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THE MULTIPOLARISM OF FOOLS  
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John Feffer
November 4, 2025
TomDispatch [[link removed]]

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_ Don’t be fooled by autocrats championing sovereignty. As a bloc
of mostly authoritarian, eco-unfriendly, and socio-economically
conservative countries, BRICS represents the multipolarism of fools. _


BRICS Business Council, 20 Aug 2013 , by GovernmentZA (CC BY-ND 2.0 /
Flickr)

 

Donald Trump hates Antifa. He hates late-night TV hosts,
Democratic-controlled cities, and anyone who has ever challenged him
in court. As of October, he officially hates the Nobel committee for
not giving him a peace prize, despite his efforts to strong-arm its
members into voting for him.

The president has gone after everyone he thinks has ever done him
wrong. But there is a Venn diagram to his vendettas, an overlap in his
circle of obsessions.

Map out his attacks, subtracting the purely personal and the primarily
partisan, and you’ll see that they converge on a profound disgust
for the liberal international order. That Trump has personally
profited from that very global order — his portfolio of
international real estate, his business’s reliance on global supply
chains, the unacknowledged benefits he’s accrued from the
international rule of law — makes no difference.

“Globalists” like BARACK OBAMA
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and EMMANUEL MACRON
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have made fun of him, not fully accepting him into their ranks and
refusing to acknowledge his brilliance with medals and awards. In the
president’s skewed accounting ledger, the gatekeepers at the global
country club who don’t want him as a member must be made to pay.

Trump has attacked the liberal international order in seemingly every
conceivable way. He’s initiated a global trade war. He’s
dismantled U.S. humanitarian assistance to impoverished lands and put
pressure on allies to spend more money on war preparations, not
welfare programs or foreign aid. He’s destroyed relationships with
liberal allies like Canada and the non-Hungarian members of the
European Union. He’s levied sanctions against the International
Criminal Court (ICC) in an effort TO SHUT IT DOWN
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He’s gleefully ignored international law by embracing ICC scofflaws
like Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu. And he’s committed his
own crimes, like THE EXTRAJUDICIAL MURDER
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of the crews of nine boats near the Venezuelan coast and five in the
Pacific Ocean.

The United States had long been a pillar of the liberal international
order. So, when Trump takes a sledgehammer to its base, he causes
potentially irreparable damage to the reputation, power, and global
position of the United States. Many Americans, particularly those in
the political center, are aghast at the self-inflicted wounds this
country is now suffering.

In other quarters, however, there’s celebration.

America’s right wing has long hated everything that shimmers in the
distance beyond the territorial waters of this country. The U.N. gives
it indigestion. Ditto the European Union, the Third World, and
anything connected to universal human rights. The most reactionary
elements of the Republican Party have blocked Washington’s
ratification of international treaties, undermined global efforts to
address threats like climate change, and claimed to spot Communist (or
Islamist or terrorist) conspiracies behind every international
institution and many nationalist movements. Such right-wingers have
pushed to eliminate all forms of soft power in favor of beefed-up hard
power. The ascendancy of Trump has provided them with an opportunity
to force conventional conservatives from their party, while
consolidating an America First position.

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BUY THE BOOK
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Elements of the left, too, have rejoiced in Trump’s
globalism-bashing. The most predictable support has COME FROM UNIONS
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that believe the president’s tariffs will protect American jobs. But
some leftists have also been hesitant to support the work of the now
largely shuttered U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
— even its distribution of AIDS medicines and climate funds —
because of its legacy as a “DESTRUCTIVE ARM OF AMERICAN IMPERIALISM
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Some have even joined hands with Trump TO DERIDE NATO
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and ECHO KREMLIN TALKING POINTS
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lead-up to the 2024 election, the odd progressive EVEN MISTOOK TRUMP
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an anti-imperialist.

Once upon a time, adventurous theorists IMAGINED
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that communism and capitalism might both end up adopting some version
of democratic socialism, as a reformed Soviet Union and an
increasingly welfare-state-oriented United States seemed to be
converging on the Swedish model. In the early 1980s, however, the
leaders of the two superpowers of that time, Leonid Brezhnev and
Ronald Reagan, teamed up to drive a knife through that particular
fantasy.

Today, a different convergence is in process and the two poles are not
meeting in the middle. Rather, the dalliance between left and right is
taking place at the margins where a mutual disgust for liberalism
fuels the romance. This courtship has developed its own love language.
Both sides love to hate “globalism” — and, of course, the
globalists who globalized it.

Trump stands astride that consensus like an angry god, urging his
followers to tear down the temples and wreak vengeance on those who
worship foreign deities. Meanwhile, some Marxists MUTTER
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approvingly of “sharpening the contradictions” — the notion that
Trump will make things so bad that the masses will rise up in
reaction. Meanwhile, MAGA followers love the spectacle of destruction
that clears the way for White people, rich people, or just plain mean
people to take over.

