BRICS-Global South Development a nd the Globalist Threat

1.    Introduction

The world is witnessing today a tremendous shih fr om a unipolar, to a tripolar geopolitical dimension, in which the United States, Russia and China are start- ing to play a pivotal role in contributing to peace and international cooperation. In this context, the role of BRICS and their vision and strategy, becomes crucial and, particularly, regarding the virtuous effects that any newly designed win-win knowledge-based technological strategy, with the Global South, would generate in the form of a new wave of formidable economic development. In this last period of progressive deglobalization, the unipolar approach has shown, more than ever before, its limits to contribute to the growth and development efforts of the Global South. The reasons for that are multiple.
In the first place, the International Economic Organizations that emerged from Bretton Woods, 80 years ago, have been erratic in their development pol- icy interventions and recommendations which, in most of the cases, were unable to identify the revolutionary implications of the knowledge-based economy and the right interpretation of its sustainable development dimensions for developing nations. These gaps revealed the mechanistic thinking that a unique single theory could solve all the problems of all countries. We desperately need new theoretical

and applied models and tools capable of explaining growth, national production and development in an integrated way. This is a crucial challenge for BRICS coun- tries and the Global South.
Secondly, hyper-globalization came together with the accelerated diffusion of globalism, a kind of “fake-governance”, an intent of “privatization of the Res Publica”. Globalism should be understood as an authentic economic and social reality. It brings with it the predominance of highly concentrated corporate actors, imposing their global corporate strategies, on political actors. It is G7 countries, and in particu- lar the corporate oligarchy of the United States and the United Kingdom which have, and may continue to benefit the most, from globalism, over other nations. Other western economies have also participated and have been actively incorporating and abiding by the new social engineering, also known as “woke culture” or “wokism”, used as a tool to grant social support to this ideology and to contribute to main glo- balist corporations taking control of political actors, as a way to open new markets. In today’s increasingly more “international”, than “transnational” world scenario, and in order to identify what technological approaches and initiatives should be prioritized, by BRICS and the Global South, to contribute to economic growth and sustainable development, two main priorities emerge: deconstruct globalism and launch knowl- edge-based national competitiveness strategies, in particular through NBIC techno- logical convergence, as a codevelopment approach by BRICS with the Global South.
2.    An agenda to deconstruct globalism and promote development

Since the mid-1990s, the phenomenon of hyper-globalization has generated two extreme effects: the wild concentration of companies and profits of an emerg- ing oligarchy, on the one hand, and the reduction of real wages as well as of the activities of small and medium-sized companies, on the other, thus threatening the potential to stimulate global consumption, while destroying middle classes.
The globalist process
The globalist process emerged guided by a plutocracy that has been denatur- ing western countries’ democracies and destabilizing societies worldwide, through actors that have designed and financed a complex social and financial engineer- ing. This process has transformed these nations into “politically correct” and nearly totalitarian ones and threaten their sovereignties and cultures. There is an urgent need to fight against globalist impositions, at national and international levels, by promoting reforms and engaging in far-reaching political actions as the only way to defend the values of freedom and democracy.
“Globalism” and “Wokism” terms should not be confused. The social engineer- ing behind the term wokism is starting to decay globally, but not globalism. A good illustration of this decay is the new policy implemented by President Trump, clearly illustrated by the address, by Vice-President Vance, at the last Munich Conference.

