First, I severely question the human rights record of China, Russia and India - in that order. I think these are NOT the militaries we want ruling more of the world. Grozny, Tiananmen and incidents of Indian army brutality should weigh on our minds before we celebrate.
Second, the governmental structures of China and Russia are a terrible model for the world to follow.
Third, I think the recent popularity of idea that the world is going "tripolar" may be a product of the financial bubble.
With Brazil and Russia, the argument is pretty obvious - the oil and commodities bubble has helped make these countries appear far more important than they may really be. The evidence is as simple as the charts.
Oil is clearly a bubble. Russia has become an oil state. Brazil still has a huge natural resources economy and most major commodities followed oil upwards. The bubble is bursting and it remains to be seen whether these countries can and will retain the same clout without a bubble market to inflate them.
India and China have prospered from the outsourcing of production from the first world and the attendant huge increase in consumer and other credit in the first world. A reduction in the price of goods and the credit creation has allowed first-world workers to buy Indian and Chinese goods and services despite stangnant wages for working people in the first world.
Consumer credit in the first world is beginning to show cracks in the system, with defaults on credit cards increasing rapidly. Credit is still being created and quickly, but for how long?
All four countries - and all the "second world" countries - have also benefitted enormously from the generalized explosion in credit and financial markets. All of these countries have seen explosive growth in equity markets - which growth now seems in trouble. There has been rapid GDP deceleration worldwide and crashing equity markets.
Furthermore, despite the advent and success of the euro and a huge gain in many major currencies against the dollar, the world has gone from holding about 57% if its foreign exchange reserves in dollars in 1997 to holding about 65% of its foreign exchange reserves in dollars in 2007. The dollar is absolutely as popular as ever, even though the IMF cites "fragmentary evidence" that the euro is moving towards becoming a favored reserve currency. Meanwhile the BRIC countries have been pumping their own money growth in currencies that have not internationalized to much appreciable extent - with the slight exception of the Indian rupee.
But now it looks as though the dollar was in a "down bubble" as the euro and other major currencies were traded up with commodities as futures markets got overwhelmed with a lava flow of hot money. Now things are going the other way.
As the dollar gets stronger, major alternative currencies lose value and commodities get cheaper, many second world countries will get hit with a double-whammy.
A stronger dollar is good for countries that export to the U.S., but that stronger dollar is being accompanied by a continually-worsening economy grinding to a standstill as the Credit Crisis deepens.
The second world has, of course, created large amounts of infrastructure for itself and there is more and more trade among "second world" nations. However, the overwhelming majority of world trade is still done against the U.S. dollar with the percentage not changing much - especially in light of BRIC growth. This would seem to indicate that second world's financial infrastructure has not developed as fast as the industrial infrastructure. Worldwide, sovereign wealth funds are looking to invest dollars in America and some euros in Europe, rather than putting real, rubles, rupees and yuan into the BRIC world.
And the government infrastructure is still a shambles in the second world.
So I think the thesis needs a few more elements before it is viable.