The left and the right still maintain very different visions of the
future: maximum justice versus maximum injustice. But their odd
convergence against the international liberal elite helps to explain
MAGA’s success in certain Democratic strongholds. “Throw the
globalist bums out” is a tagline that can appeal to both ends of the
political spectrum.

As the poet William Butler Yeats OBSERVED
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the end of the First World War, the center is not holding, while the
best lack all conviction. During this second coming of Donald Trump,
however, you better believe that it won’t be mere anarchy that is
loosed upon the world.

GLOBALISM, NO. MULTIPOLARISM, YES?

Multipolarism has lately become ALL THE RAGE
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The notion that the world could have multiple centers of power in
contrast to the bipolarism of the Cold War or the aspirational
unipolarism of the United States after the fall of the Soviet Union in
1991 is anything but new. Still, with the “RISE OF THE REST
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and the ascent of China in particular, the world has begun to look
ever less U.S.-centric.

For many, however, multipolarism isn’t just a description, it’s a
prescription, too.

On the right, philosophers LIKE ALEXANDER DUGIN IN RUSSIA AND OLAVO DE
CARVALHO IN BRAZIL
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have used the concept as part of their ultra-nationalist projects. For
Dugin, Russia must reassert its superpower status as part of a new
Eurasian force to block the Anglo-Saxons and their NATO henchmen. For
Carvalho, who died in 2022, multipolarism would enable Brazil to move
closer to the Christian West, while shrugging off its subservience to
global elites.

Some on the left, too, have identified multipolarism as a sign of a
more equitable geopolitics — and a potential cudgel against American
imperialism. As the Tricontinental EDITORIALIZED
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in 2022:

“The longed-for Western, globalised capitalist world has not lived
up to the expectations of even its most enthusiastic advocates. Today
we are witnessing a shift towards a multipolar world, despite the
aspirations of neoliberal globalists, neoconservatives, and those who
favour the US model of development (‘Americanists’).” 

ENTER THE BRICS

If multipolarism seems like a magic elixir to many, today’s vessel
of choice for it is the BRICS. Over the years, many multipolar efforts
have fallen by the wayside, including the Non-Aligned Movement, the
New International Economic Order, the Group of 77, and the World
Social Forum. But the institutions created by Brazil, Russia, India,
China, and South Africa (BRICS) beginning in 2010 were seen by
multipolarists as THE INHERITORS
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of those earlier movements for non-alignment and so a potential
COUNTERFORCE
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to U.S. and Western power. According to such a scenario, the BRICS
would sooner or later REPLACE THE WORLD BANK AND THE INTERNATIONAL
MONETARY FUND (IMF
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DETHRONE THE DOLLAR
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and remake the entire global economy.

For some on the left, support for the transformative nature of BRICS
recalls arguments used to defend Russia from charges of imperial
designs on Ukraine. By supposedly holding the line against the
enlargement of the European Union and the expansion of NATO, Russia
was seen as standing up to the West. The globalists responded with the
same kind of sanctions they’d applied to Cuba, North Korea, and
Venezuela. Unlike the leaders of those three countries, however,
Vladimir Putin has never pretended to be a man of the left. Instead,
as a right-wing authoritarian leader, he’s killed opponents, thrown
dissidents in jail, eliminated an independent media in Russia, and
imposed a religious, anti-LGBT, misogynistic agenda on its society.
He’s also revived Russian imperialism with his invasion of Ukraine,
his political meddling IN MOLDOVA
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and his CYBER-INTERFERENCE IN THE BALTIC COUNTRIES
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The cognitive dissonance required for a progressive to defend Putin
carries over to any enthusiasm for BRICS as a whole. After all, a
majority of the countries in that 11-member group — Russia, China,
Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates —
are presided over by autocrats. Only Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia,
and India are democracies, and the last two come with asterisks, given
the autocratic tendencies of their current leaders. Moreover, the
anti-imperial credentials of the bloc are suspect, considering
Russia’s interference in its “near abroad,” China’s position
toward Taiwan, India’s efforts in Kashmir, and the Saudi war in
Yemen. At best, many of the BRICS members are sub-imperial, as
political economist Patrick Bond has long ARGUED
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The BRICS also generally have a distinctly regressive position on
climate change, which is hardly surprising given that the majority of
them are significant fossil-fuel exporters. Brazil has been pushing
its fellow members to focus on climate change as a threat to the
planet and a number of BRICS statements do acknowledge the importance
of reducing carbon emissions. But China, despite its massive
INVESTMENTS
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in the green energy revolution, remains stunningly dependent on the
worst of the fossil fuels, coal, as do India and Indonesia, while
carbon neutrality remains a distant goal for Russia (2070). In the
LATEST BRICS STATEMENT
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the members “acknowledge fossil fuels will still play an important
role in the world’s energy mix, particularly for emerging markets
and developing economies.”

