Three months before taking power in 1949, Mao Tse-tung wrote of the solidarity required for the Chinese people’s revolution, remarking that a “principal and fundamental experience” was to “unite in a common struggle with those nations of the world which treat us as equals and unite with the peoples of all countries.”

Mao warned, though, of “domestic and foreign reactionaries, the imperialists and their running dogs.”

Fast forward to last week (March 9), as Indian writer Arundhati Roy rebukedPrime Minister Narendra Modi’s government: “Some of you will remember how we used to joke about that florid, overblown Chinese communist term, ‘Running Dog of Imperialism.’ But right now, I’d say, it describes us well.”

Are BRICS rising? Or spalling? Or running (dogs)?

Does the critique of Modi’s allegiance to Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu apply more broadly, when we consider the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) bloc, now adorned with five (or six) others? In 2023 at the Johannesburg summit, new BRICS were added: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), with Saudi Arabia an ambiguous invitee (Riyadh has never formally accepted). In early 2025 another new full member joined: Indonesia.

And at the Kazan Summit in 2024 hosted by Vladimir Putin, there were more ‘partner’ invitations – a category reflecting the bloc’s indigestion after the 2023 expansion – offered to Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam, all of which were accepted. (Only Algeria and Turkiye turned down partner status.)

As a result of the apparent strengthening of the bloc, by July 2025, geopolitics podcaster Ben Norton could remark with unparalleled BRICS-hype:

The Non-Aligned Movement was founded in the 1960s by former formerly colonized countries almost all with socialist governments, the initial founders of the Non-Aligned Movement, saying that they refused to go along with US imperialism in the first cold war against the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. So, BRICS is now bringing back this anti-colonial mantle. They’ve picked up the anti-colonial mantle and they’re fighting against US dollar hegemony which is a which is a form of imperialism. They’re fighting against western imperialism.

The Non-Aligned Movement was founded in the 1960s by former formerly colonized countries almost all with socialist governments, the initial founders of the Non-Aligned Movement, saying that they refused to go along with US imperialism in the first cold war against the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. So, BRICS is now bringing back this anti-colonial mantle. They’ve picked up the anti-colonial mantle and they’re fighting against US dollar hegemony which is a which is a form of imperialism. They’re fighting against western imperialism.

But the BRICS bloc is not up for this fight, it is now apparent. In a March 9 Johannesburg discussion with leading local political broadcaster Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, Tricontinental director Vijay Prashad warned, “If the BRICS countries don’t wake up to the reality of trying to stop this conflict by any means possible, trying to stop this conflict now, if they don’t recognize this reality, the entire project of peace and development is in jeopardy.”

Likewise, just after the Trump-Netanyahu regimes began bombing Iran, ambitious hopes for BRICS were promoted by renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs on March 2:

It’s not only Trump but there’s no brake, there’s no foot on the brake. This is only an accelerator towards expanded war right now. And the only way that it can stop is if the BRICS countries – and that means India, that means Brazil, that means Russia, that means China, that means South Africa and others – and it’s Iran, which is a member of the BRICS, says, ‘This is not the way the world can work.’ They have to stand up to American hegemony. This is the only way the world can be safe. And so this is actually a responsibility of the BRICS right now, which is the only standing bulwark against America’s global empire.

It’s not only Trump but there’s no brake, there’s no foot on the brake. This is only an accelerator towards expanded war right now. And the only way that it can stop is if the BRICS countries – and that means India, that means Brazil, that means Russia, that means China, that means South Africa and others – and it’s Iran, which is a member of the BRICS, says, ‘This is not the way the world can work.’ They have to stand up to American hegemony. This is the only way the world can be safe. And so this is actually a responsibility of the BRICS right now, which is the only standing bulwark against America’s global empire.

This ‘only standing bulwark’ is, in reality breaking up, or ‘spalling,’ i.e. (as I’ve mentioned before), a construction-industry term referring to a process in which – mainly due to the freezing-thawing cycle – “a wall’s masonry and bricks crack, crumble, flake, and even pop out of the wall.”

Expel running-dog India, along with any other Israel-collaborationist (?)

From hype to hope to helplessness seems like the inevitable emotional slide-away for BRICS-watching multipolaristas. By March 11, one of the most ebullient of multipolar journalists, Thailand-based Brazilian journalist Pepe Escobar, despaired – on Danny Haiphong’s podcast – that the BRICS bloc was now spalling beyond repair. So Escobar boldly recommended that one in particular be popped out by the others:

India betrayed two top BRICS sequentially, Russia and Iran. That’s extremely serious. This would be grounds for expulsion of India from BRICS… The problem is what’s going to happen to BRICS this year, considering that India is the BRICS chair in this year when they betrayed two BRICS.

India betrayed two top BRICS sequentially, Russia and Iran. That’s extremely serious. This would be grounds for expulsion of India from BRICS… The problem is what’s going to happen to BRICS this year, considering that India is the BRICS chair in this year when they betrayed two BRICS.

The next day, Escobar told a podcast hosted by a former Fox News legal commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano, “BRICS would have grounds to expel India considering that India betrayed sequentially two top BRICS, founding member Russia and a new member Iran in several levels because of American pressure. When the Trump administration told India you cannot buy Russian oil, the Indian said okay, okay, master.”

(Tehran was forgiving: on March 14 two tankers carrying liquefied natural gas to India were allowed through the Strait of Hormuz. Perhaps this reflected compensation for both countries’ pain when Tehran’s battleship Dena was sunk by a U.S. submarine’s torpedo on March 4 – killing 87 Iranians – just after it left naval exercises in the Indian city of Visakhapatnam. As a former Indian military officer, Arun Prakash, complained to The Guardian, “The U.S. navy could have sunk this ship anywhere on the way back to the Persian Gulf. We are supposed to be friends and partners of the USA. To bring the........

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