Current Events: The Historic Significance of the 2026 BRICS New Delhi Declaration on Palestine and Lebanon

Current Events: The Historic Significance of the 2026 BRICS New Delhi Declaration on Palestine and Lebanon

    Saturday, September 12, 2026   No comments

A Unified Global South

In a landmark display of consolidated diplomatic weight, the BRICS bloc has issued some of its strongest collective language to date regarding the Middle East. Adopted today at the 2026 BRICS Summit in New Delhi, the New Delhi Declaration delivers an unequivocal rebuke of ongoing military and political actions in Palestine and Lebanon, signaling a profound shift in how the Global South is shaping international discourse on the region.

Far from a routine diplomatic communiqué, the declaration represents a watershed moment. It marks the evolution of BRICS from a primarily economic forum into a formidable geopolitical voice, drawing clear, consensus-driven red lines based on international law.

Unwavering Support for Palestinian Rights and Statehood

On the issue of Palestine, the bloc’s language is both comprehensive and uncompromising. The declaration explicitly rejects the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, warning against any political or security arrangement that could prejudice their “inalienable rights” or “legitimize or prolong occupation,” as noted by the Board of Peace.

The text firmly reaffirms the Palestinian right to self-determination and the right of return. In a significant boost to Palestinian diplomatic efforts, BRICS officially supports Palestine becoming a full member of the United Nations. Furthermore, it calls for the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, encompassing both Gaza and the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

The declaration leaves no room for ambiguity regarding demographic or territorial engineering, rejecting “any attempt at temporary or permanent forced displacement” of Palestinians and any effort to alter Gaza’s territory or demographic composition.

Perhaps the most striking passage of the document states plainly: “We reiterate that international law and international judicial bodies demand the end of the illegal occupation.”

Building on this, the declaration condemns the use of starvation as a method of warfare, attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, and restrictions on humanitarian assistance. It reiterates steadfast support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and explicitly references the ongoing proceedings before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) concerning Israel’s obligations under the Genocide Convention, lending institutional weight to the bloc’s stance.

A Direct Challenge on Lebanon

The declaration’s language regarding Lebanon is equally direct and unprecedented in its specificity. BRICS condemns continued violations of Lebanon’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and established ceasefire arrangements.

In a sharp diplomatic rebuke, the text explicitly labels Israeli troops remaining on Lebanese territory as “occupying forces.” The declaration issues a direct demand: “We call on Israel to respect the terms agreed with the Lebanese government and to withdraw its occupying forces from all of the Lebanese territories, in which they remain.”

Reiterating its support for Lebanon’s sovereignty, the bloc also backs the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and strongly condemns any attacks against UN peacekeepers and their facilities, framing the protection of international peacekeeping missions as a non-negotiable priority.

The Weight of Consensus: Why This Matters

The true significance of the New Delhi Declaration lies not just in what it says, but in who is saying it. This is not merely a statement from Russia, China, Iran, or any other individual member state pursuing a unilateral foreign policy agenda.

This is consensus language adopted by BRICS as a unified bloc. Achieving such sharp, direct language requires agreement among a diverse group of major emerging economies with historically varied foreign policy alignments. The fact that these nations have coalesced around this specific phrasing demonstrates a deep, shared commitment to a multipolar world order where international law is applied universally, not selectively.

By speaking with one voice, BRICS—representing a vast portion of the global population, landmass, and GDP—is challenging the traditional Western hegemony over Middle East diplomacy. The declaration serves as a powerful counter-narrative to efforts that might normalize or overlook prolonged military occupations and humanitarian crises.

Broader Geopolitical Implications

The 2026 New Delhi Declaration will resonate far beyond the summit halls of India’s capital. It achieves several critical geopolitical objectives:

• Validation of International Judicial Bodies: By explicitly referencing the ICJ and the Genocide Convention, BRICS is actively reinforcing the authority of international legal institutions, pushing back against attempts to sideline them.
• Diplomatic Pressure: The unified demand for Palestinian statehood on 1967 borders and the withdrawal of forces from Lebanon increases diplomatic pressure on Israel and its primary allies to reconsider current military and political strategies.
• Empowerment of the Global South: The declaration proves that the Global South is no longer content to be a passive observer of Middle Eastern conflicts. It is actively shaping the normative framework of international relations, advocating for a rules-based order that prioritizes sovereignty and human rights.

The 2026 BRICS New Delhi Declaration is not merely a symbolic gesture or a routine diplomatic formality. It is a clear, collective, and historically significant demand for accountability. By rejecting forced displacement, demanding an end to the “illegal occupation,” reaffirming Palestinian statehood, and calling for the withdrawal of occupying forces from Lebanon, BRICS has drawn a definitive line in the sand.

As the geopolitical landscape continues to shift, today’s consensus in New Delhi will be remembered as the moment the Global South decisively stepped forward to champion its vision of international law, justice, and sovereignty in the Middle East.

UAE Bet on the Wrong Horse and Paved the Way for Asian Hegemony

UAE Bet on the Wrong Horse and Paved the Way for Asian Hegemony

    Friday, September 11, 2026   No comments

For decades, the United Arab Emirates was heralded as the definitive economic miracle of the twenty-first century. Rising from the desert sands, it transformed itself into a hyper-modern global crossroads, a neutral financial sanctuary, and the undisputed logistics capital connecting East and West. It was a glittering oasis built on a seductive promise to global venture capital: zero taxes, top-tier infrastructure, and absolute safety, regardless of the chaos churning elsewhere in the Middle East.