Paradoxically, the forces of globalism, those which promoted the Color Revolu- tions, the Arab Spring or the “Catalan Coup”1 are still alive. The current globalist agenda has been built through, among others, misconceived approaches such as the deconstructing of the UN Millenium Development Agenda, into Agenda 2030, a rigid matrix of new radical woke priorities and imposed false truths.
Effective anti-globalist political proposals could be drawn up, through the strategic design of “step by step”, almost “surgical” actions, capable of deconstruct- ing globalist mechanisms. This will, among others, protect the interests of BRICS and the Global South. The initial proposals presented below go along these lines.
Transit from sustainable development to green competitiveness
It is important to stress that, from the very beginning, the concept of sustain- able development, endorsed by the member countries of the UN, never conceived “sustainability”, the environmental imperative, as superior to development, the economic one. UN sovereign nations agreed it should be sustainable, but above all, development!. Paradoxically, what we are seeing today is the reverse. The real alter- native should have been, instead, to promote “Green Competitiveness” at all levels, a strategy that would allow environmental goals to be achieved, precisely because we design them as drivers, and not as obstacles, to growth and development. A strategy that generates simultaneous green, economic and social benefits. The BRICS, and particularly China, are today a successful example of this strategy. They have foreseen the benefits of the internalization of positive externalities. Eco-ef- ficiency and clean production, the promotion of renewable energy, the promotion of green trade and the generation of competitive advantages from the conserva- tion and use of forests and biodiversity, are important illustrations in this regard. In order to reestablish a coherent approach to sustainable development, the following actions can be recommended: (i) a coherent strategy, announcing and defending an immediate international temporary green moratorium, in all instances wh ere a serious conflict may prevail today between sustainability and development; and (ii) design and launch a “Green Competitiveness Initiative”, in contrast to the “Ecolog- ical Transition” promoted worldwide by globalist forces. This global initiative would be framed so as to generate simultaneous green, economic and social benefits.
Neutralize globalist interference fr om NGOs, media, “verifiers” and social networks
Key representatives of civil society, a large part of the media, fact-checkers, and
even the large global corporations that control social media, continue to feed the globalist process. Globalists found a way to infiltrate and control most of the NGOS that truly represented civil society in the past. These NGOs have also found ways to control institutions such as the European Commission (Brussels Lobbies), the European Parliament, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), the Council of Europe or the UN Human Rights Committee. In the case of the media, and in the United States, they control the main media groups. In Europe, they directly finance the BBC, Le Monde, Die Welt, El País, etc. On the side of the so-called “fact check- ers” or “verifiers”, they not only claim to be considered as “guarantors of the truth”, but almost as Public Prosecutors. If we want to defend our democracies, the fol- lowing action should be taken: demand a Transparency Law on NGO funding and activities that would establish, among others, an updated database on their objec- tives, their real functions and the origin of their funding, particularly if it is external funding. The law will monitor their activities, to ensure that they are in accordance with the legislation and the sovereign interests of the respective nations. It will also identify the existing links with external financing from globalist funds and institu- tions, as well as demand the examination of the oligopolistic practices of certain groups that threaten information plurality.
De-privatize the “Res Publica” and take again the control of international institutions
The globalist process does not respect the independence of international
organizations, nor of High Courts of Justice. The social engineers of this process, such as the Soros and Gates Foundations, have also concentrated their financing on international institutions capable of imposing the new global governance on the road to a supposed “New World Order”. From the moment that, within the scope of an international institution, sovereign nations lose the power of decision, the insti- tution looses its fundamentals and credibility. International organizations were never created to be governed, in a covert manner, by non-governmental private actors, but this is the astonishing reality we face today.
Globalist NGOs and lobbies exercise tight control in Geneva, Brussels and Strasbourg, they influence the drahing of laws and directives, initiatives, jurispru- dence, parliamentary condemnations of certain countries, gender issues, extreme feminism, the culture of death, illegal immigration, etc. Similarly, in other UN bodies, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, together with other NGOs have become, progressively, the organi- zation’s “top funders”, above member States. The independence and plurality of these organizations is today in question. Time may have come to undertake a number of actions: (i) Present to the UN Secretary General a report on the loss of independence and impartiality of various key agencies of the organization; (ii) Call on the European Parliament (EP) to evaluate the influence of the Soros OSF and other globalist lobbies and NGOs related to them, on the work of the Euro- pean Commission or in the EP itself; (iii) Mobilize a coalition of international lawyers and other actors to bring before the European Parliament, the threat to the impartiality of judges at the ECHR, and of Rapporteurs at the UN Commis-

sion on Human Rights in Geneva, based on compelling evidence presented in the two reports published on the subject by the European Centre for Law and Justice in Strasbourg.
3.    A new BRICS-Global South Co-development Approach

