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The expanded BRICS forum and its declaration this week of cooperative commitment to creating a more just and peaceful world order are a historic landmark. One that gives hope and confidence in achieving a better future for humanity.

The 16th annual summit of the BRICS grouping took place in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, in southwest Russia. The three-day event, from October 22 to 24, was much anticipated and lived up to its billing as a breakthrough in international politics.

Russian President Vladimir Putin greeted 25 heads of state. Over 40 nations were represented by 20,000 delegates. The world’s news media, including journalists and crews from major Western media outlets, were in attendance. Laughably, however, the Western media tended to play down the momentous, tectonic shifts in geopolitics that the BRICS portend.

The summit’s highlight was the Final Declaration entitled “Strengthening Multilateralism for Just Global Development and Security.” It contained 134 provisions for a wide range of critical goals, from fair and cooperative trade to the democratization of international financing mechanisms, from equitable participation in the United Nations to collective resolution of conflicts, and much, much more.

Many commentators hailed the conference’s success as “an inflection point of international politics”.

One observer, Professor Alexis Habiyaremye, articulated the views of many by commenting that the summit marked “the official launch of multilateral world order and the twilight of U.S. hegemony.”

The BRICS is a relatively recent international movement, and yet in a short span, it has forged a seminal new direction for global relations – and for the better. The forum was founded in 2006 by Brazil, Russia, India and China. South Africa became a member in 2011. The first annual summit was held in Yekaterinburg, Russia, in 2009.

Each year has seen the group grow both in terms of the number of aspiring member nations and in establishing the mechanisms for implementing its vision of a multilateral, more democratic world.

This year saw the accession of five new members, including Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. At least 40 other nations from every continent are requesting formal membership.

Already, the BRICS+ has surpassed the Western bloc of G7 in terms of combined population and economic strength.

A crucial difference is that BRICS demonstrates that there is “an alternative to the Western-led global order,” noted Bolivian President Luis Arce, who was among the foreign heads of state attending the forum in Kazan. “There is an alternative to act more justly and more equitably,” he added.

Another observer, Gilbert Doctorow, an international political analyst, assessed that the prestigious gathering of world leaders and delegates in Kazan was proof of Russia’s growing influence on the global stage despite vigorous Western efforts to isolate Moscow. Those efforts intensified after the eruption of the U.S.-led proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. But the barrage of economic sanctions levied on Russia by the West has failed and indeed can be seen to have backfired with detriment on European economies, in particular that of Germany. Arguably, the status of the U.S. dollar as a global reserve currency has also been undermined by Washington’s sanctions.

“On the contrary,” added Doctorow, “the Collective West has self-isolated and condemned itself to irrelevance.”

During the summit, President Putin held an open press conference that included Western media journalists. It was significant that Western media were free to pose critical questions to Putin in contrast to how U.S. President Joe Biden and other Western leaders have banished Russian media from asking questions.

At one point, Putin put a petulant U.S. journalist in the proper place when it was alleged that Russia was escalating war in Ukraine. Putin reminded that the conflict was instigated by the Western powers unleashing a coup in Kiev in 2014 and weaponizing the regime over the next decade for war against Russia.

In any case, the bigger picture of BRICS and the multilateral world is the important focus.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attended the Kazan summit. The significance is that the BRICS forum and vision represent a true manifestation of the UN Charter established in 1945 following the Second World War.

For decades, the U.S.-led Western order was a gross negation of the UN Charter and international law respecting nations’ sovereignty and universal human rights. The Western order was, in reality, a pretext for the continuation of colonialist exploitation of the rest of the world. And, when it suited, that exploitation was enforced by the unilateral use of violence and wars.

Today, every major conflict can be attributed to the nefarious working out of Western imperialist interests, from the Western-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza to the NATO-backed proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, from promoting regime change in Latin America to the exploitation of Africa for natural resources, from fueling tensions in the Asia-Pacific with China and North Korea.

The basic point is that the Western-led order is inherently violent because it was always implicitly designed to serve a minority to impose global power. The Western order is fundamentally antithetical to a democratic world of cooperative nations that are equals. All the pretentious rhetoric about abiding by democracy and international law is nothing but an odious lie.

Jeremy Kuzmarov, the editor of Covert Action magazine, put it well when he observed that the BRICS summit in Kazan “reflects the end of the dream of US unipolar power… the growth of the BRICS is a reality that Washington policymakers will ultimately have to come to terms with and adapt to.”

The BRICS gathering in Kazan was replete with splendid symbolism. This ancient city of over 1,000 years reflects a mix of exquisite antiquity and elegant modern engineering and infrastructure. It embodies a peaceful, harmonious fusion of Christian and Islamic cultures from north, south, east, and west.

The UN Charter remained unfulfilled for decades because it was dominated and distorted by a minority of powerful Western states. Now, however, the emergence of BRICS and its formidable, decisive economic power represents the demise of the old, anti-democratic order and, more crucially, the realization of a more democratic and peaceful world. Both visions are incompatible.

At a time of violent, desperate throes of the dying Western imperialist order, the BRICS offer a firm basis of hope for humanity.