The deep reason for our messed-up Ukraine strategy is that we underestimated Russia. We underestimated the countries’ resilience, the size and strength of its economy, and the alliances it was capable of building.

Of those, the single most important has been the Brics+. The acronym stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The "plus" stands for the new members: Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia is on course to join soon. And there are several others semi-attached to this club. 

Together the Brics+ accounts for 35.4 percent of the world economy. The Group of Seven advanced industrial countries account for 29.6 percent. The gap is even starker for the population. It's 45 percent for them, and 10 percent for us. 

So what makes us so sure that we can win this 21st century cold war when they are bigger than us, and collectively, richer too? 

Western economists and policy strategists are clinging one to one straw - the idea that the dollar dominates world trade. This is how the US exerts an exorbitant power to impose its will on others. The dollar dominance gives the US administration the privilege to sanction countries through the financial system. Virtually all banks in the west depend on the US dollar markets in some form or other.

I keep hearing a popular strawman argument that we don't have to worry about the Brics+ because they will not create a joint currency between that could challenge the dollar. This statements falls into the category of both true and pointless.

The Brics+ will not create a single currency. The EU is cautionary tale of how a common currency can end up increasing political divisions between its members. The Brics+ are after something else - an infrastructure that allows to route financial flows between them without entering the dollar universe at any point. The so-called Brics Pay was big star at their summit last week in Kazan in southern Russia. Bricks Pay is a blockchain-based payment system that uses the same underlying technology as Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. 

Payment systems are the stuff you normally don’t read about in news magazines. For good reason. They are part of the plumbing of the global financial systems. Normally, they are unbelievably boring. But in today’s world, they have emerged as a critical geopolitical instrument because they allow countries to defend themselves against western sanctions.

The Brics+ account for some 35-40 percent of global trade, yet they are at the mercy of the US because most of their trade is in US dollars. This is even true for trade flows within the Brics+ region. The French economist Jacques Sapir has argued that the Brics+ are on course to shift some 80 percent of that portion of the trade away from the US dollar within the next five years. This will have a huge impact on the balance of global financial power. Some 60 percent of global foreign reserves are currently held in dollars. With the new payment system, the Brics+ could be on course to overtake the dollar within five years, Sapir has calculated. I am more cautious about such projections, but Sapir is right about the trend. The Brics+ do not need a single currency to make themselves dependent from the US dollar. All they need is 21st century technology.

Our complacency is based on the observation that the world only ever had one dominating currency. This used to be the pound until the middle of the 1920s, and since then it has been the dollar. The reason for the dominance of a single currency is a  winner-takes-all network effect. But blockchain changed the calculus. One way to think about blockchain is as a secure ledger that keeps track of payments. But the technology itself is open-source. Blockchain is not only the backbone for crypto-currencies. It can also run payments between banks and central banks. 

Macroeconomists, and especially the macroeconomists who advise governments, massively underestimated the impact of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, and many still do. They are also underestimating the impact of Brics Pay. They did not see that this technology allows countries to wean themselves off their dependence to the US.

A Luddite attachment coupled with the delusional belief that we are the world's envy are the main reasons we keep on underestimating our adversaries. It is why Ukraine is currently in danger of losing the war.

Another related strawman is the observation that the Brics+ are not politically as cohesive as we are. This observation is also true and misleading. They do not need the same degree of political integration as we have in the G7, Nato or the EU. Unlike China and Russia, India and Brazil are not interested in a confrontation with the US. They want to trade with everyone, and not become part of a bloc. Russia, North Korea and Iran have

moved closer together. Xi Jinping, China’s president, has formed a strategic alliance with Vladimir Putin, and yet keeps a distance. The Brics+ are a very diverse bunch, but their strength stems from a focus on the few things they have in common. The single most important one is their desire to reduce their dependency on the US. 

This is not about the US elections. US trade and sanctions policies have evolved over several administrations. The US is becoming less willing to absorb global trade surpluses, and to subsidise Europe's defence. Neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris have a strategy, or even an ambition, to reign in the geopolitical ambitions of the Brics+. Global decoupling is the megatrend of our century, and the Brics+ will be that second leg of the new bipolar global order.