Modern international affairs are considerably aggravated these days, not only due to the permanent Russian-American feud and the intractable North Korea-US confrontation, but also fundamental issues affecting the prospects for the entire world order. These struggles, in fact, split the world into two camps. Some countries are more than willing to please, by all means, the United States in its desire to individually rule the world (these so-called allies behave more like vassals than equal partners). Others, to the best of their abilities, are trying to resist this dangerous and destabilizing process. Meanwhile, as world practice shows, in essence there is no "third option."

Each country will somehow make its own decision and choose with whom, and in what format, to continue its own existence. The current global confrontation is not between different ideologies or economic systems; it is rather between deep and absolutely alien visions of our future, and not between Washington and Moscow, or any specific irreconcilable individuals. And that makes the current situation, in my view, much more intriguing and complicated. Theoretically, all the major countries that are extremely irritated (if not to use a stronger word) by American foreign policy are already sort of united and have formed their own "group of interests."

Building Brics

Back in 2010, a group of strong emerging economies created a very specific and unusual organization, in many ways much more mythical than really operational. They called themselves the Brics: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. This union remains informal, in many ways is nonoperational, and pretends to declare in words something that it still cannot realize in practice. Each of these countries has its own ego and interests. And these interests are supposed to be radically different from those of the West, primarily from the United States. The main idea of the Brics formation, in fact, was more to try to teach a lesson (or another "mother of Kuzma" the late Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev attempted in the 1960s at the United Nations with his threats against US hegemony) than to establish any new "non-American" world order. And the issue of demonstration of external independence and sovereignty prevails in the political calculations of the five Brics nations versus pragmatic assessments of what they are really able to do with this "other world" outside the West.

Meanwhile, one very serious problem has emerged. All these "sovereign" and "absolutely independent" countries somehow, in one way or another, are not even thinking about their existence beyond the United States and the rest of the West. As a result, instead of actively enhancing and developing interaction among themselves within the Brics format, they are trying on a daily basis to do everything possible to strengthen relations with this supposed opposite side. And the Brics organization itself, unlike, for example, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, does not even have its own secretariat headquarters and only gathers once a year for a friendly but ineffective summit dominated by photo opportunities among the leaders of its member countries.

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