28 Mar, 2013 01:29

‘BRICS Development Bank would shift the tectonic plates of geopolitics and geo-economics’

Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst. He writes for RT, Sputnik and TomDispatch, and is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the former roving correspondent for Asia Times Online. Born in Brazil, he's been a foreign correspondent since 1985, and has lived in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Washington, Bangkok and Hong Kong. Even before 9/11 he specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central and East Asia, with an emphasis on Big Power geopolitics and energy wars. He is the author of "Globalistan" (2007), "Red Zone Blues" (2007), "Obama does Globalistan" (2009) and "Empire of Chaos" (2014), all published by Nimble Books. His latest book is "2030", also by Nimble Books, out in December 2015.Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst. He writes for RT, Sputnik and TomDispatch, and is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the former roving correspondent for Asia Times Online. Born in Brazil, he's been a foreign correspondent since 1985, and has lived in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Washington, Bangkok and Hong Kong. Even before 9/11 he specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central and East Asia, with an emphasis on Big Power geopolitics and energy wars. He is the author of "Globalistan" (2007), "Red Zone Blues" (2007), "Obama does Globalistan" (2009) and "Empire of Chaos" (2014), all published by Nimble Books. His latest book is "2030", also by Nimble Books, out in December 2015.

The BRICS Development Bank is the beginning of the end of the existing monetary management system, Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar told RT.

RT:There’s no doubt about it, these countries that form the BRICS, they haven’t got a lot in common have they? They’ve all got different styles of government indeed some of them are economic rivals. Are they really a group to be taken seriously?

Pepe Escobar: From now on yes, let’s say until this summit in Durban, there was a lot of political talk of course and the BRICS are basically an economic group in the making. Now it’s different, now they have clear sound, actual policies to be implemented.

This alternative to the World Bank and the IMF is absolutely essential, this is the beginning of the end of the Bretton Woods system and is to be supported by the next BRICS, the MIST, the Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey and the next MISTS as well.

These are the tectonic plates of geopolitics and geo-economics, they are changing, and it’s not Atlantasist anymore. It’s the emergence, the re-emergence finally of the South. I’m reading a fantastic book about that as we speak, I’m going to write about it probably tomorrow, by Vijay Prashad and he explains in detail over 300 pages how the South has been completely undermined and attacked in fact by the North, since the end of the Second World War and now for the past few years at least with the best neo liberalism in fact all over the place, failed policies. Now the South has started to organize itself.

RT:Pepe, the way you’re talking here, about geo-economics, it sounds as if we’re crossing the border into geopolitics, is that really one of the main ambitions of this group?

PE: As well. It’s not only geo-economics, its geopolitics as well, because inside the BRICS we have for instance crucial bilateral relationships. For instance, now China is the largest trading partner of Brazil, of course there are clashes, but they can resolve this inside the BRICS mechanism.

Russia and China is an extremely strategic partnership involving special energy, no wonder Xi Jinping went to Russia just after he was elected president in China and immediately afterwards he went to Africa where the meeting is taking place, because South Africa is one of the bridges for China to invest in the whole of the African continent and the myth being spread by Western corporate media that China is a neo-colonialist power is completely ridiculous.

If you talk to African officials from many of these countries involved, some even say that China has already invested in their countries, and they have not extracted a single barrel of oil yet.

The most important thing in fact that we should be talking about all the time is the only argument that the Western elites have at the moment vis-à-vis the BRICS and organization of the South’s or they have a lot of resentment against the West. This is ridiculous.

RT:Pepe, we are in global economic crisis at the moment, so there is so much talk about these fast developing economies, surely they’re going to be effected by the global economy crisis and indeed their GDP is slowing down, some are experiencing stagnant growth so is really the outlook that rosy?

PE: No, no, no, I’m not saying it is a rosy outlook. Brazil is going to grow one percent this year. This is absurd, they were growing between seven and eight. China, even if they decrease from 10 to 7.5-7.7 per cent, every 11.5 weeks China creates a Greek economy inside China. If you put this in perspective, this is enormous.

Of course, from the point of view of Western elites, the only thing they care about is the salvation of capitalism, of financial capitalism. They think that China is the salvation of capitalism. Just like Deng Xiaoping fifty years ago, he was saying exactly the opposite.

And now, it’s China saving the West, instead of the West saving China. And there are discrepancies in terms of Russia and China as well. But in the long term, there will be more integration among the BRICS, among the other developing countries as well, especially among the global South, and we’re talking about 150-160 countries.