They can “add” as many members as they want. It wouldn’t change shit.
The BRICS are an acronym searching for a geopolitical role. When Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa get together for their annual summit in Johannesburg next month, a top issue for discussion will be whether to expand the club. Emerging economies might be better off if it disbands.
www.reuters.com
Despite their annual gatherings, the BRICS haven’t achieved anything notable together. They created a multilateral lender, the New Development Bank, in 2015. But it has approved only
$33 billion of projects in its entire history. The World Bank, by contrast, committed
$104 billion in its 2022 fiscal year alone.
The fault line between India and China, which fought a small war in the Himalayas in 2020, is one reason the BRICS club has done so little. India sees the People’s Republic as its most dangerous threat.
It is also hard to view China, now the world’s second-largest economy, as a voice for the Global South. Besides, most developing countries don’t want to be forced to choose sides in a showdown with the United States.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has further compromised the BRICS. Indeed, Vladimir Putin is not attending this year’s summit because South Africa would be required to arrest him, as it is a member of the International Criminal Court which has issued a warrant against the Russian President.
China is keen to
expand the club to new members. But it’s not obvious what a bigger group would do. Given how hard it has been for even five nations to agree, it’s fanciful to suppose a larger and more disparate gathering would achieve anything more than complain about American hegemony.
Take currencies. It’s true that many developing countries want to wean themselves off their dependence on the U.S. dollar. The vagaries of Federal Reserve monetary policy whipsaw their economies. They would also like an alternative place to stash foreign exchange assets after the world’s rich democracies froze Russia’s reserves following the invasion of Ukraine.
But neither China nor India has a fully convertible currency - limiting the attractiveness of the yuan and the rupee. What’s more, New Delhi doesn’t want to be sucked into China’s currency orbit. It has been
trying to stop oil importers paying for Russian oil with yuan, albeit with limited success.