But the oasis was built on a sandhill.

The UAE’s economic architecture required two fundamental conditions to survive: permanent maritime peace and unshakeable regional security. Today, following a series of fatal strategic miscalculations, the UAE finds itself trapped in an environment that completely lacks both. By abandoning its historic policy of diplomatic hedging and choosing a side in a volatile regional landscape, Abu Dhabi has exposed the severe structural vulnerabilities of its transient, import-dependent model.

As the security architecture of the Gulf fractures, a massive global correction is underway. The decline of the UAE’s hub-and-spoke economy is paving the way for a major geopolitical shift—one that is dramatically strengthening India, Pakistan, and China, while permanently limiting the influence of the Gulf states.

The Fragile Foundation: Oil, Money, and the Migrant Majority

To understand the severity of the UAE’s current dilemma, one must look beneath the gleaming skyscrapers. The Emirati economic model is fundamentally unnatural. Emirati citizens make up only about 10% to 12% of the total population. The remaining 88% to 90% are foreign expatriates and migrant workers, predominantly from South Asia.

While the country’s legal, security, and immigration structures are specifically built to prevent any scenario of migrant civil disobedience or "takeover," this demographic reality dictates a ruthless economic imperative: the state must keep the economy booming to maintain its social contract.

Economically, the UAE has aggressively diversified. While oil and gas directly account for about 20.6% of GDP (down from a historical 30%), the non-oil sector has surged to 79.4%. However, this diversification is highly regionalized. Abu Dhabi controls roughly 94% of the country’s oil reserves, while Dubai is over 95% non-oil-based, relying on tourism, real estate, aviation, and financial services. Crucially, hydrocarbon revenues still generate roughly 60% of total fiscal revenues, which are then funneled into massive sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) managing over $2.4 trillion in assets.

To future-proof this model, the government has heavily subsidized the "New Economy," targeting AED 450 billion in tourism under the We the UAE 2031 vision, expanding aviation logistics, and positioning the nation as a global AI and tech epicenter.

But all of this high-tech, high-finance diversification relies on one physical reality: the uninterrupted movement of goods. And that is where the cartographic reality of the Gulf has finally caught up with the UAE.

The Fatal Gamble: Abandoning Neutrality for Distant Friends

The UAE’s primary trade gateway, Jebel Ali Port, sits deep inside the Persian Gulf, entirely dependent on the Strait of Hormuz. When the 2026 U.S.-Israel war on Iran erupted, the UAE shattered its traditional "hedging" foreign policy. By opening its airspace and allowing its military facilities to be used for strikes against Iran, Abu Dhabi became the only Arab state to act as an active co-belligerent.

The retaliation was swift and structurally devastating. The de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz, driven by extreme war-risk insurance pricing, caused container throughput at Jebel Ali to plummet by over 90%. The UAE’s Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) dropped sharply from a booming 60.2 down to 48.8, directly severing supply chains.

Desperate to stop its economy from being held hostage, the UAE executed an emergency backup plan, but it quickly proved to be an illusion.

The Bypass Ports are in the Line of Fire: The UAE attempted to shift trade to its eastern coast port of Fujairah, which sits outside the Strait of Hormuz. However, Fujairah remains comfortably within the reach of Iranian missile and drone technology. Iran demonstrated this by launching devastating strikes directly at the Fujairah and Mussafah oil hubs, and even knocking out AWS data centers in Dubai, freezing banking applications and payment platforms. Moving cargo from Fujairah inland also requires traversing the rugged Hajar Mountains, creating natural bottlenecks and skyrocketing costs.

The Saudi Trap: With the seas compromised, the UAE’s only lifeline is overland transport through Saudi Arabia (KSA). While emergency routes like the Sharjah-Dammam Trade Bridge have been launched, routing millions of tons of cargo overland is astronomically expensive. More importantly, it gives Riyadh total leverage over Abu Dhabi. Historically fierce economic rivals, the two nations are now locked in a "Gulf Economic War." Saudi Arabia is actively executing a strategy to replace the UAE as the region's primary hub, utilizing its massive land advantage and "Project HQ" mandates to force multinational corporations to move their regional headquarters to Riyadh.

The Security Trap: To survive the drone strikes, the UAE was forced to accept advanced Israeli air defense assets, including the Iron Dome, deployed secretly on its soil. Abu Dhabi is now entirely trapped in its alliance with Israel. It cannot "make nice" with Iran without abandoning the very missile shields keeping its cities structurally intact for now.

The Great Bypass: How the East is Re-Routing Global Trade

While the UAE spends billions duplicating pipeline networks and building mountain-bypassing railways just to keep a fraction of its economy moving, the world’s rising economic giants are simply building paths around the Gulf.

For years, the UAE banked on the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) to cement its status as the permanent middleman of global commerce. The persistent state of war in the Gulf has effectively killed that dream. In its place, the geopolitical axes of India, Russia, and Iran have converged on an alternative that completely cuts the Gulf states out of the equation: the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC).

