Yves here. Readers may recall that we have not been very enthusiastic about BRICS. It helped provide the platform to advance one very important step, establishing bilateral payment systems between trading partners who wanted to bypass US sanctions on dollar payments. But it was never able to grow to compete with the international structures that existed after World War II. First, actual and potential members are too diverse to agree on all that much. Second, many small and even large countries do not want to take sides in many conflicts. For example, India rejected US demands of “With us or against us” at the start of Special Military Operations, insisting that it will pursue its interests independently. The positioning of the BRICS as opposed to the US and the EU makes this kind of balancing act even more difficult.
Third, the BRICS itself did not set ambitious goals. If you read the Kazan Declaration and the recent statements of BRICS, this group does not intend to take the position of bodies like the UN, IMF, and the World Bank, but to change their governance so that the most important and now well-developed developing countries of Asia, Africa, and South America have a greater weight in governance.
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Nurina Malek. Originally published on Jomo’s website
The leadership of the Global South has been in gradual decline since the 1980s. Many hope that BRICS+ will fill the void, but its purpose and membership suggest that such hopes may be misplaced. The re-purposed Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) offers the best way forward.
The Golden Age
After the Second World War (WW2) the Keynesian ‘Golden Age’ saw significant post-war reconstruction and post-colonial development, particularly in South Asia.
In 1964, developing countries formed the G77 caucus and established the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) within the UN system.
In 1974, the UN General Assembly called for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) after President Nixon ended the Bretton Woods international monetary system of 1944 in 1971.
In 1979, the US Fed responded to rising Western stagflation by sharply raising interest rates. This created financial and debt crises in Latin America and Africa, forcing many to seek emergency IMF funding to deal with them.
Meanwhile, the counter-revolution inspired by Thatcher-Reagan against Keynesian and development economics led to the reform of the ‘neoliberal’ policy of the Washington Consensus, deepening the recession.
At the Plaza Hotel in New York, the US got its G7 caucus of the world’s 7 largest economies to counter its overvalued dollar by demanding that the currencies of Japan and Germany become more popular.
Financial liberalization promoted by the G7, particularly the IMF-promoted opening of national financial accounts in the 1990s, increased the frequency and impact of crises.
With its legitimacy in jeopardy following the East Asian, Russian, and other financial crises of 1997-99, G7 finance ministers agreed in 1999 to form the G20 group of finance ministers from 20 of the world’s largest economies.
Shortly after the global financial crisis of 2008 (actually in the West) began, the first summit of G20 leaders met at the White House in November 2008.
Making BRICS
The ‘BRICs’ were coined in late 2001 by the former head of Goldman Sachs Global Economic Research Jim O’Neill, referring to Brazil, Russia, India, and China.
Ostensibly including Africa, the BRICs invited South Africa to join, creating BRICS as an alliance of five major independent ’emerging’ economies.
Also acting as a caucus in the G20, BRICS has tried to improve international financial and financial relations. Since then it has allowed many countries to have an expanded BRICS+ with two levels of cooperation.
To be sure, neither BRICS nor BRICS+ was intended to represent the radically different interests of the Global South. Understandably, it caters to its progressive ‘financially important’ members.
BRICS and the South
BRICS promises a world that is not dominated by the rich and powerful countries of the Global North, especially in the West.
The world has been dominated by the US since the end of WW2, and especially after the first Cold War. Despite the occasional opposition, the US’s European NATO allies seem happy to play the second film.
For a long time, many developing countries have felt that the existing arrangements are of no use to them. BRICS seems to provide a ‘voice’ and other foundations for economic and international cooperation.
There is no doubt that BRICS has strengthened the voice of the Global South and created new programs to support the needs of developing countries, especially financing development.
BRICS also advocated for certain international issues of the Global South. All five BRICS countries have also led developing country organizations on certain issues with varying degrees of success.
Unsurprisingly, many developing countries welcome the role of BRICS in such matters, while others choose to publicly align themselves with it.
However, the expansion of BRICS to BRICS+ is unlikely to solve many of the problems that developing countries face due to global power imbalances and imbalances.
Possibilities and Problems
The diversity of the Global South complicates the group’s claim to represent it.
BRICS+ brings together countries with very different political and economic systems, priorities and aspirations, including development goals and interests.
This diversity enhances the broad appeal of BRICS but also makes it difficult to ensure that it becomes an effective platform that consistently represents the interests of developing countries.
This challenge becomes more apparent when the interests and aspirations of the weaker developing countries are compared to those of the larger BRICS+ countries.
Many vulnerable countries are preoccupied with food security, structural change, deindustrialization, environmental sustainability, global warming, and financing.
Meanwhile, BRICS members want to pursue their strategic goals, raise funds and investments, increase their exports and increase their international influence.
These goals are not inherently conflicting, but they are rarely fully aligned. This makes it more difficult to pursue shared interests, communicate collaboratively, and maintain cooperation.
BRICS+ membership by invitation also limits its active accountability to the Global South. It is unrealistic to expect BRICS+ to always represent the full range of concerns of all developing countries, especially the poorest and least powerful.
The Global South must undoubtedly try to benefit from the economic weight and voice of BRICS+. But it can advance its shared interests with its own voice and organized energy through a renewed NAM, re-focused on peace, development and justice.
