When we say that the people, and especially the people of the Global South, aspire to a world system (economic/social/political) that realizes their aspirations for Good Living and sovereignty of their Homelands, their thinking elites know that the current multipolar scenario offers substantial opportunities that the previous unipolar NATOist and neoliberal globalist international board was unviable. But what would make it possible to take advantage of these opportunities?

Let’s first describe what are the main opportunities that multipolar platforms can provide to the Global South, and then answer the question posed.

1) Diversification of relations: The BRICS and other multipolar platforms offer the Global South a crucial way to reduce its historical economic dependence and political subordination to the Western hegemon, which favors the strengthening of its strategic autonomy.

2) New sources of financing: Institutions such as the New Development Bank (NDB) of the BRICS and other banks not controlled by the West, provide credit alternatives for infrastructure and development, without political conditions and with less onerous conditions and aligned with the priorities of the Global South, than those imposed by the IMF or the World Bank.

3) Access to vast markets: China and India are formidable and growing markets. Brazil and Russia (despite sanctions) offer complementarities. The BRICS+ expand this panorama even further. This diversifies export destinations for commodities (raw materials/basic products), manufacturing and, potentially, services.

4) Strengthening South-South cooperation: The BRICS and the new multipolar platforms seek to promote more horizontal cooperation between countries in the Global South, based on mutual respect and shared benefits, contrasting with historical asymmetric relations with the West. I must emphasize that the West is a geopolitical category that does not necessarily coincide with geographical reality. Thus, Our America, which is located in the Western Hemisphere, cannot be considered part of the West, from a geopolitical/geostrategic perspective.

5) Drive for multipolarity: Multipolarity is a dynamic and developing process that the unipolar ‘system’ tries to stop and even destroy. The push for multipolarity must be constant to achieve its consolidation and for the Global South to find more spaces to promote its specific interests and alternative development model.

The emergence of multipolar platforms such as the BRICS (and their expansion) represents a tectonic change in the global order, offering alternatives to the economic and financial system traditionally dominated by the West (Atlantist/globalist). For Nuestra América, this new geometry raises a crucial question: Can these platforms offer a new type of cooperation that supports their aspirations for sovereign development?.

The answer is yes, the potential is there, but there are conditions for that existing potential to become a reality, one of the main ones being joint regional action.

Additionally, the following aspects must be considered:

1. Asymmetries: Within the BRICS, China exercises disproportionate economic and political influence. For Our America, there is a risk of replacing one dependency (on the US/EU) with another (on China), especially in trade and investment. The relationship must be managed with pragmatism and clear defense of national interests.

2. Own agenda: The BRICS has its own agenda focused on its strategic priorities (energy security, access to resources, geopolitical expansion). Our America must articulate its own and proactive agenda to ensure that cooperation effectively responds to its industrial, technological, social and environmental development needs.

3. BRICS Internal Cohesion: The BRICS are not a monolithic block. They have political, economic differences and strategic rivalries (e.g. India-China). This can limit its effectiveness and consistency.

 4. Lack of regional cohesion in Our America: The existing political and economic fragmentation is its greatest weakness, this weakens its collective bargaining position. Without a coordinated regional strategy, the benefit will be uneven and bad.

5. Extractivist model: There is a risk that the relationship with the BRICS, especially with China, reinforces the historical pattern in our region of exporting raw materials with little added value, perpetuating economic vulnerability. Cooperation must clearly prioritize technology transfer, industrialization and productive diversification.

6. Geopolitical uncertainty: If Our America manages to define its fundamental interests as a region, this will necessarily be reflected in its international policy, thereby mitigating geopolitical uncertainty in the face of conflicts that arise on the geostrategic board, promoting mutual trust and the will to cooperate.

To close and answer the question we proposed at the beginning: But what would make it possible to take advantage of these opportunities?

Our region is overdetermined by specific historical conditions, one of the main ones being the fact that our capitalism was born subordinate to its imperialist phase, which produced an oligarchy coupled with its interests, which explains the causes of our stagnation in several items.

This oligarchy is the cause of our slow, deformed, tortuous development, which has not prevented this oligarchy from enriching itself enormously, since precisely the “development” model that it has imposed has been dependent on and articulated to the needs of the central countries. (A crucial fact: Latin America loses $150 billion annually due to capital flight (CEPAL).

This oligarchy, for example, has not been interested in the development of an internal market and what has been created in many cases has been nothing more than an extension of the metropolitan market. Nor has it been interested in regional geopolitical unity, the latter was reflected in the destruction of UNASUR or is reflected in the lack of dynamism of other integration platforms.

Raúl Prebisch had already said it decades ago, Our America needs its own and cohesive strategy and not look for external saviors. But that historical task falls to our people to carry out; the Latin American oligarchies have demonstrated that they have other interests that do not obey those of our region.