BRICS and Bones (UpDate2)

As I noted yesterday, US allies seek to repair the damage of Trump’s tariff extortion policy by scampering to China and India for new trade deals.

This might have looked good for the BRICS and even encouraged hopes that one day Europe would turn full-frontally towards the east, not just China but also towards Central Asia and, of course, Russia in exchange for its pathetic and humiliating kow-towing to and dependence on US despotism.

Now China finds itself in two crosshairs that may test the solidity of this BRICS centered multipolarity alternative to US global hegemony. On Cuba it must decide whether it will risk US wrath by breaking the illegal US blockade of the island. Trump has threatened Mexico with retaliation if it continues to supply oil to Cuba to compensate for Cuba’s loss of supply of discounted oil from Venezuela. It looks as though Mexico, to its eternal but hardly surprising shame, has succumbed.

(On this issue, I note more uncertainty than I was aware when I wrote those words above. As of late January 2026, President Claudia Sheinbaum has not agreed to permanently stop sending oil to Cuba. While she recently acknowledged a pause or suspension of specific shipments, she maintains that Mexico will continue providing “humanitarian aid” to the island. It is the case that on January 27, 2026, reports emerged that Mexico’s state oil company, Pemex, had canceled or paused a scheduled oil shipment to Cuba. Sheinbaum characterized this as a “sovereign decision” based on internal supply fluctuations rather than U.S. pressure. On January 28, 2026, Sheinbaum clarified that “humanitarian aid to Cuba... continues” and denied that there was an official policy to stop all exports. She noted that shipments are evaluated on a case-by-case basis. These developments occur as U.S. President Donald Trump has pledged to cut off all oil to Cuba. U.S. lawmakers have signaled that Mexico’s continued support for Cuba could negatively impact upcoming USMCA trade negotiations. The uncertainty and reported shipment pauses have exacerbated fuel shortages in Cuba, leading to long gas lines and severe blackouts).

China has promised it will protect Cuba. China promised on Tuesday (Jan 27) to provide Cuba with “support and assistance” in the face of repeated threatsa from the United States. Beijing and Havana are longtime socialist allies, and Chinese authorities have consistently opposed the economic blockade imposed on the island for decades by the United States.

Cuba is said to have only three weeks left before the oil runs out and its economy collapses. If Chinese protection is to be meaningful it should involve a mechanism for supplying oil to Cuba. The oil itself would likely come from Iran or Russia on “shadow fleet” ships. It is difficult but not impossible to imagine that China, perhaps in partnership with Russia would come up with suitable naval and air protection for ships carrying oil to Cuba. Difficult, because China seems far from ready for World War Three. For the US the war has already started. As for Russia which, of course, does have oil it could supply to Cuba at risk of breaking the US blockade, is not, to my knowledge currently providing oil, nor am I aware that Cuba has sought Russian aid).

In addition, China faces the consequences of renewed Trump threats against Iran, a significant source of oil for China. In the event of a US assault, Iranian closure of the Straits of Hormuz and the consequent 20% increase in oil prices will hurt China - and everybody else, including the US. So this is a far more potent consideration than Chinese protection of Cuba.

Mersheimer has explained to Judge Napolitano that Trump had been primed to bomb Iran on January 14 to build upon the CIA-Mossad instigated riots in Iran but was told by Israel that Israel was not ready (indicative that Iran’s impact during the 12-day war laast June was considerable). Mearsheimer does not consider that Russian assistance to Iran is especially notable; the strategic partnership between them, he says, does not require either of them to come to the other’s aid in the event that one is attacked. But he thinks that Chinese assistance to Iran is more considerable.

The situation is the same today: Israel’s position is that it is not in its interest to join a US strike on Iran. Yet Iran’s position is that even if the US strikes Iran just by itself then Iran will still consider that it is at war with both the US and Israel. Mearsheimer speculates that Trump has boxed himself in because of the very expensive assembly of immense fire power in the Meditteranean and the Gulf: he has to do something, but may limit himself to a one-day show of force that will be celebrated in the West as a great victory but wont amount to anything (and will have provoked meaningful damage by Iran against Israeli assets). Another possibility in my view is that Trump may play the same game as he did with Venezuela: he will keep the threat of his fire-power in place until his intelligence and covert forces have a found a way of weakening the Iranian leadership.

