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more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. china for asians are the day. the sun.

taking. a low in welcome to cross talk on people of the building breaks of the future some of the world's fastest growing emerging markets are meeting in china and they're called the brics brazil russia china india and south africa their plan is simple be an alternative to a western centric world is this an inevitable reality or just wishful thinking. that you can. still see. just as the role of the brics in the world today i'm joined by pepe escobar and from palo he's

a journalist and author of obama does globalist on in brussels we have frederick erickson he is a director and a co-founder of the european center for international political economy and in denver we cross to either a kind he is a professor of economics at the university of denver gentlemen this is cross talk that means you can jump in anytime you want to go to you first because you've been on the program before ten years ago we came across this term goldman sachs came up with that brics and it was a well let's put what it was was a sexy tool to sell the emerging markets stocks well ten years later it has taken on a life of its own and in researching this program it's either lionized or demonized i know where you stand where should we should it be lionized or should it be demonized. we should be lionized in fact there are a lot of non bricks they should be part of bricks should be bricks some so for something like thirty should be indonesia should be in south korea should be but

instead the bric countries they started have south africa to have a continental appeal so all the developing emerging areas are having any i mean let me jump in here why should why should they be in there because of the level of their level of economy because there are certain political orientation or both political orientation so instead of having another asian like indonesia or south korea or turkey from the middle east the effect they discussed in brazil last year it was supposed to be bricked. with turkey but instead at the last minute said no we need this somebody from africa and obviously they can have nigeria they can have livia ruptures reasons and so they chose south africa which is the most powerful african economy so it's a continental wide in the global appeal but the most important thing in my view is what what what should the greeks do so they are very influential inside the g

twenty so major economic decisions have to be supported by brics inside the g twenty they just seven as we all know is history so people could see that in fact we are living in a g.'s zero because nobody is in charge of anything and i personally subscribe to this view as well and there's also the political component very important voting of u.n. resolution one nine seventy three. do for me jer bricks they abstained they coordinated this. journey back south africa did with both already there is a foreigner yes but south africa i'm going to frederick here frederick is the is the brics country more of a still just kind of a sexy selling tool me what kind of political influence does it have it certainly are emerging markets now i think anyone doubts that but is it anything more than that. well i mean first of all i think i mean i belong to the group of people who

think it's premature to speak about brics as something we are a group of countries with a lot of things in common and that is you having big aspirations for global influence in the world so far it's only it's only one country in that group which is china who actually has some real influence today all the other countries there so far in global economy terms in trade terms or in your leadership terms they are still still playing paying off in the top league so far so i think it's more of an aspiration that it is an accurate description of what we're seeing today but look i mean it's absolutely true that many of these countries are going to become much more influential in the world in twenty thirty years from now simply because they're going to grow their economies are going to grow and and that also means they going to have more influence in the world ok i know if i go to you in denver i mean let's go back to the political dimension here and what i said in the beginning of the program can this block of countries the brics as in his point maybe they'll

be more countries be an alternative to the west because that's what they're touted for in the minds of so many people not just because they're emerging markets it's a lot of countries growing out there the west is not growing particularly fast what about the political mission of brics as it expands. yes indeed. i don't think that they should be lionized or demonized i think they should be analyzed both economically and politically according to the models that i have run by two thousand priority actually the brics group plus probably a few others. like indonesia korea mexico even nigeria could actually be that driving force of the world economy but more importantly politically i think we have not seen anything like this since i would say bundu in the one nine hundred fifty s. when some countries tried to take

a nonaligned an independent course and as i have expressed myself in several places this could actually be a harbinger of a much less people critical much more just and much more stable world when you think about its virtues are very strong words less hypocritical in the western centric world that we live in today go ahead. i really like what heidegger said because this could be viewed as and you've been doing the been doing at the time and you know it came out a nothing new for the counter-revolution against but don't buy special european elites was really hardcore in american leads as well including the vietnam war so the nonaligned movement which is more than one hundred countries they can look up the bricks some sort of guiding like models like many see china as a model effect inside bric brazil nowadays under a duma she's in beijing right now trying to clinch

a lot of deals she's looking at the state model of china to try to reorganize brazil's industrial policy which at the moment is neil there's no industrial policy in this country brazil is becoming an exporter of raw materials and they need state presents they need some guidance the way you have you find in chinese model so you can export manufactured products and and compete with other countries like for instance embraer now they have a factory in china they are selling more is that if jets to china this is the way to go otherwise brazil will be selling soybeans in orange juice to kingdom come and the nonaligned countries they look at that in south america they look at brazil as a model in asia they look at china as a novel russia it's not much of a model to anybody unfortunate well it's a model has a model that would sell very very articulate very dynamic model at the same time

fredricka if i go to you frederick hear me already i let me add something here go ahead go ahead jump in. ok let me add something here about brazil and india i think clearly china is economically the powerhouse but the studies that i have done on india and brazil as well as in china in the you know haitian system actually indicate to me that. if they do not make too many policy mistakes both brazil and china and perhaps even russia within fifteen years sexually can have a very diversified and flourishing economy and add to that the democratic strengths of brazil and india and china indeed can learn something from these two countries as well ok fredricka franco to you i mean one of the things it's obvious to everyone is that economic power is translated into political power and a lot of these countries the emerging markets they see that we use institutions are run by western countries the world bank the i.m.f.