The new route is elegantly simple and geographically secure:

[Russia / Central Asia] ──> [INSTC Land & Rail] ──> [Iranian Ports (Chabahar)] ──> [Direct Ocean Routes] ──> [India & China]

By routing goods directly from Russia, through Iran’s Caspian and Indian Ocean ports, and straight into the Arabian Sea, global trade now bypasses the volatile Western-aligned chokepoints of the Gulf entirely. At recent BRICS meetings, heavyweights like Russia and China increasingly view the UAE's infrastructure not as a neutral global hub, but as a potential Western intelligence and military liability.

The Energy Realignment: Russia’s Role in the Shift

This geographic and logistical bypass is being supercharged by a critical resource: cheap, unlimited Russian energy.

With Western markets restricted, Moscow has redirected its vast oil and gas reserves eastward. By providing heavily discounted, reliable energy directly to India, China, and Pakistan, Russia has removed the single greatest leverage point the Gulf states historically held over the global economy. The Gulf’s historical monopoly on energy security has been broken, insulating the Asian mainland from Middle Eastern supply shocks.

The Winners: India, Pakistan, and China

As the UAE’s hub-and-spoke economy declines, a massive transfer of influence is flowing toward a more resilient Asian mainland.

1. India: The Ultimate Beneficiary Historically, the economic relationship between the UAE and India was a one-way street: India exported cheap labor, and the UAE reaped the corporate rewards. Now, that dynamic has reversed. As the UAE becomes a volatile security liability, global capital is migrating directly to India. Unlike the UAE, India possesses a massive domestic market of over 1.4 billion consumers, broad and unencumbered ocean access, and an unlimited native workforce. Backed by cheap Russian crude to power its industrial base, India no longer needs the UAE to act as its "front office." The UAE’s $2.4 trillion sovereign wealth is now desperately buying up Indian infrastructure and tech ecosystems, binding its financial survival to India's growth.

2. Pakistan: The Strategic Land Bridge As the Gulf destabilizes, Pakistan’s geographic value increases exponentially. Anchored by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and the deepwater port of Gwadar, Pakistan provides China with a direct, overland trade route to the Arabian Sea. This infrastructure bypasses both the volatile Persian Gulf and the heavily monitored Malacca Strait, positioning Pakistan as a vital transit hub for an increasingly integrated Asian trade bloc.

3. China: The Insulated Industrial Hegemon For Beijing, a fractured Gulf accelerates its long-term strategy of Eurasian integration. By securing long-term energy deals with Russia and expanding maritime and overland routes through Pakistan and Iran, China has successfully insulated its supply chains from Western-aligned vulnerabilities. The decline of Dubai as a financial middleman simply means more global transactions shift to Shanghai and Hong Kong, utilizing alternative financial networks detached from Western oversight.

The Long-Term Cost of a Historic Blunder

The Gulf states—and the UAE in particular—built an economic empire on the assumption that they could buy security from distant superpowers while ignoring the core interests of their immediate neighbors. They assumed that a glittering skyline and a zero-tax regime would always be enough to hypnotize global markets into forgetting the volatility of the map.

It was a fatal miscalculation. By turning their homeland into a launching pad for external interests, they converted a neutral global hub into a primary military target.

As multi-trillion-dollar sovereign wealth funds scramble to buy up foreign real estate and tech ecosystems to protect their wealth abroad, the empty ports and quiet airports at home tell the real story. The capital has migrated. Armed with abundant Russian energy, vast native populations, and secure geography, the rising giants of Asia are sealing the deal. The era of the Gulf state as the indispensable middleman of global wealth is drawing to a close, proving once and for all that no amount of financial engineering can ever truly conquer geography.

Media review: U.S. Economic War on Iran Is Forging a Parallel Global Financial Order

Media review: U.S. Economic War on Iran Is Forging a Parallel Global Financial Order

    Friday, August 28, 2026   No comments

The United States' decades-long campaign of economic warfare against Iran—characterized by extraterritorial sanctions, SWIFT exclusion, and the weaponization of dollar dominance—has produced an outcome that Washington neither anticipated nor desired. Rather than isolating Tehran, these measures have become the single greatest catalyst for the construction of alternative financial infrastructure now competing with SWIFT, Visa, Mastercard, and the correspondent banking system. From Russia's SPFS messaging network to China's CIPS clearing system, from the mBridge multi-CBDC platform to pan-African settlement rails, a parallel architecture is emerging that promises to restore national sovereignty over monetary policy, reduce the rents extracted by Western intermediaries, and enable bilateral and regional trade outside Washington's jurisdiction. This article examines the current state and potential of these systems, the billions in savings they offer participants, and the specific elements that are transforming them from emergency workarounds into genuinely reliable and attractive alternatives.

I. The Sanctions Paradox: When Weaponization Begets Diversification

The logic of U.S. sanctions against Iran has always rested on a simple premise: control the plumbing of global finance, and you control the behavior of nations. By threatening to sever access to SWIFT, freezing dollar-denominated assets, and imposing secondary sanctions on foreign banks, Washington sought to make compliance with American foreign policy the price of participation in the global economy.

But this strategy contains a fatal paradox, one that economists and historians are now documenting in real time. Washington cannot both weaponize the dollar system and maintain universal trust in it. These two objectives are in direct conflict. The erosion is slow—percentage points per decade rather than per year. But it compounds.

