Expanded BRICS offers opportunity for the isolated, and poor

An expanded collective of developing countries under the BRICS umbrella, with six new members, could be stronger than its predecessor, offering developing or rich but isolated countries an opportunity to enter the international arena.

This could be one of the most important outcomes of the 15th BRICS summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Tuesday August 22. BRICS is made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

When they gathered for a summit last week, they invited several other countries from Africa and beyond that are considered partners of the bloc.

And now Argentina, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia and Iran are set to join from January 2024, making it an enlarged BRICS.

For one thing, this grouping means a much greater chance of significant funding for the BRICS New Development Bank, an underfunded facility designed to help developing economies with major infrastructure projects.

It also means that BRICS will continue to emerge as a global grouping of growing influence and economic power, to the benefit of less developed states such as South Africa, Egypt, Argentina and Ethiopia in particular.

For future members Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, BRICS is becoming a new centre of geopolitical gravity with reach and influence far beyond the Middle East.

In turn, these two states have the means to make the whole idea of the BRICS bank far more effective, with far-reaching implications for intra-BRICS trade.

Between them, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, with $853 billion in assets, and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, with $776 billion, are two of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world, with the power to drive the development agendas of a number of states.

China's weakened economic position, due in part to the enormous damage wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic on top of a huge and growing domestic debt burden and a looming demographic crash of its working-age citizens, has meant that it is now unable to play the role perhaps envisaged when the bloc, then known as BRIC before South Africa's accession, was formed.

While Ethiopia is one of the poorer countries and Argentina is a middle-income state, the benefit for the less wealthy BRICS members may lie in the deeper pockets of the expanded collective.

Enlargement will also bring greater political empowerment to the grouping, which has become more openly hostile to Western powers, especially with the inclusion of Iran, whose membership was supported by the Russians in particular.

South Africa's BRICS ambassador, Anil Sooklal, denied that the addition of new members to the grouping, especially those like Iran that are already under international sanctions, would change the essential nature of the bloc or its emerging role in world affairs.

"BRICS doesn't recognise unilateral sanctions. Iran will add value, as will Saudi Arabia and the UAE," he told the media.

The view from within the BRICS leadership, as expressed by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, was that the expansion of BRICS was part of an emerging multipolar geopolitical realignment. Guterres addressed the grouping's final plenary session on Thursday.

At least 22 countries have applied to join, but existing members can choose from the six to start with. And part of the rationale for expanding the body was to pursue a multipolar world, ending the post-Cold War hegemony of the United States and perhaps the "dollarised" global economy.

Each of the existing members addressed this issue in its own way.

Similarly, the enlarged bloc suits the current and future members, each in its own way.

Ethiopia and Iran will act as strong allies of Russia within the expanded grouping, which is likely to retain its existing name but perhaps become 'BRICS Plus', while the inclusion of three more leading oil producers in Iran, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, along with oil producer Russia, makes the expanded BRICS something of a 'mini-OPEC'.

With some 60 other world leaders or their representatives also in attendance, it is clear that BRICS as a global power bloc has grown in stature and capacity - and is poised for further growth.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva noted that the expanded grouping has increased its collective contribution to global GDP to 37 per cent and its share of the world's population to 46 per cent.

There are concerns in some quarters that the grouping will become increasingly unwieldy as it expands beyond its current 'small circle of friends'. But the Brazilian leader, echoing comments made by other leaders, said the expanded grouping was needed not only to counter the dominance of the dollar and the US superpower, but to ensure that many more were involved in the global rebalancing. This comes amid the many challenges facing the world, from climate change to entrenched inequalities.

For its part, China has reiterated that BRICS is not about "confrontation" with the West, but merely an alternative venue for geopolitical and economic cooperation. President Xi Jinping went out of his way in plenary speeches to emphasise China's strong desire to avoid confrontation, going so far as to indirectly criticise Russia's invasion of Ukraine by saying that nations should not resort to violence to solve their problems, a view echoed by Ramaphosa and Da Silva.

But this sentiment may be somewhat optimistic, as other delegates pointed out that Brazil, now with a 'progressive' government, had supported Argentina's accession. Argentina is currently 'pro-BRICS', but faces elections in October in which, according to current polls, centre-right and far-right parties could take power. This is likely to lead to 'anti-BRICS' or less enthusiastic attitudes towards the bloc.

The event was largely successful, despite some personality clashes between existing leaders. But there were real concerns that, for example, just because Iran and Saudi Arabia are not currently in open conflict and both are to join BRICS, there are still significant tensions between them that could easily escalate, as they have before.

Egypt and Ethiopia also bring their own past tensions into the grouping, ultimately over control of the Nile and Ethiopia's construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile, which Egypt complains poses an existential threat to this vital water supply.

Moreover, Iran and Argentina are hardly 'close' and relations remain strained over a 1994 terrorist attack on Jews and a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires.

But BRICS already contains similar inter-state tensions to those that exist between economic and geopolitical rivals India and China, which are also engaged in low-level border disputes.

Ultimately, it was the development of a 'non-Western' collective of states, with the prospect of development finance not dependent on Washington-leaning bodies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as well as mutual support in the face of powerful Western countries, that were among the most attractive features for the body's new members - and the 40 or so other states that have expressed an interest in joining.

Much emphasis has been placed on the use of 'local currencies' within BRICS when trading with each other, as a first step towards a non-dollarised global trading regime, and with a possible new BFRICS currency, or more likely a basket of currencies, as the ultimate goal on this front.

With the guiding principles established by existing members for new members, BRICS, or perhaps BRICS-Plus, will continue to grow, representing, as Guterres said, the development of a multipolar geopolitical playing field, but one, he also pointed out, that is not necessarily safer or without the prospect of further major conflicts.

As successful as the summit appears to have been, with new members and others waiting in the wings to join, Ramaphosa emerged with a much higher global profile, and Xi emerged as the most powerful leader in the bloc. There were still tensions and problems, showing that joining BRICS is not a magic formula for solving problems between states.