By MANOLO MONEREO*

The tectonic plates of geopolitics are moving across the world

This is a crucial historical moment when we must begin to discuss not just the war itself, but the changes taking place in the world economy after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. Under the general heading of Eurasia, it is very important to see why we are certainly experiencing the greatest spatio-temporal reorganization of Eurasia since Genghis Khan, no more and no less. This will force us to consider high-level things.

I would like to begin with a sentence, with a quotation, from Halford MacKinder: “When our statesmen are conversing with the defeated enemy, some winged cherub must whisper to him from time to time the following: He who rules Eastern Europe controls the continental heartland. , he who dominates the continental heartland controls the World Island, he who dominates the World Island controls the world”. This is an old quote that has a lot to do with the problems we are experiencing in today's world, specifically in Europe. It is about the concrete relationship between Europe, the European peninsula of Eurasia and Eurasia, and their relationship, which in the end is the relationship between Germany and Russia.

This is precisely the great strategic problem of the Anglo-Saxon world inherited by Great Britain and the United States, which was to prevent – ​​at all costs – an alliance between Russia and Germany. This is one of the old unresolved problems of geopolitics: the debate between the thalassocratic powers and the tellurocratic powers and seeing it in a way that is a little bit beyond the mythical and entering into what we can call correlations of force and geopolitics as a struggle for power from a geographic point of view. That's what it's all about.

Are we really facing a third world war? This is the position that Emmanuel Todd has defended very strongly. I do not believe that we are facing the beginning of the Third World War. Now, what I believe is that the possibilities that open up for this are growing exponentially. We are getting closer and closer, for a reason that is very easy to understand, which is this: for Russia, the issue of Ukraine, this war, is existential, its future life lies in it, not only as a State, but as a culture and civilization. For the United States this is not the case, it is not existential, but it is decisive for maintaining its hegemony. The war in Ukraine, the NATO war against Russia and the war, after all, between West and East, is very important. Because if the United States loses, it would be the definitive confirmation of its loss of world hegemony.

As the Secretary General of NATO said not long ago, the key is that the biggest risk we run is that Russia wins; behold, the other risks are secondary. From this perspective, we are living on a razor's edge. This is a situation that might lead some people to think that we are very close to the third world war. Now we are in conflict and the war in Ukraine has been going on for over a year. And things have changed very quickly.

The first thing to note is that the economic emergency measures against Russia implemented by NATO and the West have failed. It is not that they have not had an effect, but that they have failed in their fundamental element. I think this is an extremely significant fact. That is, for the first time, a well-thought-out strategy by hegemony, the United States, to do away with Russia and practically prostrate it in the face of defeat is failing.

The second issue closely linked to this is that the de-dollarization process has advanced a lot. In other words, more and more measures are being imposed against Russia or against China, against their currencies, their exchange rates and the free movement of capital and goods. This is signifying a process of crisis of dollar hegemony that is of great importance for the United States. The hegemony of the dollar and its military expansion are the same thing, one finances the other. America's enormous military power is based on the economic power of the dollar, and without it, its enormous military power is not possible.

The third issue is very serious, it is that we are facing the centrality of China. Now it looks like Beijing is emerging as a Mecca. You are not important if you don't interview Xi Xinping and everyone goes there to see what he wants and how he wants it.

There is a fourth issue related to Eurasia, which is the agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, something that has a huge geopolitical dimension. Why? Because the island of the world has a lot to do with an enlarged Eurasia; this is one of the three screws being reconstructed. China, Russia and Iran are reorganizing Eurasia and reaching new relationships with none other than Saudi Arabia. And the whole world has to do with the Middle East, which is one of the fundamental nuclei of US economic and military power.

There is also a new element that has to do with the things that Lula is starting to do or that Alberto Fernández did in Argentina – and, it should be noted, there are no two without three. When this polarization between the United States, China, Russia and NATO appears, a third way quickly appears. This path belongs to those who want it but cannot follow it. They perceive the window of opportunity that this represents for Latin American, African, Asian countries, because this polarization gives them greater maneuverability, greater autonomy. For what? Leave aside the interference, the constant and systematic presence of the United States, of international economic and political institutions on its border.

There is a new air in international relations, where everyone perceives that multipolarity is emerging and that means greater autonomy and the possibility of defending the strategic interests of each country and, ultimately, greater sovereignty. Of course, the key piece is India, which already this year will certainly be the largest country in the world demographically. She will play a decisive role in this change; but also Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world; also, in a way, Pakistan, as well as in one way or another Malaysia. That is, the world of the East emerges with great force. The countries within them are changing, the actors are changing and the internal correlation is also changing.

