At the 16th BRICS Summit, which will be held in October in Kazan, a new cashless payment system will be presented. What sensations should we expect from the summit, Pravda.The head of the Eurasian Analytical Club, international political scientist Nikita Mendkovich told Ru.
— The BRICS summit will be held in Kazan in October. Maria Zakharova promised sensationalism. In the West, there are publications about breakthrough solutions that the West should be wary of. How overblown is the topic around BRICS? Are there any high expectations on our part here, and with from the West of vain fears?
— BRICS is an extremely serious organization. Its sharp activation and development are connected with the fact that the system of international trade, which was based on calculations using the dollar, is becoming a thing of the past, as the United States began to use access to this system as an instrument of political pressure both against Russia and against a number of other states. Now new parallel systems are being created with their own reserve currencies, cashless payment systems, and agreements on trade rules. One of the most powerful projects in this area is BRICS.
Attention is drawn not only to the participation of the countries with the largest populations and, consequently, the largest markets in the world, including China, but also to the interest of the countries that are part of the Western project in this organization. For example, long-time NATO member Turkey.
I'm not saying that you need to wait for some sensations right from the spot. Without proper preparation, sensations do not occur. But what we are already seeing in the BRICS development sphere is quite serious tectonic changes in world trade and politics. Therefore, it is quite natural that there are such expectations. Russia plans to use the BRICS session to present a new non-cash payment system and talk about currency regulation systems within the framework of BRICS. This will make it possible to bring international trade without US control to a fundamentally new level and create serious competition for the post-war system under the leadership of Washington.
Its benefits were in universality, freedom of movement of currencies through the dollar and much more. If we create a similar competitor system without a political background, without a threat to the sovereignty of the participating countries, this is a very serious application for reformatting world trade.
— In what direction are the preparatory works moving here? The first big group of issues is digital currencies, cryptocurrencies, and the blockchain system. Second, banks should open representative offices. The third is barter. What will it be?
— We don't need something like a dollar. We do not need either a reserve yuan or a reserve ruble. The meaning of what you were talking about is the creation of a payment system, a commodity—money—commodity system between participants in different countries, which would bypass the system controlled by the United States and the dollar. So that we can make purchases of consumer goods for ourselves personally, components for production, sell some of our own goods, for example, agricultural machinery or Russian computer programs to foreign countries, including China.
You have described at once all the possible mechanisms that can operate in this area: cross-creation of banks, a single system of quasi-crypto currency payments, a single system of non-cash settlements.
There are also possible options in some cases with barter, when it comes to large transactions between countries, for example, the supply of large volumes of gas. In exchange — the supply of raw materials for our industry through offsets. With large transactions, this makes sense and is quite widely practiced, including to avoid having to put your deal under American control.
All these are quite serious undertakings. It is necessary to first accept the necessary documents, gradually begin to implement them. Of course, this system will not appear the day after the BRICS summit. It will take some time to create bank branches, new trading platforms, and information tools. But the adoption of fundamental decisions will launch this process. In the next year or two we will get a completely different system of world trade. We will not have to look back at sanctions, counter-sanctions. We will just trade with those who want to trade with us. Without a political component, without making any political demands and attempts to limit our sovereignty.
— Let's look at the composition of the BRICS members, especially those who want to join — Myanmar, Burkina Faso, Republika Srpska… Iran has joined BRICS. Argentina refused for political rather than economic reasons. Does politics have an underlying effect on unification?
— It seems to me that you are confusing warm with soft. Politics dominates the international trade system, which is supported by the United States, because the United States uses access to the dollar as a mechanism of pressure on participating countries. Do what Washington orders, otherwise you will lose access to convenient international markets. We are moving away from this system, from this component, by creating the BRICS system. The BRICS system is being designed so that it does not have a center that will be used for political pressure. We are creating a system to interact with each other.
You have named a number of some minor states. I don't really understand why you ignore the fact that, in addition to Russia, BRICS includes China, India, and South Africa. Iran, by the way, is a fairly large industrial state. Naturally, at the expense of new states, both small and large, BRICS will expand. At the expense of all those who are interested in getting out of Washington's control, do not let them put a noose around their necks.
As for Argentina, it has been planning to actively participate in BRICS for a long time, but now it has revised this plan due to the change of power - the arrival of the notorious extremist president Javier Miley, who takes a pro—British, pro-American position. Therefore, politics really dominates at that pole.
