I don't think your analysis of countries flocking to BRICs is a good one though. While Russia and China do want to see the dominance of the US go down and poten

I don't think your analysis of countries flocking to BRICs is a good one though. While Russia and China do want to see the dominance of the US go down and potentially see BRICs as a tool for that, the other members have their own agendas that make it far less potent. India, for example, is in it for good relations with their neighbours, but benefits from and wants more trade with the US. > seemingly inadvertently promote US prosperity and influence, many times at their expense. Joining in with the US rules based order is what has allowed China to become massively more prosperous. What they don't like is that the system is not their own, now that they've got into a more powerful position on the back of it. Further to that, they've always tried to dodge the 'rules' around IP and so forth. Now many might say fair game, the US did the same in it's youth. But in those times the world order was colonialism run by the Europeans. I would invite the view that if China had played more strictly by the 'rules' and supported the system they've joined, then they wouldn't be seeing aggressive push back from western nations and could potentially have lifted more of their population to a higher level. I wonder how far a multipolar world could go anyway. The thing about being able to participate in western markets is that it seems to not be a zero sum game. We all grow economically. Not that there aren't huge downsides and bad things, but economically there's been general benefit. Eastern European countries demonstrate clearly that's the system they want to be in, I don't think a system that Russia is happy with is going to be lifting anyone else.