But the conservative nature of the BRICS is perhaps most strikingly on
display in its embrace of the global capitalist economy. Its July 2025
statement ENTHUSIASTICALLY ENDORSED
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both the IMF and the World Bank, and put the World Trade Organization
at the center of the global trading system. The principal BRICS
institution, the New Development Bank, HAS BEEN HERALDED
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as a building block for a new economic order, but its focus on
FINANCING
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the same old dirty extraction projects makes it a mirror image of the
World Bank.

The BRICS mode of multipolarism has but a single progressive
attribute: its potential as a counterbalance to U.S. imperial power.
Unfortunately, even a tepid challenge to Washington’s authority has
produced a predictable backlash from Donald Trump, a leader committed
not just to U.S. unipolarism but to his own unileaderism. To the
imaginary threat that the BRICS would actually create a currency to
challenge the dollar, Trump has repeatedly WARNED
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aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS, will be
charged an ADDITIONAL 10% tariff.”

TOWARD A TRUE INTERNATIONALISM

In its BRICS form, multipolarism boils down to, at best, an effort to
get a better seat at the table with the big boys. At worst, it’s a
repudiation of the progressive parts of internationalism, especially
global efforts to rein in abuses of power through higher standards on
human rights, the environment, and labor.

To support the regressive multipolarism of the BRICS countries,
elements of the right and left trumpet the importance of sovereignty
and the notion that a country’s leadership has uncontested control
over the territory within its borders. Sovereignty is indeed under
attack on all sides. At a territorial level, the most obvious
violation is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At the economic level,
neoliberal globalists want to challenge sovereign economic power
through corporate attacks on state regulations and the IMF’s
imposition of budget austerity in its loan agreements.
Internationalists, by contrast, focus on democratically agreed-upon
norms around human rights, while challenging the state’s prerogative
to deploy child soldiers, employ child workers, or kill off large
parts of the population.

Progressive internationalists should, however, be wary of conservative
notions of sovereignty. Sure, we loathe the IMF’s overreach and the
way oil companies take countries to court to dismantle their
environmental regulations. But we also don’t believe that kings,
tyrants, or even democratically elected autocrats should have the
freedom to invade other countries or engage in extrajudicial killings.
Sovereignty is not a trump card (or a Trump card). _Popular_
sovereignty, where power is in the hands of the people, is certainly
indispensable in securing more democratic societies. But as Trump and
his friends like Nayib Bukele of El Salvador and Viktor Orbán of
Hungary have demonstrated, autocrats often use the language of popular
sovereignty to gain office before concentrating power in their own
sovereign hands. 

It’s a dispiriting irony that just when the world needs more
internationalism to address climate change, economic inequality, and
pandemics, among other devastating realities, it’s also experiencing
an upsurge in nationalism propagated by the SOVEREIGNISTAS
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internationalism these days feels a lot like embracing a Palestinian
state when the material basis for such a state is disappearing beneath
a rising tide of Israeli settlements and bombs. In both cases, there
is a will but not, it seems, a way.

Progressives should not join hands with the right in a misguided
attack on “globalists.” U.S. hegemony and a neoliberal faith in
unfettered markets are noxious to be sure, but don’t be fooled by
autocrats championing sovereignty. As a bloc of mostly authoritarian,
eco-unfriendly, and socio-economically conservative countries
masquerading as a geopolitical counterbalance, the BRICS represent the
multipolarism of fools. The ends do not justify the BRICS.

Call me a globalist, but someone has to stick up for this planet when
so many extremists, whatever they may call themselves, have their
knives out to carve Earth up into their own fiefdoms of bigotry.

_John Feffer is the director of __Foreign Policy in Focus_
[[link removed]]_ at the __Institute for Policy Studies_
[[link removed]]_. In 2012-13, he was also an Open Society
Fellow looking at the transformations that have taken place in Eastern
Europe since 1989. He is the author of several __books_
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[[link removed]]_. His latest non-fiction
book is __Right Across the World_
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_Tom Engelhardt launched TomDispatch in October 2001 as an informal
listserv offering commentary and collected articles from the global
media to a select group of friends and colleagues. In November 2002,
it gained its name and, as a project of the Nation Institute (now the
Type Media Center), became a web-based publication aimed at providing
“a regular antidote to the mainstream media.”_

_Follow TomDispatch on __Twitter_ [[link removed]]_
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Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian
novel, __Songlands_
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novel __Every Body Has a Story_
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and Tom Engelhardt’s __A Nation Unmade by War_
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as well as Alfred McCoy’s __In the Shadows of the American Century:
The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power_
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John Dower’s __The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since
World War II_
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and Ann Jones’s __They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from
America’s Wars: The Untold Story_
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