In this it is worth discussing two countries, China and Russia. Russia is coming out of a “capitalism” more or less of oligarchs, as they say in the West – as if our monopoly capitalists were not oligarchs, but holy men and elegant businessmen. One of the many positives this conflict holds for Russia is that the oligarchs are getting out of the way and not only that, something is being built. In other words, a new type of country is being born, in what we can call expanded and developed state capitalism.

Russia is developing industrially enormously in these years. It is becoming a great productive power, it produces things, while the West produces paperwork. And this is relevant in the internal relationship of the forces in Russia, in their operational capabilities and in the demonstration that, in the end, the sanctions are not meaning for them the cost that the United States and NATO had been programming.

The other pole, obviously, is China, with its new centrality in the interior as well. Of an economy that is reinserting itself again and, paradoxically, that defends a globalization that has been beneficial. Against the United States, which is breaking with the very globalization it created as the great project of the new American century (PNAC). Many decisive things are happening, among them a very complicated transition to a multipolar world, which is just beginning, but is already taking place rapidly. If we look at what Lula is advocating for Europe and the recent interview between Volodymyr Zelensky and China, we realize that China is trying to play the role of peacemaker and leader of a new type of international relationship that is not marked as an Empire, as was the case with the U.S.

Now comes the question: How changes in the relationship between China and Russia, their alliance, as well as the creation, in 2001, of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), modify the geopolitics of the world.

At this moment, 19 countries want to join the BRICS. They will end up becoming a large-scale economic-political hub. In my opinion, this is of enormous importance, what I called China's new centrality as a peacemaking power that brings security and stability to international relations. At the same time, the United States appears as a kind of neighborhood bully, as a force that continually causes wars, defeats, generates monsters, which it is not able to control.

Now, this process, in a way, is accelerating; For the United States, it is about fighting for something fundamental, which is not to lose its hegemony in the world. It is very important to take this fact into account, because the internal and external relations in that country are very clear at the moment – ​​they always have been. They live in a latent civil war, an extremely serious internal conflict, which was seen throughout Donald Trump's term and which became much more evident with Joe Biden's term. And, on the other hand, in the United States the ruling elite lives the situation with great drama. It is what we can call the enormous power of time.

The United States has a very serious problem, it knows that its time has come, that its hegemony in the world is ending. There would be several possibilities, to negotiate this end, to reach a new international agreement. But what he is going to do at this moment is to prevent his hegemony from declining, and for that he is going to use all the power he has (and even the power he doesn't have) in this central political battle. That's why I spoke a moment ago about the possibility of a third world war, because the American power believes that, in one way or another, the China, Iran and Russia alliance is strengthened, develops and a ceasefire is reached in Ukraine.

If this means, purely and simply, that a part of what is now Ukraine becomes part of Russia, it represents not only a more or less strong tragedy for the Ukrainian elite, but it is a kind of decisive element, to tell the whole world that America is not what it used to be. He now becomes one more, in a rapidly changing world. That possibility will affect you, but it also puts us all in danger; it is a power in decline that does not want to stop being one and having the privileges it had thanks to that enormous power that it accumulated over decades. That is what is behind these aforementioned problems and which have to do with the new international geopolitical alliance framework.

If we take a historical look at how they can sit down to discuss ending the war in Yemen between Iran and Saudi Arabia… That's an amazing thing. That is, the internal conflict that Israel is already experiencing has a lot to do with all of this. With how the Gulf countries for years maintained US power in the area, and were able to recycle dollars and turn them into petrodollars to finance the massive US trade deficit. These countries today reach an agreement and, above all, what is decisive for me, they agree to a type of exchange in a currency and in an economic bloc that no longer depends on the United States, its institutions and its issue. of paper money.

We are in a rapidly changing world; well, this is happening at your nodal points. So, if you look at what is happening in Ukraine, with the birth of the Shanghai Cooperation Organ, with the new impetus for the Brics, the presence of Dilma Rousseff in her Development Bank, the active economic presence of Russia and the China in Africa, all this is giving a sign that things are changing very quickly. And for the African, Latin American, Asian ruling elites who still don't have enough power to face the United States, what they do is take advantage of this dispute, this contradiction between Russia and China, on the one hand, and the United States, on the other. another, to take a stand and try to take advantage and benefit from a world that is definitely changing its base.

