Filenews 22 August 2023 - by Andreas Kluth
The U.S. and its Western allies would do well to counter the pomp and ostentation elements that will accompany this week's BRICS summit in Johannesburg without taking them exactly at face value.
Certainly, this "bloc" – which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – represents more than 40% of the world's population, and other countries in the Global South may join it. The BRICS also wish to present themselves as a kind of geopolitical alternative, as non-West or anti-West to US hegemony. But they are not – and never will be.
The curse of blocks
For starters, it's always hard to launch something successful – a policy, a foundation, a group or a club – just because someone came up with a great acronym. And that's exactly how BRIC (later BRICS) began. Jim O'Neill coined the term in 2001 when he was an economist at Goldman Sachs and needed a handy name for many markets that looked promising to investors but otherwise had nothing apparently in common.
The BRICS adopted the label because it suited two trends: the fashion of acronyms, but also the fashion of blocks. The latter, I think, came out of the evolution that followed a bipolar world during the Cold War to a unipolar moment of US hegemony and seen as a return to multipolarity from then until today. In this more complex world, countries assume that they must belong to some kind of coalition, perhaps even several at once.
Today there is a staggering array of blocks to choose from. Just take Africa as an example. The continent has (I will not mention the explanation of the abbreviations) the blocs – organizations AMU, Comesa, CEN SAD, EAC, Eccas, Ecowas and a few more, not to mention the African Union. This word "union," in fact, is especially popular with blocks because it brings unity where it usually doesn't exist at all.
This applies even to the European Union, which is closer to being a real bloc in the sense of a confederation. In trade and regulation, the EU is a global power. In everything else, however, it is nothing but a club of chaos of various nations that cannot agree on much and that certainly could not stand up to the great powers of the world.
The blocs of the rest of the world have much less to offer. Latin America, for example, is making a serious effort, with SICA, Caricom, Mercosur and others. And every time one bloc dies out, such as USAN (the Union of South American Nations), another takes its place, most recently Prosur (Forum for the Progress of South America). In your place, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for results.
Among all these aspiring confederations, BRICS members arguably have the least in common with each other, apart from dislike of U.S. influence in global economic, financial, and geopolitical affairs. They consist of three democracies at different stages of regression and two increasingly repressive authoritarian dictatorships. A couple within the bloc, China and India, are as likely to fight each other as they are to work together. This is very different from, say, the G7, a club of rich liberal democracies with a common sense of being the gatekeepers of the global economy.
One thing that all blocs, associations and forums successfully engage in is the creation of bureaucracy. The EU wins the title in this category, with 10 or 11 presidencies, depending on how you count them. But even smaller blocs boast of their secretariats, rotating presidencies, and related other bureaucracies. The BRICS, for example, created the New Development Bank, an institution intended to copy the World Bank (again because the latter is based in Washington).
However, when blocks pursue higher goals, they unwittingly become fodder for satirical artists. The BRICS have promoted the idea of a common currency – so much the better to topple the hated US dollar from its global throne. But only one bloc, the EU, has ever achieved a monetary union – and it did so at the cost of repeated risks of "premature death". The idea that the BRICS will pool their money, their central banks, their fiscal and monetary policy is simply ridiculous.
Reasons
In fact, each of the five BRICS is in this bloc for different reasons. Take China as an example. He wants to displace the US as a hegemon and continues to produce blocs that he believes he can dominate precisely for this purpose. These include the Belt and Road Initiative, an intercontinental infrastructure project, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a Eurasian group, and the so-called 16+1 (formerly 17+1), a format in which China reportedly cooperates with Central and Eastern Europe. As the Europeans at this club have understood, however, +1 actually wanted to make the boss to the other 16.
Given C's goals in the BRICS, neither B, R, I, or S, nor other countries that have expressed interest in joining, such as Indonesia, can really be enthusiastic about becoming Beijing's vassals just to teach Washington a lesson. That's one reason why the forum will have a hard time projecting soft power — and even more so it will struggle to project tough power.
Another reason is the company he is forced to keep in his ranks. It never helps a club when a member cannot turn up because the International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for his arrest. In this case, this is Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is facing war crimes charges for allegedly deporting children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia. He will participate via video call to avoid being handcuffed upon arrival in Johannesburg.
How the hosts will take care of this delicate situation and whether everyone in the room will be left speechless, including Putin's foreign minister, is worth watching. But a new world order will be nowhere in sight.
