The BRICS: From Advertised…to Weaponized?

What a strange trajectory for the BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The term was coined by Goldman Sachs in a 2001 report, as a group of emerging market countries that were growing fast and could dominate the world economy by 2050. Then, the capital S was a small s, for South African only joined the grouping in 2010.

By Gregory F. Treverton

Note: The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of SMA, Inc.

How much the term was marketing hype for Goldman’s BRICs investment fund is lost to history. In any case, by 2015, after the financial crisis of 2007–8 and the decline in oil prices that began in 2014, Goldman merged its BRICS fund into its broader emerging markets fund. Long before then, however, the BRICS countries had decided to organize themselves into an informal group—thus converting an advertising slogan into an international organization.

Last year’s BRICS summit South Africa was a no-go zone for Vladimir Putin, who would have been subject to arrest as an international criminal. By contrast, this year’s summit, hosted by Russia in the city of Kazan, was a Putin coming out party. Not only was it the first to include new members Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, but it included 36 countries, including 20 heads of state and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. Putin himself held twenty bilateral meetings around the summit. The point, plainly, was to demonstrate that Russia is not isolated, surely not as much as the United States and its allies would like.

Putin’s grander purpose was, and is, to use the BRICS as an instrument in building an alternative to the Western-led order, one in which Russia holds more influence. On that score, the summit was mixed. Certainly, it was inconvenient that South Korea announced, and the United States confirmed, that 12,000 North Korean troops were being sent to Russia to fight Russia’s war on Ukraine at the same time as the summit—though it was also an illustration that Russia is not a complete pariah after its invasion of Ukraine.

However, the summit also illustrated that Russia wants more from BRICS than it can give. On war footing, it has no surplus resources for the kinds of foreign aid and investment that strengthen partnerships. BRICS may save it from total isolation but will not serve as the vehicle for Russia’s global leadership. That was clear in the summit declaration, which was long but vague, and made no commitments regarding sanctions, the war in Ukraine or Russia’s goal of creating a BRICS payment system as an alternative to SWIFT, the main messaging network through which international payments are initiated, and one dominated by the United States and its allies. Chinese president Xi Jinping, while present at the summit, remained reserved, talking about trade but making no significant statements.

The summit outcome won’t undermine Russia’s bilateral relationships with key partners such as China and India but did suggest that BRICS-plus is unlikely to serve as a forum for Moscow to shape the global agenda to its liking. China, which hardly has made no secret of its interest in at least leading the global South. Yet it, too, would run into the same obstacles. For instance, while India may favor a more multipolar order, it also has good relations with many Western countries, including the United States. And, to boot, it seeks to compete with China’s international influence. The new members add a mélange of differing interest to the organization.

Yet as the world becomes one less of poles than of two looser “clubs” around the United States and China, with Russia as a junior partner, states—including several new members of the BRICS -plus—have more opportunity to hedge their bets or even swap clubs for specific issues. So, the grouping could be a means to harmonize members’ interest where they align and manage them when they diverge. The summit did produce the first meeting between Xi and India’s leader, Narendra Modi, in five years, and served as a kind of deadline for China and India to cool their border dispute. While the language was general, both sides began pulling back troops in the most combustible of the disputed areas.

Beyond the BRICS-plus summit, the fluidity—and uncertainty—of global geopolitics does seem to offer new lines of action for the global South, though BRICS-plus, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)—which includes Russia, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan – or some arrangements as yet unconceived. Middle powers in the South see more opportunities as the U.S.-led world order splinters. Ten countries of the South comprise 32 percent of the global population and 20 percent of the world’s gross domestic product. None has sanctioned Russia, and many are seeking to strengthen ties with China, though they also do not wish to weaken ties with the United States.

For the near future, BRICS-plus won’t be a weapon to create an alternative world order, but it will be a platform for China and India to manage the inevitable tensions between them, just as the SCO has played that role for China and Russia in central Asia. And who knows, over a longer time horizon Goldman’s original advertising bet may be a winner: countries of the global South could dominate the global economy, though probably not through BRICS and provided China continues to be counted in that South.

Gregory F. Treverton stepped down as Chair of the US National Intelligence Council in 2017. He is now Professor of the Practice at Dornsife College, University of Southern California, Chair of the Global TechnoPolitics Forum, and an SMA Executive Advisor.