BRICS; an Opportunity, Not an End Goal.
BRICS; an Opportunity, Not an End Goal.
The BRICS countries now comprise over half of the world’s population with Indonesia’s accession, as well as around 40% of global productivity.
The development of multipolarity offers the Global South the opportunity to free themselves from the constraints of Western credit and governance institutions – but multipolarity should not be seen as the final destination.
Reminder: The words highlighted in red are links leading to relevant critique articles.
We particularly recommend our series on China to understand our positive perspective on China’s development.
Additionally, “Postcolonial Colonial“, an older article, discusses the arrogance of Western reporting when it comes to the Global South.
Compared to their growing global significance, media coverage here in Germany of the “BRICS” – an acronym for the first five member states of the alliance – is laughable.
With Indonesia’s inclusion, the largest economy in Southeast Asia, the BRICS now represent not only about half of humanity, but nearly 40% of the world’s economic output.
Of the nominal GDP of roughly 30 trillion USD of the BRICS, China accounts for approximately 17.8 trillion USD, i.e., 59% of the total economic power of the alliance.
India follows with 3.55 trillion USD, Brazil with 2.1 trillion, Russia with 2 trillion, and the new member Indonesia with 1.371 trillion USD.
The development of the BRICS countries appears to be more important than the mainstream media here suggest.
The Bild newspaper, which has the highest circulation among German daily papers, has 11 articles directly about BRICS online. For comparison: Till Schweiger has been featured in over 1,000 articles since 2008.
The coverage of BRICS here in Germany reflects a Western arrogance that is hard to top.
Axel Erich of Volksstimme calls all BRICS countries except Russia, which obviously accounts for only a fraction of BRICS’ economic power, “useful idiots in Moscow’s devious power monopoly.”
Matthias Brandt even describes BRICS’ growing global influence as “influence of rogue states” in Statista.
The BRICS summit in Kazan was “Putin’s summit against the West”, where this imaginary BRICS leadership, currently held by Brazilian President Lula da Silva, is developing his “League of Autocrats” (Welt, Süddeutsche Zeitung prefers “Club of Autocrats”) and his “plan for a new world order against the West.”
The limited media coverage about the BRICS alliance here makes it hard to determine whether it is an economic alliance of rapidly developing countries or a coalition of Bond villains.
So, let’s look into it: “How dangerous will this tyrant bloc become for us?” (Bild)
What is BRICS?
BRICS stands for “Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa”, and is the acronym for the founding countries of the alliance.
Originally, BRICS included only Brazil, Russia, India, and China, known as BRIC until South Africa joined in 2010, after which it is called BRICS.
Since its founding, the alliance has established itself as a platform for economic, geopolitical, and strategic cooperation, including the creation of the New Development Bank (NDB) in 2014, intended as an alternative to Western-dominated institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
The bank mainly finances infrastructure and development projects in member countries and other emerging economies, offering more attractive interest rates that are not tied to regional political approvals, unlike Western-led credit institutions.
Beyond the founding states, today Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Argentina, and recently Indonesia are full members of BRICS.
Additionally, there are 23 concrete applications for membership, including from Vietnam, Cuba, Palestine, States of the Sahel Confederation AES, North Korea, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In addition to full membership, which involves rotating leadership each year, there are also associate memberships and cooperation agreements with non-BRICS countries, such as MERCOSUR, including Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
A key difference of BRICS compared to Western-dominated organizations is that there are no directives regarding internal affairs of member states;
BRICS countries form an informal grouping without a charter, primarily focusing on regular summits and providing a forum for deeper bilateral agreements.
Although bilateral trade within BRICS is managed by the New Development Bank (NDB, formerly “RICS Development Bank”) in Shanghai, and China provides the majority of BRICS’ economic strength, there are no currency requirements for trade – it is agreed that transactions are conducted in each country’s own currencies.
In Western-led institutions like the IMF, loans and credits are almost exclusively handled in US dollars.
Even though mainstream media might suggest otherwise, the thesis that BRICS is an “anti-Western bloc” (DW) is false – precisely because BRICS is not a political alliance.
The bilateral relations of member states with Western countries vary significantly; Russia, Iran, and China maintain very different political and economic relations with the West compared to the United Arab Emirates, India, or Brazil.
A critique from a reader notes: “India and China are not exactly friendly towards each other. So, an economic alliance will likely not be very cooperative.”
And it’s true; internally, relations between, for example, China and India or Iran and Saudi Arabia are marked by conflicts; however, the informal nature of BRICS means internal and external complications among BRICS and non-BRICS countries are not a problem, because bilateral trade within BRICS does not only avoid disadvantages but also leaves no room for political or economic manipulation.
The multilateral forums of BRICS allow no single country, unlike the EU, to influence others economically or politically – BRICS is not a supranational organization with authority over its member states.
The existing order, as Jakarta stated upon Indonesia’s accession to BRICS, still carries elements of colonial oppression and is vehemently defended by the West, which profits from it, as a so-called “rules-based world order” – sometimes even with military means.
Especially in the Global South, former colonies increasingly oppose this old order.
BRICS plays a central role here, as its member states are actively questioning the existing world order.
However, this is about the global system of states, not the internal structure of individual countries.
The end of the old colonial world order might lay the foundation for a fairer world, but it alone does not create a truly better world. (jW)
Despite the shared goal of overcoming the old order, BRICS countries pursue different interests.
This is also pointed out by the Indonesian government: President Prabowo Subianto already stated last year that Indonesia would work closely with BRICS countries like China, but also with the USA – because BRICS is not a closed bloc.
This point is crucial: while some BRICS countries like Russia actively oppose the West, others focus on fighting the order maintained by the West.
This difference influences the dynamics within the alliance and shows that BRICS is not a monolith but a platform for diverse interests.