Iran has been the laboratory for this paradox. Cut off from correspondent banking, excluded from SWIFT, and denied access to Visa and Mastercard networks, Tehran was forced to build or adopt alternative rails. The result was not capitulation, but innovation. Iran linked its SEPAM interbank messaging system to Russia's SPFS, integrated its Shetab card network with Russia's Mir system, and became an early adopter of yuan-denominated trade settlement. Each tanker forced to pay in yuan, rupees, or rials—or to reroute at higher expense—chips away at the petrodollar architecture.

The significance extends far beyond Iran. Every nation watching Tehran's experience has drawn the same conclusion: over-reliance on U.S.-dominated financial infrastructure is a strategic vulnerability. The current de-dollarization push is different from anything in the past 80 years of dollar dominance precisely because these are not the actions of enemies—they are the actions of allies and partners who have watched the United States weaponize the dollar-based financial system, and have quietly concluded they need to reduce their exposure to it.

II. The Hidden Tax: How Western Financial Infrastructure Siphons Wealth

To understand the appeal of alternatives, one must first understand the cost of the status quo. The traditional cross-border payment system—built on SWIFT messaging, correspondent banking chains, and card networks dominated by Visa and Mastercard—functions as a sophisticated rent-extraction mechanism.

A typical SWIFT transfer costs $15–$50 in sending bank fees, plus $10–$30 per intermediary correspondent bank, plus $5–$20 in receiving bank fees, plus a foreign exchange markup of 0.5–3% above interbank rates. Settlement takes three to five days, during which capital is trapped in transit and subject to counterparty risk. For low-value remittances, the World Bank estimates the average cost of sending money across borders at 6.26%—a punitive levy on migrant workers sending earnings home.

For developing countries, the burden is structural. African companies historically used correspondent banks—often outside Africa—to settle payments between two African currencies in a third currency, usually dollars or euros. This created foreign exchange and liquidity requirements for individual central banks, while Western intermediaries captured fees at every hop. The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) estimates that this correspondent banking dependency costs African businesses $5 billion annually in transaction costs alone.

The card network duopoly adds another layer. Visa and Mastercard together control the vast majority of global card purchase transactions, with interchange fees, scheme fees, and FX spreads embedded in every cross-border purchase. For nations with currencies outside the dollar-euro axis, this represents a persistent drain of national wealth into Western financial institutions.

III. The Architecture of Alternatives: A Survey of the New Financial Infrastructure

The alternative systems emerging in response to sanctions pressure can be grouped into four functional categories: wholesale messaging and clearing, central bank digital currency platforms, national and regional card networks, and integrated payment ecosystems.

A. Wholesale Messaging and Clearing: SPFS and CIPS

SPFS (System for Transfer of Financial Messages) was created by Russia's Central Bank in 2014, following the annexation of Crimea and Western threats to disconnect Russia from SWIFT. It allows participating banks to exchange standardized payment instructions using formats broadly compatible with SWIFT's MT messages. After the 2022 Ukraine escalation, the Kremlin pushed to internationalize SPFS, onboarding banks in Belarus, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and critically, Iran.

In January 2023, the central banks of Iran and Russia signed an agreement connecting their national interbank communication systems—Iran's SEPAM and Russia's SPFS—enabling about 700 Russian banks to exchange financial messages with Iranian banks, plus 106 non-Russian banks from 13 other countries. The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has explicitly warned foreign financial institutions about sanctions risks for joining SPFS, acknowledging that sanctioned Iranian banks have joined SPFS to retain financial connectivity given restrictions on using SWIFT.

CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System), launched by the People's Bank of China in 2015, represents a more ambitious challenge. Unlike SWIFT, which is purely a messaging network requiring separate correspondent banking arrangements, CIPS combines payment messaging and settlement in a single system, settling directly in renminbi and removing the need for the dollar as an intermediary currency.

The growth has been extraordinary. In 2024, CIPS processed 8.2169 million transactions totaling RMB 175.49 trillion ($24.47 trillion), increases of 24.25% and 42.60% year-over-year respectively. By June 2025, CIPS had 176 direct participants and 1,514 indirect participants across 110+ countries. Monthly volume in June 2026 alone reached 810,563 transactions settling RMB 18.21 trillion ($2.67 trillion).

B. Central Bank Digital Currencies: Project mBridge

Project mBridge is perhaps the most technically sophisticated alternative to emerge. It is a multi-central bank digital currency (mCBDC) platform shared among participating central banks and commercial banks, built on distributed ledger technology to enable instant cross-border payments and settlement.

The project began in 2021 as collaboration between the BIS Innovation Hub, the Bank of Thailand, the Central Bank of the UAE, the People's Bank of China, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. Saudi Arabia joined in 2024. The BIS formally exited the project in late 2024, leaving the participating central banks to continue operations independently—an important signal that the platform is transitioning from experiment to operational infrastructure.

By early 2026, mBridge had processed RMB 470 billion ($69 billion) in cumulative cross-border transactions, with more than 95% denominated in renminbi. The platform is now reportedly ready for commercialization and considering incorporation in Hong Kong. Its significance extends beyond speed—cross-border CBDC payments that once took days now settle in seconds—but to sovereignty: it allows trade settlement without passing through correspondent banks or the dollar-centric SWIFT network.

C. BRICS Pay and the Interoperability Vision

BRICS Pay represents an attempt to stitch national systems into a coherent alternative network. Rather than creating a single supranational currency—which founders on questions of monetary sovereignty and Chinese yuan dominance—the current approach focuses on interoperability.

