“From India to Indonesia, Asian nations are becoming less reliant on the West. There is a new self-confidence emerging, as they offset their security interests with the US and their economic needs with China or Russia,” Bloomberg said, Report informs.
According to Bloomberg, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s decision last week to declare his interest in Kuala Lumpur joining BRICS — the economic bloc co-founded in 2009 by Brazil, Russia, India and China and later South Africa — is a good example of that.
It expanded in January to include other “Global South” nations - Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. BRICS now represents 42% of the world’s population and 36% of global GDP.
Anwar pointed to the fact that BRICS has doubled in size this year, partly by offering access to financing, but also because these nations feel they can operate without having to kowtow to Washington or the West. Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand are also considering joining. There are risks of course, given its potential irrelevance, and what seems like a misguided pursuit of a de-dollarization strategy.
“The bloc provides an alternative to Western-led institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund — an entity that is remembered less for its economic forecasts, and more for the painful austerity measures it imposed in the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s,” said Bloomberg.