This sort of hysterical take based on optics never quite delves into how many states involved in these summits actually share a free trade zone, customs union, currency structure and unconditional defence pact
Replies
Inevitably, when invited by a country where you share significant interests, you turn up, smile & shake hands. It doesn't mean that all or even most of your interests coincide. But at present, you do want to show Trump that his tariff policies won't make you knuckle under & underline alternatives.
sep 1, 2025, 12:54 pm • 0 0 • view
Russia leads.... yeah sure.
sep 1, 2025, 10:19 am • 2 0 • view
I've written about the post-American world. But this rising East stuff reflects desperate hankering after any stable order around a new hegemon when in reality neither China, India or the EU have the unique mid-20th century dynamics that empowered the US. Instead we face chaos
sep 1, 2025, 10:10 am • 81 5 • view
Analysts, journalists and scholars have been so shaped by a late 20th century world under US hegemony that they assume a global system shaped shaped by a dominant power is the norm Yet for long stretches of history the world was defined by disorder and chaos with no hegemon
sep 1, 2025, 10:10 am • 78 11 • view
legrandcontinent.eu/fr/2025/04/2...
sep 1, 2025, 10:12 am • 19 2 • view
Merci ! Je n’avais pas réalisé que vous accordiez autant d’importance à l’euro comme monnaie mondiale par rapport, par exemple, au développement militaire
sep 1, 2025, 11:47 am • 0 0 • view
Sorry to have to ask but is this in English anywhere?
sep 1, 2025, 10:24 am • 3 0 • view
In the band right under the publication name, I see language options.
sep 1, 2025, 10:54 am • 0 0 • view
French and Spanish Italian, german and polish should come soon
sep 1, 2025, 11:49 am • 0 0 • view
I would also like to have that (or in German!) but until now deepl.com is the best translation service. As a "for free user" you may have to translate n paragraphs, not the whole piece at once.
sep 1, 2025, 11:04 am • 2 0 • view
Cheers
sep 1, 2025, 11:36 am • 0 0 • view
I'm a HUGE fan of the rise of the Brics narrative as it basically creates a job for life for me going "no that's bollocks".
sep 1, 2025, 10:12 am • 35 2 • view
IMV it's worse than that. It's a huge distraction in generating hopes for some new hegemon that shows up to make it all better rather than facing the more likely reality that the EU needs to prepare for a long era of geopolitical chaos.
sep 1, 2025, 10:14 am • 18 0 • view
Hopes where, do you mean? Not in the EU presumably?
sep 1, 2025, 10:19 am • 5 0 • view
Even in the EU. What I find so telling about the "OMG China" stuff is that while it reflects deep fears, it also operates on the assumption that if the US impales itself on its own internal contradictions there will inevitably see some other actor (AKA China) that will step in to create order..but..
sep 1, 2025, 10:20 am • 14 2 • view
...but I view that tendency to assume that hegemony is the default state of the global political economy or military environment to reflect a fundamental failure of strategic imagination in a lot of econ and IR coded analysis in academic traditions shaped by a century of US dominance
sep 1, 2025, 10:22 am • 16 1 • view
So to arc back to what the sentiment in the EU about "rising China" stuff, I think in worrying about China as the next hegemon it risks becoming a distraction from an IMV more likely outcome where neither China, India or the EU, or anyone else has the capacity to create global order.
sep 1, 2025, 10:23 am • 8 0 • view
tbh, it's a take that needs 4000 words rather than a social media thread.
sep 1, 2025, 10:24 am • 8 0 • view
I get the impression the EU actually fears the rise of a concerted Brics or other EM bloc (remember this ghastly thing? www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKN6...) but I guess it depends whom you talk to.
sep 1, 2025, 10:25 am • 1 0 • view
Lol, that's so retro
sep 1, 2025, 10:27 am • 2 0 • view
But the crux of my view is that the EU Commission as well as Member State governments have too many people that both fear the emergence of a new hegemon aka China and in the process assume that this next hegemon will emerge by default once the US collapses as a geopolitical actor. But..
sep 1, 2025, 10:29 am • 7 0 • view
Someone watched Kill Bill Vol 1 and got very excited.
sep 1, 2025, 10:33 am • 0 0 • view
why fear something that is never going to happen though?
sep 1, 2025, 10:28 am • 0 0 • view
That's the crux of my point in terms of how the last 80 years of US dominance shaped not just intellectual outlook of scholars but how entire academic disciplines from IR to economics to Global History are structurally coded. Hegemony is assumed to be a default state in ways I think are flat wrong
sep 1, 2025, 10:32 am • 6 0 • view
Partly they big it up because it gives them an excuse to do things domestically - in this case "you have to do what DG Trade says or you'll all be speaking Chinese".
sep 1, 2025, 10:38 am • 2 0 • view
Consistency bias.
sep 1, 2025, 11:01 am • 0 0 • view
These people will both tell you sob stories about how the adoption of Euro is a neoliberal plot bankrupting poorer EU members, and how China, India, SA and Russia are totally going to have the same currency which will benefit each of them.
sep 1, 2025, 10:14 am • 2 0 • view
Not sure you contradict each other: Germany wanted a “place in the sun,” broke the old order, and spread chaos. A rival to the Western order today may not be a new hegemon, but could speed up the shift toward an unstable multipolar (multinodal?) system.
sep 1, 2025, 10:47 am • 0 0 • view
Haven't people been saying for decades that BRIC countries are on the rise and poised to be the next big player?
