🇮🇪 Ireland is witnessing near-record levels of immigration, while emigration among Irish citizens is approaching the rates seen in the years following the post-2008 downturn. We’re losing our young people.

📎 james_akw

🌍 African engagement in the 2024 BRICS+ summit highlights that many African countries are primarily interested in the economic benefits of BRICS and that the bloc remains divided over key geopolitical disagreements and the wider geopolitical role the bloc should play.

China and Russia have attempted to frame BRICS as an anti-Western geopolitical body.

Member and partner states have fundamental disagreements on regional and international issues, however. Such discrepancies include relations with the West and Chinese dominance of BRICS.

India is particularly concerned about outsized Chinese & Russian influence.

Brazil, India, and South Africa all opposed further BRICS expansion partially due to fears that adding pro-Chinese or pro-Russian partners would push the body towards a firmer anti-Western stance.

The African countries in BRICS also have divergent interests. New BRICS+ members Egypt & Ethiopia are fierce regional rivals, while both are competing with South Africa and new partner country Nigeria for leadership on the continent, including securing a permanent UNSC seat.

Brazil, India, and South Africa have tried to balance ties with the West and explicitly avoided making BRICS an anti-Western body.

This approach is shared by many African countries and reflects the policies of the new African BRICS affiliates.

Given its economic focus & pattern of expansion, BRICS will likely prioritize increasing engagement with countries suited to help expand the bloc's global economic leverage in key comparative advantage sectors, which could aid long-term objectives like de-dollarization.

BRICS expansion has expanded the bloc's ties to regional institutions in Africa, the Americas, and Asia. The expansion has also pushed the bloc's global share of population & foreign exchange reserves over 50 percent & increased its share of oil production, exports, and GDP.

🔗 Critical Threats

🇺🇸🇵🇱🇺🇦🇷🇺 The U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) pushes a bill through Congress that would allow Poland to shoot down Russian missiles or UAVs flying in Ukrainian airspace which may or may not threaten Poland itself.

The CSCE says that this is a response to the arrival of a contingent of North Korean troops on Russian soil which is expected to take part in actual combat.

🔗 U.S. Helsinki Commission

🇨🇳 China’s PLA Navy conducts first-ever dual-carrier formation exercises in the South China Sea

The drills featured both the Liaoning and Shandong aircraft carriers.

🔴 @DDGeopolitics