Obama Worries About China and India in SOTU Address Calling Them "Highly Competitive", But Bigger Threats Loom

With his approval rating steadily rising within the last couple of days, a cocky Barack Obama addressed the 112th Congress on Tuesday night with talk of uniting as a nation in order to revitalize our downtrodden economy. Job growth was undeniably one of his main talking points, intertwined with competing with other countries that are growing rapidly, namely China and India. But nations in Asia aren't the only ones that are quickly catching up in the race toward becoming the next global superpower.

The Brazilian economy has also significantly risen in the past few years, thanks to former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a social democrat. "Lula" was just recently succeeded by his former Chief of Staff Dilma Rousseff, the first woman president of Brazil. I didn't think too much of Rousseff when I heard of her election to the presidency, I simply thought to myself, "Congrats to Brazil on its first female president, I hope for the Brazilian people's sake that she proliferates the economy as well as her predecessor did." My mindset completely changed when I learned of her former involvement in a far-left, Marxist political organization called the "National Liberation Command", which became infamous in the late 1960s for its use of guerrilla warfare. According to reports and fellow members, Rousseff was an expert in weaponry and guerrilla warfare. Other reports claim that Rousseff shot at numerous military personnel, officials, and others during her time in the organization, but she denies such claims.

SMFH

Although I always knew of the Brazilian government's predilection for socialist-leaning politics, I would have never in my life imagined that the country would one day be led by an individual who so ardently supported Marxism at one point in her life. Just the thought of it is frightening, especially because of Brazil's unexpected and active rise to power (it is expected to be the world's 5th largest economy by or before 2016, ahead of both France and the U.K.) Rousseff has recently made claims that her political ideology has significantly altered with time, saying that she is now a firm believer in capitalism, but she also says that she remains proud of her radical roots. To me... that's a little bit too ambiguous.

It all may not seem so threatening, but it is critical that the big picture be studied carefully, and the "big picture" is synonymous with "BRIC".

BRIC is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, and China; it is a newly founded coalition of those four countries which have all been recognized as having economies that just recently began to experience advanced and accelerated development. It has been estimated that by the year 2050, the combined economies of the four nations will easily surpass the combined economies of the world's current richest nations. Many economists, politicians, and governments in general have speculated that the BRIC nations could very easily form their own "political club" to take advantage of their recently elevated economies in order to form a "geopolitical clout" that could dramatically affect the direction in which the world's nations head in in terms of both economics and politics.

L to R: Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Incumbent Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Incumbent Chinese President Hu Jintao, and Incumbent Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the 1st BRIC summit in 2009

To me, the most distressing thing about the situation isn't the fact that those four countries are growing rapidly, it's not a thing of envy or hatred, but the plain fact that 3 out of the 4 BRIC nations have extremely close ties to socialism and communism is startling to say the least.


*Initial (2003) Goldman Sachs report of BRIC economic statistics in the coming decades:

• The Chinese economy will eclipse Germany's in the next few years, Japan's by 2015, and the United States' by 2041
• India's growth rate will be the highest of the four nations
• Together, the four nations could surpass the U.S. as well as the European countries in as little as 4 decades

The most recent report proves to be as dismal as the first.

**Most recent (2010) and approximate Goldman Sachs report of BRIC economic statistics in the coming decades:

• The Chinese economy has the capacity to eclipse the United States' economy as early as 2027 (nearly a decade and a half earlier than expected)
• The four BRIC nations could be as big as the G7 nations (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, U.K., U.S.) as early as 2032