The BRICS’ expansion from January 2024 could help broaden its agenda and help India reinvent its initial positions at this uniquely placed plurilateral negotiation table. Along with this, the recent visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to the Middle East countries (BRICS new members) during COP28 reassured Russia’s participation in shaping the global balance. Consequently, recent pushback from Argentina and new ambitions from other countries for BRICS participation may lay a complex trajectory for BRICS identity.
Beyond counting numbers: Set of like-minded forces.
The foundational approach of a plurilateral bloc gets dismantled when it seeks to create a larger ambit for new members to be included in the decision-making. In the Johannesburg Declaration 2023, the addition of The United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, and Egypt adds to the texture of the next phase of diplomacy among these emerging economies that will play out at the BRICS forum. BRICS has now transitioned from accounting for 41 per cent of the world population, 31.5 per cent of the global GDP (in terms of PPP 2022) and 16 per cent of global trade to 3.7 billion in population, and an estimated total of $66 trillion of GDP (in terms of PPP 2023) with now 10 members, starting from January 2024. Along with this, these 10 countries will now hold a considerable percentage of global commodities including rare earth metals and oil production capacity accounting for around 50 percent globally. This could also rekindle the group’s aspiration of a common currency, which was initially proposed to be backed by a global commodity, primarily ‘gold’, that didn’t reach the negotiation tables. This grouping has often been seen in contrast with the G7 countries covering 30 per cent of global GDP—a number that the BRICS already surpassed in 2012. India, however, doesn’t see G7 and BRICS in any geoeconomics competition, as India continuously seeks economic and strategic partnerships with other Western nations.
BRICS members were able to reach an agreement on the criteria of candidacy for the new applicants of the BRICS forum. Many BRICS membership applications were held or rejected including emerging economies that could have aligned with the overall BRICS agenda, like Indonesia or even Nigeria. To accommodate such a request in the mandate of the BRICS, a partner country model that will list out the prospective countries to be introduced in the next summit in Kazan, Russia 2024, to include more voices from the aspiring countries. These inclusive outreach were also observed in the BRICS South Africa 2023 business meetings and ‘BRICS-plus Africa outreach where other 50 members were invited, resonating with the policy of BRICS to include the Global South. With these additions and parallel avenues of interventions, there can be new ‘points of convergence’ which most likely include ‘financial transition’ and ‘green transition’ as they strongly align with the agenda of the newly joined oil partners. Further, the BRICS forum is also uniquely placed for its member countries to provide subsidies, reduce market access barriers, and remove export restrictions, which existed in the forum discussions and maybe some additional ‘points of convergence’ with the new members as well.
The BRICS initially challenged the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank to reform for more equitable contributions, but later came up with their financial institution—the New Development Banks (NDB). It emerged due to a shared interest in creating an alternative financial system using local currencies in trade, investments, and payment and maybe creating a local currency bond market. The NDB is currently headquartered in China and may now look to spread its presence with the new oil-rich nations’ financial contributions in the future, pivoting it from China-centred to Asia-centred. However, this still seems a highly unlikely force to replace US dollars in many transactions as US dollars account for roughly 60 per cent of global currency reserves and 88 per cent of global Forex transactions in international settlements. Though the NDB may have been recognised globally with ‘observer status’ at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), it has only sanctioned worth $30 billion, which is less than half of the World Bank’s commitments in a year. The NDB has also stopped financing Russian projects to avoid being sanctioned. Will Russia be able to shed such restrictions when it hosts the summit for the fourth time in Kazan in 2024?
Will there be a common agenda over the national agendas?
There seems to be some bleakness in the existing working groupings and current frameworks of operations at the BRICS, which has led many prominent scholars to argue about the relevance of the BRICS. The most evident is the blatant leanings towards national agendas of member nations over the common agenda of the grouping, which could often be observed in the BRICS members’ positionstatements which also highlights the ‘divergence in priorities’ of each member.
- India’s proposal at the BRICS 15th Summit to establish a ‘space exploration consortium in the BRICS that will help create common avenues, and move beyond the BRICS satellite constellation, or even overcoming such bilateral deals like South Africa joining the China-led ILRS moon base project. India has also proposed to share best practices in the domain of delivering ‘digital public goods’, education, and skill assessment.
- For Russia, BRICS is a converging force for a multi-polar world order, diversification of supply chains, and de-dollarisation with a focus on transfers of local currency.
- Brazil’s agenda aligns much more with the financial convergence and sees this as an opportunity for an alternate currency for trade.
- South Africa is more in favour of diversifying in currency reserves of the countries in the global South with intra-group trade.
Will these above-mentioned unique stances by old members prevail at Kazan Diplomacy 2024? Such divergence on specific agenda topics may represent a lack of cohesion and promote mutual suspicion. However, the BRICS economic grouping has always been clear on improving the global financial architecture which may even further align on the energy agenda due to new members. The road to the 16th BRICS summit in Kazan in 2024 could be challenging as Russia has promised to hold 200 meetings in the next year, where a more common agenda/working model could prevail like in the case of the 200 meetings held under the G20 India Presidency in 2023. South Africa hosted the Summit for the third time with the three proposals that would be carried forward at Kazan, which would also help streamline the common agenda.
- First, the BRICS leaders have tasked their ministers and Central Bank governors to explore the use of localised platforms for international trade, payment, and financial transactions in individual currencies, which will be reviewed at the next BRICS summit in Kazan.
- Second, evaluating the new memberships and Western countries’ requests for invites—which may not happen next year in Kazan.
- Third, the South African Summit decided to establish the BRICS Youth Council to share skills, technology, and experience, for concrete outcomes and impact assessments for the youth population.
Conclusion
This investment bankers’ grouping may seem to have taken a new identity form, that now has more desire for a multipolar international system or wants lesser dependency on global financial architecture. Do these ambitions make them anti-US or anti-West? The BRICS is not a geopolitical coherent grouping, even with its old members. Most of the countries in the BRICS see the forum as extending degrees of freedom to manoeuvre their trade and foreign policy. These new degrees of freedom on agenda topics can have an exploratory approach to tap into new dimensions for further alignment among member countries. In the case of the most heavyweight member, China, the economic intertwining with its strategic competitors like the US has created vulnerabilities for its downward domestic economy along with its already existing demographic decline. So, China may take this BRICS expansion into its economic interest to increase interdependence with newer members. The recent host, South Africa, could rejoice in the addition of the oil-dominating member countries as it has been seeking gas and energy supply solutions, as experts considered that to be its biggest systemic risk in the long run.
The new members are set to bring energy as well as currency independence to the group, which could be a great point of convergence in the coming years for the BRICS forum. The divergence, however, could be sensed in the ‘exact approaches’ that would be adopted in the financial or energy transitions agenda, prioritising their already existing positions, degree of market access and concrete amount of subsidies by the member countries. Some other divergences could emerge due to its plurilateral setting or pitfalls of the system, which include a lack of a rule-based order, insufficient binding forces for policy directions, and a lack of financial commitment for initiatives. The extension of the BRICS seems to be a promising aspect for government-to-government (G2G) relations and business-to-business (B2B) ties for members internally, and who seek to invest in them through global markets.