According to Azat TV, Arman Vardanyan, a member of the Bruntsk Civilian Initiative, made a post on his Facebook page stating:
“There’s a lot of talk and writing about BRICS these days. Is the potential of this union being overestimated? They have already created the BRICS New Development Bank, negotiations are underway to create a unified currency unit, form a unified economic zone, and so on. Are these ambitious initiatives feasible and effective in ensuring the sovereignty of the union’s member states?
In 1817, the Bank of Britain issued a currency unit which it named ‘Sovereign.’ The name wasn’t chosen randomly – if a state didn’t have its own currency unit, it wasn’t considered sovereign. In the modern world, having your own currency unit is not a sufficient condition for sovereignty.
The International Monetary Fund, which is a specialized UN institution, was created in 1944 during the Bretton Woods international financial conference and today manages the Global Banking System, with the Dollar as its medium of exchange. All world currencies have a direct connection to this fund.
The paradox of BRICS is that the BRICS Development Bank itself participates in sanctions against a BRICS member state – Russia. Here, the conflict of interest is obvious. BRICS states are consulting about creating a common currency unit. They might even name it ‘BRICS’ if it works out.
This raises the question: what will determine its value? For example, the Russian perspective is that energy should become BRICS’s unit of measurement. 1 BRICS would equal X kilowatt-hours of energy, Y cubic meters of gas, and Z barrels of oil. But some BRICS states have less of these resources, and automatically, states with more energy resources would be at an advantage, which isn’t beneficial for China, India, or Brazil. The question arises: how should 1 BRICS be measured to benefit everyone enough to abandon the Dollar system and switch to the BRICS system?
Speaking out against the Western financial system isn’t sufficient reason to go against one’s own interests, and being against it doesn’t mean supporting a black box. Today, the Western financial system is valued not only for its largest market but also for the new technological revolution. No BRICS member state, no matter how authoritarian or adventurous, can convince others to dismantle the existing financial world order just because U.S. policy isn’t to their liking. One might be crazy, but not everyone. It’s no coincidence that Chinese President Xi Jinping tells Putin to stop the war in Ukraine.