In 1928, the German Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer told his German congregation in Barcelona: “The rug – or let us say the bourgeois parquet floor – has been ruthlessly pulled out from under our feet, and we must now search for a bit of earth on which to stand. We have been utterly and completely shipwrecked and are now horrified to see just how utterly at sea many of us are.”
World War I brought about deep social, economic, political changes that were disrupting European societies. Addressing the same congregation in 1929, he said: “All that seemed solid has become soft, all that seemed certain has become uncertain, all that seemed self-evident has become questionable...”
One hundred years later, Bonhoeffer’s words resonate with us as we struggle to understand the deep technological, economic and political changes that are transforming the world for ever.
BRICS+ member states (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates) now represent 45% of the world’s population, while the G7 (United States, Germany, Canada, France, Great Britain, Italy and Japan) only account for 10%.
The BRICS+ countries account for 35% of global GDP, while the G7 only represents 30%. In 1992, G7 nations made up 45.5% of global GDP, while BRICS held just 16.7%. Between 2000 and 2023, BRICS+ expanded its share of global merchandise exports from 10.7% to 23.3%. Meanwhile, the G7’s share fell significantly from 45.1% to 28.9%.
According to the International Monetary Fund, China alone will account for 22% of global growth over the next five years, surpassing the total contribution of all G7 countries. The BRICS+ countries expected to experience an average growth rate of 4.4% in 2024-2025, which is notably higher than the G7’s average of 1.7%.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) runs ‘The Critical Technology Tracker’, covering 64 critical technologies spanning defence, space, energy, the environment, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, robotics, cyber, computing, advanced materials and key quantum technology areas. It provides a leading indicator of a country’s research performance, strategic intent and potential future science and technology capability.
ASPI’s global and country findings for 2024 show that China has strengthened its global research lead in the past year and is now leading in 57 of 64 critical technologies. This is a leap from the 2003–2007 period, when it was leading in just three technologies.
ASPI says that “the US is losing the strong historical advantage that it has built: Over the 21-year period, the US has been unable to hold its research advantage. In the early to mid-2000s, the US was by far the dominant research power. India now ranks in the top five countries for 45 of 64 technologies... This represents enormous gains from 2003–2007, in which India only placed in the top five countries for four technologies. The European Union, as a whole, is a competitive technological player: With members of the EU aggregated over the past five years, we found that the EU leads in two technologies… and is ranked second in 30 technologies”.
Irrelevant Europe
On February 25, 2024, Josep Borrell, the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs, wrote in a blog post on the official website of the EU’s diplomatic service that the “era of Western dominance has indeed definitively ended… If the current global geopolitical tensions continue to evolve in the direction of ‘the West against the Rest’, Europe’s future risks to be bleak”.
While the US is mending its relations with Russia, the EU is becoming more hostile towards its neighbour- Evarist Bartolo
He acknowledged that the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, along with the anti-colonial uprising in Africa’s Sahel region, have “significantly increased this risk” of Europe becoming geopolitically irrelevant. Borrell said that “improving our relations with the ‘Global South’” is one of “the four main tasks on EU’s geopolitical agenda… Many in the ‘Global South’ accuse us of ‘double standards’”.
Since Borrell wrote that just over a year ago, things have become more difficult and complicated for the EU. Not only has the EU failed to take any serious steps to improve its relations with the Global South (developing and least developed countries) but there is now a deep rift between the EU and the US as American President Donald Trump wants to improve relations with Russia and wants the EU to become much less dependent on the US for its security.
While the US is mending its relations with Russia, the EU is becoming more hostile towards its neighbour at a time when there cannot be prosperity and stability in Europe without a framework of cooperative security that includes Russia.
While BRICS+ grows, G7 fragments. G7 members used to have deep-rooted economic, security and diplomatic alliances through NATO, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. This allowed the G7 nations of the West to adopt a common position on global issues against the Rest: imposing sanctions, coordinating monetary policy, or addressing security threats. The West is now deeply divided, with the US and the EU at odds on their proxy war in Ukraine and with the US threatening to take over Greenland that belongs to a NATO ally and to impose tariffs on EU exports for the American market.
On April 4, 2023, the influential think tank, the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) concluded in its white paper ‘The Art of Vassalisation’ that “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has revealed Europeans’ profound dependence on the US for their security, despite EU efforts at achieving strategic autonomy. Over the last decade, the EU has grown relatively less powerful than America – economically, technologically, and militarily”.
Written when Joe Biden was still in the White House, ECFR said that “Europeans also still lack agreement on crucial strategic questions for themselves and look to Washington for leadership”.
ECFR warned: “Europe becoming an American vassal is unwise for both sides.”
Trump’s US is ending this dependence. Can the leaders of the NATO-EU recover from this trauma, learn to fend for themselves and build a healthy, sensible relationship with the US, Russia, China and the Global South in the emerging multipolar world?
Evarist Bartolo is a former Labour foreign and education minister.