipolar system in the future, which would replace the bipolar division of the world (on the principle of socialist camp/capitalist camp) instead of the unipolar world proclaimed by liberals and globalists (“the end of history” of Fukuyama, Huntington’s main opponent).

Four civilizations or Civilization-States (Zhang Weiwei) joined BRIC at the first stage. And the principle of the association was to posit themselves outside the zone of dominant influence of Western hegemony. Each of the civilizations had its own fundamental justifications for its own sovereignty

• China’s economy, financial system and demography,
• India also economics, demography and high technology;
• Russia – resources, nuclear weapons and a political history of stubbornly asserting sovereignty in the face of the West;
• Brazil – economy, industry and demographics.

BRIC was initially very cautious and peace-loving, but nevertheless has somehow quietly presented itself as a pillar of an alternative to unipolarity, rejecting rigid hegemony of the “collective West” (NATO and other rigidly unipolar US-dominated organizations). While Western civilization proclaimed itself to be the only – unique — civilization, civilization in singular — which is the essence of globalism and unipolarity, the BRIC countries represented sovereign and independent civilizations, different from the West, with a long history and a completely original system of traditional values. And the multipolar club has thus expressed its determination to defend this state of affairs in the future.

At the same time, each of the BRIC countries was more than just a country.

Brazil, the largest power in South America, represented the entire Latin American continent.

Russia, China and India are of sufficient scale on their own to be considered civilizations. But they are also more than Nation-States.

Russia is the vanguard of Eurasia, the Eurasian “Greater Space.”

China is responsible for a significant area of the neighbouring powers of Indochina. The One Belt One Road project precisely outlines the expanding zone of influence of the Chinese pole.

India is also extending its influence beyond its borders – at least to Bangladesh and Nepal.

When South Africa joined the BRIC countries in 2011 (hence the acronym BRICS – the “C” at the end of South Africa), the continent was symbolically represented by this largest African country.

But the most important event in the history of BRICS took place at the XV Summit, held from 22 to 24 August 2023 in Johannesburg. Here a historic decision was made to admit 6 more countries to the organization – Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Each of these countries, by joining the multipolar club, brought with it something much more than just another application for participation in international associations, which are already plentiful without BRICS.

The accession of four Islamic powers – Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the Egypt – was fundamental. In this way, the direct participation in the multipolar world of the entire Islamic civilization, represented by both Sunni and Shiite branches, was consolidated.

In addition, along with Portuguese-speaking Brazil, Spanish-speaking Argentina, another strong and independent power, joined BRICS. Back in the mid-twentieth century, theorists of the unification of South America into a consolidated large space – above all Argentine General Juan Perón and Brazilian President Getúlio Vargas – considered the rapprochement of Brazil and Argentina to be the decisive chord of this process. If this is achieved, the process of integration of the Latin American ecumene (A. Buela) will be irreversible. And this is exactly what is happening now in the context of the accession of the two major powers of South America – Brazil and Argentina – to the multipolar club. It is not by chance that the globalists were so furious at the very fact of Argentina’s accession to BRICS, mobilizing all their agents of influence in Argentine politics to prevent this from happening.

Ethiopia’s acceptance is also highly symbolic. It is the only African country that has remained independent throughout the colonial era, preserving its sovereignty, its independence and its unique culture (Ethiopians are the oldest Christian people). Combined with South Africa, Ethiopia is strengthening its presence in the multipolar club of the African continent.

In fact, in the new composition of BRICS we get a complete model of uniting all the 6 poles – civilizations, “Greater Spaces” that only exist on the planet. With the exception of the West, which is still desperate to preserve its hegemony and unipolar structure. But now it faces not disparate and fragmented countries, full of internal and external contradictions, but a united force of the majority of humanity, determined to build a multipolar world.

This multipolar world consists of the following civilizations:

1. The West (the USA+EU and their vassals, which includes, alas, the once proud and original Japan);
2. China (+Taiwan) with its satellites;
3. Russia (as an integrator of the entire Eurasian space);
4. India and its zone of influence;
5. Latin America (with the core of Brazil+Argentina);
6. Africa (South Africa+Ethiopia, with Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, etc., emerging from French colonial influence).
7. Islamic world (in both versions – Shiite Iran, Sunni Saudi Arabia UAE, Egypte).

Thus we have the structure of the heptapolar world, consisting of 7 full-fledged civilizations, some of which are already fully formed (the West, China, Russia, India), and some of which (the Islamic world, Africa, Latin America) are on the way.

At the same time, in the context of the heptapolar world, a kind of emerging heptarchy, one civilization – the Western one – claims hegemony, while the other six deny it this right, accepting only a multipolar order and recognizing the West as only one of the civilizations, along with others.

So the rightness of Samuel Huntington, who saw the future in the return of civilizations, has been confirmed in practice, while the fallacy of Fukuyama’s thesis, who believed that the global hegemony of the liberal West (the end of history) has already been achieved, has become obvious. Therefore, Fukuyama is left only doomed to lecture the Ukrainian neo-Nazis, the last hope of globalists to stop the onset of multipolarity, for which Russia in Ukraine is fighting today.

August 2023 can be considered the birthday of the multipolar – and even more precisely heptapolar – world.

The heptarchy is here. It is high time to take a closer look at how the civilizational poles themselves interpret the situation in which they find themselves.

Source: https://ria.ru/