I will speak briefly on the topic of the Non-Aligned Movement in the current geopolitical conditions, starting from what I believe to be four possible scenarios in geopolitical terms, and the role that the Non-Aligned Movement or Non-Aligned Movement countries can play in these different contexts.
Starting from an unlikely (scenario), but something we cannot rule out, that is the US and its allies managed to recover hegemony. We know that they're in decline. This decline may even accelerate, may have even accelerated already. But is it possible that they might recover their standing? Again, it's not impossible because it has happened before. If you look at the history of the United States in the 20th century, go back to the 90s, 60s, 70s, Vietnam War, inflation, crisis of the dollar system of Bretton Woods; after 10 years of struggle, the US managed to recover under Ronald Reagan. Now, Donald Trump, in my opinion, is not a second coming of Ronald Reagan. The US situation is much more difficult now than it was in the 70s. So we won't see, I believe, a recovery of the old style, Western dominance that we had until early this century.
The second possible scenario would be something that Donald Trump referred to when he visited South Korea, when he met President Xi recently, a G2. United States adjusts to the fact that China is uncontainable and establishes peaceful relation. That would be the G2. That is a difficult scenario for us. We're all Global South countries, except China. Then we would have to face the fact that the two major powers would be united, largely or to a large extent. We will have to face that reality. For the Non-Aligned Movement, this would be a major challenge. But I submit that this G2 scenario is also unlikely. Why? Because we have to thank the United States for being extremely inflexible. I hope we can also thank China for not falling into the arms of such a trap. I don't think China will. You know why? Because China, as everyone else, knows that the US cannot be trusted. It is prone to make commitments and go back on them very easily. So we would not expect China to simply believe the US and go for G2 solutions, sacrificing the ties that China has developed with the BRICS and with the rest of the Global South.
A third scenario is something even worse perhaps, from our perspective, which is what we could call the G3, an arrangement between Russia, China, and the United States; a superpower arrangement that would try to divide the large part of the world into spheres of influence. This would be of course a major defeat for the Global South project and for the BRICS project. It would perhaps benefit the three countries in terms of power politics. But again, what saves us from this terrible scenario? The intransigence of the West. The West is very convinced of its superiority. If it's its right to rule, it would be difficult to have the US actually sharing power with Russia and with China. If you look at China from this perspective, I believe – correct me if I'm wrong, my Chinese colleagues here present – but I believe China has difficulty in establishing a hegemony in its region; it is strongly contested by many countries in its neighbourhood. It has difficult relations with India, with Japan, with Vietnam, and with the Philippines. So China would be a little bit foolish to accept such a division of the world because it would not benefit from the theoretical possibility of establishing a sphere of influence. Unless the US were to accept Taiwan being back in China, fully. That's too hard a pill for the United States to swallow. What about Russia? Russian friends may disagree, but I think Russia might not think this is a bad thing to have its sphere of influence recognised, for example, including Ukraine. Perhaps the US would agree, but the Europeans have shown yet again and again, that they are not willing to go down this route. So G3 is also impossible.
So the fourth scenario is the one that I think will prevail, actually. It is the multipolar world. Messy, but multiple centres of influence. Multi currencies, for example. And perhaps in this context, we, as a group or sub-group of Global South countries, can work towards a new monetary system, a new reserve currency. That's the most likely thing. That's what's looking like probable in the current world conditions. So we would have the North Atlantic pool, United States, Canada, Europe; we would have the Asian pool, the South Asian pool with India; the East Asian pool, very influenced by China; Russia's Eurasian project and so forth; Brazil, if it gets its act together and have its own centre of influence in South America. In this conception, it's centres of influence; it's not spheres of domination as traditionally thought. So Brazil could not come to its neighbours and say, let's build something which I would lead. By the way, I think large countries of the world, including our large countries, should never use the word 'leadership.' You don't appoint yourself leader of anything; you have to be recognised as such, if at all, right? Sometimes we fall into the trap of behaving like Americans do, calling themselves the leaders of the world every time.
And to conclude these comments, a few words on BRICS and BRICS+. As I said, the BRICS would become irrelevant, meaningless in the G2 or G3 scenario. It would be very relevant in a continuation or re-establishment of the American hegemony and very relevant in the multipolar world. Now, what about BRICS expansion? At this point, BRICS has only ten countries and the Global South has 140. Can the BRICS become more inclusive? We are now ten countries, full members, and ten partner countries. There's a dilemma there for the group, because a large group loses effectiveness. The dilemma is the choice between efficiency and inclusiveness. I would prefer, quite frankly, that the BRICS stops expanding and co-operate with outside countries of the Global South. We have mechanisms for that. We created a New Development Bank, headquartered here in Shanghai. I believe all of you have heard of it. It's a Global South bank or the Global South in conception. If you go to the building of the bank here, you'll see it. A beautiful building built by Shanghai municipality for us, 30 floors, marvellous structure. We have nearly 300 employees. Dozens of projects approved, infrastructure, sustainable development, capital of more than 10 billion paid in by countries that are members. We have issued bonds, including non-dollar currencies.
Nevertheless, the NDB falls short of what we planned, when I came to Shanghai exactly 10 years ago, as part of the administration of the new bank. It's not a global bank yet. It's far from it. We only have ten member countries. We need to expand if we are going to be something relevant in the global scenario. One serious thing I will mention is that we are tied to Western capital markets, tied to Wall Street, tied to London, tied to credit rating agencies of the United States. This has led us to the absurd situation where the NDB has stopped lending to a founding member. I mean Russia. It's so ridiculous that the bank has stopped disbursing on pre-existing contracts before the war in Ukraine, which is a violation of legally perfect contracts, and by fear of sanctions from the West. We made a mistake back then. When we founded the bank, we did not foresee that the bank would need to be much more independent of the Western capital markets than it now is. The other problem is that the quality of projects were not very sure. From the outside, we cannot check if the projects are really efficient, because there's no transparency in the bank. It is another problem. If you go to the website of the bank, you don't have much information.
That's what I wanted to say to you. I think the Global South has a role to finalise. I will quote what I heard at a dinner in Beijing from one former Chinese official. He said the world is changing so fast; the West has so many difficulties; the time has come for people from the Global South to speak up, make their voices heard, in order that the world can be changed for the better. Thank you.
Watch the whole speech here: