MOST people on the planet do not live within the borders of the former colonial powers — but they have been dominated by them for most of the last 500 years.

But the good news is we are now at a major geopolitical tipping point, and the global majority is rising up and constructing a new world.

There are no demands for change as if permission were required; the vast majority of the global population is simply going about the business of constructing a new way of doing things that breaks away from the rule of the minority.

No part of the global majority is asking to leave the plantation. They, and those of us linked by blood, are doing what our ancestors taught us — leave, fight back and build something new.

This minority, once led by the former superpowers — Britain, Spain, Portugal and France — and now themselves overtaken and largely colonised by the US, are now facing a scale of challenge they have never before been confronted with.

New global alliances, such as the Brics bloc, are not dependent on exerting joint military power and are now being created out of the ashes of the fires burnt by the former colonial powers.

But there is clearly potential and perhaps a need for a level of military co-operation between the alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — the core group — and the newer Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and, if they finally decide they are in Brics, Saudi Arabia.

It probably goes without saying that if the trade foundations on which Brics is built are threatened, then it seems inevitable that some form of security co-operation will be necessary to ensure their safety.

A recent high-ranking Brics officials meeting recognised that the erosion of international systems of security is a threat to sovereign countries. It seems logical to me then that this means that there needs to be a new system of international security put in place. This can’t be done by wishful thinking. It likely includes some level of security or military co-operation.

By any historical measure of transnational alliances, the Brics bloc is a strange creature, with current members having very different political systems and ideologies.

Of course, political rulers come and go, and sometimes political systems change. However, many transnational alliances, such as the European Union, have a strong foreign policy and military foundation to their existence.

Nato, of course, is explicitly a military alliance that does not even hide the fact that it is a vassal for the US.

Brics is, at the moment, somewhat different in that it is explicitly attempting to forge a new multilateral world based on common win-win trade interests.

This does not and has not stopped members of Brics from developing bilateral security alliances, but I doubt very much that we will see this bloc turn into an avowedly military body.

Brics explicitly counters the small number of powerful, warlike nations that have cast themselves as “masters of the universe” and who treat the global majority as “unpeople” and like something they have just scraped off the bottom of their shoes.

These wannabe political geniuses regard the global majority as mere collateral damage in their quest to boost the profits of the already unimaginably wealthy puppet masters — the largely faceless oligarchs who control when, where and how high politicians jump.

The financial arms of the global minority, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, have basically directed the domestic policies of large sections of the global majority since they were created.

At Bretton Woods, both bodies decided to “Christen” the US dollar as the planet’s reserve currency.

In effect, this was Christendom once again exerting its “God-given” superiority over a largely non-Christian world.

The new multilateral arrangements being created are a direct challenge to this hegemony.

It is a challenge to the belief of these masters of the universe that everything and anything is up for sale — including whole governments and top judiciaries — such as the US Supreme Court.

For example, the 1.4 billion-strong Indian nation, the country with the largest population in history, has been bought and paid for since it won what turned out to be a rather superficial independence in 1948.

India is now in a position where it has been forced by the World Trade Organisation to import massive quantities of rice (yes, rice), wheat, sugar and milk.

Government warehouses are now overflowing while many people across the country struggle to find food to eat in a country where massive levels of deep poverty persist.

Meanwhile, much of this food is dumped — but it has been paid for, so someone is making money.

In Kerala, coffee, tea (yes, tea in India!) and rubber plantations are being forced to close down, costing thousands of jobs.

The brilliant Arundhati Roy points out that one of the major problems we face is that “the language of dissent has been co-opted.”

The WTO and World Bank continually publish reports in a way that portrays these predatory organisations as being politically concerned about the plight of people they have systematically exploited for decades.

Outside of activist circles, they have been largely successful in painting themselves in a way that masks their primary role of safeguarding the interests of US capital.

We must be clear that the role of bodies such as Brics, the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, the Group of 77 plus China and other emerging alliances is not some adventure that allows politicians to prance around the world for photo opportunities.

This is a genuine challenge to the power system that has dominated since World War II.

But none of this can be allowed to remain in the hands of so-called leaders — no matter how well-meaning they are or how much we currently trust them.

We must build people-powered movements that do not just mirror these transnational “official” arrangements. We must build international structures and links that push these bodies in the direction of achieving fundamental changes in favour of working class and peasant communities across the world.

I have never been good at just waiting for someone to tell me what’s good for me without having had a conversation with them first.

Activists can’t simply cede our futures away to official bodies of politicians.

Neither should we believe that there will not be a fightback from the soon-to-be displaced masters of the universe.

They will either revert to reflex and launch a direct military response to the new world, or they will — as I think will be the first tactic — attempt to destroy these bodies from within.

I think it is highly likely that the US and its posse will attempt to use its powers to threaten nations within bodies such as Brics toe their line.

Remarks of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that interfered with the sovereignty of Venezuela by arguing that there should be a fresh presidential election led some critics to suggest that he had succumbed to US threats to remove him from power.

These new transnational bodies are really important, but they are only as strong as our ability as activists to build worker and peasant power across the globe to provide the backbone to resist the inevitable backlash.