Everywhere, disruption has become the new normal. Development processes do not happen anymore in a gradual or sequential manner. Many developing nations’ National Plans still follow blindly multilateral institutions advice that “if they follow the right path of specialisation, countries should progressively transit from their intermediary status of today, to that of an industrial country in 2030 and wait, until 2050, to become real Knowledge-based economies”! Are they really serious? Is it for this reason that these multilateral institutions have recently and publicly exposed their fears of an inevitable “fractured world”? Let’s recall here that in new development models, “specialization”, as a concept, becomes “diver- sification”2, and this means nothing less than “development”. So, there is no bet- ter “development shortcut” than to diversify a nation. In framing a codevelopment interaction with the Global South, the BRICS need to respond to the combined challenge posed by the new diversification nature of development models and the emerging threat of a “fractured global world”. The promotion of new diversification models, in a common co-development framework with the Global South, would accelerate the shih towards knowledge-based development.
BRICS and the Global South need to drive the change and they have to do it as
quickly as possible. Things have really stopped happening gradually and sequen- tially. Emerging economies are already starting to become central points in a ris- ing tornado fed by digitization, mobilization, augmentation, disintermediation and automation. Inside it, winning or losing is now happening faster than ever before. So, why would the Global South contribute to a fractured world by waiting 2050 to become knowledge-based economies and societies? Since change is exponential, the e-revolution has the capacity to launch the BRICS in co-development with the Global South, towards new heights and in a reasonably short period of time.
Indeed, many developing nations are sub-optimizing the use of the true driv- ers of endogenous and international competitiveness, wasting the synergies that could be built from the Schumpeterian and neo-Schumpeterian approaches3. In this regard, special attention should be given by BRICS to avoid perpetuation by multilateral institutions of their pro- “immiserizing growth” and “poverty trap” policies, conditioning the future of the Global South. Contrary to what most interna- tional trade theories still maintain, countries should specialize/diversify towards goods from their, not more, but less, abundant and more high value added gener- ating factors of production. Knowledge for innovation, as today’s most important of these factors, is not a given, exogenous variable, but a truly endogenous one. Knowledge-based competitiveness is not something given that you may have, or not, depending on your stage of development. It is something that can be deter- mined. Today you don’t check your national abilities and competitiveness; you build them!. Knowledge can be built and generate development shortcuts. Several recent examples illustrate this. A new institutional architecture is needed to sup- port these new approaches, a one that BRICS nations can promote in their co-de- velopment efforts with the Global South.
In this context, the biggest danger in today’s world is the increasing fracture
between countries able to use the full power of the technological revolution and the rest. Unfortunately, there are too many divisive narratives around the techno- logical revolution that is transforming governance, economics and politics. The challenge of restructuring economies, at different levels of development, around new NBIC (Nano-Bio-Info-Congo) convergent technologies, has not been suffi- ciently echoed. While advanced countries are galloping in this direction, the gap with developing and emerging economies is widening.
Research on NBIC technological convergence and its economic impact has been a subject of research in the last 20 years. Nevertheless, it is only in highly developed economies wh ere it has expanded the most, providing these economies with accelerated technological advantages reinforcing their competitiveness. We refer here to the multidisciplinary research of interactions prevailing between life and artificial systems for the design of tools that combine nanotechnology (Nano) with biotechnology (Bio), information and telecommunication technologies (Info/ ITCs) and cognitive sciences (Cogno/Artificial intelligence). Engaging fully in NBIC convergence, as part of the implementation of a knowledge-based model of diversification, can provide BRICS and emerging economies, with strong techno- logical competitive tools. In turn, BRICS could, in co-development efforts with the Global South, generate strong synergies for authentic technological “development shortcuts” in these countries.
Joining the new wave of NBIC technological convergence, requires the anal-
ysis of the science and technology complex network prevailing in each country. In 2006, the author of the present Essay published the first of these analyses for NBIC4. A year later a new book was published for the specific case of the Health sector5. Undertaking these complex analyses can lead to establishing “critical paths”. Through the use of prospective structural analyses tools, the identification of national NBIC convergence critical paths can contribute, in turn, to identify the potential to apply an NBIC-led diversification model to an economy. Identify the capacity to jump from initial NBIC capacities to more value added ones, can finally contribute to the framing of new national competitive advantages.
4.    Conclusion
Technology, in the new knowledge-based economy, represents the central developmental challenge of BRICS, in co-development and the Global South, in the years to come. BRICS countries, would be wise to act strategically and gener- ate a more transparent and equitable world playing field, by countering the threat of globalist actors and the destabilizing effect of their strategies. In addition, they could accelerate the emergence of new knowledge-based development through diversification shortcuts, and in particular through the identification of NBIC new national technological convergence critical paths. Through these double edge interventions they would contribute, undoubtedly, to the acceleration of growth and development of their respective nations and of those from the Global South.