OPINION: BRICS Is Collapsing Under the Weight of Its Ambition

In a 2001 seminal research paper, then Goldman Sachs Chief Economist Jim O’Neill lumped together four standout emerging markets – Brazil, Russia, India, and China – that he believed were punching well below their weight at the time and warranted greater representation on the international arena. 

The inaugural 2009 BRIC Summit, held in Yekaterinburg, Russia, welcomed the heads of state of all existing members to discuss the budding alliance. In 2010, South Africa was admitted to the bloc, despite its bleak growth prospects that prompted Moody’s to downgrade its debt outlook from stable to negative a year later. BRICS was born. 

The alliance remained limited to these five countries for over a decade until earlier this year. On Jan. 1, 2024, the group almost doubled in size after voting to admit four new members – Iran, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Ethiopia. The expanded organization has since taken on the acronym BRICS+.

O’Neill began to suspect early on that the alliance, originally ideated as an abstract marketing concept he had coined for “adventurous investors,” was becoming something of a vanity project. During an event held by ETF Stream in London last summer, O’Neill confessed that the group was never meant to be a “political club” and questioned “what fruitful purpose it serves” following the haphazard expansion wave earlier this year. 

Other Topics of Interest

Pyongyang Delivered More Artillery, Rocket Launchers to Moscow, Seoul Says

Seoul’s intelligence said Pyongyang sent artillery and rocket launchers currently not used by Russia, meaning North Korean troops are likely responsible for their instructions and maintenance.

Bringing Iran, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Ethiopia into the fold only reaffirmed his assertion that the informal alliance was light on substance and heavy on symbolism while lacking any real raison d’être. 

Other major emerging economies were invited to the fold but declined to join.

Argentina’s “anarcho-capitalist” President Javier Milei opted out of BRICS+ shortly after assuming power in December 2023, citing his unwillingness to “ally with communists” as grounds for doing so, according to an interview with Deutsche Welle. Fellow invitee Saudi Arabia has postponed confirming whether or not it will formally join the Russian-led association. Besides biding their time in anticipation of the US elections this November, the House of Saud and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MbS), in particular, appreciate that tethering the Kingdom’s post-oil future to Greater Eurasia as opposed to the Group of Seven (G7) economies is a losing proposition. 

Should US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump return to the Oval Office for a second term, Riyadh will likely mirror Buenos Aires in scrapping BRICS+ membership altogether. Though he has long been accused of having a soft spot for Russia, Trump is at odds with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ongoing quest to undermine the petrodollar. Amid recently released footage directly implicating Saudi intelligence operative Omar Al Bayoumi in the planning and execution of 9/11, the Trump administration could agree to suppress any negative publicity that risks torpedoing MbS’ Vision 2030 in return for Saudi Arabia pivoting away from the Kremlin-CCP orbit. 

The former president went out of his way to provide cover for the conservative sheikhdom’s de facto ruler in the aftermath of the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Affinity Partners, a hedge fund founded by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner after leaving the White House, received a $2 billion windfall from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) as a token of gratitude for burying the Khashoggi incident and limiting the reputational damage wrought upon MbS. Also worth recalling is that Kushner helped broker the historic 2020 Abraham Accords and now has his sights set on Saudi-Israel normalization.

That said, the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel prevented both Middle Eastern states from reaching a near-term peace deal. If anything, Putin ended up milking the ensuing Gaza conflict and feigning sympathy for the Palestinian cause to advance his multipolarity designs and win over the Global South.

BRICS has admittedly generated interest from key players within the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), like Turkiyë, Malaysia, and Algeria, by virtue of its pro-Hamas stance. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met his GCC counterparts in Riyadh last week to further consolidate pan-Arab support for the “new world order.”

Among the reasons why BRICS+ has, nonetheless, failed to position itself as a credible counterweight to the G7 or OECD is acute internal rivalries – notably that of China and India. Ever since the Galwan Valley border clash four years ago that left 20 Indian soldiers dead, diplomatic ties between the two Asian giants have remained at rock bottom. 

India has steered clear of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and refused to resume direct flights to China while playing an increasingly active role alongside the U.S, Japan, and Australia in the Quad – a strategic security coalition aimed at containing Beijing’s influence across the Indo-Pacific region. 

Another less-discussed territorial dispute that BRICS+ managed to import concerns Iran and the UAE. Despite repeatedly lobbying Russia and China to condemn the Islamic Republic’s alleged annexation of three Persian Gulf islands – Abu Musa, Greater Tunb, and Lesser Tunb – the Emiratis are effectively underwriting their own occupation given Dubai’s notorious reputation as the go-to offshore haven for IRGC-linked officials to launder and stash away their ill-gotten gains. To make matters worse, the Kremlin has invited arch-foes Armenia and Azerbaijan to the upcoming BRICS+ forum in Kazan that will take place next month.

When it comes to potential enlargement, however, Russia -– which currently chairs BRICS+ – appears to have engaged in doublespeak. On the one hand, Putin continues to boast that 34 countries are vying for accession, only hinting at the absence of any hard and fast criterion that must be fulfilled to make the cut. At the same time, Lavrov recently ruled out the intake of any additional members in order to first “process new arrivals”. Although the “de-dollarization” agenda is bound to feature prominently in Kazan, prospects for launching an alternative payment mechanism and common currency are still riddled with challenges.

For starters, most BRICS+ participants are not as gung-ho about disrupting the status quo as the Russians, Chinese, and Iranians. Efforts to bypass SWIFT and entertain non-dollar cross-border transactions at scale could expose nations on cordial terms with the West – such as India, Brazil, and South Africa – to secondary sanctions. 

There have already been cases of punitive measures imposed on third-country banks that facilitate financial flows to and from Russia. Moreover, most funding and lending administered by the New Development Bank (NDB) is done in U.S dollars, with local-currency borrowing amounting to below 20%.

As far as Putin is concerned, BRICS+ and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) are the new Nord Stream I and Nord Stream II. Conducting strikes deep inside Russia is arguably Ukraine’s best bet to thwart the ex-KGB agent’s grand plans for a global redistribution of power and ensure that he is forced to show up at the negotiating table with a weak hand. 

Bringing the war home to Russia will not only render the country ‘uninvestable’ and off-limits to foreign dignitaries, but eventually prompt its “fence-sitting” allies to second-guess their commitment to an anti-Western movement faced with a major legitimacy crisis.

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.