I WAS alone and noticed that I was laughing out loud. This would normally not be a good sign on so many levels.

But on this occasion my outburst of hilarity was to do with the latest expression of annoyance by Western nations over last week’s summit of Brics nations in the Russian city of Kazan.

The established Brics members — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, joined by a new cohort as of January of this year — Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates — obviously caused some fretting among the self-appointed masters of the universe led by the United States.

The bleating about the Brics summit began way before the leaders of the global majority even set foot on their planes to fly to Russia.

They just can’t help themselves! 

The European Union, and no doubt the US, were apparently vexed about the participation in Kazan of EU candidate country and Nato member Turkey and other partners of the European capitalist club such as Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

But at least one of the EU’s leaders recognised the summit was a clear signal to the former colonial powers to stop lecturing the global majority about who they can and can’t have a relationship with.

European Council president Charles Michel is reported by the Financial Times as recognising that the EU needed to change its ways and show more respect to the global majority.

Of course, another way of terming this might be to say the EU needs to stop being so racist and patronising!

Michel said: “It shows something if a country like Egypt, very close to us and very close to the US from a military point of view, if a country like the Emirates, very close to us in terms of economic partnerships, are making the choice to be in Kazan, they want to send a message to the rest of the world.”

Michel recognised that a new approach was needed if the EU was going to maintain any kind of relationship with the global majority.

He reported a meeting he had with an unnamed African leader in 2022 who said: “When the Europeans come to my country you leave lessons. When the Chinese come they leave infrastructure.”

The final comments from Michel are perhaps the most telling in summing up why so many nations of the global majority have had enough of being treated like naughty schoolchildren.

The days when the global majority was prepared to accept this deeply paternalistic and racist notion that they were “less than” the masters of the universe should have gone many moons ago.

Whatever happens next the plain fact is that the genie is well and truly out of the bottle and has no chance of being recaptured.

Rather than looking ahead into the future for a new multilateral world I believe that it has already been born. We just haven’t recognised it yet in our excitement.

I’m not saying this new world is in its final form — far from it. But it has arrived and will grow.

The unanswered questions are whether this new child will be strangled at birth by the likes of the US or will be able to mature into a fully fledged, self-confident and healthy adult.

In previous articles I have suggested that no bully — such as the US — will simply allow its long-time prey to escape its clutches. They will fight like hell to maintain their lucrative position of power.

But I wanted to say something else here about some of the other obstacles that could stunt the growth of this newborn infant called multilateralism.

Firstly, no child should be lumbered with such an unwieldy name as multilateral or, as some call it, multipolar or even multinodal. We should call the child what it looks like. Let’s call it freedom!

The breakaway from the twin yokes of imperialism and colonialism looks to me like freedom rather than the “flag freedom” Franz Fanon described as existing in much of the so-called post colonial world.

This plantation breakout looks to me like freedom and offers the opportunity to create something new where the countries of the global majority can enjoy the fruits of their own labour without it being exploited for fat profits for Western transnational corporations.

But a major obstacle for achieving this clearly reasonable aim is the corruption and double-dealing of some of the “misleaders” in the global majority who would sell their own grandmothers if they thought it was to their advantage.

These people — such as Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Egypt’s leader, Abdel-Fattah El-Sissi, along with far too many others — talk a good game about the need for a new world but continue to prop up the old one.

One look at the stance some of these nations take towards the Israeli genocide in Gaza and its attacks on Lebanon should tell you everything.

They denounce the genocide in public but continue to co-operate with the Israeli apartheid regime — for example, by selling the oil without which the Israeli war machine would grind to a standstill.

The hypocrisy of these sorts of leaders won’t change on its own by wishful thinking or some kind of magic. We, the people, must force the change and we must be prepared to do the hard organising graft to make that happen within and outside structures such as Brics, the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, the Group of 77 nations plus China, or anywhere else there is the glint of promise.

I am not in favour of leaving the future of the new-born baby called freedom to the whims of the likes of India’s far-right Prime Minister Narendra Modi or anyone else.

Just imagine the kick-back though if the nations of the Sahel — for far too long forced to give up their abundant natural resources so that the West can enjoy the lifestyle to which it has become accustomed while they themselves got poorer — moved closer to Brics.

The uranium, gold, cobalt and so many other precious minerals that they produce would not be allowed to go under the control of Brics without something more than mild vexation.

But that’s precisely what is about to happen, as the likes of Niger has made it crystal clear that its intentions lie in the direction of Brics and freedom.

Communists, socialists and other progressives must seize the time and develop local, regional and international networks that can apply meaningful pressure on the misleaders. 

We will also need to provide support for those who we trust within these international arrangements who will come under pressure from the misleaders as the US and its posse apply the pressure on them to undermine the prospects of the newly born infant.

So what could this pressure look like?

We have the technology available to us in a way it never was before to build these networks. It’s great and always preferable to meet in person but it doesn’t always have to be the default position.

I don’t know what this new international movement should look like but we should certainly begin to have the conversation. The alternative is to allow a process to develop over which we have no say and control.

It really is time that multilateralism was more than just about what leaders did for or to us. We have to seriously build our own structures and with it our own power.