Putin starts sanctions against EU/USA

[Zod95]

Augen said:

Zod95 said:

It could be a lot worse too. Why can't everyone just get along? Because that's not how things work. The world always had a leader. Nowadays, it's the NATO countries (more specifically the USA) but it is changing to the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). That change has been lead by China (the future world leader) and Russia (the most proactive country in the change). Although this is inevitable (once the BRICS will just get more and more powerful in the course of time and no matter what), the West is logically not willing to give up that easily. The Ukrain's enticement from the European Union and the social disorder sponsored by the US are some examples of the West fighting back towards the easiest target (Russia), since China is nearly untouchable.

Hereupon, what do you consider to be the "normal" that you want to go back to? US domination? Maybe the same was thought about the UK empire when it started to get weaker and lost the dominance to the USA. Normality is in constant change. Nothing lasts forever.

I'll be curious as to if "BRICS" becomes a block or if we essentially go from G8 to G20 as leaders.  The world divided into spheres in the Cold War showed that eventually on side would win out.  If emerging economies want to continue growth past a certain point they will increasingly become interconnected to established economies. Sure, some countires will recede a bit and other emerge, but my hope is they all understand how better off with peace and commerce as opposed to conflict and isolationist practices.  Be very interesting how the 21st century develops.

Even after the Cold War, the West never stopped being a sphere. That caused the rest of the world to organize themselves into small spheres too, each lead by an economic / military power. BRICS (which comprises a group of countries from 3 different continents) have been the first attempt to create something bigger than any sphere in order to unite the world. And that had to be done outside of the NATO's influence, since the West is far from willing to give up of their highly privileged situation (specially the USA with the dollar). So I would say BRICS are isolated from the West because the alliance was created in response to the West being isolated from the rest of the world in the first place. Note that I'm just talking about power, of course the economies are interconnected. Anyway, such isolation just gives more power to the center (in case they become the center). There's an enormous advantage in being at the center and having the others as followers. So far the USA has had that advantage, in the future it will be the BRICS (or even China alone).