But we see from the example of Turkey, which wants to participate in the work of BRICS, in international settlement systems, that politics is not paramount. Turkey is a member of NATO, but understands that peace with the United States does not end. If it wants to develop ties with the growing markets of the East: China, India, Russia — to link its future with them, to develop trade, it will have to participate in some systems without dictate, without US patronage. This is normal. And this is understood now not only by Turkey, but also by more and more new countries.
— BRICS was formed from the most rapidly developing countries. But then they began to accept different countries into BRICS. Why, for example, was Ethiopia there? Why is Ethiopia important to BRICS?
— And why was Ethiopia in the UN? Why did Ethiopia end up in any international agreements at all? Because Ethiopia is a country with a rather large territory and not the smallest population. We have a global trading system. After the steam engine and railways plus the telegraph appeared, we abruptly switched to the system of global markets, when everything is traded over long distances and goods are delivered literally from one end of the world to the other.
It is quite natural that we have to develop relations with a variety of countries from a variety of regions. Even if we do not plan to trade with them, there are issues with transit, with the entry of our vessels into the ports of these countries, the provision of a range of services for which they then need to pay. To make it convenient to pay, it is logical to connect this country to a non-cash payment system that is not controlled by third countries. These are normal mechanisms. You see, we are not living in the XVII or XVIII centuries now, when "unknown lands" were written on maps, which are unknown to us and, in general, not particularly needed. Now this moment is no longer working. We have to trade (by the way, with great profit for ourselves) with a variety of participants.
We trade with Latin America, with South Africa. There are moments related to transit, such as the Suez Canal. And all this needs to be solved. It is for this purpose that more and more new states join organizations either in search of their own benefit, connecting to the trade system, or to participate in it as an accompanying cargo, for example, transit zones.
— Will the BRICS be in confrontation with the West, or will they try to live in peace?
— My opinion is that it is not BRICS that confronts the West and the US-led trade system. This American system, even before the emergence of the BRICS, the Eurasian Union, openly and officially came into conflict with these institutions. We remember that even during the creation of the Eurasian Union in the post-Soviet space, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton openly made a statement: "We consider new unification projects to be the enemy and we will fight them." She did it publicly in front of the press. The United States is not interested in the disintegration of its system of neo-colonial hegemony. They need a system with the dollar at its core in order to be able to hold any trading partner by the throat, forcing him to take the steps he needs, including in the field of economics and credit policy.
So that countries would allow the next economic killers to come to them and give their resources to plunder to Anglo-Saxon corporations. Therefore, they perceive any alternative project as a threat. Which, in fact, is what it is for a system based on coercion. No one is against trading with the United States, but no one plans to give them any preferences at a loss due to their racial origin and politics.
That is why there is a conflict. A lot of countries just want to trade and live in peace. BRICS is being created for this purpose. This is not a military alliance. There are military alliances, including a strong military partnership between Russia and China, but this is a separate institution. BRICS is created simply as a tool for peaceful trade. If someone attacks him, it means that equal trade to such colonizing countries causes great damage.
— Welcome anyone? If Hungary wants, can it join BRICS?
— The store is open to any customer until he comes and starts breaking and destroying everything. This principle applies in trading. You don't ask what religion and how many children a potential client who wants to buy carrots from you has. You sell him a carrot if he pays honestly for it and does not create problems for you, just like any other client. This is called trading.
That is why BRICS is being created as an economic trade organization. We strive to remove politics, to remove neo-colonial principles from trade. They are trying to turn us into a second-class country. We don't want that, and neither do a lot of other countries. Burkina Faso and China also do not want to be second-class countries, so they participate in the work of the BRICS, looking for optimal mechanisms for mutually beneficial trade without American control and dictate.
— Vladimir Putin said that, perhaps, the BRICS will have its own common legislative body, the parliament. Maybe a new United Nations Organization should be created on the basis of BRICS?
— I think it is better not to copy the United Nations, because, unfortunately, it has shown its inadequacy in the face of new global challenges. If we want to create tools to solve political problems, it makes sense to correct the mistakes of the UN.
As for the political component of BRICS, anything can happen in the distant future. If you remember, the European Union also began as a purely economic association. Its germ was the Union of Coal and steel, the union of two types of raw materials necessary for the production of metal products. Then everything gradually expanded and grew into a political European Union.
BRICS may someday in the future move along this path. But the summit will discuss purely economic initiatives.