A BRICS Moment? Lessons from the Kazan Summit

After last year's meeting in Johannesburg, the BRICS club has just met again under the Russian presidency, in Kazan - the capital of Tatarstan, emblematic of a multi-ethnic, South-oriented Russia. As we all know, the five historic members of the group (Brazil, India, Russia, China and South Africa) were joined this year by four new members co-opted in Johannesburg (Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates), Argentina having declined the invitation to join the club and Saudi Arabia still hesitating to accept it.

The summit lasted three days, from October 24 to 27, to allow time for meetings with the many guests from outside the BRICS - including Turkish President Erdogan and some twenty heads of state and government from Africa, Asia and Latin America, as well as the Secretary-General of the United Nations (much to the chagrin of the Ukrainians). The summit on the banks of the Volga was a great spectacle, the most "important diplomatic event organized by Russia since the Second World War", according to some Russian commentators. Upon arriving in Kazan, most of the leaders invited to the summit launched appeals for peace in the Middle East and Ukraine. Xi Jinping was the most specific on Ukraine, calling for "no geographic expansion, no escalation, no provocation". This did not seem to concern Vladimir Putin, who believes that the dice are now rolling in his favor in the Ukrainian theater.

The Russian president warned instead against the risk of a general conflict in the Middle East, as if to dwarf the conflict he has triggered in Europe.

A Major Success for Vladimir Putin

The BRICS alone account for roughly 45% of the world's population, ⅓ of global GDP, 43% of oil production and half of mineral production. Russia's non-isolation is clearly demonstrated.

Let us perhaps add some nuance to this observation, which has been emphasized by many commentators. Note, for example, that the Russian president has decided not to travel to Brasilia in November for the G20 meeting chaired by his friend Mr. Lula, so as not to embarrass the Brazilian authorities, who are bound by the statute of the International Criminal Court, which has indicted Mr. Putin for his aggression against Ukraine. The same reason prevented him from attending the G20 summit in New Delhi and the BRICS summit last year. What's more, one wonders whether the appeal of the BRICS today lies more in the prospect of sitting alongside the Chinese president than with the Russian one. Conversely, the presence of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres can only be seen as an admission that Russia has regained its status as an essential partner. This admission is likely to set a precedent.

Lesson two: Kazan has confirmed the attractiveness of the BRICS club. There are some thirty candidates, including Mr. Erdogan's Turkey, present at the Kazan summit, and partners close to the United States such as Thailand, Mexico and Indonesia.

Are all these candidates really convinced by Mr. Putin's talk of advancing the "process of the emergence of a multipolar world" or Mr. Xi Jinping's flights of fancy about advancing a "fairer world order"? We won't swear to it, but two specific factors are prompting many of the "middle powers" of the Global South to knock on the club's door: firstly, the West's underwhelming support of Ukraine, which doesn't encourage the powers of the South (or East) to rely too much on the West for their own security. Secondly, the prospect of Donald Trump's eventual return to the White House, synonymous with both American disengagement and new troubles in the world order. Significantly, Mr. Modi and Mr. Xi Jinping had their first bilateral meeting in five years on the sidelines of the summit, and agreed on a form of mitigation of their rivalry.

A Space Free of Western Sanctions?

There is a lot of emphasis in the West, and rightly so, on the heterogeneous nature of the club, which is bound to become even less coherent as it expands. If India and China, Egypt and Ethiopia (almost on the brink of war over Somalia), or the Emirates (and potentially Saudi Arabia) and Iran can cohabit under the BRICS roof, why not others? In any case, the club's leaders - undoubtedly Russia and China, under the watchful eye of India and Brazil - have skilfully managed the question of further enlargement: a kind of airlock will be established through the creation of a group of "friends of the BRICS", for which the admission criteria will be defined in the coming months. The figure quoted is 13 countries.

The Kazan summit ended with the adoption of a 32-page communiqué, which diplomats from all over the world have a talent for negotiating. Many of the paragraphs are what is known as "agreed language", containing numerous clichés on issues of governance and development that are rarely very precise. The insistence on the role of women, for example, paragraph after paragraph, is classic UN decorum, although it is doubtful that this is a major concern for many members of the BRICS Heads of State and friends (all male, incidentally). A close reading - another symptom of the masochism of diplomats - reveals some of the flaws in the BRICS companionship. For example, failing to dethrone the hegemony of the dollar, the Russian presidency proposed setting up an alternative banking exchange system to the SWIFT system, called the "Brics Bridge". This issue (like a number of others financial matters) will be the subject of further study. Another example: the Johannesburg communiqué supported - albeit in convoluted terms - the candidacy of Brazil, India and South Africa, by name, for a permanent seat on the Security Council; the Kazan communiqué once again stresses the need for reform of the Council, but without naming any lucky beneficiaries, a sign that at least one of the newcomers has blocked the consensus on "agreed language" on this point in Johannesburg.