The envisioned system would link Brazil's Pix, India's UPI, China's CIPS and UnionPay, and Russia's SPFS into a cross-border network where each currency remains fully sovereign. What changes is the infrastructure that allows them to interact. A prototype tested in Moscow in October 2024 demonstrated capacity for 20,000 transactions per second.

As of March 2026, BRICS Pay remains in pilot phase, with planned rollout beginning with foreign tourist payment access in BRICS nations, expanding to CIS countries and the Middle East, with broader BRICS+ integration by year-end. The realistic path is not replacement of SWIFT but interoperability between national payment rails, not a single replacement currency.

D. National and Regional Card Networks

The card payment layer is where alternatives have achieved the deepest market penetration:

UnionPay has become the world's second-largest card network by purchase transaction volume, capturing 33.15% of global brand-card purchase transactions in the first half of 2024—behind only Visa at 38.66%. With over 250 million cards issued outside mainland China across 83 countries, acceptance in 183 countries and regions, and 99 countries supporting UnionPay mobile payments, it has evolved from a domestic Chinese system into a genuine global challenger. The shift toward international transactions has been steep: roughly 0.5% of UnionPay transactions occurred outside China in 2015, compared with about 43% in 2025.

Mir (Russia) and Shetab (Iran) illustrate how bilateral integration can function under sanctions. Russia's Mir system, launched in 2014 after Visa and Mastercard suspended services in Crimea, now has over 475 million cards issued and represents over 75% of all domestic transactions in Russia. In November 2024, Iran and Russia linked their national payment systems, enabling Iranian citizens to withdraw rubles from Russian ATMs using Shetab-linked cards, and Russian Mir cardholders to make payments in Iran. The third and final phase of integration—allowing Iranians to make purchases at Russian stores using Shetab cards—is expected to be finalized in 2026.

Mada (Saudi Arabia), launched in 2015 to replace the older SPAN system, has become the backbone of the Kingdom's digital payments boom. It operates as a national switch enabling cross-border transactions and instant settlements, primarily in Saudi riyals. In the context of Saudi-China currency swap agreements and the kingdom's growing trade with BRICS nations, Mada represents a strategic national asset that could interoperate with alternative clearing systems.

Meeza (Egypt) demonstrates how national schemes drive financial inclusion. With over 40 million cards issued—representing more than 55% of all payment cards in Egypt—and processing over 1.02 billion transactions annually totaling approximately $26.74 billion, Meeza has created a domestic payment ecosystem that reduces reliance on international card networks. Critically, Meeza cards do not require a traditional bank account; Egyptians need only a national ID to obtain a prepaid card, bringing the unbanked into the digital economy.

RuPay (India) and UPI (Unified Payments Interface) form India's two-track strategy. While RuPay provides domestic card network independence, UPI has expanded internationally to eight countries including Singapore, UAE, France, and Mauritius, with 20+ target countries by 2029. India's digital rupee (e-Rupee) has processed over 1.3 million wholesale transactions in early 2026, primarily for interbank settlements and government payments, laying groundwork for cross-border CBDC integration.

Verve (Nigeria), Africa's first and largest domestic payments scheme, has issued over 70 million cards in Nigeria alone and expanded acceptance to 21+ African countries. It has achieved merchant acceptance with global platforms including Google, YouTube, Spotify, Netflix, and Uber, allowing Nigerian consumers to access international services in local currency.

Girocard (Germany) and BC Card (South Korea) represent advanced economy alternatives that preserve domestic payment sovereignty. Girocard operates across approximately 1.344 million terminals in Germany and has overtaken cash as the highest-turnover payment method at German checkouts. BC Card, South Korea's largest payment processor, has begun experimenting with foreign-currency stablecoin payments, completing a pilot in October 2025 that allowed overseas digital wallet users to make payments at Korean merchants using stablecoins converted to BC's digital prepaid cards.

E. Regional Integration: PAPSS, Onafriq, and M-Pesa

PAPSS (Pan-African Payment and Settlement System), launched in January 2022 by Afreximbank and the African Union, enables near-instant cross-border payments in local currencies across 15 operational countries including Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and Zambia. By connecting central bank RTGS systems and netting out daily balances, PAPSS eliminates the need for African trade to be intermediated through European or American correspondent banks. In February 2026, Kenya's Pesalink instant payment network partnered with PAPSS, enabling 80+ Pesalink participants to connect with 160+ PAPSS banks for 24/7 local-currency cross-border transfers.

Onafriq operates as the leading pan-African payments network, connecting businesses to 43 African markets through a single API, with access to nearly 1 billion mobile wallets, 500 million bank accounts, and 2,000 cross-border payment corridors. Its infrastructure bridges traditional banking and mobile money, enabling gig worker payouts, remittances, and B2B settlements across fragmented markets.

M-Pesa, Kenya's mobile money pioneer, was named among the Top 100 cross-border payment platforms for 2026 by FXC Intelligence, reflecting its evolution from domestic peer-to-peer transfers to a genuine cross-border rail.

IV. Sovereignty, Trade, and Savings: The Three Pillars of Attraction

The alternative financial infrastructure offers three interconnected benefits that explain its accelerating adoption.

National Sovereignty

For nations facing sanctions or merely seeking strategic autonomy, control over payment rails is synonymous with sovereignty. When the U.S. can sever a country's access to SWIFT or pressure Visa and Mastercard to suspend service—as happened to Russia in 2022—monetary policy independence becomes illusory. The alternative systems restore the ability to clear and settle payments according to national law rather than Washington's extraterritorial dictates.

