The BRICS nations (originally Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are meeting in Russia this week, and many alternative economics writers are making much of how these nations will be working hard to replace the dollar, but it is really nowhere near as simple as a united front to dethrone the dollar as the world reserve currency.

Now that 32 nations are meeting at the BRICS summit, talk of the dollar's collapse to a new competitor has grown again as it did last year when BRICS met and did absolutely nothing in that direction. The growing number of nations willing to work in this economic bloc together is portrayed as a sign of growing and imminent threat against the dollar. The theory is that taking down the dollar as the global trade currency will crush the dollar and badly damage the US. Maybe it would—if they could do that—but that is very far away from what is happening. (On a long enough timeline, of course, anything is possible.)

Any attempt by the BRICS to collapse the dollar will face a mountain of troubles far greater than the dollar's former feared serious replacement—the euro—or the solo ne'er-do-well attempt by the Chinese renminbi. Think, for example, of how the euro's repeated weakness has been that various European national economies are so different in their needs that we find ourselves repeatedly talking about exits from the euro because one nation's needed austerity is another nation's death grip.

Well, the nations involved in BRICS are way more diverse than European nations, which, at least, share a common Western culture. Economically, they have even greater differences as well. So, you know the reality is that over time, they are going to be more fraught with conflict than the Eurozone has been. In fact, some of them are practically arch enemies.

Even getting a new currency started is highly problematic, much less the far more difficult job of building it up to where it can compete with the dollar. China and India exist on the fringes of war together all the time, conflicting over Himalayan regions. While Russia and China incline toward a currency based on the Chinese renminbi, India absolutely does not want anything that gives China more power in the bloc.