. some people even go as far as say that nato is being used as a replacement for the security council the united nations being the world's policeman when it gets down to its institutions in a brick bricks is very young but do you think it could turn into some kind of political institution as an alternative because as the ritually get more resources they will have. no i don't think so i think i mean i think one of the thing which is going to characterize the rise of of emerging markets is they're going to keep compete with each other about economics and about politics see increasing increasing increasing tensions between those countries themselves and some of them are certainly going to make a lot of efforts in order to do united states or europe in order to be on this side whether it's you know concerns trade issues or where those concerns arms deals or what have you so i think i think i mean look i mean i i i want countries to succeed

i want them to have extremely rapid economic growth in the next ten twenty thirty forty years because that's going to be very very good for the population of those countries but i don't think it will happen so i think we are talking about an aspiration here which is which is a little bit speculative and it certainly is yet to come and the only thing we can john far is basically that that in all matters at least in economics today what countries like india and brazil are afraid o. is competition from china it's competition from china that's what they are afraid of and as long as the mindset of of of brazil russia india and others are going to be whole of that kind it's going to be tremendously difficult to forge any sort of strong alliances. nato or the western alliance since that would lies that we saw grew during the cold war ok ted what do you think about that because the west can still get divide and conquer these bricks this brick organization mindset and

they're still competing among themselves it's a good point. yes it's through the competition among themselves absolutely through like the brazilian booster lists there are three hundred and nine following dilma to beijing this week they are trying to create some trying to catch some deals to sell brazilian products in china but china basically in a factor of the world they don't need to buy manufactured products from anybody apart from high tech technology which is the case of embraer like executive jets what and russia basically it's still monoculture it's oil and gas and weapons industry as well so the diversification of the brazilian the indian economy is going to take i would say at least another two generations but the most important thing in my view is the political power in the long run of bricks or brick or the large bricks. first of all trying to get rid of that

absolutely stupid mechanism which is natal which has now become the you know the weaponized arm of the united nations and who wants to rule the world as the best chinese scholars writing and saying it openly i talked to one of them last week and this is how they see it they see the pentagon is just getting this point i want you to finish it i want you to finish it off record and i don't think you know we come back in the break i want you to finish your point after the break we'll continue our discussion on the challenges to the west state with our.

just say. the.

welcome back to cross talk i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're talking about the position of the bric countries on the global stage. ok friend if i want to go to you in brussels that was talking about something that i think was very interesting before we went to the break and is it any use countries get richer and richer their political clout may or may not depending on how collectively they work together become more powerful but we have these institutions that are in place today pepper was talking about nato also we have the united nations security council mean we're going to have to have institutional evolution to accommodate these growing populations and richer populations we cannot continue with the nine thousand nine hundred forty five political order and i'm looking at the united nations security council how do you think that's going to happen is the west's recedes in power and wealth in the rest of the world comes up for good other parts of the world what's the institutional change that has to occur

. well i mean that's a very good question i'm afraid i don't have a good answer for you i mean i think the solutions will look different between the international institutions that exist if you look out if you start with the bretton woods institutions dima from the world bank i think there is already now a very good case to make for increasing increasing the influence of the emerging markets and that would launch to come at the expense of the influence of the smaller european economies have in those organizations today and i think that's something which should be pushed much more rapidly than it has been so far especially as far as china is concerned because china is the economy which has the liquidity and the capital in order to be part of big time leadership for the world economy india russia and brazil certainly doesn't have that at least not yet but china china they are so china needs to have a much more say in a sign of policy from these institutions if you go to to the g.

twenty for instance which has become the new sort of committed to run the world in economic affairs i think it's something which is going to diminish in import in importance simply because it was it was an institution that function well at the height of the crisis when governments needed to come together in order to avoid a repetition of tit for tat type of protectionism a lot of the night in the thirty's and the great depression and it served their purpose quite well but now that we are starting to deal with other type of issues like for instance the global financial regulations we could clearly see that the interest between countries here are fundamentally different and of course also the the you know this size of this size of the economies in the size of of in this case the financial services sector is also differ so much between these countries that it's impossible to get. there some of that certainly something they maybe to be talking about in a in china this week i don't find out who you are if they ask maybe my first the

same question in a different way is should the bric countries are they mean to reinvent the world order or just be grown up enough to sit at the adult table to the west established over the past half century. ok i think there are several aspects here one is economically the greeks are already there at the table and. recent moves by brazil by china by russia to actually fund the i.m.f. and to. push for special drawing rights gradually replacing dollar i think are very significant moves we also are seeing the emergence of what i call regional financial architecture and these kind of filled with. i don't think i agree with fred that there would be a kind of permanent clash of interests economically or politically among these

countries plus when brics scared of mentored by what can be called cement as well and the other emerging countries i think the essence of the matter is that there are really no permanent competition or permanent cooperation in the world we have to go issue by issue by issue we already are seeing cooperation in finance we're seeing cooperation in high technology we're seeing cooperation in terms of specific separatists. and materials politically i think this conference that is going to take place in a few days in china is very very significant not only because south africa has been brought in and africa now has a representation as well but more importantly there will be a kind of. political was i used to fusion allies asian now.