Within these scenarios of some pressure, Ukraine-Europe, Taiwan-China, Sea of ​​Sahel-Africa, proposed by the United States and by the collective imperialism of the West, in this dispute, how to compare the dynamics of China in relation to that of the United States in the question between Western Asia (peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia) and Africa?

When dealing with this subject, I always point out that three front lines had been built. Three very complex scenarios, four maybe. The first front line in Europe and Ukraine, secondly, the South China Sea with Taiwan and the third for me is the advanced defense of the West and Europe in Africa, which becomes again a space of dispute between the great powers. It has always been in one form or another, but now it comes back with a vengeance.

There is a fourth scenario, cognitive media. It is what we can call the immense media control, manipulation and construction of the social imaginary that the United States and the West have set in motion in this process that is not only against Russia, but also clearly against China. It is becoming a disciplinary discourse where critical voices are marginalized, those who disagree with the narrative that the United States and the Collective Empire of the West are imposing.

The United States has a clear superiority (which is always good to take into account) in the political-military field. No country in the world can compete militarily. Its 800 military bases, its presence on all seas, its huge aircraft carriers, its ability to deploy an expeditionary force of 200.000 or 300.000 troops anywhere in the world, all this can only be done by the United States. It has, for the time being, the strength to create conflict scenarios. The United States returns and when they return, as Joe Biden said, it is to put pressure on countries that are questioning what they call Western values ​​and the hegemony of the international order and its rules, that is what they have been imposing.

This leads to the establishment of three major scenarios created by the United States that tries to govern them. For example, I call the thermostat that governs the conflict between the United States and China. When American power is interested, it will press that thermostat so that the conflict occurs, but when it is not interested, it will moderate it. But it is already starting to work on that perspective of creating an alternative bloc to China based on the set of military bases that it has in the entire area that China practically corners and permanently harasses and that it is setting up. And recently in a very strong way in the Philippines and especially in South Korea, where for the first time there are nuclear submarines that are actively and permanently operating in this area.

Taiwan is no small thing either. It is known that the United States already has several hundred military advisers in this area and that they are also systematically and more firmly rearming it, breaking all international agreements that recognize Taiwan as part of China. So, from this perspective, the conflicts are all open and the North American country governs them according to its own ability to manage them. What China has learned and is learning is what in Peru is called “stepping on sticks”. There is a saying: “what he wants is for me to step on a dick”; well, what the United States wants is for China to step on Taiwan's dick. After Ukraine's experience, if they do, it will be because they know they will win and that they will act decisively to change the situation.

What China is doing now is returning as a great peacemaking power capable of fixing the mistakes, the conflicts of a power in decline, which permanently creates disorder and crisis and puts world peace at risk. It is setting in motion, under its guidance, a new international economic and political order.

This is increasingly welcomed by Asian, African and Latin American countries who see in this new order a possibility of building a world where the collective imperialism of the West is not permanently imposed. And thus allow the peoples a new Bandung and a new socioeconomic orientation, which, in one way or another, put an end to misery, poverty and sustainable economic development and, above all, allow them to overcome a neocolonial situation that weighs decisively on the living conditions of the populations of the so-called Global South.

Is China trying to build China's New Silk Road infrastructure while at the same time the US is trying to undermine it? Also taking into account another focus of conflict that sometimes comes from decades, such as Central Asia and the post-Soviet space, where the United States tries to exercise coercion. Looking at all this Eurasian interconnection and the military bases around China, Iran and Russia, what does this contradictory role between the United States, China and Russia look like?

This is a conflict that I would say existential. For the United States, Russia is not an existential conflict. But China does; for the North Americans, the development and growth of the Asian giant is incompatible with the future of North American hegemony and, therefore, they will fight it systematically. It returns what people interested in geopolitics have always studied, which is the centrality of Eurasia. Without that, it is not possible to understand what is happening, which is a space-time reorganization of Eurasia around a strategic alliance between Iran, Russia and China.

This alliance will be huge because it will not only be a series of high-level technological infrastructure mechanisms, railroads, but a whole set of devices that, on the one hand, seek to circumvent the influence that the United States has, for example, in the Suez Canal and throughout the Red Sea area. In addition, they seek to articulate Eurasia as a self-sufficient space, capable of generating its own dynamics and transforming it into the centrality of planet Earth. This is being done in a tripartite alliance that will not be easy, it will mean a whole set of economic, technological, transport measures, also related to energy, that will transform Eurasia into a self-sufficient economic space with the capacity to challenge the entire planet Earth from of its own centrality.

