Executive Summary
This article analyzes the integration of Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries into the BRICS+ framework, examining it as a geopolitical shift towards multipolarity and New Strategic Regionalism. It focuses on how economic sanctions drive trade deflection and reshape supply chains for countries like Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. The study highlights BRICS+ as a platform for strategic realignment, offering alternatives to Western-dominated systems.
Why It Matters
This document is crucial for defense and geopolitical analysts as it details how economic sanctions and the rise of BRICS+ are reshaping global trade, supply chains, and strategic alignments in Latin America, directly impacting geopolitical influence and economic security.
Key Takeaways
- BRICS+ serves as a strategic platform for Latin American and Caribbean countries to realign economically and geopolitically, seeking alternatives to Western-dominated systems amidst a shift towards multipolarity.
Source evidence · PDF page 1
This article examines the recent integration of Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries into the BRICS+ framework as part of a broader geopolitical shift toward multipolarity. It analyzes BRICS+ through the lens of New Strategic Regionalism, the author’s own theoretical contribution to the study of regional transformations in the Global South, and focuses on trade deflection under sanctions, and the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in BRICS+.
- The effectiveness and nature of trade deflection are heavily influenced by the specific design and scope of sanctions regimes, ranging from comprehensive embargoes to targeted measures.
Source evidence · PDF page 23
First, sanctions architectures shape trade deflection through their scope and regulatory form. Comprehensive embargo-like regimes tend to lock in exclusion and convert destination choice into a structural constraint, whereas targeted, designation-based measures primarily raise compliance costs and uncertainty while leaving core trade corridors intact.
- Supply chains are not merely economic conduits but geopolitical infrastructures, with sanctions acting as a structuring force that reallocates connectivity and determines market access for sanctioned nations.
Source evidence · PDF page 25
Third, the integration of HS and BEC trade data with Bills of Lading micro-evidence contributes to supply-chain scholarship by conceptualizing sanctions as a structuring force of chain geography rather than as an external shock.
Strategic Relevance
The study provides insights into how economic statecraft, particularly sanctions, influences geopolitical alignments and trade flows, offering a framework to understand the evolving multipolar world order and the strategic responses of nations in the Global South.