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The BRICS concept is rightly the zeitgeist of our time. It is rallying more nations to its fold especially those of the so-called Global South which for decades have been subjected to the unilateralism of Western hegemony.
The trouble is that for a new world order based on equality and fairness to succeed in practice, it needs to be secure from arbitrary military aggression and imperialist tyranny. In other words, a new security architecture is required to underpin the development of a multipolar world.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been advocating for a new indivisible international security system. This week saw the plan for a new security arrangement put into action.
The Russian leader embarked on state visits to North Korea and Vietnam during which he signed new strategic partnership and defense accords.
Ahead of his trip to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Putin outlined the integrated vision thus: "We are also ready for close cooperation to make international relations more democratic and stable... To do this, we will develop alternative mechanisms of trade and mutual settlements that are not controlled by the West, and jointly resist illegitimate unilateral restrictions. And at the same time - to build an architecture of equal and indivisible security in Eurasia."
The concept of indivisible security is by no means limited to Eurasia. Russia has signaled the same principles apply to Latin America, Africa and indeed every other corner of the world.
During Putin's meetings with Chairman Kim Jong Un of the DPRK and President Lo Tam of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the strategic partnerships agreed were not merely about military defense and security. They involved comprehensive partnerships for the development of trade, transport, technology, education, science and medicine.
Nevertheless, it was clear that the commitment to strategic partnership was underpinned by new mutual defense accords. This was most explicit in the treaty signed with the DPRK which furnished "mutual assistance in the event of aggression against one of the parties".
This is a game-changer. It totally upends the geopolitical calculations of the United States and its NATO partners who have been unilaterally expanding military force and provocations in Eurasia and elsewhere.
U.S. President Joe Biden's administration has ramped up aggression in the Asia-Pacific against China and North Korea with impunity. Under his watch, the US has increasingly moved nuclear forces into the region to intimidate not only Beijing and Pyongyang but also Moscow. The Biden administration has been assiduous in forming hostile military formations in the region with its NATO partners, including Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea.
Year after year, the United States has built up weapon systems in Taiwan to provoke China and on the Korean Peninsula to threaten North Korea.
This unilateral aggression and "might is right" arrogance underpin the notion of Pax Americana that prevailed for decades after the Second World War. That notion was always a cruel euphemism for American imperialist violence to impose its economic and political interests. The Korean and Vietnam Wars in which millions of civilians were annihilated were the real-world grim translations of Pax Americana and its fraudulent "rules-based order".
Geopolitical perceptions have dramatically changed in a few short years. The U.S. and its Western partners - a global minority - have come to be seen by most people of the world as rogue states that have trashed international law through illegal wars and unilateral bullying with economic sanctions. The U.S. dollar and Washington's relentless debt spending are seen as instruments of imperialist looting.
The BRICS multipolar world order is a welcome alternative to the mayhem of the Western-dominated system. The principles of fairness and cooperation are laudable and necessary to implement. But such principles must be reinforced with military defense and security for all. This is far from the one-sided "defense and security" of the United States and its NATO partners, which in reality is an Orwellian cover for aggression.
The defense commitments given by Russia to the DPRK this week can be seen as long overdue. One may wonder how the U.S. and its allies got away with threatening the people of North Korea for so long and denying Pyongyang the sovereign right to self-defense. Admittedly, Russia did previously support UN sanctions on North Korea over its missile program. That's over.
The U.S.-led proxy war in Ukraine against Russia that erupted in February 2022 was a wake-up call for Moscow and many people around the world.
Patently, the Western hegemonic system will stop at nothing to assert its neocolonialist privileges, even to the point of antagonizing a nuclear world war.
There is only one language that the U.S. and its minions understand - and that is the threat of devastating countervailing force.
Washington and its NATO lackeys think they can put missiles in Ukraine to hit Russia or in South Korea and Japan to hit North Korea - at no cost to their own security. Well, now, they might want to think again. There's a new sheriff in town, as this week's developments show.
A new global security system is being incarnate. Russia's vision of indivisible, mutual security is shared by China and many other nations because it is fully compliant with international law and nations' sovereignty.
Russia, China and other supporters of a multipolar world are not preemptively threatening anyone. But it takes the guarantee of unassailable nuclear powers, Russia and China, to make a new security system viable by restoring the deterrence towards the rogue states of the United States and NATO accomplices.
The defense accords between Russia, the DPRK and Vietnam are installments of the new security architecture that is needed in Eurasia and globally. The has-been American hegemon has been served notice that from now on its presumption of belligerence with impunity, to destroy nations, and to have a license to murder en masse is null and void.
Welcome to the new multipolar order and Pax Rossiya. All are welcome - except hegemonic rogue states.
Reader Comments
If Turkey wants to eliminate Kurds, or Albanians want to eliminate Serbians, how will that be worked with? If Poland wants to annex part of Ukraine, who controls it?
The world has changed a lot in my lifetime.