Brazil to propose embryo of Brics currency at summit

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

You quite like it, huh? Which part do you like the most- the country currently brutally invading its neighbor, murdering innocents and raping little girls? Or maybe the country currently geocoding an ethnic minority and using force to put formerly democratic societies under oppressive authoritarianism? Oh, oh, how about the country in the tweet OP, soon to join them, that kills women for being immodest and executes gay people for existing? Do you like seeing your country’s flag next to theirs?

What a silly little rant this is, even if BRICS is something that many people put too much expectations into. People serious about diplomacy know you work with anyone and everyone to push what you want done. That's why, we worked with the Russians in order to try to get the Iranian nuclear deal to work out. Realists who knew how to get the job done...career foreign  affairs ministry bureaucrats in America and elsewhere who help make international solutions possible. The deal fell apart because Trump left it...and trust in us (rightfully) declined as a result (where we misstep as a country we should be judged for it). And now nuclear proliferation risk is on the up, instead of the down.
This attitude your post espouses is not how you run a foreign policy and if this was the attitude of our great bureaucracy, then we'd deserve to be a second-rate power, we'd deserve it. Coordination with other countries is important for global stability. Both when we are operating with a cloak and dagger, and when we are shaking hands.

By this standard, Joe Biden merely offering Putin a meeting in Oval Office on the eve of February 22nd indicts him, because he'd be seen walking alongside Putin himself had the latter taken him up on the offer.

Fortunately the bureaucracies of both Russia and America are saner in dealing with each other than the most inflexible partisans of either are towards the other. In fact, our intelligence community's awareness of what is going on in Putin's Russia is a product of our successful ethos in dealing with them.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

You quite like it, huh? Which part do you like the most- the country currently brutally invading its neighbor, murdering innocents and raping little girls? Or maybe the country currently geocoding an ethnic minority and using force to put formerly democratic societies under oppressive authoritarianism? Oh, oh, how about the country in the tweet OP, soon to join them, that kills women for being immodest and executes gay people for existing? Do you like seeing your country’s flag next to theirs?

What a silly little rant this is, even if BRICS is something that many people put too much expectations into. People serious about diplomacy know you work with anyone and everyone to push what you want done. That's why, we worked with the Russians in order to try to get the Iranian nuclear deal to work out. Realists who knew how to get the job done...career foreign  affairs ministry bureaucrats in America and elsewhere who help make international solutions possible. The deal fell apart because Trump left it...and trust in us (rightfully) declined as a result (where we misstep as a country we should be judged for it). And now nuclear proliferation risk is on the up, instead of the down.
This attitude your post espouses is not how you run a foreign policy and if this was the attitude of our great bureaucracy, then we'd deserve to be a second-rate power, we'd deserve it. Coordination with other countries is important for global stability. Both when we are operating with a cloak and dagger, and when we are shaking hands.

By this standard, Joe Biden merely offering Putin a meeting in Oval Office on the eve of February 22nd indicts him, because he'd be seen walking alongside Putin himself had the latter taken him up on the offer.

Fortunately the bureaucracies of both Russia and America are saner in dealing with each other than the most inflexible partisans of either are towards the other. In fact, our intelligence community's awareness of what is going on in Putin's Russia is a product of our successful ethos in dealing with them.

Yes, making a common currency and integrating with genocidal states is the exact same as negotiating with them to achieve concrete purposes. I'm a IR grad, "realists" don't impress me.

For someone who is an IR grad...how did you get the idea that the feeling we could fully or mostly isolate Russia internationally isn't utterly delusional?
Let Brazil do what Brazil wants to do, we just remain competitive against Russia at its own game and maintain a strong outreach to the Third World more generally (something Biden is handling decently well). BRICS has contradictions in itself anyway...if it does actually turn into "integration" then we're facing bigger problems...even a common currency for all BRICS countries feels very remote considering neither China nor India are yet prepared to set aside their differences.
It's frankly silly to let Western notions for what these countries are like blind us to what drives Third World countries. EU and USA+Canada is around a billion people...on a planet of eight billion. Not everyone dances to our tune or sees things the way we do. And let's be blunt here...decision makers in the West have to factor in the fact that money talks and elites in these places are filthy rich. Just look at where sporting events have been held...China...Russia...Qatar...
RedVelvet, I, and the bulk of the State Department bureaucracy aren't too different in how we approach this. It's just how the world works...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I am now going to list just the problems with this idea that some guy with an Econ minor thought of in the past five minutes

– Currency would need a central bank located somewhere and accountable to someone – big problem in a group with multiple aspiring global powers
– Currency would strip member states of independent monetary policy which is a big deal for large, export-heavy economies like China's
– If you can't actually buy stuff with this currency in any arena besides international trade I have no idea if or how that would even work as fiat currency
– If you try to avoid that problem by begging the BRICS currency to some other currency then now you have just created the Eurozone but even worse

I think BRICS such as it is could possibly be a useful institution in easily allowing third-world countries to seek financial assistance from multiple large economies that aren't economically aligned with the United States, but this whole currency thing is completely moronic and you're setting yourself up for disappointment, Red Velvet

This is an idea that we're only hearing about because journalists are bored, but in defense of this proposal, I don't think that its more serious versions would resemble the euro (the banknotes posted in his thread notwithstanding). The idea is that this would be a unit by which international trade would be denominated, replacing the dollar in that role: IMF special drawing rights have also been proposed for this role in the past, although it is maybe indicative that this has never gotten any traction.

Good points. The novelty factor helps further...And if there's anything journalists and those in the media ecosystem like, it's some grand narrative for clicks. (see also: their push for "populism" to be an actual ideology)

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

For someone who is an IR grad...how did you get the idea that the feeling we could fully or mostly isolate Russia internationally isn't utterly delusional?
Let Brazil do what Brazil wants to do, we just remain competitive against Russia at its own game and maintain a strong outreach to the Third World more generally (something Biden is handling decently well). BRICS has contradictions in itself anyway...if it does actually turn into "integration" then we're facing bigger problems...even a common currency for all BRICS countries feels very remote considering neither China nor India are yet prepared to set aside their differences.
It's frankly silly to let Western notions for what these countries are like blind us to what drives Third World countries. EU and USA+Canada is around a billion people...on a planet of eight billion. Not everyone dances to our tune or sees things the way we do. And let's be blunt here...decision makers in the West have to factor in the fact that money talks and elites in these places are filthy rich. Just look at where sporting events have been held...China...Russia...Qatar...
RedVelvet, I, and the bulk of the State Department bureaucracy aren't too different in how we approach this. It's just how the world works...

International relations are a far more interesting genre of theory than "everything is simply interests, I am very smart". Dogmatic realists, just like dogmatic liberals or marxists, are simply delusional, and we've seen this very clearly in their failure to predict the strength of the global pushback against Russia's war.

Few people really expected Ukraine to do this well when the war started. And correctly so...they weren't going to do this well without US aid, which they received in numbers far larger than most would have anticipated when the war began.

And the very fact that there is weariness from many towards the idea of a West (never mind we aren't completely unified, that's a false belief of many in other places and within it as well)-dictated state of affairs in Ukraine, at least among the political classes in some areas. If Russia really was the pariah some think it to be, then BRICS (as in the group of Russia, China, India, South Africa, and Brazil...two of which have more people than EU+US+Canada combined) would have met the same fate as the G8 did in 2014. You are wildly overestimating the Western narrative's power globally, as well as underestimating Russia's remaining levers of power.