Obviously, the United States will try to oppose this with everything they have, not only in the Central Asian space, or by promoting the existing conflicts, re-mobilizing Georgia or Moldova, but trying to intervene in the former Soviet republics, since some of them have no small difficulties. But we cannot forget that in this world there is another active presence, which will be very specific, it is India, which will be the other major player in this area. So far India is navigating between different positions and benefiting from this intermediation, equidistance or good relationship between one and the other. And it will do this by strengthening its technology, its military industry, also its own import-substituting industrialization, and it will play a key role.

What China is basically doing is trying to generate a multi-content block. I would say that, of variable geometry, where you are not going to renounce any country, for example Japan, South Korea or the Philippines knowing that they are part of a bloc that is being reorganized by the United States, none of the fundamental pieces of the geopolitics of the Asia. It will continue to strengthen relations with countries that wish to do so, such as Indonesia or Malaysia, and will create conditions for a future of economic cooperation with countries in Latin America and Africa.

China seeks to build a block of opposition to the bad, warmongering, I would say irresponsible policies of the United States to create permanent disorder. And so it appears as an ordering, pacifying force, seeking multiple alliances, some of mutual economic interest in the short term; others with ever stronger medium-term formulations around man; and then a strategic core that leads it to actively engage with Russia and Iran.

Both the United States and China are building or redefining blocks of variable geometry, with different accents. And trying, in the case of China, to give an image of moderation, pacification and cooperation. Leaving the United States the sad role of neighborhood bully that only knows how to solve problems, creating bigger and bigger problems: the case of Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, so many countries, including Ukraine itself.

When the United States intervenes with all its strength, it generates consequences that it is not able to govern and that, in the end, lead to a situation of planned defeat strategy. It's a bit what the United States has been experiencing up to now and it's the great fear of American elites today. That is, this test becomes a weapon where the hegemonic power loses its three great components of power: the first, its enormous economic power; the second, its control over the main international economic institutions; and, thirdly, its enormous economic-military potential that practically makes it an empire all over the world.

How, then, are the two key factors in the geopolitical question, energy and food? There is an Asian turn in the global economy, a return of power to the Eurasian continent. The two powers are acting in other countries, such as those in Africa and Latin America. Could it benefit them?

It is worth remembering that Michael Hudson and Sergei Glazyev, a Russian economist, have written a lot about this. In this contrast between two blocs, two types of economy also confront each other. In one of them is the economy of the G7, an economy of nostalgia, financialization, exhaustion, these are the great powers. What Braudel said about this is this: financialization is something like the autumn of a great power. In fact, the G7 reflects the old nostalgia of the collective West that ruled the world for 500 years and that has been building a financialized economy where paper, predation, a gigantic “accumulation by dispossession” is produced, as David Harvey put it.

And, on the other hand, there is China, Russia, Belarus, India, a whole set of countries that produce things, which are machines for the production of goods for use by society as a whole. And this machinery that produces use values, for example, is on the food issue table. An old problem that has been dragging on this year, the issue of Ukrainian wheat, Russian wheat… And here they did something incredible. Countries are changing a lot since the war in Ukraine started and one of the countries that has done that the most is Russia. Today it has a very diversified productive structure and an extraordinarily efficient agriculture that makes it the biggest wheat exporter in the world, together with Ukraine. It took advantage of US sanctions to leave aside the old capitalist economy inherited from Boris Yelstin and move towards a new type of economy that is much more efficient and, above all, productive, with a very advanced industrial agricultural base.

In turn, Russia is building very strong industrial mechanisms on an old policy of import substitution, which is also forcing it to change the relationship and form of its insertion in the world market. It is trying to supply a deeper and more developed internal market and better redistribute income from wealth in the country. We are living through a certain, I won't say revolution, but a profound change in the relationship between economy and society and in the role of the working classes.

This has a lot to do with China as well, because all these countries, Indonesia, the old Asian tigers, are all productive economies, they produce things, they are capable of generating and producing goods for use throughout the world. While the West is a predation machine based on speculation and the dominance of finance capital internationally. What would not be possible without the role of the dollar and the control of the United States over the international economic institution.

The other aspect mentioned earlier had much more to do with the possibility that a multipolar world will raise old questions that were buried with the fall of the USSR and with the triumph of neoliberalism, around the new American century (which Bill Clinton basically did). . This world liquidated Bandung, as well as the possibility of a new type of development, a new relationship of growth and, on the other hand, of income and wealth in the countries.

