From Yalta and Bretton Woods to Johannesburg

In February 1945, the leaders of the great powers that had already shown themselves victorious World War II, They met in the Russian city of Yalta, on the Crimean peninsula, to establish the foundations of the post-war world order. Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill They agreed on the rules of the world that was emerging after the debacle of the powers Axis Rome-Berlin-Tokyo.

There were still many battles to be won, many pitfalls to be overcome, but the fall of Berlin and the most uncertain capitulation of Japan were expected to take months. There are spheres of influence of the so-called West (Anglo-Saxon) and East (Russian-Soviet) in Europe freed from the Nazis, designing fundamental institutions in the political sphere ( United Nations System, at a later conference in San Francisco). Then in Potsdam,

Germany (August 1945) decisions were reaffirmed without consulting any other country, a small geopolitical detail that is usually overlooked.

In the economic aspect, the agreement was previously discussed in more detail in the American town of Bretton Woods (July 1944), from where the monetary-financial order will be born and the commercial order will be considered, which could not be realized almost half a century later, when the World Trade Organization was established (Montevideo , 1995). They were born there International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) which survives as part of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and after fierce debates on the commercial and monetary dimensions, gave wayl General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The Americans and the English starred in the famous controversy between Harry Dexter White and John Maynard Keynes, the echoes of which are relevantly valid. In short, Yalta and Bretton Woods established a global order of increasing unipolar focus that ruled the world practically until 2020.

That factual order and its rules of coexistence are now interrupted, equally de facto, by the rise of two emerging powers in the economic order: China and India; and the other, military: Russia (with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world). China and India are now challenging US hegemony in the commercial, technological and investment fields, and created the material basis for the creation of a multicentric, not a multipolar, order.

This last clarification is very important, because it seems that in the next 20 years we will see a world order characterized by multilateralism as the fundamental doctrine for the articulation of states and their economies, and not by the creation of “blocs” in the manner of the old division of the world into the Sino-Soviet bloc and the Euro-American bloc, although so far we have two axes in dispute: United States of America and the People’s Republic of China.

In this new configuration, according to “doctrine” (goals and methods of action) the so-called members of the BRICS group are already fundamental actors, although the loose and heterogeneous nature of its members tends to underestimate them, especially in the Western media. sphere, where in this war of minds spokesman Jack Sullivan, referring to BRICS He said that they do not represent a real competitor to the Americans in geopolitics. (See: https://www.france24.com/en/minute-by-minute) This is reminiscent of the story of the wolf and contradicts what “think-tanks” like the Rand Co. or the Quincy Institute say.

Indeed, on August 23, the XV meeting of the heads of state of its 4 original members was held in the capital of South Africa: Brazil, Russia, China, India and the Republic itself. South African. Lula, Putin, Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi and Ramaphosathey took a transcendental step by expanding the group by integrating (from 2024) several more countries: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and Argentina.

Thus BRICS originally represented (2009) 43% of the world’s population, 25% of global GDP, 20% of world investment and 15% of total trade on the planet; to form a group that with the aforementioned incorporations now means 46% of the world’s population, 37% of the planet’s economy and what the Elcano Index calls 22% of global presence, which calculates the projection of countries beyond their borders (including economic and military spheres, and the so-called “soft” aspects such as culture, science and technology, sport and migration). (See: Index Elcano global presence (realinstitutoelcano.org) Importance of the South African summit BRICS is undeniable.

On a symbolic/communicative level, it is a clear commitment to multilateralism; and on a factual level, it strengthens the ties of countries with strategic power in the domain of the key energy source that drives the world economy (oil) by 80%; as well as access to key minerals, but above all, it points the way for potential cooperation in trade, investment and monetary management separately from, or in the first combined but increasingly autonomous way, mechanisms inherited from Bretton Woods, first of all enabling escape from the suffocating noose of the IMF in terms of development financing; and laid the real foundations for challenging the hegemony of the dollar, which, as is known, rested since the 1970s on petro-dollars and the irresponsible management of that currency, which created financial bubbles, periodic inflationary shocks and recessions all over the planet. A new world is being born, and Johannesburg will be remembered for its contribution to this birth.

There were still many battles to be won, many pitfalls to be overcome, but the fall of Berlin and the most uncertain capitulation of Japan were expected to take months.