What did the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg accomplish?
With one notable exception, Russian President Vladimir Putin, the great and the good of the Global South were all in attendance at the 15th Summit of the BRICS leaders in Johannesburg these past three days. A large part of the public proceedings, meaning the addresses to the Business Forum and the closing addresses to global media, were carried live on television majors, in particular on the Chinese CGTN.
A lot of words were delivered over the microphones. Still more were set down in the 26 page closing Declaration, which typically delivered pious hopes for a better world. The overriding call was supportive of the traditional international institutions of global governance including the United Nations and the IMF. But the call was for their reform to give a greater voice to nations of the developing world for whom BRICS is today’s rallying point. Even UN Secretary General Antonio Gutterez spoke in favor of reform of the Bretton Woods institutions and democratization of the UN Security Council, which he said reflect the world power balance at the end of WWII when many of the states present at the BRICS summit were still colonies and had no place at the table. Gutterez diplomatically avoided saying how these reforms might be effected and when.
One might say that pending the arrival of a consensus on how the United Nations, the Bretton Woods institutions and the WTO can be reformed to perform their functions of promoting peace, security and sustainable development, BRICS has set out workable plans for achieving these objectives in an ad hoc manner through new parallel institutions of its own making.
Put bluntly, these are the considerations which clearly guided the existing five members in their decision to invite six further members to join the club in January 2024: Iran, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Ethiopia. I see in this choice the priority given to enhancing global security and to financing infrastructure development.
The world is big and the list of candidate countries for inclusion in BRICS that was circulated before the Summit included many that are important in terms of population, GDP and similar neutral measures. In this connection, I would mention here Algeria, Venezuela, Nigeria, Mexico, Indonesia and Thailand. However they were overlooked in this first round of new admissions. So far I have not seen in mainstream media any commentary on this issue, so I will offer mine to fill the gap.
To be sure, Argentina’s inclusion was a necessary sop to Brazil, which had in general not been a strong advocate of expansion, preferring, like India, to keep the club small so as to preserve its own more privileged visibility and not wishing to exacerbate with the United States by admitting countries openly hostile to Washington. Otherwise, all the other new members are clustered in West Asia (till recently called the Middle East) and northeast Africa. This whole geographic area has been and remains one of the most turbulent and war-riven parts of the world. Although Ethiopia may be at peace presently, its immediate neighbors in the Horn of Africa have not been. In any case, Ethiopia counts as the second most populous country in Africa after Nigeria, and one of the poorest, in great need of development assistance.
The simultaneous inclusion of Iran and Saudi Arabia surely has the intent to build upon the peace accords between them negotiated this past spring by China. Like India and China, these two new BRICS members will surely benefit from the regular contacts within the club.
As for Saudi Arabia, its likely joining the BRICS Bank as a major contributor of capital is an obvious argument for its inclusion, alongside the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, which are already members of the Bank.
Indeed the BRICS Bank is central to the whole mission of the club. It presently is funding 100 major infrastructure projects in the developing world, and will be in a position to finance many more when its foundation capital is increased by new incoming members. It does this without imposing the Neoliberal economic straitjacket on recipient countries as do the World Bank and IMF. This is an escape route from enslavement by Western capital. It is also an escape route from dollar hegemony since the Bank will be opening loans in Brazilian, South African and other national currencies.
So much for substantive content of the BRICS summit. I now return to the blah-blah part of the exercise, which was interesting in its own way, especially the speeches by Chinese President Xi and by Vladimir Putin to the Business Forum and Closing Session.
Xi delivered barely veiled attacks on the United States for its attempts to enforce its global hegemony. He denounced its attempts to fragment the world, to divide the global community into democracies and autocracies, to foment a clash of civilizations. In denouncing “Cold War mentality,” he was speaking unequivocally about Joe Biden’s America.
While reporting of mainstream ahead of the Summit had correctly identified China as the country pushing hardest for expansion of BRICS, it spoiled its coverage by portraying Xi as seeking global hegemony for his own country. This was precisely the editorial line presented in the articles of the Financial Times dated 21st and 22nd August. Xi used his speech to refute these accusations and to claim that China seeks only an open, inclusive and representative world order. He argued against alliances as being divisive of the world into opposing camps.
It is curious that Vladimir Putin used his time at the microphone to present very different material. He spoke about the background to the Ukraine War; he explained the decision by Russia to pull out of the ‘grain deal’ securing Ukrainian grain exports and reiterated Russia’s readiness to provide Africa and the rest of the world with food security, including by delivery of grain free of charge to the neediest African nations. However, he also devoted more attention to the issue of de-dollarization, pointing to the achievement of 70% denomination in national currencies in Russia’s trade with BRICS countries. He also remarked on the growing share of global GDP enjoyed by the BRICS Five, which now is measured at 27% by the IMF, and may be called 32% in Price Parity Equivalency, meaning that it is presently greater than that of the G7. With the inclusion of the new members, the share of BRICS will be still bigger.
Putin may have been absent. But Russia was not. Moreover, in 2024 Russia takes over the chairmanship of BRICS and the Summit will be held in Kazan. The venue was surely chosen to highlight Russia’s position as a fellow “Muslim country” as it draws strategically closer to Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023