BRICS Agree To Consider Membership Expansion

Leaders and senior officials from BRICS nations convened in Johannesburg for a three-day summit to discuss expanding the five-member bloc and weakening the dominance of the US dollar in the global economy.

The bloc—whose members are Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa— agreed on a mechanism for considering new countries after Argentina, Belarus, Indonesia, Iran, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia expressed interest in joining the group, which represents 40% of the world’s population and a quarter of its GDP.

“We have a document that we've adopted which sets out guidelines and principles, processes for considering countries that wish to become members of BRICS,” South Africa's Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor said on Ubuntu Radio, a station run by her ministry, on August 23 following a meeting by BRICS leaders at a three-day summit in South Africa. "That's very positive."

Member nations wanted to use the summit to forge a counterweight to Western dominance of global institutions. But the bloc, which was formed in 2009, had been divided by internal divisions about how to expand and what should be done to counter US influence in the global economy.

“The expansion of memberships comes with certain pressures and tensions between members themselves,” Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, a senior fellow and director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said on August 18. “India is very worried about what role China will play and maybe taking over the entire platform to assert its own influence.”

South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, hosted the summit in Johannesburg, which brought together the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping and Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Russia is being represented by its foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.

Expansion

Ahead of the summit, China and Russia have expressed interest in enlarging the group, a path that has become increasingly important for China as its economic and geopolitical rivalry with the United States intensifies.

“China will push for expansion of key members,” Brian Hart, a Fellow CSIS’s China Power Project, said on August 18 at an event hosted by the Washington-based think tank. “We’ve seen growing signs and statements from Beijing that they definitely want to see BRICS expand. From their perspective, expanding the BRICS to include other developing countries will give China more of an opportunity to project its power and influence in key regions.”

It is also important for Russia as its economy suffers under intense sanctions after invading Ukraine. The death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led the Wagner mercenary group's halted coup attempt earlier this year, will likely further isolate Putin. Prigozhin was a passenger on a jet that was blown up by an onboard bomb on August 23 north of Moscow, according to NBC News.

Lavrov attended the summit after Russian President Vladimir Putin decided not to travel to Johannesburg to avoid forcing South Africa to choose between fulfilling conflicting obligations as hosts of the summit and arresting him after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for alleged war crimes in Ukraine.

Brazil, India Weary

India and Brazil, though, have been less enthusiastic about expansion. They think that the bloc’s influence could be dominated by China and diluted globally with new members, according to analysts.

India has “very tense relationships with China right now,” Katherine B. Hadda, CSIS Visiting Fellow and Chair of the U.S.-India Policy Studies, said. “That includes not only the border tensions,” but discomfort about China’s “malign behavior in some neighbors of India, such as Sri Lanka/Pakistan.”

Comment by Brazil's Lula also pointed to a divergence within the bloc, which political analysts say has long struggled to form a coherent view of its role in the global order. "We do not want to be a counterpoint to the G7, G20 or the United States," Lula said during a social media broadcast from Johannesburg. "We just want to organize ourselves."

While Lulu sees BRICS as an “incredibly important institution to herald the rise of Brazil onto the world stage,” the country’s foreign ministry is opposed to it, according to Ryan C. Berg, Director, America’s Program at CSIS. “Brazil’s foreign ministry is against it because, frankly, they’re afraid of watering down the benefits of membership through expansion,” Berg said.

Dollar Diplomacy

Some BRICS leaders want to create a framework that will encourage the use of countries’ own local currencies for direct trade. By shifting away from the US dollar, BRICS aims to decrease dollar diplomacy and the strength that Western institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund, have on foreign affairs.

Putin told the bloc’s summit that members would discuss switching trade away from the dollar and into national currencies and that the BRICS New Development Bank would play a key role. “The objective, irreversible process of de-dollarization of our economic ties is gaining momentum,” he said.

South African officials, though, said that the creation of a common BRICS currency is not on the table at the summit, adding there will be no discussions of a common BRICS currency, an idea floated by Brazil as an alternative to dollar-dependence.

“Lula has been on a diplomatic world tour, where in every stop in the global south he seems to mention his desire to move away from dollar dominance and move into doing trade in other types of currencies,” Berg said.

Officials and economists have pointed out the difficulties involved in such a project, given the economic, political and geographic disparities between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

New members

Dozens of leaders of other countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East also attended, many hoping to be invited to join the bloc. South Africa, pushing to have more African members, has invited more than 30 African leaders to join this year’s meeting.

Saudi Arabia is one of more than 20 countries to have formally applied to join BRICS in another possible expansion, South African officials say. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Farhan bin Faisal is leading the Saudi delegation at the summit.

Any move toward the inclusion of the world's second-biggest oil producer in an economic bloc with Russia and China would clearly draw attention from the United States and its allies in an extra-frosty geopolitical climate.

“If Saudi Arabia were to enter BRICS, it will bring extraordinary importance to this grouping,” Talmiz Ahmad, India’s former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said.