BRICS announces 'historic' admission of six new members
thejakartapost.com
thejakartapost.com
On its own BRICS makes no sense, the core interests simply don’t align and some members have real conflicts amongst them. The only real beneficiary will be China since this would be a forum to to do what it could not do via Belt and Road Initiative, build a large market in which China is in the center from which it can try to introduce standards and currencies it controls, a long stated goal of the CCP. Russia is going to be a resource train that is it, its march to irrelevancy is all but set. So really it’s a China play.
Adding these choice 6 countries makes it even tougher, I can see Brazil and India diluting away and eventually leaving BRICS at some point provided their economies get big enough. Although if BRICS keeps increasing in size and more key members join e.g OPEC it could put them in a tough spot.
This perspective is very western-centric. Nobody sees themselves as the villain in their own story, after all. I strongly doubt the non-Chinese non-Russians countries are thinking like that.
How about another perspective: when you run a science experiment, say if you are checking if a drug works or not, you don’t compare against “nothing”. You compare against a placebo sugar pill; otherwise you will get a significant placebo effect.
What if we replace the leaders of these countries with “placebos”? Let’s say they are generic, generally pro-democracy, boring leaders with the interests of their people at heart. Let’s not assume they’re trying to be villains for the sake of being villains, and try to explain this move. What would happen?
First off, it seems clear that world trust in the USA and western european countries is falling. The USA is chaotic domestically, and that is spilling over into its foreign policy. A neutral country cannot expect the USA to act in the public interest. The USA will always act in its own interest. For example, West Germany or Japan in the late 1990s could count on a total guarantee of USA protection against the USSR; nowadays, Taiwan is functionally a client state for the USA but seen as more “disposable” in the long run. The USA clearly intends to replace TSMC with domestic companies. Countries like Ukraine can count on USA support only for as long as public opinion holds; as soon as that dries up, the supplies will follow. Russia knows this and is fighting a war of attrition right now.
The western democracies are also bound by their election cycles. The USA’s global policy changes every 4 year election cycle, and can be hard to predict. In that sense, China or Russia are more stable allies- you’re not bound to a 4 year election cycle.
So if you’re a leader of a somewhat neutral country like Brazil or India or Egypt or Argentina, you’re not inclined to kowtow to the USA long term. It’s in your interest to recognize geopolitics is rapidly moving to a multipolar world, and being seen as one of the poles of the world as opposed to a single standard bearer is seen as being a good neighbor.
First is BRICS is being co-opted by China in pursuit of said multipolar world order and that has ramifications, which are largely negative. I have my issues with the west and history is replete with examples of it’s horrors but China would be worse as it’s actions in SCS, Tibet, Hong Kong, Tibet and some day Taiwan shows. It is an absolutely morally bankrupt enterprise, and should not be allowed any degree of control over world affairs, more than what it already has.
To your point about countries acting in their own interest, well yea of course they do, and that is totally fine. Neutral countries should do that too, and should not kow tow to anyone, especially not China-Russia because that will not be a two way relationship. It’s a sign of worse things to come is all.
Given that most of these countries are falling stars economically, it definitely seems to be a relationship of necessity more than anything.
Egypt-Ethiopia and KSA-Iran-UAE are consequential rivalries that dictate MENA geopolitics; Israel/Turkey are left in the cold.
Brazil+Argentina means South America is decisively a BRICS+ continent. What Monroe Doctrine?
3/4 of global energy production is now BRICS+.
But yeah, we in the West can cope about how BRICS isn't real, and made of economic "falling stars" from our glass houses.
At it's best it's still a toothless fantasy, at its worst it's G7 but for supervillains. And for all the criticisms you might have for G7 and "the west", BRICs is shaping up to be much, much more exploitative.
But my opinions don't really matter. If they can actually figure out a new international commerce and trading system that doesn't rely on dollars and the US Navy, despite all hating each other and each others' currencies, hats off to them. In the meantime I won't wait up.
All these new members are countries that have extremely strong trade and defense relationship with Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa already
Brazil - Argentina
Russia - Iran, UAE
India - Egypt, UAE, KSA, Ethiopia, Iran
China - Iran, KSA, UAE, Ethiopia, Egypt
South Africa - Ethiopia
The issue is, BRICS+ will never be as cohesive as the G7 because the I and C have an active rivalry that is impacting bilateral relationships in the B, R, and S.
Within the G7, all the members are already aligned with each other.
> Israel/Turkey are left in the cold
Israel has India, France, and the US due to defense and economic dependencies.
Turkey has the full support of Eastern and Southern European NATO members like Romania, Poland, Spain, etc because they are a regional power competing against Russia within the Balkans, Mediterranean, Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe
We know exactly how they differentiate from the west
BRICS is a rather motley collection of mostly "losers" desperately in need of foreign investment and other help - let's see if China/Saudi's has the stomach to give the rest of us some charity.
I reckon the moonshot coalition pact will be able to squeak by if it holds together but that assumes the turncoat opportunists and backstabbers in the "Patriotic Alliance" is kept out of it.
We at a breaking point right now - outside of the Western Cape things are falling apart literally into shambles.
Look at what America did to their ally South Africa, the ambassador accused us without proof and our currency dropped like a rock. The US also had its army in Syria protect private military contractors who protect US companies extracting oil from Syria. They're hypocrites as China is their biggest trading partner. France produces 70% of its electricity from nuclear and gets the majority of its fuel from Africa. And West Africa is just as poor as it left them.
India and China having border skirmishes don't make them sworn enemies of each other. In fact, China is one of India's largest trading partners. The US and Canada even has border disputes; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixon_Entrance.
Also, it's not a military bloc. And you can understand why the Global South countries would want this alliance to grow their economies and be less reliant on Western imposition. On average, African countries loans cost 4% more than America and 8% more than Europe, they're being taken advantage of and their natural resources depleted.
The BRICS countries constitute more than 50% of the population and 26% of the world's nominal GDP but have only 14% of the IMF's voting rights.
They aren't looking to unsettle the dollar, but be less reliant on it.
And now those countries want to come together to build up their economies through the New Development Bank which aims to increase local currency borrowing to 30%.
India is now ranked 108th in the democracy index.
Flaw democracies they might be. Nonetheless, they're still democracies (For now at least). That index isn't a static ranking. Even countries like the U.S have moved couple of rankings up and down in recent years based on policies set by whatever party is in power.
In India you have corruption, censorship, control of the media by the government, deceptive legal or illegal measure taken against the political opponents...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/brics-2023-s...
“South Africa said that more than 40 countries have expressed interest in joining Brics and 22 have formally requested to be admitted.”
and
“The membership of the new members will come into effect from 1 January 2024, Mr Ramaphosa said.”
I assume the 6 being invited are a subset of those 22. So it seems “invited” is a diplomatic way of saying that the other 16 got held back at the door, at least for now.
- India and China fucking hate each other and engage in frequent deadly border skirmishes
- Same with Iran and Saudi but without the border
- Egypt and Ethiopia are dick inches from a war, and not backing down
Maybe BRICS org can help fix some of that but unlikely. More likely this will go the way of the African Union, CARICOM, and ECOWAS - aka a lot of noise but no material change
One insane fact I recently learned is that they do not use modern weapons, like guns, for fear of things getting out of hand. Only medieval clubs, bats with barbed wire, and martial arts/fists are allowed. [1]
[1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a44725757/...
Improvised clubs with embedded nails, rebar and wooden bats ala Mad Max style. Both are nuclear armed nations, so it is sort of de-escalation mechanism for saving face whenever they clash without somebody taking it up a notch.