On Saturday, my phone didn’t just buzz… it practically tried to achieve orbit!

I had actually managed to fall asleep like a responsible adult who swears they’re “cutting back on news,” and then woke up to an avalanche of alerts about a major geopolitical rupture in Venezuela. You know, the kind of headlines that makes you blink twice and think, “oh, geeze… not again! Not another one!” Somewhere in my brain, the Chris Farley meme was already putting on its awful, brown tie and reporting for duty: “Getting pretty tired of living through historical events.”

That joke may be doing an irresponsible amount of emotional labor right now. And for that, I apologize.

For context, I am currently staying in New Delhi. And during Putin’s recent visit to India, the city took on a charged, contemplative mood. Conversations among colleagues and clients kept circling back to a familiar question: Is the world finally tilting away from the United States and toward a BRICS bloc? Well, while Putin was in town, I attended a talk hosted by the Chintan Research Foundation that explored the state of India-Russia relations and the shifting dynamics inside a BRICS / Eurasian Economic Union grouping that continues to expand and evolve. The timing made the discussion feel especially immediate.

Sitting there, I understood why so many people ask whether the United States is losing its grip. I hear the fear frequently from colleagues and clients. They see BRICS expanding. They see the headlines about de-dollarization. They watch policymakers spar over sanctions, AI, and global rules. And they wonder whether the world is moving into a new era where the dollar stumbles and a coalition of emerging economies seizes the strategic high ground.