2025 marked the end of an era: that of a synchronized planetborn from the illusion that victory in the Cold War would become the cornerstone of a westernized structure thanks to globalization. The reality is exactly the opposite: a polyrhythmic world, where each continent lives according to its historical time. At the center of this divide, two opposing movements define the new era: the return to armed isolationism of the United States and the systemic rise of BRICS+ as the cornerstone of an alternative order that stretches from Brasilia to Shanghai.
This temporal asymmetry is the litmus test of the current systemic chaos. Understanding this is the key to interpreting 2025 and anticipating the 2026. In Europe, awareness of this reality is, unfortunately, absent.
No region has experienced 2025 with as much intensity as Latin America. the real historic event was twofold: Brazil, by simultaneously presiding over the G20 and BRICS+, accomplished an act of “overlapping diplomacy,” demonstrating that it could operate in all global forums while building a new one. The COP30 in Belém, under the aegis of Brazil, positioned the Amazon and climate justice as pillars ofBRICS+ program. This is not soft power: This is structural power. Brazil took advantage of its presidency to accelerate the operation of the New Development Bank (NDB), promote the use of local currencies in intra-bloc trade and launch a food and climate security initiative in the countries of the South. BRICS+ are no longer a reaction against the West; they constitute the operational system by which Brazil and other demographic giants manage their rise.
While Brazil multiplied its wedding rings, the United States chose to isolate itself. This decline is not only geopolitical; It’s systemic. Washington no longer participates in the construction of new global institutions, it deserts or sabotages them. The problem is that, in the vacuum created, the BRICS+ are building a new system. The US refusal to reform IMF and World Bank quotas has pushed dozens of countries towards the NDB and BRICS+ currency swap mechanisms.
Europe lives in suspended time, paralyzed by the impossible choice between a withdrawn American protector and opposition to its Eurasian neighbor (the Russia) which is an integral part of the expanding BRICS+ ecosystem. The EU is watching with growing concern how the BRICS+ agenda – food and energy security, infrastructure development, “non-punitive” climate transition – is becoming increasingly important. irresistible for its neighbors in Africa and the Balkans. Europe is cut off from this alternative financial and political circuit, and its productive stagnation makes it a less and less attractive partner for the countries of the South on the move. Europe risks becoming an island of declining relative well-being in a world that adopts other standards.
Asia lives in another century and is the driving force of BRICS+. There China he is not only a member; it is the leading financier, technology hub and defender of commerce. India it is the democratic and demographic counterweight, the bridge with the Anglo-Saxon world and the guarantor that the bloc does not become an anti-Western alliance. Together, they provide the critical economic, technological and military mass that makes BRICS+ credible. Asian successes in terms of productivity, described by 2025 data, are the guarantee of the sustainability of the project. BRICS+ offers to Asia a protected internal marketalternative trade routes (via Iran, Russia, Africa) and collective weight in climate and technology negotiations with the West. This is the system’s projection of their ascension.
By Oceania, BRICS+ expansion redefines the geography of strategic pressure. Countries like Fiji and Papua New Guinea are increasingly interested in the NDB to finance climate adaptation, an area in which traditional Western donors are seen as slow and insufficient. Australia e New Zealand they find themselves navigating a Pacific where Chinese influence (as part of BRICS+) and Brazil’s offers of climate cooperation directly compete with their traditional leadership. THE the strategic “district” is expanding: it is no longer just South-East Asia, but the entire Southern Hemisphere which is coordinating via BRICS+.
2025 data on exceed Asian production explain why BRICS+ are not a utopia. They have a real and dynamic economic engine. European stagnation and American isolationism create a vacuum in terms of demand and investment. The BRICS+, with their sustained growth, create an integrated economic circuit: raw materials from Africa and Latin America, manufacturing transformation and technology from Asia, financing of the NDB, consumption of an expanding bourgeoisie in all member countries. It is an embryo of parallel globalizationwith its own norms and institutions.
The question for 2026 then becomes: will we see the crystallization of two partially integrated global systems?
The challenge is no longer to imagine a time shared with a single watchmaker, the West, but to prevent the desynchronization of historical times from degenerating into a head-on collision between two systems, one old and the other emerging. The success or failure of BRICS+ as a concrete platform for governance – beyond rhetoric – will be the determining factor in global stability over the next decade. Europe, motionless, risks being the battlefield, and no longer the actor.