sep 1, 2025, 6:35 pm • 0 0 • view
Worth noting the author has an interesting career and agenda
sep 1, 2025, 9:31 pm • 0 0 • view
Let’s not even get into how people take the Westphalian system of sovereignty as a given, instead of the modern & rather arbitrary social construct it is.
sep 1, 2025, 10:39 am • 0 0 • view
“...the largest collection of the worlds most populous fastest growing group of countries that now have increasingly coordinated geopolitical agenda…" China’s population is shrinking faster than India’s is increasing and their two armies beating the living piss out of each other hand-to-hand in
sep 1, 2025, 10:47 am • 4 0 • view
the high Himalaya sounds like a real recipe for close co-operation. Not to mention China getting the hooks into Pakistan with the Belt and Road. Oh yes, and China sold Pakistan the weapons which they kicked India’s butt with a few months ago. Sounds like a real emerging global hegemon.
sep 1, 2025, 10:47 am • 2 0 • view
I particularly like the idea that Brazil, India, and South Africa are just going to go along with Russia and China as if none of them can smell a colonialist from a mile away.
sep 1, 2025, 11:58 am • 4 0 • view
Pepe Escobar cosplay. BRICS is in the same category as cold fusion at this point.
sep 1, 2025, 12:01 pm • 1 0 • view
Well, as the ANC in SA still apparently think the USSR is still going strong I don't think much practical advice or policy is likely to emerge from this part of the BRICS 😑
sep 1, 2025, 10:35 am • 0 0 • view
Not saying you are wrong but I think you are seriously misunderstanding the importance of this. And that's what they are banking on.
sep 1, 2025, 10:56 am • 0 0 • view
Ben Aris is not a good faith actor. That's the only analysis required.
sep 1, 2025, 7:01 pm • 1 0 • view
It's like people completely forgot we used to have to build giant walls to keep our settlements safe before alliances started doing that instead.
sep 1, 2025, 12:53 pm • 0 0 • view
The West has destroyed its economic and technological advance, because a few billionaires were furious about paying decent wages and thought moving the production in China was the solution.
sep 1, 2025, 11:15 am • 1 0 • view
We are also destroying our soft-power, because the USA and most European countries think that genocides and war crimes are bad only when the Russians are doing it. The whole world can see that we are helping Israel burying children alive.
sep 1, 2025, 11:15 am • 2 1 • view
And that's not all : we have been blessed with democracies, the most efficient political system. What are we doing ? We vote for fascists and wannabe corrupt autocrats.
sep 1, 2025, 11:15 am • 1 1 • view
We have the most powerful military alliance ever : its leader want to destroy it or change it into a pure racketeering scheme. Same with our free trade zones and agreements.
sep 1, 2025, 11:15 am • 1 1 • view
The fundamental of our power comes from the scientific revolution. So of course, the Academia is under siege, by rising scholarship costs, ideological wars, corporations interference and now censorship.
sep 1, 2025, 11:15 am • 1 1 • view
Our Art production is now cut in two : mass produced unimaginative rubbish (Marvel...) for the mass and cheap produced high-profit non-sense for the elites (banana taped on the wall anyone ?).
sep 1, 2025, 11:15 am • 0 0 • view
The political discourse has been taken hostage by extremists, either the far-right white supremacists who want to take us back to the 9th century or the far-left western hating who want to destroy everything and everyone born in the West except iPhones and BlueSky.
sep 1, 2025, 11:15 am • 0 0 • view
We are plagued by antivaxxers, climate denialists and flat-earthers, we are losing our free press to the appetites of a few reactionary oligarchs. Our States are drowning in debts.
sep 1, 2025, 11:15 am • 0 0 • view
So, in reality, we should be thankful to Putin and Xi Jinping: their malevolence is a given, but if they were less incompetent, they would have taken over a long time ago. What allows the West to stay relevant is the abysmal performance of the rest of the world.
sep 1, 2025, 11:15 am • 0 0 • view
Histrionics possibly come from the expectation (shaped, as you said, by growing up in US hegemony) that there will be an element of military coercion to up the economic dominance. Looking at 🇷🇺, NK, and the way 🇨🇳 acts in South China Sea, not unreasonable reaction. BRICS also learned from the US 🤷
sep 1, 2025, 10:19 am • 4 0 • view
It’s fascinating to observe at any rate. It also seems like people like to forget that the trust towards the US was built on the US not exercising their power in the West much. I doubt China will be able to reverse their appetite for Indian and Taiwanese soil quick enough to build real trust there.
sep 1, 2025, 10:57 am • 1 0 • view
Yes. Any one of these guys would shank the other without thinking twice.
sep 2, 2025, 3:34 am • 0 0 • view
Are any of those things actually necessary? If nations recognise when they cooperate vs when they compete, yes, you get more complexity but that doesn’t mean you get chaos or a lack of collective will to break free of the current US dominated hegemony.
sep 1, 2025, 10:55 am • 0 0 • view
The historical track record of global and regional powers willing to recognise the advantages of cooperation over competition when they feel threatened and have clashing strategic interests is not great
sep 1, 2025, 10:57 am • 4 0 • view
My counter is a bullying superpower interfering in regional affairs rarely improves regional stability, causing resentments & hostilities with long memories. I’m not a historian & learned too late in life that there are no clear-cut goodies & baddies.
sep 1, 2025, 12:48 pm • 0 0 • view