PAPSS explicitly addresses this by enabling payments in local currencies, reducing the need to convert African currencies to the US dollar or euro for intra-African trade and helping central banks optimize liquidity management and reduce exposure to dollar fluctuations. Similarly, mBridge's governance framework is tailored to its unique decentralised nature, with each participating central bank operating a validating node.

Bilateral and Regional Trade

The alternatives are explicitly designed to facilitate trade between nations that Washington seeks to separate. The Iran-Russia SPFS-SEPAM linkage allows financial institutions in both countries to open letters of credit or process money orders and bank guarantees without SWIFT. The Mir-Shetab integration removes restrictions for electronic payments and opens a new chapter in economic and cultural cooperation.

For BRICS nations, the appeal is quantitative. BRICS members currently represent 35.4% of the world economy and around 45% of the global population. Enabling these nations to trade in their own currencies without dollar intermediation unlocks trade volumes currently suppressed by transaction costs and sanctions risk.

Cost Savings: Reclaiming Billions

The economic case is compelling. Consider the arithmetic:

PAPSS targets $5 billion in annual savings for African businesses by eliminating correspondent banking chains.

mBridge reduces cross-border payment costs by eliminating multiple intermediary banks and their associated fees. A typical SWIFT transfer can accumulate $15–$50 in fees per intermediary; mBridge settles peer-to-peer in seconds.

Stablecoin and blockchain rails cut cross-border costs to roughly 0.5% on-ramp/off-ramp with pennies in-network fees, compared to 2–4% FX spreads plus wire fees in traditional banking.

Domestic card networks like Meeza and Verve retain transaction fees within national economies rather than remitting them to Visa and Mastercard's U.S.-based revenue pools.

For Iran specifically, the savings are existential. By settling energy trade in yuan rather than dollars, Tehran avoids the full architecture of U.S. financial surveillance and the 3–5% effective tax imposed by dollar intermediation. Russia's experience after 2022 demonstrated that redirecting hydrocarbon flows toward eager buyers in Asia—primarily China and India—bypassing the dollar-dominated payment system resulted in energy revenues that soared far beyond pre-sanction levels despite reduced volumes.

V. Elements of Reliability: What Makes These Systems Attractive

For alternative financial infrastructure to transition from emergency workaround to genuine competitor, it must satisfy several criteria. The current generation of systems is meeting these tests in ways that previous attempts did not.

1. Technical Resilience and Speed

The new systems are built on modern architecture. mBridge uses a bespoke blockchain—the mBridge Ledger—compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, enabling real-time peer-to-peer settlement. CIPS processes transactions in real-time. PAPSS settles intra-African payments instantly rather than in 3–5 days. BRICS Pay's prototype demonstrated 20,000 transactions per second.

2. Multi-Currency and National Currency Settlement

Unlike SWIFT, which ultimately funnels most transactions through dollar correspondent accounts, the alternatives prioritize settlement in national currencies. BRICS Pay's core design principle is trade in national currencies—reduce FX risk and dependency. mBridge allows direct foreign exchange transactions between participating CBDCs without dollar conversion. CIPS settles directly in RMB.

3. Governance Decentralization

The most credible alternatives avoid single-point control. mBridge's governance framework was created specifically to match its unique decentralised nature, with rulebooks tailored to multi-jurisdictional operation. BRICS Pay is developing DAO governance for transparent decision-making.

4. Regulatory Compliance and Trust

Paradoxically, the alternatives are investing heavily in compliance to build trust. BRICS Pay emphasizes full AML/KYC, regulators-aligned architecture. PAPSS is compliant with global regulatory standards and overseen by African central banks. Onafriq maintains ISO 27001, CMML3, PCI DSS, and SOC2 certifications. This compliance investment is essential: the systems must be clean enough to avoid the stigma of sanctions evasion while robust enough to resist political pressure.

5. Interoperability Rather Than Replacement

The smartest strategy is not to challenge SWIFT head-on but to route around it. As BRICS Pay's developers state: BRICS Pay does not replace SWIFT, Visa, or Mastercard. It offers a parallel, compatible option—giving businesses and individuals choice in how they transact globally. This interoperability-first approach reduces switching costs and allows gradual migration.

6. Financial Inclusion

National schemes like Meeza and Verve demonstrate that alternative infrastructure can reach populations excluded by Western systems. Meeza's no-bank-account-required model and Verve's penetration of Nigeria's unbanked sectors create constituencies with a vested interest in domestic payment sovereignty.

VI. The Uncertain Road Ahead: Challenges and Potential

Despite remarkable progress, these alternatives face significant hurdles. SWIFT still connects over 11,000 institutions across 200+ countries with decades of regulatory integration. The dollar remains the dominant invoicing currency for global trade. Network effects are powerful: merchants accept Visa and Mastercard because consumers carry them; consumers carry them because merchants accept them.

Yet the trajectory favors the alternatives for several reasons. 

First, U.S. aggression is not abating—it is expanding. The Iran war and associated sanctions have shaken confidence in the dollar among allies, not just adversaries. France has repatriated 129 tons of gold from the Federal Reserve. Canada has announced a $25 billion sovereign wealth fund to reduce U.S. economic dependence.