aside from brics we also have bilateral and trilateral discussions between russia and china between india and brazil and south africa etc so what we are experiencing i think now is actually not to growing up. getting a seat at the table that somebody else are set but actually thinking about the size and shape and the kind of people that we need ok pepe if i can go to you i mean one thing that could really makes a power works in is the bric countries expand their influence and maybe having a more common common agenda is getting rid of the dollar i mean if you can if you got them all together and started working on a that would be a pretty amazing event in may and maybe that's what the one major event the world needs to really shake it out. exactly this this is this is what the chinese and the brazilian specially have been talking by a lottery i would say for at least two years now reform of the international finance system and adopting

a basket of currencies which would probably include the dollar the euro the convertible you won the ryal which at the moment is. valued relation to the dollar was to twenty four five years ago now it's one fifty seven yesterday so this is possible but this reform of the international system which evolves more see at the i.m.f. and world bank for emerging markets especially the brics has to be followed by a political reform at the u.n. security council this is much more complicated because the european elites specially and washington they just don't want more seats at the table for emerging markets like obama more or less promised india a seat at the security council he was in brazil three weeks ago and he skirted asia completely and obviously the brazilians are in fact this i think is one of the major mistakes of brazilian foreign policy and they are putting all their chips in

this we want to be recognized with a seat at the security council this is very important it has to be a group of countries it has to be germany india brazil indonesia turkey total reform of the u.n. structure which is totally dependent from the u.s. at the moment any having for instance militaristic or sarkozy and david cameron which practically launched a war based on a resolution they draft inside the u.n. security council ok fredricka and i to go to you as i want to hypothesize let's say it's two thousand and fifty has the west become more like the bric countries or is the bric countries become more like the west do you think's going to change. well i mean i don't think it's that simple. but i mean if i had to choose between one of your teletypes it would certainly be that the bric countries would have become more like the west both in terms of you know new type of political institutions in countries like china and russia where you know democracy is fragile or where

democracy is nonexistent in a class in a country like china because civil liberties would i'm sure is going to be stronger than they are today so i think they are moving along a trajectory of of political modernization there which is going to make them closer to western type of political institutions. i think i mean i mean to come back to one of the issues that we've been talking about here i mean my point is basically it is that we have lots of countries in the world right now which can be described as middle kingdoms and certainly india brazil and russia are belong to that particular group these are countries with aspirations in countries which have unit which have grown in stature and influence in the past in the past decade but they are far from countries that actually can lead and actually can achieve something by leadership on the global scene and one of the one of the most striking things i i think when you look out the ability to lead is to these two you know when you when

you look at surveys among population which countries they would like to move to if they have the opportunity to do so take for instance china there was a survey in china of one and a half year ago among what was called the chinese elite where they asked they were asked the question if you could would you rather move to the united states then to stay in china seventy five percent of the respondents say yes we would rather move to the united states to remain in china if you look at a lot of people but that's because their standard of living is there because they want their so-called american freedoms or it's because they want to live a comfortable life. well i mean i think is it i think it's a combination of things i mean everything from you know you can you can environmentally do a much better life could be united states you can do in beijing or shanghai but i think it also concerns you know civil liberties political institutions and having this sort of capitalistic enemy isn't there to simply don't have the trainees economy or coraline or an economy i'd like to ask you i mean by the year two

thousand and fifty what do you think of my my question is the west could be more like the brics today with the brics going to be more like the west where you think oh ok first of all let us be reminded of what eugene you know score said about prediction that we can only predict things after they have happened but we go on. i think. one thing that i can predict with some certainty in two thousand and fifty although i have different scenarios but even in the worst scenario. the brics will have collectively a higher g.d.p. . and the g c i can also pretty certain that in terms of education. innovation systems. infrastructure the brics will be certainly farther ahead of the united states

if not seeks as a whole interim so far politics i think they are much harder to pretty but i don't know jump in here real quick to time and why do i want to give you the last word forty seconds go ahead. try to remember then show ping's master plan seventy eight he said that by two thousand and forty there could be political freedom in china can you imagine if that happens the thousand for you get to two thousand and fifty the asian century already established china as a democratic powerhouse in an economy powerhouse and they're back to where they were for eight singing of the last twenty centuries so my bets are on raging ok gentlemen thank you very much my guest i mean some hollow brussels and in denver and thanks to our viewers for watching if you are see you next time and remember across.

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