Sectionalism has produced quite a number of alphabet soup associations designed to break apart and break out from larger universes to form smaller more distinctive, focused, and independent factions, aggrupation, and alliances. Depending on attitudes and objectives, these can either be seen as divisive or unifying — as defense mechanisms or one that seeks comfort in commonalities.
To establish regional security on a geopolitical scale, these factions range from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) created to counter the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), while on the non-military front, to establish economic and trade alliances, there is the powerful European Union (EU) on the opposite side of the planet, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) right in our neighborhood.
The pure and absolute objectives of these supposedly parochial organizations have blurred over time as the difference between a purely military undertaking and those that are economic blur as well. As examples, economic sanctions as part of warfare as well as military expansionism to control if not forcibly appropriate international assets such as oil, gas and minerals resources are extremely familiar issues with the ongoing war in Ukraine and our own weekly mini battles in the West Philippine Sea.
Between 2009 and 2010, as a result of a developing summit initiated at Yekaterinburg, Russia, founding members from Brazil, Russia, India, and China, and later, South Africa formed BRICS. Wikipedia describes BRICS as an intergovernmental geopolitical bloc established to highlight investment opportunities. Note that political persuasion, ideology, or economic structure are not strict requisites. This is validated by one of its principal tenets — that of non-interference.
Rice price influencers
In our region, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam have joined BRICS. All four are significant trading partners of the Philippines. Two, in particular, temper domestic inflation either through our policy of importations that flood domestic food supply or through import substitution. Do not forget that our rice price influencers come from importing from India, Thailand, and Vietnam. Confronted by the creation of BRICS and the pressures to join, this will be a critical issue for the Philippines and the ambivalent foreign policies of the president.
While Singapore and the Philippines have so far decided to ignore overtures to join, perhaps due to American interests and influences in our case, and inherent economic strength in the case of Singapore, note that among BRICS, socialists and democracies, autocracies and representative governments, free-market and command economies co-exist.
BRICS’ membership has since changed but it has also grown exponentially and currently its combined resources cover nearly one-third of the planet’s and 45% of the world’s population.
The planet’s current organization representing the world’s leading advanced economies, the West’s G7 Bloc, however, considers BRICS a rival organization. Given the historical domination of the US dollar and its economy on global trade, culture, and geopolitics, that is understandable. [READ: ‘Anything you can do,’ G7 rivals China with grand infrastructure plan]
Analyze the history of sectionalism and the development of geopolitical factions. For as long as we can remember, the global economy has always been polarized and the demarcations drawn between real and imagined rivals have not only been thick and solid, but these have also been drawn along diverse and crisscrossing spectra that any kind of global or even regional unity seems like an impossible challenge.
Even when the population remains technically homogenous, where the internal territories, towns and provinces are naturally contiguous and geographically borderless, severe sectionalism has won out. From the fractured tribal states of the African continent to the dispute between the West and the New Englanders in the 1800s and 1900s and the civil war between the North and South in Northern America, among the most neglected communities to modern-day beacons of a unified political exemplar, division, — radical and, at times, violent —has punctuated human history, predicating the internal divisiveness we see today.
The ghosts of Mars must be laughing at us. Graphically debunking the shared one-planet proposition that should keep us from blowing ourselves and our planet into smithereens and causing a man-made 6th extinction, closer to home but as ancient as the 200s BC, China built a divisive wall so massive it is visible from space where no other man-made demarcations can be seen. Ironically, China is a principal author of BRICS — and is the invader of the West Philippine Sea.
While nature has provided the oceans, seas, and rivers as well as mountains and deserts as challenges to unity, humankind developed concepts, protocols and technologies that bridge and overcome nature’s barriers. From prehistoric horns, smoke signals and tom-toms to digital telecommunications, the invention of the wheel, man-made wings, rockets and satellites, and vehicles to conquer distances, to such concepts as core-families in our immediate microspheres, to globalization and trade alliances, to free speech and other various subtle iterations of inclusivity, mankind seems to want to relate closer and better.
To join or not to join
Unfortunately, from The Book of Genesis and the Garden’s Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, this objective to develop inclusivity has likewise created our capacity to end life on earth. From the Allied Powers versus the Axis Alliance in World War 2 to the proliferation of thermonuclear doomsday bombs under the control of politicians and other genocidal madmen, to Chinese military expansionists within our waters, towns and elsewhere, global war hawks like Xi Jin Ping pursue a scorched-earth policy while bent on eliminating rivals.
![[Edgewise] Xi Jinping wants his ‘diplomatic iron army’ to win people’s hearts](http://www.rappler.com/tachyon/2024/01/TL-edgewise-jan-25-2024.jpg?fit=449%2C449)
Factor these in as we are being invited to join and engage BRICS with its founding principals who threaten the global world order with apocalyptic expansionism on the larger stage, and in our neighborhood, not simply threatening food security for a vulnerable economy whose leaders decided it will import food and its principal price index staple, but as BRIC’s Chinese hegemons threaten, they simultaneously create subservient food import dependence as we are diametrically weaned away from less hegemonic trading partners.
This is what happens when the sole crafter of Philippine foreign policy and the former Department of Agriculture secretary has prioritized food security based on simply combating high prices with quick-fix importations likely from BRICS, rather than defining food security from the more fundamental objective of domestic self-sustainability, self-sufficiency, and an empowered and productive agricultural sector. – Rappler.com
Dean de la Paz is a former investment banker and managing director of a New Jersey-based power company operating in the Philippines. He is the chairman of the board of a renewable energy company and is a retired Business Policy, Finance, and Mathematics professor. He collects Godzilla figures and antique tin robots.