Russia does not need Iranian oil and an international crisis, especially one that closes the Straits of Hormuz, will increase the price of Russian oil, considerably, and enhance Chinese dependency on Russian energy.

These two sources of crisis, Cuba and Iran, following on the shambolic prostration of both Europe and Asia to US commandeering of the oil trade of Iraq and, now, Venezuela, and to the divisiveness of Trump’s Board of Peace and the mediocrity of UN engagement, call into question the credibility of the multipolar discursive platform.

Then there is Syria. I have never seen Putin look so uncomfortable as he appeared at yesterday’s Moscow conference between Putin and former head-chopping ISIS and Al Qaeda leader Al-Jolani, now al Sharaa. For the sake of a continued Russian presence in one major naval base on the Mediterranean and one air base near Latakia - strategically important, I concede - Russia spits on the memory of its former ally and on the lives it expended in holding back the forces of the CIA and Saudi and Qatari-paid jihadists and effectively congratulates one of these for allowing Turkey and HTS to seize Damascus, all in the name of the new “integrity” of Syria. An integrity which means expulsion or suppression of the Kurds in the northeast, and rewarding Israel with Syrian territory in the south including Mount Hermon (probably agreeing to allow passage for Israeli planes and missiles against Iran)and continuing with the persecution of Alawites, Christians and other minorities.

Couldn’t Russia have found a more principled way of handling the setbacks in Syria?

Russia until now has had the strongest moral and geopolitically correct realpolitik stance on NATO expansionism.

But something is looking distinctively “off” as in the countenance of Putin yesterday. Syria is one face of that. Another is Russian ineffectiveness on Venezuela. And another is its failure (yes, I know, Iran could have done more to secure help from Russia with which it has a strategic partnership) to protect Iran from a never ending litany of threats and economic warfare from the US and Israel. And on an aside, if Iran has not yet weaponized its nuclear energy, and I don’t believe it has (Trump is clearly confident it has not), then it will sadly have nobody but itself to blame for its destruction. Similar comments pertain to the devastating situation of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the fragility of pro-Iranian militia in Iraq. There is little here that Russia can be proud of.

Russia is winning on the battlefields in Ukraine but the civilian punishment that it is inflicting on the Ukrainian people by its targeting of energy infrastructure in the midst of severe winter is a more promising case of war crime than anything else Ukraine has tried to pin on it.

On a brighter note it seems that there may be an energy truce very soon. Ukraine’s threat to come to Moldova’s aid, should Moldova choose to consolidate its own territorial security by attacking Russian troops in Transnistria, may be intended as a club to get Russia to confirm an energy truce. If so, then Ukraine is acting counter-productively, since Russia cannot allow itself to be seen to knuckle under to Ukrainian threats. Far better for both sides to seek a mutual acknowledgment of the need even in war to protect civilians.

I notice an article today by Anatol Lieven that argues that Russia has made significant concessions on the war in Ukraine. I have my doubts as to how real these concessions are or even IF they are, but it seems indisputable that Russia has indicated it is perfectly OK with Ukraine joining the EU. As it happens, Ukrainian accession to the EU is so damaging to the economies of many European countries that I think the issue is moot. But because the EU is more or less indistinguishable now from NATO and because NATO is Russia’s existential enemy I think this Russian concession is stupid as well as meaningless. Equally problematic is Russia’s obsession about talking normalization, trade and deals with the US even before the Ukraine crisis is resolved. It makes Russia appear merely mercantile, easily biddable.

What this is fundamentally about and what Russia has always said it is about (but does not always seem to believe that it is about) is the need for a new security architecture for Europe.

The problem with this formulation is that it puts the weight of concern on the borders of western Russia with Europe. That is simply too narrow a perspective and unrealistic, and attributes far too much importance to Europe. What the world is crying out for is a Eurasian security architecture on the path to a new global security architecture that looks more like but much better than the UN in its inclusiveness and fairness, and nothing remotely like Trump’s insulting BOP concept.

Getting this started is not possible with just Russia talking to the US or the US talking to Europe or any other similar shallow contraption of diplomacy.

We have got to get serious, very serious, very soon.