by PATRICK BOND & RICHARD WOLFF
Will the BRICS economic and political alliance change the world’s U.S.-centered balance of power? As the annual BRICS summit wraps up in Russia, we host a debate between American economist Richard Wolff and South African sociologist Patrick Bond over the significance of the conference. This year, the nine BRICS countries invited 13 new “partner states” into their alliance, which Wolff calls “historic” and “a serious economic competitor to the United States and its role in the world.” Bond, on the other hand, argues that BRICS should be considered a “subimperial” formation, which expands and legitimates the existing world economic system rather than truly disrupting it.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
We end today’s show with the summit of BRICS nations that concluded Thursday in the Russian city of Kazan as President Putin made a comeback to the global stage, hosting 36 world leaders and representatives from countries including China, India, South Africa, Iran, even Palestine. Israel’s war on Gaza took center stage, with many heads of states demanding an immediate ceasefire. Putin also faced direct calls at the summit from some of Russia’s most important allies for Moscow to end the war in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the BRICS coalition, which was founded by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, officially added 13 new nations to the alliance as partner countries, including Bolivia, Cuba, Nigeria and Turkey.
For more, we’re joined by two guests. Here in New York, Richard Wolff, professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs at The New School, founder of Democracy at Work, author of several books, including, most recently, Understanding Capitalism. And in Johannesburg, South Africa, we’re joined by the political economist Patrick Bond, distinguished professor and director of the Centre for Social Change at the University of Johannesburg, his recent CounterPunch article headlined “Rising Dangers of Imperial and Sub-Imperial Partnering.”
We’re going to begin with you, Patrick. Talk about the significance of this BRICS summit.
PATRICK BOND: I must quickly say thank you for having me. But also, in 10 or 11 days, you may know whether the great teams at Democracy at Work and Democracy Now! need to be in exile because democracy won’t be allowed. And you’ll come to Johannesburg, and we’ll have a very fine site for your production systems. It’s a great address here at the moment.
And I think the fact that we had the BRICS summit just 14 months ago — I was chatting and debating with Vijay Prashad, along with my colleague Trevor Ngwane. And it means that in the current period, where the de-dollarization rhetoric coming up to this BRICS, because Russia hosting it and being shut out of the SWIFT system, having $600-and-some billion seized illegally by the Western banks, and not getting loans, even from the BRICS New Development Bank, suffering sanctions, that meant a lot of attention has been on whether Vladimir Putin and his team can generate a de-dollarization strategy. Unfortunately — and fortunately, that didn’t transpire.
And then, since we’ve just come out of the Israeli genocide story, not using genocide in the Kazan Declaration on Wednesday night, not calling for sanctions, even though the United Nations General Assembly effectively did last month, and not acknowledging that nine out of the 10 BRICS countries have very profitable relationships, like South Africa, number one coal exporter to Israel, and China and India having companies that run the Haifa Port, you could turn those off and really put pressure on Israel if they really had the guts. But we see them talking left, walking right.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Richard Wolff, your takeaway from this BRICS summit? How historic was it?
RICHARD WOLFF: In my judgment, and even though Patrick is right about a number of his criticisms, this is a historic turning point. I cannot overstress it. Here we have, for the first time in a century, a serious economic competitor to the United States and its role in the world. We’ve never seen this before in the lifetimes you, me and the people watching this program and listening to it. Here are a group of countries that together have a larger GDP, a greater production, than the G7, the United States and its allies. We haven’t had that before. And the gap between them is growing. The economic growth of the United States this year, by the IMF, is scheduled to be 2.8%; in China, 4.8%; in India, 7%. So, they are growing faster than we are. They’ve been doing it for decades. It is a new economic world. And as an economist and an American, I am aghast that our presidential election isn’t putting that front and forward.
This is a new world. Everybody else in the world is adjusting to this reality. The American Empire and our system is in a decline relative to what the BRICS are about. Are there problems among them? For sure. Do they have their faults? Absolutely. This is not good and bad, but it is a radical alteration. And if we continue as a nation to pretend it isn’t happening or it isn’t important, we will continue to make big strategic mistakes, not the least of which is to bring us into a war kind of situation that people are already sensing might be in the air.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, for his comments at the BRICS summit.
Democracy Now for more