Crazy, Rich, Performative Asians
Signaling is cheap; projection under constraint is not.
What’s collapsing now is the credibility of performative capacity — drills, parades, payment rails, declarations — when none of it survives contact with real incentives, time pressure, or enforcement.
The capability vs claim framing is sharp. The insight that Russia can't replicate US pressure tactics in Ukraine despite higher stakes cuts through alot of noise about multipolarity. I've noticed in defense circles how easy it is to conflate signaling capacity (joint drills, payment rails) with actual projecton power under constraints. The Iran/Venezuela parallels are especially telling because they expose not just resource gaps but coordination and institutional depth issues. Dunno if BRICS can build that without decades more integration.
The U.S. advantage isn’t resources in isolation,
it’s institutional depth + coordination speed + consequence delivery.
Iran and Venezuela are useful because they weren’t about spectacle; they were about sustained pressure across finance, logistics, diplomacy, and enforcement — all synchronized.
That’s not something you bolt on with summits or branding.
So the BRICS question isn’t “multipolarity,” it’s whether they can move from signaling to operational capability under stress. And that gap is why performance theater is losing meaning while capability becomes the only benchmark that matters.