Intervju z Davidom Wolffom o padcu ameriškega povojnega imperija in vzponu novega svetovnega reda pod vodstvom Kitajske v navezi z državami BRICS+. Spodaj je še nekaj odstavkov transkripta.

David Wolff je  upokojeni profesor ekonomije na Univerzi v Massachusettsu v Amherstu, kjer je poučeval ekonomijo od leta 1973 do 2008. Zdaj je gostujoči profesor na podiplomskem programu mednarodnih zadev Univerze New School v New Yorku.

Once upon a time, after 1945, there was one dominant economic power: the United States. It built an alliance with the former dominant powers: Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and (Western) Europe. For most of the last 75 years, the G7—comprising the United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy—was dominant.

Over the last generation, the last 20-25 years, that situation changed with the spectacular rise of China. From being the largest country by population and one of the poorest on Earth, China achieved an economic growth rate never seen before. For the last 25-30 years, China’s GDP growth has been 6-9%, which is two to three times that of the United States and greater than 99% of the rest of the world.

China became a modern powerhouse economic unit.

Then, a few years ago, China began wisely to build up alliances very carefully with everyone and anyone it could find willing to do so.

Now we have the BRICS, which is China and its allies, paralleling the United States and its allies.

The BRICS initially included five countries: China, India, Russia, South Africa, and Brazil.

Now it has added another six countries, making it a total of 11.

The important thing is that this alliance of China and the others is now a larger economic unit by GDP than the G7.

They were equal back in 2020, but since then, the BRICS have grown much faster relative to the G7, which are barely growing at all.

This changes everything.

Every country on Earth, big or small, has no choice but to react to this changed world economy.

If you export, you want to be able to export to both of them, but if you have to choose, you’ll go with the one that is larger and growing faster because it would be foolish not to.

This gives China enormous power.

If you want to import from those countries, the same reasoning applies.

If you want to borrow money or get investments, whatever you want, you are now at least going to talk to the BRICS alongside the G7.

In fact, if you’re big enough, you’ll try to play them off against one another.

Right now, Saudi Arabia is busy doing that, and other countries do it too.

Everyone is trying to recalibrate what they’re going to do.

There will be people who go to one side and then the other, depending on the reactions to the competition between them.

At this point, it’s impossible not to make adjustments.

We are living through these adjustments, and that process of adjustment is also the dominant engine of change in the United States, too, because it also has to adjust.

The problem in the United States, as I’ve discussed before, is that there’s an immense need here to deny what’s going on.

Every empire’s decline saw many people in the declining country refusing to see, understand, or take it into account.

Let me give you just one example of the terrible miscalculation that can result from not thinking honestly about it.

The United States and Britain clearly decided that there was a reasonable chance they could quickly defeat Russia if it intervened in their plans to bring Ukraine into NATO and the European Union.

Why? Because they saw a 10-year developed army in Ukraine that the West had equipped, trained, and mobilized.

The Ukrainians could never have done that themselves; the weapons they use are overwhelmingly either old Soviet-era weapons left in Ukraine or Western ones.

The miscalculation was thinking they would be fighting Russia, but they were actually fighting the BRICS.

When Russia couldn’t sell oil and gas due to the sanctions levied by the United States with Europe going along, they thought Russia was destroyed.

Russia’s economy depends heavily on exporting oil and gas, and if they couldn’t export to their conventional markets, they were finished.

But this overlooked the importance of the BRICS.

The BRICS bought the oil and gas.

To make a complicated story very simple. I’m oversimplifying, but it’s the same basic point.

The irony is that it proved to the BRICS how important they are to one another.

It’s not just Russia that learned.

Russia learned what it could get from India and China, but India, China, and Brazil also learned what they could get from one another.

It changes all their calculations, including whether or not to go to war, and there aren’t any more important calculations than that.

Being in denial about your decline leads to terrible mistakes.

The war in Ukraine is being lost by the Ukrainians more today than ever before.”