Second, the alternatives are compounding. Each new participant in CIPS, each new country accepting Mir cards, each new mBridge transaction builds network effects for the alternative ecosystem. Iran's integration with SPFS and Mir creates a template that other sanctioned or sovereignty-minded nations can replicate.

Third, the cost differential is widening. As blockchain rails mature and CBDC platforms scale, the 6.26% average remittance cost and 2–4% FX spreads of traditional banking look increasingly indefensible. For a company moving millions across borders monthly, the difference between SWIFT and blockchain rails translates into millions annually.

Fourth, the regulatory environment is shifting. The U.S. GENIUS Act and Europe's Instant Payments Regulation are forcing even Western systems to modernize, but they also legitimize the technological approaches—stablecoins, real-time settlement, ISO 20022 messaging—that underpin the alternative infrastructure.

The Architect of Its Own Competition

The United States set out to isolate Iran through financial warfare. In doing so, it has inadvertently become the architect of the most significant challenge to its own financial hegemony since Bretton Woods. The alternative systems catalogued here—SPFS and CIPS for wholesale clearing, mBridge for CBDC settlement, UnionPay and Mir for card payments, PAPSS and Onafriq for regional integration, BRICS Pay for multilateral interoperability—are not merely workarounds for sanctioned states. They are becoming the preferred infrastructure for a growing cohort of nations that value sovereignty over convenience and cost savings over habit.

The irony is profound: by demonstrating that access to the dollar system is conditional on political obedience, Washington has taught the world to diversify. By extracting billions in correspondent banking fees and FX spreads, Western institutions have created the economic incentive for their own displacement. And by disregarding international law in the application of extraterritorial sanctions, the U.S. has undermined the very trust that made its financial infrastructure the global standard.

These alternative systems will not replace SWIFT or Visa tomorrow. But they no longer need to. By offering reliable, cheaper, sovereign-compliant alternatives in an increasingly multipolar world, they have crossed the threshold from protest platforms to permanent fixtures. The economic war on Iran did not break the resistance of its target. It broke the monopoly of its author.

War on Iran Effect--Economic Ambition and Political Fragmentation Paralyzes BRICS

War on Iran Effect--Economic Ambition and Political Fragmentation Paralyzes BRICS

    Tuesday, May 12, 2026   No comments

 The BRICS Paradox

In May 2026, as foreign ministers from ten BRICS nations gathered in New Delhi to address an escalating Middle East conflict, the bloc produced no joint statement. Two of its members, Iran and the United Arab Emirates, were actively engaged in hostilities. Others maintained calculated neutrality. India, holding the rotating chairmanship, issued a muted summary that expressed concern but avoided normative clarity. The silence was not accidental; it was structural. It exposed a fundamental reality that the grouping can no longer sidestep: a coalition built on economic potential but devoid of political focus is losing its relevance in a world where security and development are inextricably linked.

The Architecture of Divergence

The contrast between BRICS and the G-7 is often framed ideologically, but it is fundamentally institutional. The G-7’s cohesion does not stem merely from shared wealth; it rests on a common political architecture. Member states share foundational commitments to liberal democratic governance, collective security frameworks, and aligned threat perceptions. This allows them to translate economic interdependence into coordinated political action, particularly on global security matters.

BRICS was conceived differently. It was never intended as a political or military alliance. From its inception, it functioned as a pragmatic coalition of emerging economies, united by a desire to reform global financial governance, increase representation in multilateral institutions, and explore alternative development pathways. This design was its early strength: it allowed authoritarian regimes, electoral democracies, non-aligned states, and strategic competitors to collaborate on trade facilitation, currency swaps, and infrastructure financing without demanding ideological conformity.

But a feature becomes a liability when the agenda shifts from economic coordination to security crises. Without a minimum framework of shared political principles, BRICS lacks the institutional grammar to navigate conflicts that demand normative clarity. Flexibility, when untethered from predictability, becomes fragmentation.

The Expansion Trap

The bloc’s recent expansion, which added nations including Iran, the UAE, Egypt, Ethiopia, and others, did not simply increase economic weight; it imported geopolitical friction. Pre-existing fault lines, long managed through bilateral channels, are now institutionalized within BRICS itself. The China-India border dispute, India’s deepening strategic ties with Israel alongside its traditional Gulf partnerships, Russia’s security isolation, and the UAE-Iran territorial and strategic rivalries all sit within the same forum.

Rather than creating a unified counterweight to Western-led architectures, BRICS has increasingly become a microcosm of multipolar disorder. Member states pursue overlapping but non-aligned economic interests while maintaining divergent security postures. When a grouping contains both belligerents in an active conflict, consensus on that conflict becomes mathematically and politically impossible. The result is not strategic autonomy, but institutional paralysis.

The Iran War Test: Normative Abdication

The ongoing war on Iran, launched by the United States and Israel has served as a stress test that BRICS failed. The failure was not in taking sides, but in failing to establish a baseline principle. International law does not require states to adopt identical foreign policies; it does require them to agree on certain foundational norms. The UN Charter explicitly prohibits wars of aggression and reserves the authorization of force to the Security Council. A coalition of ten nations, representing nearly half the global population and a growing share of economic output, could have anchored its position to these universally recognized principles without endorsing any combatant.

