What is the future of the BRICS?
15th annual summit of the BRICS—a group comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—takes place in Johannesburg. For the first time one of the bloc’s leaders will be absent. As host, South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, felt he had a responsibility to welcome his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
But as a signatory to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the International Criminal Court, his duty was to detain Mr Putin under the court’s arrest warrant and send him to the Hague to stand trial for war crimes. Russia’s leader has said he will stay away. But Mr Ramaphosa’s dilemma is part of a wider struggle between BRICS members over how to make the group geopolitically relevant.
What unites the BRICS, and how much does the group matter? Alliances usually grow out of their members’ common interests. Not so with the BRICS. The acronym was coined in 2001 by Goldman Sachs, a bank, as a marketing tool to attract investment into four of the world’s largest, fast-growing middle-income countries (South Africa was not originally part of the club).
In 2006 the bank opened an equity fund for investors in the BRICs. The group’s members differ profoundly. Brazil, India and South Africa are democracies.
Russia and China are not. Russia, China and India have nuclear weapons. Brazil and South Africa do not.
Brazil and Russia export commodities. China imports them. China’s economy is larger than the others combined.
It has a long-running border dispute with India, which flared up in 2020, killing 24 soldiers. In 2015 Goldman closed its BRIC fund. Three years later The Economist asked: “Does anyone still care about the BRICS?" Its leaders certainly do.
Read more on livemint.com