The summit in Kazan (2024) concluded with a joint declaration, which among other things calls for reform of the United Nations, condemns “terrorist attacks on critical cross-border energy infrastructure” (the Nord Stream pipeline explosions), criticizes the “terrorist act” of targeted bombings of hundreds of pagers in Lebanon by Israel, and condemns the “mass killing of civilians in Gaza”.
Furthermore, the declaration criticizes “illegal unilateral sanctions” under the UN Charter and calls for “African solutions to African problems”, seemingly a call for solidarity with, among others, the people of the newly formed AES Confederation in the Sahel.
Multipolarity; an Opportunity, Not a Fact
“BRICS represents the most important component of a new, multipolar world order and plays a decisive role in promoting global peace and development” (Xi Jinping in a speech at the BRICS summit in Kazan).
By a multipolar world order, we mean an end to Western hegemony over global institutions, whether they are security organizations like NATO or credit institutions like the IMF.
The current world order, which since the victory over Fascism has followed more or less the same principles, was characterized by organized bipolarity between the United States and the Soviet Union (1945-1991) and by American unipolarity, which was increasingly undermined by China’s rise, and has only experienced a real shift since the Ukraine war.
The unipolarity since 1991, i.e., Western dominance without a real counterbalance, is described in mainstream political science as a state that leaves less room for inter-state conflicts due to the lack of a counterweight.
The German federal government’s working paper on multipolarity (2015) states: “Hegemony initially sounds negative, as it is associated with imperial systems based on authority and intimidation. But there is also the integrating hegemon, which – like the USA in NATO – largely respects the sovereignty of nation-states. This hegemonic system is based on participation and cooperation inwardly.”
Of course, the USA and NATO respect national sovereignty – but the list of “mistakes” such as Yugoslavia, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Indonesia, Laos, Cuba, Panama, China, Italy, the Philippines, Guatemala, Lebanon, Ecuador, Burma, Congo, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Honduras, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Pakistan, and others, shows that the German government’s claim of “largely” respect is somewhat optimistic.
In contrast, multipolarity is “unstable and crisis-prone”;
“Today, the crises and conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, parts of Africa, and territorial disputes in Southeast Asia show that security is increasingly unstable and crisis-prone.”
The bourgeois state clings desperately to the illusion of its waning hegemony, sounding like a man from the 1950s: “We need a hegemon, without me, you won’t get along! Look, the governments we installed and support are fighting against those we sanctioned and intervened in” – the puppet strings are being pulled by the puppeteer.
However, multipolarity itself is, of course, not an end state.
The critique many Marxists have of multipolarity is that the diversification of global markets is not inherently productive – a large imperialist or ten small ones, what’s the difference?
And it’s true; looking at the BRICS countries, it quickly becomes clear that only a few states are truly capable of being seen as progressive from a Marxist perspective.
India under Modi is a fascist-like Hindu-nationalist state, which is highly reactionary internally and externally, serving as a front in the arms race against China and participating in the civil war in Myanmar.
Russia is an imperialist state pursuing capitalist interests in the Ukraine war, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths.
The Iran regime enforces highly reactionary policies on women, while the United Arab Emirates debates cooperation with the US and Israel over Gaza following the war – membership in BRICS does not make a state progressive.
But what is the argument here? No one, except the mainstream press, claims that BRICS is a new Warsaw Pact – they are merely an economic alliance that, unlike Western organizations, does not interfere in the internal politics of individual countries.
From a realistic perspective, multipolarity is not more the logical opposite of the declining Western hegemony over global trade, credit, and currency.
It offers the possibility of an alternative to Western order, which previously did not exist.
Moving away from the old order is a progressive step because this old order is reactionary.
Seeing progress only in the early stages of socialist construction ignores the fact that developing a progressive state within the framework of the old Western organizations is nearly impossible.
“When we speak with China, we get an airport; when we speak with Germany, we get a lecture,” said the Director-General of the World Trade Organization, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, at an ambassador conference in Berlin.
By “we”, the Nigerian refers to African states, which increasingly seek BRICS membership with astonishment at the global North’s attitude.
Especially the states that have been colonized and then neo-colonized through loans and interventions over the centuries now have the chance to achieve economic emancipation outside the old order through BRICS.
The internal affairs of a state depend on the material conditions of the people who inhabit it.
Efforts at emancipation in the Global South, especially in Africa and South America, have so far been hampered by the unilateral stance of the US and its allies, which threaten to crush their attempts at freedom – as in the cases of Gaddafi, Lumumba, Nkrumah, and others.
A multipolar world, especially with BRICS’ informal nature, offers states the chance to break free from the US credit sphere without being threatened with sanctions akin to going back to the stone age.
“I see many African countries joining because Africa wants a new world power to destroy the existing one,” said Michael Ndimancho of the University of Douala (jW).
The Global South countries within BRICS gain not only access to trade benefits and bilateral relations but also a space free from political demands and moral judgments about democracy.
Joining, for example, Cuba would mean that despite the US embargo, Cuba could access new bilateral trade routes; the same applies to Venezuela, North Korea, and other states from a Marxist perspective that can benefit.
Progressive developments in countries like Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger can access multilateral trade routes through BRICS, bypassing those that kept them in their semi-colonial role.
The accession of the Sahel Confederation to BRICS was commented on by Ibrahim Traore, the transitional president of Burkina Faso, with “Africa’s time of slavery to Western regimes is over.”
BRICS and multipolarity are neither inherently good nor bad, because they do not make a difference for the oppressed peoples of this world.
Therefore, it is wrong to see BRICS as more than just an opportunity for peoples and states to free themselves from the old, seemingly more violent order.
Only from this opportunity does BRICS have the potential to create space for states to pursue self-determination through unconditional trade – the character of individual states does not determine this.