Any breakthrough in Russian-US relations would inevitably disappoint those multipolar enthusiasts who bought into the most ideologically dogmatic narratives of the New Cold War and consequently believed that Russia would forever eschew the dollar out of principle.
The three-year-long NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine contributed to the belief that the international community had bifurcated into the West and the World Majority respectively, with the outcome of the aforesaid conflict determining which camp will most powerfully shape the global systemic transition. This paradigm predisposed observers to imagine that BRICS, which represents the World Majority, is actively coordinating de-dollarization policies in order to decouple themselves from the West’s financial clutches.
That perception persists to this day despite last October’s BRICS Summit achieving nothing of tangible significance at all, including on the de-dollarization front, and leading members like India and Russia subsequently confirming in response to Trump’s tariff threats that they’re not creating a new currency. As it turns out, even before Trump initiated the nascent Russian–US “New Détente”, the international community wasn’t as divided over the past three years as many multipolar enthusiasts thought.
Complex interdependencies kept most of the main players together, including Russia and the West after Russia continued selling oil, gas, and critical minerals like uranium to the West in spite of their proxy war. Similar interdependencies account for why Indian External Affairs Minister Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar declared in mid-November that “India has never been for de-dollarization” and then reaffirmed this position last week when he said that “we have absolutely no interest in undermining the dollar at all.”
He also said that “I don’t think there is a unified BRICS position on [de-dollarization]. I think BRICS members, and now that we have more members, have very diverse positions on this matter. So, the suggestion or the assumption that somewhere there is a united BRICS position against the dollar, I think, is not borne out by facts.” The reason why it’s important to draw attention to his latest words is because of the global context within which they were shared as regards the nascent Russian-US “New Détente”.
