BRICS Rising in Tatarstan

Eds-- see also the related article by ESW's MENA Editor Ahmed, regarding Turkey's bid to join the BRICS at next month's Summit in Kazan.

-- James Smith

Editor-in-Chief and Publisher, ExitStrategy.World

September 16, 2024

Autumn is upon us and here in Moscow Oblast its starting to smell a lot like cinnamon, pumpkins and BRICS. The last third of October, the 22nd through 24th specifically will see Russia hosting a major BRICS summit in the historic city of Kazan, which is located 490 miles (790 kilometers) southeast of Moscow. With the planned high speed rail (HSR) line the current 11 hour train ride will be cut down to less than four.

A Brief History of the Volga Bulgars, 'Tartary' and Russia

Kazan itself is the capital of the Tartarstan Republic of the Russian Federation, a semi-autonomous region that extends east to the Ural Mountains. The confluence of the broad Kama River flowing south from Udmurtia where it meets the mighty Volga is roughly 66 kilometers from Kazan. The city itself is ancient and adjacent to these riverine trade routes. Until the Soviet philologists came up with the name of Tartarstan and the ethnonym Tartar, Kazan was the capital of the Volga Bulgars, known as the Volga Bulgarians.

A branch of the Volga Bulgarians famously broke off and wandered into modern day Bulgaria, conquered the native Balkan Slavs there. Like many of medieval Russia's coalescing tribes, they were a western Asian people with strong ancient Northern Eurasian ancestry. The 10% minority that ruled Bulgaria were quickly assimilated by the 90% Slavic native population, as the male line Magyar tribal leaders who originated in what is today Russia's Ural Mountains Republic of Bashkortostan rapidly intermarried with the Slavic native women further northwest in Hungary. The Bulgars pre-Cyrillic alphabet may have disappeared from memory, but they left a Balkan country their name: Bulgaria.

Kazan itself had a long history with the Rus as an ally, as trade partners along the well-plied Volga route to the Black Sea and on to the then-richest city in Europe, Byzantium. It was only centuries later that Rus and Tatar would clash as enemies. When the principality of Muscovy started unifying the other independent principalities to itself during the 14th century and threw off the weakening yoke of the collapsing Golden Horde, the Volga Bulgars became Moscow’s allies and also gained their full independence from the Golden Horde, or rather the Great Mongol Khan's feuding successors. Later, Kazan became a vassal of Moscow, but betrayed Tsar Ivan Vasilovich the Fourth Grozny (the Feared, not the British propaganda translation of Terrible), listening to envoys from the Ottoman Turks and their vassals in the Crimean Khanate. This led the Tatars to war with the Grand Prince of Moscow and one of the first Tsars of all the Russias, Ivan the Feared.

After a failed siege attempt in 1545, Ivan returned with a much better prepared army and a well- developed supply train/logistics base in 1552. The siege lasted from 2nd September to the 13th of October and the Tsar himself participated in the final storming of the city fortress.

The fall of Kazan, however, was not conducted in a fashion then typical for European warfare, such as the envious Western European Crusaders sickening betrayal and pillaging of the richer and more educated Orthodox Christians of Byzantium. Then as now, Russians weren't and aren't exactly Europeans. The Turkish empires and Crimean Khanates, Polish/Lithuanian Commonwealth, Swedish, French and German losers of countless wars to the Russians in the last 1,000 years should thank God for that. Instead of three days of looting, robbery, and mayhem followed by destruction and mass forced conversion, the city was left alone.

The Tatar elites pledged loyalty to the Tsar. To seal the union, many of their daughters intermarried with the Russian elites. This was something unheard of in “true” Europe, for the nobility to sully their blood and to marry Asiatics or others “inferior” races. Furthermore, the population was allowed to retain their Sunni Muslim faith, though many Tatars did convert to Orthodoxy of their own volition. As a result, many of the noble Russian families at the imperial court well into the 19th century carried Tatar blood or were said to have more 'Asiatic' features, particularly among their renowned for their beauty women.

In the five hundred years since, Kazan has been a splendid blend of western Asiatic and Eastern European cultures, of Christians and Muslims living peacefully side by side. At one point, under the Tsars, Kazan has been home to the biggest church bell manufactory in all of Rus. In the Great Patriotic War and again in the SMO, they have fought shoulder to shoulder to defend Russia.

So, when it comes to BRICS, this city, like no other, is a demonstration that unity amongst different peoples and cultures can be found, not through forced vassalhood and subversion, but through authentic tolerance and working together. Kazan truly upholds the motto of this year’s meeting “Strengthening Multilateralism for Equitable Global Development and Security”.

What's in store for the BRICS?

First of all, this is a high level BRICS meeting, in other words, the heads of state will be arriving in Kazan. This is not an economics development session. As we all know, the original BRICS: Brail, Russia, India, China and South Africa have already expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and UAE.

