In 2001, these economies together already represented 23 percent of world GDP (according to the purchasing power parity criterion), while the G7 economies, a group formed by Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, represented 49 percent of the world’s economy.
In his report, Mr. O'Neill predicted that the BRICS would grow. He was right: By the end of 2022, the combined GDP of the BRICS (which came to include South Africa in 2010) had already surpassed 31 percent of the world economy, while the GDP of the G7 had fallen to 30.7 percent.
The acronym created by Mr. O‘Neill captured the imagination of politicians, and the BRICS began to meet in 2009. The next meeting is taking place in South Africa from Aug. 22 to 24—in a world that has changed dramatically since Mr. O’Neill wrote his report.
A sign of the changes is the absence of Vladimir Putin. Mr. Putin will not be in South Africa because of an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for alleged Russian activities in the war in Ukraine. Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, is attending. Last year, Mr. Xi was “re-elected” to a third term as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. It’s the first time this has happened since the death of former leader Mao Zedong.
But, when it comes down to it, what is the BRICS? It’s easier to define what it isn’t: The BRICS isn’t a bloc aligned around common interests or the same geopolitical vision. It isn’t a union created by treaty. It doesn’t form a self-defense pact. Perhaps the best definition of the BRICS is that it’s a tool for the projection of two supreme rulers and power groups of two member countries. The BRICS is a platform, a mechanism to be used pragmatically, according to situational convenience.
The countries that make up the G7 maintain important differences among themselves: some are members of the UN Security Council—the United States, the United Kingdom, and France—others aren’t (Japan, Italy, and Canada); some have nuclear weapons, and some don’t. And the size of their economies is quite unequal (the U.S. economy is 13 times the size of Canada’s economy). The G7 is also not based on a treaty and has no permanent secretariat. But all of the group’s countries are democracies in which the rule of law is (generally) considered to exist, and which share the same geopolitical alignment consolidated after World War II and the end of the Cold War.
Despite the politically correct authoritarian fever that has been sweeping the West—the woke wave—and the leftist radicalism that has mainly contaminated American and Canadian politics, it’s still possible to see in the G7 a common intention to defend the Western democratic capitalist model.
This is much more than can be said about the BRICS. The regimes of two of its members—China and Russia—aren’t considered democracies. Russia moved from communism to an autocracy dominated by oligarchs. China is dominated by a dictatorial power structure, nominally communist, which allows the controlled existence of a market economy completely subject to state control.
The other three BRICS countries—Brazil, India, and South Africa—are unstable, turbulence-prone democracies. Brazil is going through a challenging period, marked by the use of state institutions to repress free expression and by protests against the return to power of a political group seen by many as predatory, spiteful, and radically ideological.
China and Russia are permanent members of the UN Security Council. India wants a seat on the Council. China opposes it, while Russia supports India—although many say this support is just a potentially profitable gesture, as Russia is sure of China’s veto.
The only thing that the BRICS countries seem to have in common is the fact that they are powers that don’t feel represented by international institutions. If the criterion for being a member of the G7, for example, was only economic power, India and China should be a part of it, instead of Canada and Italy. Another example is how hard it is for countries such as China or Brazil to obtain resources from the World Bank, as they’re no longer countries with low per capita income. The BRICS Bank would be a solution, although it only emerged a long time after the creation of the bloc.
The actual function of the BRICS bloc appears to be, for the member countries and their rulers, to guarantee international visibility and be a channel for relationships. That’s why the BRICS gained new importance for Russia after the invasion of Crimea and the war with Ukraine. The leftists who form the current Brazilian government—and who work to rewrite its foreign relations—seem to see in the BRICS a chance to recreate the group of non-aligned countries of the 1960s. It’s their opportunity to spin-off the “anti-imperialist” rhetoric of the past and shift focus from the economic mistakes and the political disaster of the Workers’ Party government.
Therein lies the explanation for the suggestion that countries such as Argentina and Venezuela should be admitted into the BRICS. No one should be surprised if the next suggestion is that Cuba and Nicaragua should join, too. Meanwhile, the presidency of the BRICS Bank was taken over by a controversial character: Dilma Rousseff—the former guerrilla fighter who was twice elected president of Brazil only to be impeached in her second term, after leading the country into the worst recession since the beginning of the 20th century.
The BRICS is, today, no more than a club that gives authoritarian politicians the opportunity to gain media exposure with positive-looking agendas, that justifies the luxurious international tourism of dictators and their bureaucrats, and that facilitates meetings that wouldn’t otherwise happen—and that never should, in a world that really values freedom, security, and prosperity.
