(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 04-06-2015 MON)
For two weeks the world watched as history shifted inexorably from the Unipolar World, i.e. one centered and controlled from Washington, to the Multipolar World with global power being distributed to other centers.
The China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) saw traditional European and Asian allies of Washington (except Japan, so far) rushing to beat the deadline to join the institution despite pressure and appeals from the US to shun the new international bank seen as competing with the US-sponsored International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB), and Asian Development Bank (ADB).
Prominent US allies that have joined the AIIB after overcoming a tense standout with Washington are Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Australia, and South Korea. The Philippines, surprisingly, had joined even earlier without opposition from the US, which probably considered its most canine ally unimportant enough to bother with.
Indeed, the fact that financial and economic heavyweights long considered stalwarts of the Western Alliance have joined the AIIB over Washington’s objections was a shocker to the US and should serve as a wake-up call to the Philippines. But the AIIB is just the beginning of the end of the Unipolar World.
The start of April ushered in the realization of the New Development Bank (NDB) that sprung from the embryonic BRICS Bank proposed in previous BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) summits.
Russia this week announced its ratification of its NDB participation, with a Russian to head the bank that will be headquartered in Shanghai.
The NDB will be capitalized at $100 billion. But South African Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies says the bank’s capital may not be held in US dollars--in keeping with the BRICS aim to wean the world away from control of the dollar.
Aside from bank capitalization, another $100 billion currency pool, with $50 billion coming from China, is set up to help any of the BRICS countries tide over liquidity crises as often happens when an emerging economy comes under Western financial attack, as in the 1998 Asian Contagion when George Soros ravaged the Thai baht.
Slowly, the new international world order--one that is fairer and more democratic--comes into being. This was not by war, as was the experience during the Cold War led by the USSR that, in turn, led to its demise. Rather, this new international order, the Multipolar World, is being established by financial and economic diversification.
Russia’s Vladimir Putin says of this, “BRICS are coordinating their policies on key international issues ever more closely, and are playing an active part in shaping a multi-polar world order and developing modern models for the world’s financial and trading systems…”
The NDB of the BRICS is expected to be headed by Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, who has been quoted saying, “We want to move away from the same old, same old way of doing things. What currencies the capital will be held in is something that will be part of the Sherpa (as in Mt. Everest climbing guides) process with the pace set by Brazil, but we expect substantive progress by the time of the next BRICS summit in Russia…”
Russia’s partner in all these is China, which provides at least half the capital for these new Multipolar World projects.
As change continues to beckon and even as the staunchest Western allies are accepting its inevitability, riding on the crest of the new wave, Philippine foreign and financial policies continue to hew to Cold War loyalties, which churn out propaganda still antipathetic or hostile to China, Russia, and the other BRICS countries.
We cannot expect any change while an incorrigible Western patsy such as BS Aquino is still in charge. The Filipino nation, especially its intelligentsia, must start the change and educate the rest of society if it wants to be part of the Multipolar World.
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