Instead, the bloc remained silent. In diplomatic terms, silence in the face of unchecked aggression is not neutrality; it is normative abdication. When a forum that claims to champion the Global South and advocate for a more equitable international order cannot agree that wars launched without UN authorization violate the foundational rules of state conduct, it forfeits moral authority and strategic credibility. The 2025 summit under Brazil’s chairmanship demonstrated that BRICS is capable of issuing clear condemnations when political will aligns. The 2026 impasse reveals that without institutionalized norms, such alignment is contingent, not structural.

The Security-Economy Nexus

The assumption that economic development can be insulated from global security is a fiction that BRICS can no longer afford. Supply chains, energy markets, financial systems, and maritime chokepoints are deeply politicized. Disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz have already triggered energy crises across Asia. SWIFT exclusions, asset freezes, and currency weaponization have demonstrated how financial architecture can be leveraged as strategic leverage. BRICS initiatives, from the petroyuan and mBridge cross-border settlement system to renewable energy integration and infrastructure corridors, require stable seas, predictable rules, and crisis management capacity.

Economic alternatives to the Western-led order cannot succeed if they exist in a security vacuum. De-dollarization, trade diversification, and supply chain resilience are not merely technical projects; they are geopolitical undertakings that depend on the ability to deter coercion, manage escalation, and uphold commercial rights during conflicts. Without a credible voice in global security architecture, BRICS’s economic ambitions remain vulnerable to the very shocks they seek to hedge against. There is no sustainable development without predictable security.

A Principle-Driven Path Forward

The solution is not to force BRICS into becoming a Western-style political alliance, nor is it to resign the grouping to permanent irrelevance as a transactional talk shop. The path forward requires a minimum viable normative framework that bridges economic pragmatism with political predictability.

First, BRICS must anchor itself to universally recognized principles: adherence to the UN Charter, the prohibition of aggression, the protection of civilian infrastructure, and the primacy of diplomatic de-escalation. These are not ideological preferences; they are the operational baseline for any coalition that claims to reform, rather than reject, the international order.

Second, the bloc must institutionalize crisis consultation mechanisms. Before conflicts escalate, members should have a structured forum for early warning, risk assessment, and coordinated diplomatic outreach. This does not require unified action, but it does require shared information and transparent positioning.

Third, BRICS should embrace issue-based alignment where interests converge: energy transition partnerships, financial architecture reform, supply chain resilience, and infrastructure connectivity. As analysts have noted, the bloc’s value lies in leverage enhancement and optionality maximization. But optionality only yields strategic advantage when underpinned by predictable rules and credible commitments.

Finally, BRICS must develop internal dispute de-escalation protocols. A coalition that cannot manage tensions among its own members cannot credibly mediate external conflicts. Quiet diplomacy, track-II dialogues, and economic confidence-building measures must be formalized before bilateral disputes spill into the bloc’s agenda.

Will the War on Iran Breaks BRICS 

BRICS stands at an institutional crossroads. It can remain a fragmented forum of convenience--a road to nowhere, or it can forge a principle-driven identity that bridges economic ambition and security responsibility--a road to somewhere. The choice is not between aligning with the West or opposing it; it is between relevance and irrelevance. Global security architecture is being rewritten in real time. Economic development, technological innovation, and financial sovereignty all depend on the stability of the system in which they operate.

A bloc that cannot agree on basic principles cannot credibly negotiate alternatives to the existing order. BRICS’s founders envisioned a coalition that would amplify the voices of emerging economies and diversify global governance. That vision remains valid. But without a commitment to political focus grounded in international law, crisis management, and principled pragmatism, BRICS will continue to stumble at the very moments when its members need it most. Economic potential without security relevance is not a strategy. It is a waiting room.

Indonesia now has full membership in BRICS

Indonesia now has full membership in BRICS

    Monday, January 06, 2025   No comments

Indonesia has officially joined the BRICS group of major emerging economies as a full member, the Brazilian government said in a statement on Monday, a bloc that brings together emerging economies including China, India and Russia.

The Brazilian Foreign Ministry said the most populous country in Southeast Asia “shares with other members the desire to reform global governance institutions and contribute positively to cooperation within the Global South.”

Indonesia’s candidacy was approved at the 2023 BRICS summit in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Brazil will assume the presidency of the group in 2025. BRICS comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, but is expanding to include other countries.

Indonesia formally put in request for BRICS membership last year during the organization's meeitng in Russia.

After the announcement from Barizil, China released its own statement saying that it "welcomes and warmly congratulates Indonesia on becoming a full member of BRICS", according to a foreign ministry spokesperson.

Russia: Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand are new partners in BRICS

Russia: Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand are new partners in BRICS

    Friday, November 15, 2024   No comments

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Pankin revealed that Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have become partners in the BRICS bloc.

Pankin explained during a joint meeting of foreign and trade ministers of APEC member states that the BRICS summit held in Kazan "demonstrated the desire of the global majority to create a fair world order, with a focus on reforming international institutions and strengthening equal economic relations."

He also pointed out that "the summit resulted in a set of important agreements in the fields of trade, investment, artificial intelligence, energy, climate and logistics."

Pankin pointed out that "the share of the economies of the Asia-Pacific region in Russia's foreign trade has reached 70%, while about 90% of payments are made in national currencies."

In a related context, the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister confirmed that his country continues to secure stable supplies of energy resources to the APEC countries.

It is noteworthy that the BRICS summit, which was held in Kazan between October 22 and 24, was attended by the heads of state of the group.