The BRICs summit 2023 Flashcards
The BRICS
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa
6 new members admitted on the fifteenth summit in 2023:
Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and UAE
- will officially join in January 2024 and be BRICS+
Article 1- The world should become the new kids on the bloc
- the 15th BRICS summit has sent a strong signal that the post ww2 order should accept the multipolar reality and change with the times
- a slew of applications to join the BRICs
- growing disenchantment with the prevailing international system after several actions from the West
-The expansion of the BRICS to a BRICS+ format and the adoption of guiding principles, standards, and procedures for the same, have potentially made the BRICS a more attractive institution for consensus-building and dialogue in the developing world. - new members goes beyond the traditionally “acceptable” partners in the eyes of the west
- the BRICS expansion is an attempt at an alternative world order
Article 2- The geopolitical moment of the BRICS+
The fifteenth BRICS summit will be remembered in two ways:
1) as a summit that decided on the transformation from the BRICS to the BRICS+
2) as a summit of complaints against the West for its responsibility for crises and wars and its inability to even control the consequences of these events.
- New horizons of possibility are seized in anticipation of new options for action, pointing clearly to the urgent need to reorder international relations to overcome the self-referentiality of the West.
- Western countries need to understand that the BRICS+ will continue as a loose grouping heterogeneous in its membership but with high aspirational dimensions seeking to expand its practical capabilities for other countries around the globe, especially a wider projection of the New Development Bank.
- The G7 needs to be aware that the formation of BRICS+ is more than a mere political maneuver to advance China’s vision of international order
-The BRICS+ countries have seized their geopolitical moment and called for a united stand of emerging and developing countries against a world order and practice of international politics that does not correspond to their needs and necessities
Article 3- The quest for global influence
- The new members will add their voices to advocating for a more equitable global governance system, reforming the UN Security Council, and increasing influence for the Global South.
- The expansion signifies a growing alignment of geopolitical and economic agendas within the BRICS
-The BRICS expansion has now located countervailing forces and interests at the heart of the club, which could make it difficult for its democracies—Brazil, India, and South Africa—to straddle the global geopolitical divide
Article 4- The BRICs is not an anti-western association per se
- Now experts talk both about the success of the non- West, which is expanding, as well as the West’s victory, because the BRICS+ remains an amorphous, non-institutionalized group
-The supporters of turning the BRICS into an anti- Western association could not prevail. Apart from Russia, the members are not interested in direct conflict with the West.
- At the fork in the road between deepening and institutionalizing ties or expanding outward, the BRICS chose expansion
- The BRICS will move toward the alter-West rather than the anti-West. The grouping will expand the space of interaction bypassing the Western world and without the participation of Western countries
- Current and future BRICS members have one thing in common: they reject the right of the United States and the European Union to impose restrictions on other countries’ foreign policy and economic activities
- The BRICS space can be developed as a tool for diversifying the world and moving away from Western domination toward a far more multifaceted scenario
Article 5- A greater voice for developing countries
- More than twenty countries formally expressed their willingness to join the BRICS
- It appears that both the G7 and BRICS are competing for influence in the Global South
- The Global South’s economic growth potential and increasing security influence is contributing to its rising global importance
- The G7 engagement and the BRICS engagement toward the Global South differ significantly. The G7 only occasionally invites Global South countries for partial dialogues. The BRICS have now recruited six influential full members from the Middle East, North Africa, and South America.
- The BRICS vision is to demand a greater voice for developing
countries in world affairs
Article 6- Expansion will test the BRIC´s cohesion and effectiveness
- The addition of six new members underlined the BRICS’ determination to create a bloc of major emerging economies to represent the interests of the developing world.
- Some forty countries applying or indicating interest in joining the group.
- The group aspires to reshape global governance by increasing trades in local currencies, reforming the United Nations and International Monetary Fund to better accommodate the aspirations of emerging countries, and aligning positions on global issues such as on agriculture, health, and sustainable development
- Members would need to decide if BRICS is to be a bloc of emerging economies seeking to promote their interests in a multipolar world order or adopt a more explicitly anti-West orientation, the latter of which is preferred by China and Russia.
-It is likely that Indonesia will wait to see if BRICS member-states are able to resolve the group’s identity crisis, establish a more coherent vision, and become more institutionalized.
Article 7- Brazil and the BRICS: Focus on multipolarity and multilateralism
- The growing economic weight of the BRICS members merits demands for a larger role in economic governance reforms. The BRICS countries want more power in multilateral decisions that guarantee a greater degree of domestic autonomy or flexibility (or both) in their respective development agendas.
- The Lula administration was originally against expansion because it would reduce Brazil’s bargaining power within the bloc. However, as a defender of greater participation from the Global South, Brazil accepted expansion, and the addition of Argentina was a positive sign.
- The most controversial issue for Brazil, however, is the defense of nonalignment and neutrality in tensions between the United States and China and in the war in Ukraine.
- Brazil, India, and South Africa, the oldest members, will have a difficult time ensuring that the new BRICS is not a platform for defending the geopolitical interests of China or Russia.
- Topics that are of interest to the Global South as a whole should be prioritized: cooperative mechanisms for energy transition, technology transfer, financing the New Development Bank, resumption of the World Trade Organization dispute settlement mechanism, and UN Security Council reform.
Article 8- Summit displayed South Africa´s contra dictionary foreign policy
- In President Cyril Ramaphosa’s speech to the nation just days before the summit, he underscored the value of South Africa’s diverse foreign partnerships and sought to bring clarity to his government’s policy of nonalignment
- The distance between a foreign policy grounded in a democratic identity and committed to promoting human rights and an embrace of a global order shaped by China and Russia—and now Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia as well—is considerable.
- The gulf between the story South Africans like to tell themselves and the reality of their government’s nonchalance toward repression and aggression as long as it is within states that position themselves in opposition to Western powers is hard to ignore.
- South Africa may have captured the regional zeitgeist by seizing on legitimate frustration with the status quo to embrace a fairly inchoate idea about a new global order
- Certainly other African governments share a desire for a multipolar order and meaningful reform to the international institutional architecture that was largely designed without their input.
