At this point many Latin American countries are already doing more trade with BRICS than the US. Brazil is a good example. The US is being cut off economically precisely because countries are increasingly routing trade around the US. Trump’s tariff war accelerated the whole process dramatically.
I’d also argue that you can’t make a direct comparison with the Roman times here. One big difference is that rate of communication and the speed of transportation are orders of magnitude faster. Back in the days of the Roman empire a message would take months to go from one part of the empire to another. Shipping goods around was far less efficient as well. Hence the rate of change was inherently slower than it is today.
There’s also an interesting phenomenon to be aware of here. Problems can build up under the surface for a long time as their effects get amortized by the inertia of the system. But eventually, you hit an inflection point where all that accumulated pressure triggers a rapid phase transition. The whole structure lurches into a new state almost overnight. That’s what Lenin meant about there being decades where nothing happens, and weeks where decades happen.
At this point many Latin American countries are already doing more trade with BRICS than the US. Brazil is a good example. The US is being cut off economically precisely because countries are increasingly routing trade around the US. Trump’s tariff war accelerated the whole process dramatically.
I’d also argue that you can’t make a direct comparison with the Roman times here. One big difference is that rate of communication and the speed of transportation are orders of magnitude faster. Back in the days of the Roman empire a message would take months to go from one part of the empire to another. Shipping goods around was far less efficient as well. Hence the rate of change was inherently slower than it is today.
There’s also an interesting phenomenon to be aware of here. Problems can build up under the surface for a long time as their effects get amortized by the inertia of the system. But eventually, you hit an inflection point where all that accumulated pressure triggers a rapid phase transition. The whole structure lurches into a new state almost overnight. That’s what Lenin meant about there being decades where nothing happens, and weeks where decades happen.
A really fun book on the subject that I can highly recommend incidentally https://research.fit.edu/media/site-specific/researchfitedu/coast-climate-adaptation-library/climate-communications/psychology-amp-behavior/Meadows-2008.-Thinking-in-Systems.pdf