OPINION: World Disorder

This week, Vladimir Putin strutted his stuff as host of a summit held by BRICS, a bloc of nations with Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and another few nations as members. BRICS was launched 2009 to be a geopolitical rival to the G7 bloc of advanced economies and has attempted to counter Western influence.

It promotes peace, security, development, and cooperation, but that’s a sham; note that this year’s host is a war criminal who invaded a neighboring country and conducted terrorist operations around the world. Even so, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres showed up to the gathering and took a photo with the Russian dictator. “Putin is an indicted war criminal, and the UN secretary-general went to see him. This is unacceptable,” said former US Ambassador William Taylor. Also unacceptable is Russia’s membership in the United Nations and its Security Council.

BRICS members are mostly autocratic nation-states such as Iran, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, China, and Russia. The exceptions are India, Egypt, and South Africa, which are democratic but remain members out of loyalty to Moscow for its assistance to them over the years. They are opportunists, as are new applicants from Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Malaysia, who want to plant their feet in both camps, West and anti-West. On October 23, this collection turned out in full force at Putin’s surreal meeting, which was devised to portray him as a great and powerful statesman, flanked by giants such as Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

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In reality, he’s a thug, and BRICS is an anti-American and anti-European gang-up that cannot shoot straight. This is one of the reasons why the assemblage has failed to devise ways to successfully de-throne the West. A poorly cobbled construct of the Kremlin, the group is held together by foreign and military aid plus financial and trade privileges. India and China remain arch rivals, tethered to Russia only because each is provided with vast amounts of discounted crude oil. They also disagree with BRICS’s goal of de-dollarizing the world and replacing it with the Yuan as the world’s reserve currency. Frankly, it’s not only an unlikely prospect but also of little interest to India.

Hypocrisy rules because the group’s mission statement is vague and varied. “India can ‘chew gum and walk at the same time,’” boasted New Delhi’s foreign minister when asked how his country can be in BRICS and also be in the QUAD, a military alliance formed to contain China. Its partners include the BRICS’ main nemesis, the US, plus allies Japan, Australia, and several small Asian nations.

But Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian is not equivocal and fully endorses its underlying strategy, which is to destroy the West and its Great Satan, America. “BRICS can be a way out of American totalitarianism and create a path of multilateralism. BRICS can be a solution to deal with the dominance of the dollar and deal with the economic sanctions of countries,” he said en route to the October summit.

Fortunately, the good news is that despite motives and Putinesque portrayals of BRICS as a powerhouse, it is not economically consequential. As of 2024, its countries represented 35 percent of the global GDP. By contrast, the G7 alone represented 30 percent. Then there are NATO’s 32 members (which include the G7), whose economies add up to 45.65 percent of the global GDP. This is 2.55 times bigger than China’s GDP and 20.5 times bigger than Russia’s. Atop it all is that the military might of the QUAD, which patrols the East China Sea, the South China Sea, and the waters around Taiwan, cannot be beaten by Beijing.

These numbers put Iran’s rhetoric and Putin’s theatrics to shame. So does a public statement made by China’s President Xi Jinping at the recent BRICS meeting: He said there should be “no expansion of the battlefields, no escalation of hostilities, and no fanning flames.” Washington’s Institute for the Study of War also reported that Xi told BRICS members on the sidelines “to prevent the spreading of the war to third parties” and called for the “swift de-escalation of the situation in Ukraine.”

Behind these bombshell remarks by Xi is Beijing’s new concern that Putin has opened another front in Asia, as I wrote about this week. Putin signed a deal with North Korea to join his war against Ukraine in return for enhanced nuclear know-how from Moscow. To Xi, this means Putin is widening the conflict by arming the most rogue player in China’s neighborhood, which will convince South Korea and Japan to nuclearize and militarize. East Asia will be a powder keg.

However, contrary to facts, Russia claims that BRICS is big enough to define a new world order. But, this is untenable because the ideologies of the group’s members don’t align when it comes to many policy preferences. China and India may be benefiting from cheap oil due to the war. Still, the expansion and downsides of Putin’s wars in Ukraine, the Middle East, and Sudan are worrisome to both them and their customers in America and Europe. Besides that, China and Russia want to remove dollar dominance to eliminate the sanctions imposed by America. However, India and Brazil do not share an interest in a world dominated by China’s yuan.

There are also fundamental differences of opinion concerning Russian marauding. In 2022, India, China, and South Africa abstained from voting on a UN assembly resolution to support Ukraine’s sovereignty after Russia invaded it, but Brazil and others condemned Russia’s war. The abstentions were cowardly, and their association with Putin’s BRICS diminishes their standing and makes the world more dangerous. Then, the UN’s hapless Gutteres appeared at the summit. “We need peace in Ukraine,” he said. “The invasion violated the United Nations Charter and international law. We need peace all across the board.”

He paid lip service to international law but paid homage and shook hands with the world’s worst perpetrator in front of cameras.

Reprinted from dianefrancis@substack.com – Diane Francis on America and the World.

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