40 years, as a way to protest Snowden’s revelation that the NSA was tapping her phone.

In this context of split loyalties, two quite unpredictable processes are in play at the time of writing, centering on Russian and Chinese relations with Washington. First, in Russia, Putin was accused by Obama and by the defeated candidate Hillary Clinton of assisting Trump to win the November 2016 election through email hacking, a matter that may be clarified in January if US intelligence agencies manage to prove the case. But these agencies failed repeatedly on prior occasions, and on December 29 even Obama failed to offer conclusive evidence of wrongdoing when he expelled three dozen Russian diplomats accused of spying.

At the time of writing, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange still denied he hadstarting in September 2017. And another vehicle for Third World advocacy, the Non-Aligned Movement, was considered increasingly irrelevant when in September 2016 Modi did not even show up at a Caracas summit, notwithstanding India’s formative role in its 1955 founding at Bandung.

Likewise, the BRICS leaders’ self-interest prevents genuine transformation of other multilateral institutions: in the last round of ‘reforms’ of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – all consummated in December 2015 – there can be no question that Africa was the loser, as the BRICS’ neoliberal negotiators ran roughshod over the poorest countries.

Moreover, last August, the BRICS’ representatives at the Bretton Woods Institutions endorsed five-year contract extensions for World Bank and IMF leaders Jim Yong Kim (from