Evan Ellis - The BRICS Summit in Kazan, China, and the Rise of the "Illiberal Counter-Order"
Dear Colleagues:
This week, President-Elect Trump has announced key nominations of his foreign and security policy team. Persons like incoming National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio are likely to bring greater recognition of both the strategic threat posed by China globally, and its interaction with other authoritarian and anti-U.S. actors such as Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Marco Rubio also brings a depth of understanding of Latin America and its strategic importance to the U.S. that could contribute helpfully to U.S. attention to the region.
As President Elect Trump’s team looks to understand the strategic dynamic between those actors and the appropriate U.S. response, the recent BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia offers important insights. In my newest column for Opidata, brought to you through the group Legado a las Americas, I analyze that summit, and how it is a strategically important expression of the dynamic between China and the new “illiberal counter-order.” I note how this collection of largely authoritarian, anti-U.S. regimes, lack a positive unifying vision, yet most are united in collaborating together, and with China, to decrease vulnerability to global legal, financial and other institutions, and the associated ability of the U.S. and other Western actors to penalize them for violations of bad behaviors from criminality, to contractual or individual rights violations, to aggression against their neighbors. I note how the expanded BRICS forum was an important expression of the collaboration of an important subset of these regimes to create alternative financial and other mechanisms that circumvent those vulnerabilities, in the process, undermining the rules-based order that (however imperfect) has served as the basis for economic and technological progress and security collaboration since the Second World War.
The work is available here for download in ENGLISH.
It is available here for download in SPANISH.
It is available here in ENGLISH from Opidata, which published it:
https://legadoalasamericas.org/?p=1332
It is available here in SPANISH from publisher Opidata:
https://legadoalasamericas.org/?p=1331
Podcasts, Media Appearances, and Radio Shows:
As always, I would also like to share with you my latest media appearances.
These include my weekly segments on the John Batchelor Show, in his special ongoing series on Latin America, The New World Report.
The latest episodes (November 13, 2024) are:
US Foreign Policy Toward LATAM: https://audioboom.com/posts/8608185-newworldreport-marco-rubio-to-state-latin-american-research-professor-evan-ellis-u-s-army-w
Mexico: https://audioboom.com/posts/8608187-newworldreport-mexico-on-the-border-latin-american-research-professor-evan-ellis-u-s-army-wa
Venezuela: https://audioboom.com/posts/8608194-newworldreport-maduro-and-the-venezuela-migrants-in-america-latin-american-research-professor
Argentina: https://audioboom.com/posts/8608191-newworldreport-javier-milei-to-mar-a-lago-with-president-elect-trump-latin-american-research-p
Website for all Publications:
As always, at my professional website you can access these, and past publications, webinars and podcasts:
https://revanellis.com/
Book on China-Latin America:
My latest book, China Engages Latin America: Distorting Development and Democracy, is available through my publisher Palgrave-Macmillan, at:
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-96049-0
Please feel free to share this post with a friend or colleague. If you would like to be included in my (always free) distribution list, I welcome the opportunity to include you:
Thank you, as always, for your interest in my work.
Respectfully,
R. Evan Ellis, PhD
Latin America Research Professor
U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute
@REvanEllis
Website: https://revanellis.com