Lula is indeed aligned with some of the US Democrats’ liberal-globalist foreign policy goals, but BRICS isn’t an anti-Western bloc, nor is India backstabbing Russia.
Five original founders plus the first batch of new members, almost all have some larger than life ego hidden under the name of nationaldignity and honor. Focusing on trade and finance multi-polarity is already difficult; making it a political or even military block is pushing too far. A wise guy (not me) said before: most people tend to over-estimate what can be achieved in the short term, whiile under-estimate what can be achieved over the long term. If USA was a big ship and dificult to turn around, then the whole world is like a ball floating in a whirlpool: too many forces are asserted all the time when we hope countries are NOT lead by dictators.
Lula was endorsed by the WEF, so the censorship and authoritarianism his government is trying to impose on Brazil is no surprise. How that impacts Brazil's role in BRICS is beyond my knowledge. Modi is first and foremost a Hindu Indian nationalist, so he will do what he thinks is best for Hindu nationalism at home and Indian nationalism in general abroad.
I certainly don't see Modi as subservient to the US Empire.
>>"While it’s tempting for well-intentioned observers to imagine that everything unfolding is like a Marvel movie in the sense of there being clearly defined good guys who are all on the same side against the bad guys, the reality of contemporary International Relations is much more complex than that."
Yes, that is certainly a point worth reiterating.
It is in the nature of human beings to want to moralize the world around them and indulge in crude dualism in which the players on the stage are either good or evil. No doubt this impulse comes from an evolved cognitive decision-simplification mechanism that prevents us from dithering while a ferocious animal howls in the near distance or unidentified humans bearing weapons approach our camp fire.
In modern discourse, this tendency results in a blurring of the line between normative arguments--what SHOULD be--and analytical arguments--what is, what has been and what probably/possibly will be. You find this almost everywhere to one extent or another.
I am reminded of the story about arch-neocon writer, Leo Strauss, who loved the idea that a 1950s-era TV show like Gun Smoke, with its simple white hat/black hat dichotomy, was being provided to the American masses to train them in dualistic thinking and processing.
It is certainly one of the strongest points of this site that AK consciously and consistently attempts to avoid this analytical fallacy.
Five original founders plus the first batch of new members, almost all have some larger than life ego hidden under the name of nationaldignity and honor. Focusing on trade and finance multi-polarity is already difficult; making it a political or even military block is pushing too far. A wise guy (not me) said before: most people tend to over-estimate what can be achieved in the short term, whiile under-estimate what can be achieved over the long term. If USA was a big ship and dificult to turn around, then the whole world is like a ball floating in a whirlpool: too many forces are asserted all the time when we hope countries are NOT lead by dictators.
Lula was endorsed by the WEF, so the censorship and authoritarianism his government is trying to impose on Brazil is no surprise. How that impacts Brazil's role in BRICS is beyond my knowledge. Modi is first and foremost a Hindu Indian nationalist, so he will do what he thinks is best for Hindu nationalism at home and Indian nationalism in general abroad.
I certainly don't see Modi as subservient to the US Empire.
>>"While it’s tempting for well-intentioned observers to imagine that everything unfolding is like a Marvel movie in the sense of there being clearly defined good guys who are all on the same side against the bad guys, the reality of contemporary International Relations is much more complex than that."
Yes, that is certainly a point worth reiterating.
It is in the nature of human beings to want to moralize the world around them and indulge in crude dualism in which the players on the stage are either good or evil. No doubt this impulse comes from an evolved cognitive decision-simplification mechanism that prevents us from dithering while a ferocious animal howls in the near distance or unidentified humans bearing weapons approach our camp fire.
In modern discourse, this tendency results in a blurring of the line between normative arguments--what SHOULD be--and analytical arguments--what is, what has been and what probably/possibly will be. You find this almost everywhere to one extent or another.
I am reminded of the story about arch-neocon writer, Leo Strauss, who loved the idea that a 1950s-era TV show like Gun Smoke, with its simple white hat/black hat dichotomy, was being provided to the American masses to train them in dualistic thinking and processing.
It is certainly one of the strongest points of this site that AK consciously and consistently attempts to avoid this analytical fallacy.