This time around, BRICS may be admitting quite a few more nations: We already know that Belarus, Turkey, Malaysia and Thailand are petitioning to join BRICS+. Other nations on that waitlist include: Algeria, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras, Venezuela, Vietnam, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Morocco, Nigeria, Palestine, and Senegal. This will create a very difficult situation for Washington, especially if and when a BRICS trade settlement currency of some sort is sorted out.

As BRICS stands now, they represent more economic value and more population than the Insolvent 7 or G7. They are all growing economies, as opposed to the majority of the G7, whose growth, if any, is strictly from government debt spending to hide their socioeconomic senescence. In numbers, BRICS overtook the G7 in 2018 and in 2024 represent 35% of the world GDP by Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).

But worst of all, the present configuration of the BRICS+ represents a holding of the majority of key resources that the collective West lacks and cannot live without.

American Dismissals of BRICS as Cope for Dollar Decline

Washington’s official stance has been that BRICS is a “nothing burger” that is, they just like to meet a lot, to gaggle and babble and than go home, with the member states still easy for the Americans to pressure. However, the cracks in that façade of cope are starting to appear. President Donald Trump boasted that he was worried that countries in general and BRICS+ in specific were de-dollarizing and that he was going to take radical measures, that is, any country that fully de-dollarized would face a 100% tariffs on their goods. This threat of course is built on the assumption that the US remains the indispensable partner in trade, a time which has long since passed. The proposed tariffs first and foremost will hit the already overly indebted American consumer. Putting a 100% tariff on Chinese goods, most of which no longer have US-made alternatives, will crush the already stressed US debtor/consumer.

The USD has continued a steady decline in status from around 66% down to 60% of global reserves. While this may seem like a small dip, a six percent drop in the dollar volume of well over $70 trillion (it would seem no one knows for sure how many electronic eurodollars or additionally real as well as counterfeit greenbacks are floating around the world) means that somewhere in the order of $4 to $5 trillion has flowed back into the US economy, accelerating the already crushing consumer inflation. As this vicious cycle continues to accelerate and the US debt servicing consumes more and more of the budget, already in excess of the massive spending on 'defense', this back flow of USD will continue to accelerate the already nascent hyper-inflation in the US market.

To calm the edgy investor, countless articles by the US subservient press have flooded the Internet depicting the USD as strong and healthy, with nothing to worry about in the short to medium term. These articles claim that the decline will be slow and linear and that in ten years the USD's share of global reserves might drop to 50%, mostly due to the rise of the Chinese yuan. Anyone who studies economics and economic history, however, knows of course that this is ridiculous and when the final devaluation of a reserve currency comes, they are often swift, violent and traumatic.

Secondly, this shows just how desperate the US actually is, trying to use Mob-style practices to keep nations on the dollar crack habit, even as that dollar is slowly killing those nations' economies. See Japan's Lost Decades of stagflation since 1990 or the much more rapid deindustrialization of once industrial powerhouse Germany. One of the main reasons that Saudi Arabia got off of the dollar peg, was that the actual USD rate of inflation, not the fake official rate, was destroying their economy.

In effect, what Trump is proposing, and much of the Washington Elite would support, is the creation of two blocs: Washington and her collective West allies/vassals, to include Japan and South Korea, all the nations facing demographic, economic and sovereign debt collapse, versus the rest of the world. Unfortunately for Trump or a likely Kamala Harris Administration, that's not going to happen, prior vassals especially the core petrodollar states of Saudi Arabia and the UAE have already defected to the BRICS bloc.

This trend has already started to develop and is not limited to economics. In June 2024, Russia hosted the BRICS Games, for the 7th year and counting. This is an alternative to the US dominated and absolutely corrupt and degenerate Olympics. Brazil alone brought 112 athletes to Russia for this competition.

Will There be Any Decisions this Year on a BRICS Currency?

That is a major theme of alt-media. But I am afraid will have to disappoint some of our readers. India is one of the biggest road blocks. Not only does it still harbor ill feelings often summarized as a development inferiority complex towards China, Delhi does not want Beijing to play the big fiddle in this organization, as Germany did in the formation of the Euro. Modi like Erdogan is still trying to play both sides. Modi is doing quite a bit to please his American “partners”, who see India as their main foothold into dismantling or at least slowing down BRICS development. The U.S. currently tries to bribe India by granting more H1B visas to Indian students, through large joint production defense contracts for Modi's 'Made in India' campaign, and looking the other way--until recently--at the highly lucrative Indian re-export of refined Russian oil to the EU. Although the State Department and neocon hardliners have become increasingly critical of India over this and somewhat exaggerated tales of rampant Hindu nationalist persecution of Indian Muslims (the problems of Indian Christians are almost never mentioned except by CIA types friendly with Beltway Evangelical lobbyists).

Of course a BRICS currency can exclude some nations, such as the Eurozone, so that it would not directly impact the nations stuck in the dying European Union. As for this Kazan summit, it is unfortunate, but as of now, the BRICS+ currency issue is not on the agenda. Central bankers will continue to meet, of course, but any time table or even an announcement of such should not be expected this go around.