The problem of social justice, of another model of development and of a productive democracy, capable of guaranteeing the expectations of the majority, was raised again. I believe that today's world sees this transition to a multipolar world as a possibility to rediscover what imperial neoliberalism in the United States has divided, divided, which is the social question of democracy and sovereignty of peoples.

The issue of a productive democracy and the issue of sovereignty remain a pending issue that – with this multipolar transition – people are starting to see that there are possibilities that neoliberalism will not be unilaterally imposed as it has been until now, due to pressure both from the West collectively and specifically from the United States and the institutions they control.

And, above all, with the possibility of finding a new relationship that makes politics as a collective ethics also implanted in peoples that until now the only thing they knew was misery, poverty and the debt trap. And in this case, as we talk about the food issue, the almost perfect machine of the great contradiction between Covid, the food crisis and a debt crisis that literally crushed the African peoples and the Latin American peoples.

From geopolitics, as well as from a bottom-up analysis (bottom-up) what changes can be generated through multipolarity due to the important role of the action of other emerging powers and what changes do you perceive from the analysis of what happened between Iran and Arabia?

The issue of energy has already been mentioned. We are facing, as has been said, the greatest spatiotemporal reorganization of Eurasia since Genghis Khan. In this infrastructure that is being put in place, related to the new silk routes, with Russia's Eurasian economic agreements, with the ever stronger alliance with Iran, in this world that is emerging very strongly, I have the impression that that a decisive piece will be the question of Saudi Arabia.

On this issue, for the United States, what happened was a strategic defeat of enormous importance, not only because two countries traditionally at odds and with conflicts, not only latent but also explicit, are meeting again, but at the same time they will become become decisive actors in a multipolar world, where they have great economic potential, growing technological potential and a large energy power base.

The fact that these countries are now reaching an agreement is good news; conditions are created to solve old problems in the Middle East, which has a lot to do with the crisis in Israel and also with the old Palestinian question. The entire region will be modified, transformed by this alliance that is made under the presence of China. And, in turn, this will have enormous consequences from the point of view of energy and the production of use values, which are fundamental for people at this stage.

I am now emphasizing a fundamental issue, as Europe has not yet been mentioned as an actor, that is, Europe turns out to be the great blackout, everything moves, but Europe is increasingly subordinated to the United States. And, above all, what is moving are large countries, demographically huge, with ancient, sophisticated, diverse cultures, which are already active actors in a world that no longer consents to Western domination. And who want to be and have their own voice, be consulted, be recognized and be actors in a world in which, whether the West likes it or not, they will inevitably be essential protagonists.

Although in general most peoples have been colonized by others, the last great colonizations left in the XNUMXth to XNUMXth centuries for America and in the XNUMXth century and part of the XNUMXth for Africa and Asia through Europe (plus Japan, USA and Russia in some cases) and now it is being seen especially in these last three decades, (we could also say since the Second World War) that the United States maintained it as a protectorate. So what is the situation in Europe today?

I think I said it right, the first thing to understand is that Europe is a military protectorate of the United States. The European does not want to hear these things, he is furious when he hears this truth. But today Europe is nothing more than a subordinate ally of the United States, which governs and manages it at will. The most serious thing is not that Nord Stream I and II were dynamited, but that Germany has hidden the scandalous fact and behaves as if nothing had happened. It really does something terrible, which is to erase the evidence; actively intervenes so that it does not condemn those we all know are behind it, the United States directly or indirectly.

But what does it mean? That Europe is now buying US oil and gas at a higher price and not enough. In other words, the paradox is that today Europe continues to import much more oil than before from Russia, through indirect mechanisms, including Spain. Everyone deceives everyone permanently. So what happens is that this war has turned Europe into a second-tier power that is obliged to follow the guidelines of the United States.

NATO is not a simple defensive alliance as they say. By belonging to it, first, one assumes and accepts that American strategic interests are its interests. That is, you become an instrument of a strategy, in the imperial case, of the United States. The second fundamental issue is that immediately too (and this is a conflict that has been fought with Germany, but especially with France) it makes you a user and technologically dependent on the political-military-technological strategy of the United States. And you are also an actor because you end up being dependent on interests in this case of the American military-industrial complex.

And there is a third element that is overlooked; when a country belongs to NATO, its army, its armed forces are reorganized, in each country, according to the strategic interests of the United States. You no longer have politico-military sovereignty. This means that its army is formed by the United States, it has almost always American military technology. In turn, military teaching and doctrine are increasingly influenced by the United States. NATO membership is not simply an agreement between states for a common defense policy. This, in my view, is of decisive importance in what is happening.

