> > If the US fades, this unifying principle will disappear over time. > Working, functional partnership do not dissolve easily. I would suggest you may want

> > If the US fades, this unifying principle will disappear over time. > Working, functional partnership do not dissolve easily. I would suggest you may want to consider the fairly vast gulf between what I said and what you seem to think I said. As all organizations eventually converge into their primary purpose becoming their own perpetuation, I'm sure the BRICS will be around far longer than I will. The UN, a much larger organization already far past its prime and effectively bereft of purpose, lurches on at a scale essentially incomprehensible to the human mind, yet it does not die, because such things rarely do, and effectively never on a sensible time scale. Without an enemy unifying it, BRICS will eventually just be the UN 2.0. But it will take time, decades probably, to get there. The really entertaining question to ponder is, when will the US, or at least something that is composed of some chunk of the 50 states (the territories may well do so much sooner), apply to join the BRICS?