"That sums up the state of this group."
"That sums up the state of this group."
When its Group of Eight partners (US, Japan, Germany, UK, France, Canada and Italy) threw it out of G8 because of its seizure of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula, Russia was left with membership in the Group of 20 only. Some world-famous economists and analysts thought that a country as large and as economically powerful as Russia deserved to be a member of a small and more exclusive international group. One of them thought of bringing Russia together with four or five more economically powerful countries to create a group less glamorous than G7 but more select than G20.
Thus was BRICS born. The new group brought together Russia and the largest Latin American economy (Brazil), Asia’s third largest economy (India), the world’s second biggest economy (China) and Africa’s largest economy (South Africa). Put together, the first letters of those countries’ names spelled BRICS. Obviously, the combined GDP (gross domestic products) of the BRICS countries accounts for a large percentage of the world economy. That percentage is close to 30.
Not only are the BRICS Five key players on the world economic stage; they are also major figures in the world geopolitical scene. They are geopolitical heavyweights. Decisions taken by the governments in Moscow, Beijing, New Delhi, Brasilia and Pretoria have important repercussions in world politics and are taken seriously in the chancelleries of other countries; including the members of G7.
Of the BRICS Five, the countries that are dominantly the headlines these days are China and Brazil—China because of its ongoing trade war with the world’s most powerful country and Brazil because of the raging wildfires that are threatening to destroy what have been called the lungs of the world. The highly adversarial position taken by the administration of President Donald Trump against the US-China trade relationship—the US Chief Executive has spoken of decades of uncorrected Chinese trade misconduct—has taken a heavy toll on world commerce, causing losses of jobs, incomes and consumer benefits across the globe. The trade war between the world’s two largest economies, which has involved tit-for-tat tariff increases of up to 30 percent on billions of dollars’ worth of bilateral imports, shows no signs of being satisfactorily settled anytime soon. The Amazon rainforest brushfires, which have gone beyond Brazil and moved to Bolivia and Paraguay, have caused alarm and outrage all over the world, considering the impact of the Amazon forest’s destruction on the world’s climate.
The erstwhile No. 1 adversary of the US, Russia is clearly the primus inter pares of BRICS because of its huge nuclear arsenal and its historic role as the leader of the international communist movement. In recent years it has figured prominently in the news media for two things, to wit, its verified interference in the 2016 US election and, as earlier stated, its seizure of the Crimea peninsula from former Soviet republic Ukraine. Russia’s principal economic role in Europe is its being the largest supplier of natural gas to Germany, Sweden and other European countries. President Vladimir Putin’s undeclared but obvious desire to restore Russia to its former superpower status has created, and continues to create, problems for the world, especially its “near abroad’”neighbors. The Russian economy has been hit by G7 economic and financial sanctions because of Putin’s Crimea action.
Apart from the worldwide coordination of his administration’s clear-the-forest-for-family program, Brazilia president Jair Bolsonaro, who led his right-wing party to victory in the 2018 election, faces strong opposition from the workers’ party of jailed presidents Luiz Lula da Silva and Vilma Rousseff. Recognized primarily for its agricultural exports—it remains the world’s No. 1 coffee producer—Brazil has over the years managed to develop a respectable manufacturing sector, including the manufacture of aircraft.
Occupying its southernmost portion, South Africa—formerly the Union of South Africa—ranks alongside Nigeria and Egypt as the African continent’s three most powerful countries. The apartheid regime that was swept aside in the 1994 election left South Africa with a well-developed, diversified economy. South Africa’s wines are as well known as its industrial equipment in other countries and the rand is one of Africa’s more stable currencies. Post-Nelson Mandela corruption threatened to disrupt the political stability and economic growth left behind by South Africa’s iconic leader, but the nation has been placed back on tract by the 2017 ouster of Jacob Zuma from the presidential residence.
Good economics but bad geopolitics: that best sums up the state of the five-country group that goes by the imaginative acronym BRICS.