Too inconsistent for an anti-Western bloc

 

Last year, the Russian president was unable to attend the Brics summit in Johannesburg, South Africa. The host did not want to openly contradict the International Criminal Court, which is looking for Putin for kidnapping children from Ukraine.

This year, since Russia has the rotating chairmanship, Putin is hosting the summit himself. From October 22nd to 24th he will receive the heads of state and government of the Brics states in Kazan, the capital of the Tatarstan region on the Volga in southern Russia.

There he will demonstrate that Russia is by no means alone or isolated, on the contrary, is the expected message: Russia is, according to the narrative from Moscow, a leader of the global south, which manifests itself, among other things, in the Brics.

But if you look closer, the Brics is not a coherent geopolitical bloc, but rather a hodgepodge of countries that have different interests and goals. This trend of diversity is further reinforced by the expansion of the Brics at last year’s summit in South Africa.

In addition to the members who gave the group a name based on their initials – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – the new ones are now joining us in Kazan for the first time: Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Ethiopia. Saudi Arabia is also expected. The country received an invitation to become part of the Brics. It has taken part in previous events, but has not yet formalized its membership.

The original vision

The first Brics summit took place in Russia in June 2009 and brought together countries that wanted to play a larger role on the world stage, both economically and politically – as a kind of lobby organization in competition with the established, mostly Western powers had come together in the form of the G-7.

At the 16th summit now taking place, ten countries with different interests and goals will meet for the first time. While the Brics long had the goal of gaining a better position within the existing order, today the group is characterized by conflicting interests – and consists of a number of countries that are in many cases in conflict with one another.

Beijing, which has been the most vocal in its support for expanding the Brics, appears to want to turn the group into a kind of influence organization for China – a tool in the fight for a new, Chinese-dominated global order. Beijing’s economic influence is to be forged into a political weapon with the help of the Brics.

Russia shares the anti-Western agenda with China. At the same time, however, Russia, which played a central role in building the Brics in the past, does not want to get lost in a large number of China’s partners, which will soon appear to be arbitrary. Moscow continues to see itself as a leader, together with Beijing. It wants to preserve the group’s exclusivity and hopes for increasing ability to act, especially in the power struggle with America.

India as an internal counterpoint to China

However, India by no means shares this anti-American agenda of the two most influential players in the Brics group. The country is connecting more closely with the US through formats such as the Quad Group as well as bilaterally and technologically in order to counterbalance China’s regional hegemony.

Saudi Arabia is also relying on a deeper security partnership with the USA in order to prevent Iran, which is pushing for dominance in the Middle East, from gaining the upper hand. The United Arab Emirates and Egypt also follow the US in terms of security policy. When it comes to security policy, they are all more in the American camp than in the anti-Western camp.

For countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and South Africa, it is interesting to be a member of as many “clubs” as possible in order to increase their own options and gain new scope for action. It’s also about signaling to Washington that it could also take the other side – in order to improve its negotiating position with its primary geopolitical partner, the USA. They are also hoping to gain one or two economic advantages from the Brics’ proximity to China.

India, which is increasingly becoming its own regional and global power factor, is interested in not leaving the Brics entirely to China and Russia – out of concern that rival China could use this instrument to further improve its power position. In addition, it is a primary Indian security interest that China and Russia do not move even closer together – and in the worst case, form a common bloc with Pakistan, which China also wants to see in the Brics. That’s why it’s important for Delhi to stick with it – to ensure that nothing happens that goes against its interests.

Only Iran fully shares the anti-Western agenda that Moscow represents and which Beijing supports. For Iran, the increasing ties to Russia and China offer new opportunities to position itself more strongly in terms of power politics and to prevent an international coalition from isolating Iran and imposing sanctions on it.

 

No longer a group of up-and-comers

It is clear that the Brics are anything but a group of like-minded newcomers today. South Africa, Brazil and Russia are no longer dynamic future markets. The Brics expansion last year made it clear that something else has long been at stake: China is trying to win over partners in order to push back the USA and the Western-style order and to assume a hegemonic position itself.

But given the different interests of the members, there is little that holds the group together. India sees China as an acute threat, and the same applies to Saudi Arabia with regard to Iran. Egypt and Ethiopia are increasingly in conflict over regional order issues. And above all: the anti-Western agenda that Russia and China are pushing is not shared by the majority of members.

Given this, the value of the Brics for China and Russia lies primarily in the symbolic realm. The fact that there is a platform at all where the West’s central opponents – Russia, China and Iran – sit at the same table and try to get other important countries on their side always causes concern in the West .

In substance, the Brics has nothing comparable to groups like the G-7, which are really like-minded and use their meetings for the strategic coordination of real politics. At the Brics meetings, on the other hand, only pompous declarations are usually adopted that list all the formulas of “global governance”, but remain vague and declamatory and hardly lead to joint action by the signatories.

This will not change with last year’s expansion round and possible further expansions. On the contrary, such expansions increase the diversity of interests among members, and more and more opposites find their way into the Brics. A geopolitically powerful bloc will not emerge this way.