Europe tried at some point a certain autonomy. However, one of the reasons for this war – and this was said by Emmanuel Todd and Oskar Lafontaine –, what is behind it, is to prevent any desire for German autonomy. This is also a war against Germany and against a part of Europe.

The problem seems very simple: why is this accepted? Now, not only does Germany have more than 30 US military bases, with the presence of nuclear weapons – which, incidentally, the Germans don't even know how many they have –, but it has also become a protected base, an instrument merely to support the policies that the United States is carrying out.

It is a fundamental part of the Europe of the European Union built by the United States after the defeat of the Second World War. And, in part, also something that is forgotten and to which I attach more and more importance. The thing is that effectively suppressing national sovereignty, running out of currency, without military power, ceasing to be a State in the strict sense, is very good for the ruling elites, the great economic powers, because popular sovereignty is prevented from questioning who governs and who does not. stands for election. That is what is behind this structural subordination to the American strategy of the European Union through and through NATO.

Although some also characterize this situation as a hybrid war on different planes, it would be like a third defeat of Germany without a third world war. Finally, it is necessary to think about the current situation in Africa and, finally, in Latin America.

Well, the importance of Africa grows exponentially after the conflict in Ukraine. The third great front exists, where the tectonic plates of the conflict between China and Russia, on the one hand, and the United States and NATO, on the other, collide, explode and explode. If we look closely, in the countries of the so-called Sahel there is a growing insubordination against the colonial powers and specifically against France; this is what happens in Mali, it also happens in Burkina Faso. On the one hand, there is an active presence of jihadism and, on the other, a justification for the presence of European and French soldiers to fight it, and a problem that does not appear, but which is decisive, which is the question of emigration.

The Sahel is an advanced defense of the West. It is about putting the front line there to prevent mass emigration and actively control countries that have been questioning the power of the West for many years. Jihadism has its own components, but there is no doubt that the United States and jihadism are first cousins, at least well known to each other. And that, in one way or another, the United States has been able to manipulate it since its creation, as many times as it wanted. There are governments that think that Western countries are complicit in the development of this jihadism, because it is functional to maintain a military presence in the area. What I am saying is that these countries are the front line, which the United States and Europe control very strongly.

And I think that once again a possibility arises here, what role will sub-Saharan Africa, black Africa, play. What role will it play in the future of the world. So far, it is clear that the signs are enormous, a space for confrontation between the great powers. It is also a possibility to take advantage of and develop collective autonomy. For the dominant elites of sub-Saharan Africa, this disparity and this conflict can be triggered, can be exploited to seek collective development formulas that deepen cooperation and mutually advantageous collaboration between what we can call emerging powers and the African Old World. There is the possibility of a new Bandung, that is, of repositioning Africa's development at the center of a perspective that was practically on a downward trend, in collective failures as in recent decades.

In Latin America, the situation is a little more complex. This second wave of progressive governments, the situation in Argentina is very well known. Less clear than the first, less defining, more complicated. It seems that, on the one hand, everywhere, the right has learned the lesson of the previous phase and has become increasingly tough. They promote clearly liberal and subaltern US policies and question democracy, law and freedoms.

And, on the other hand, weaker lefts, now said to be more pragmatic, who would seek something like creating a democratic front without questioning US hegemony. That task is what Lula will carry out, something that, at this moment, has already led him to have a certain confrontation with the United States. Because Lula is not going to lose – nor would the forces of the right – the possibility of an alliance with the Brics to improve Brazil's economic situation, which is sorely lacking. And take advantage of the presence of the BRICS in Latin America to deepen the unity and convergence between the economies and take advantage of the new situation that is being created in the world.

What happens is that the environment has changed and the United States is already showing signs that it is not willing to have problems in its backyard. Because it seems that everywhere there is a very moderate left and an extremist right that borders on fascism or simply an almost neo-oligarchic conservative authoritarianism in many countries. It seems that the left is coming back, but without an alternative project, without a program and hoping that Lula in particular will shed light on the possibility of finding a new path by inserting Latin America in this new world that has been emerging for years and that is now becoming very current and present. and which, one way or another, will be governing us for years to come.

*Manolo Monereo is a lawyer. He was deputy for the PCE and for Podemos. Author, among other books, of From the crisis to the democratic revolution (El Viejo Top).

Translation: Eleutério FS Prado.

Originally published on the publisher's blog The old mole.

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