South Africa

BRICS Leaders Meet in South Africa

AUG 22 2023·Updated AUG 27

Story

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Facts

On Tuesday, leaders of the BRICS nations met in Johannesburg where, according to South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor, they agreed on expanding membership. The bloc already represents 40% of the globe's population and around 25% of the world's GDP.
Reuters
The 15th BRICS conference brings together South African Pres. Cyril Ramaphosa, Indian PM Narendra Modi, and Brazilian Pres. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is standing in for Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin while China's Pres. Xi Jinping unexpectedly pulled out of addressing the summit, despite having already flown to Johannesburg.
Sky News
Geopolitical developments — especially amid the Ukraine war and growing rivalry between China and the US — have added urgency to a drive to strengthen the bloc, which has at times suffered from internal divisions and a lack of coherent vision.
Euractiv
In a statement ahead of the BRICS Summit, Ramaphosa said that the group's expansion, "will represent a diverse group of nations with different political systems that share a common desire to have a more balanced global order."
NBC
Officials say that twenty-two countries have expressed interest in joining the bloc ahead of the summit, while many others have made informal inquiries. Those who have formally applied include Argentina, Mexico, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Nigeria, and Bangladesh.
CNN
Despite his absence, Pres. Putin — currently the subject of an international arrest warrant over alleged war crimes in Ukraine — on Wednesday delivered a message via video link blaming western nations for the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Brazil, China, and South Africa have not severed diplomatic ties with Moscow over the invasion.
The New York Times

Sources Split

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The Spin

Establishment-critical narrative

The agenda of the BRICS foreign ministers meeting in the run-up to the August summit has underscored that the era of unipolarity and the West's hypocritical "liberal world order" is coming to an end. This is reflected in BRICS' efforts to "de-dollarize" and in the fact that their collective Gross Domestic Product already exceeds that of the US-led G7. The BRICS countries' refusal to join the proxy war against Russia is further proof of a new confidence gaining momentum among nations of the global south.

Asia Times

Pro-establishment narrative

Despite all the BRICS hype — and the supposedly imminent end of the US-led global economic order — the reality is more complex. The bloc's composition is primarily characterized by geopolitical and economic rivalries that make the creation of a common currency extremely difficult, a challenge that is likely to be exacerbated by adding more members. The fact that South Africa is flirting with the war criminal Putin, thus antagonizing its second-largest trading partner the US, bodes additionally poorly for the future of BRICS.