Overall, criticism of the Bretton Woods system is tempered by the reality of the loans issued by the New Development Bank, which was created by the BRICS. The BRICS Bank has issued $5 billion in loans, while the World Bank has provided $72.8 billion in loans, credits, and grants. Additionally, the NDB stopped lending to Russia in order to comply with Western sanctions.Turning to open crises, the communiqué devotes two pages to castigating Israel's actions in Gaza and the region, in stark contrast to the three soothing lines on the war in Ukraine, the gist of which is to encourage mediation efforts, without of course the slightest mention of Russian aggression. Discussions on October 27th were devoted to a dialogue between club members and some twenty guests (including the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mr. Abbas), on the theme of "BRICS and the Global South", was dominated by total support for the ceasefire in the Middle East and condemnation of Israel: a typical illustration of the widening gap with the West on this subject, which Russia and China are not failing to exploit.

This is perhaps the third lesson to be learned from the Kazan summit: the strongest link uniting the old and new members of the BRICS, on an operational level at this stage, is the aspiration to create a "space free of Western sanctions". Alexander Gabuev and Oliver Stuenkel, for example, have identified a line of hostility to the West (led by Russia and China) and a line that spares the Western camp (with India and Brazil as guarantors). For the time being, the alliance is holding together because the proponents of the first line have known not to go too far in their challenge to the Western order, and because the various partners within the BRICS, whatever their orientation, are united in their opposition to the sanctions policy.

Chinese and Western Perspectives

This brings us to a fourth conclusion, this time in the form of a hypothesis. The BRICS club was initially founded (2006 at the level of foreign ministers, 2009 at the level of heads of state) with an economic, then a financial (2008 crisis) focus. The links created between its initial members found a precise political scope in 2014, at the time of the annexation of Crimea: Russia then benefited from the benevolence of the other members of the club. In different forms, the same phenomenon is being repeated, in a way to the power of ten, with the war in Ukraine - with major economic implications (circumvention of sanctions enabling Russia to continue its war). The return on investment for Mr. Putin is remarkable.

How can we not expect China to draw its own conclusions from these precedents? The author of these lines is no sinologist, but it seems likely to him that Beijing is preparing for a confrontation with the United States and its allies, perhaps over Taiwan. In such a scenario, it can expect a volley of sanctions, which Russia first and foremost, but also other members of the BRICS, should help it to withstand.

How should the West view the phenomenon that has crystallized around the acronym once coined by a Goldman Sachs analyst? The first response should be neither to deny the phenomenon, nor to wait for it to unravel on its own. In the same vein, should the BRICS manage to avoid a serious rift with emerging powers, it has serious potential to become more influential. Whatever the grievances of these countries against the "unjust order" dominated by the United States and its allies, it is in reality from Western capitals that the countries of the South still expect solutions to their problems of development or ecological transition. The fact that President Macron was able to bring together sixty countries - including most of the BRICS - on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in September to discuss his proposed "Paris Pact for People and Planet", bears witness to this. But the United States itself must be on the ball, which once again brings us back to the November 5 elections.

To conclude, let's look beyond this series of lessons from Kazan. In a way, as we began to illustrate in our series on "middle powers" (already cited), the rebalancing of forces in the world should favor a kind of "middle power moment", the vast majority of which is in the global South. This was the theme of a major symposium held in Astana on October 16 and 17, under the patronage of the Kazakh presidency. The BRICS could have been the natural forum for the new players in the South - the emerging countries - to put forward a collective point of view. This is not really the case, as the club has been de facto preempted by China and Russia, despite efforts by India and Brazil to avoid politicizing the group too much. If there is a "BRICS moment", it does not coincide with a "middle-power moment".

Will the time come when the middle powers of the South recognize the opportunity to organize outside the "great powers of the East", China and Russia? Will they then see the benefits of joining forces with the middle powers of the West, including this very special middle power, the European Union?

Copyright image : Maxim SHIPENKOV / POOL / AFP