What Is the BRICS Group and Why Is It Expanding? - Mariel Ferragamo (Foreign Affairs)

 

What Is the BRICS Group and Why Is It Expanding?

As BRICS grows in both membership and global sway, its expansion comes with divisions among its members old and new on how to set the stage for a revised world order.

Mariel Ferragamo

 Council on Foreign Relations

Last updated December 12, 2024 10:34 am (EST

Summary

• The BRICS group has become a major political force in the last two decades, building on its desire to create a counterweight to Western influence in global institutions.
• The group’s expansion in 2023 exemplifies its growing heft, but also brings new disagreements on issues such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
• Russia’s 2024 leadership could intensify the bloc’s anti-West focus, including attempts to edge out the U.S. dollar—but that will be an uphill battle, experts say.

Introduction

The countries that comprise BRICS—which stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, and now five new members—are an informal grouping of emerging economies hoping to increase their sway in the global order. Established in 2009, BRICS was founded on the premise that international institutions were overly dominated by Western powers and had ceased to serve developing countries. The bloc has sought to coordinate its members’ economic and diplomatic policies, found new financial institutions, and reduce dependence on the U.S. dollar.

However, BRICS has struggled with internal divisions on a range of issues, including relations with the United States and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Meanwhile, its growing membership is both expanding its clout and introducing new tensions. Although some analysts warn that the bloc could undermine the Western-led international order, skeptics say its ambitions to create its own currency and develop a workable alternative to existing institutions face potentially insurmountable challenges.

Why does BRICS matter?

The coalition is not a formal organization, but rather a loose bloc of non-Western economies that coordinate economic and diplomatic efforts around a shared goal. BRICS countries seek to build an alternative to what they see as the dominance of the Western viewpoint in major multilateral groupings, such as the World Bank, the Group of Seven (G7), and the UN Security Council.

The group’s 2024 expansion comes with a range of geopolitical implications. It represents growing economic and demographic heft: the ten BRICS countries now comprise more than a quarter of the global economy and almost half of the world’s population. The group is poised to exert influence over the wars in the Gaza Stripand Ukraine, the shape of the global economic system, the competition between China and the West, and efforts to transition to clean energy.

Growing membership also brings new challenges, however, including increasing pushback from Western counties and divisions within the bloc. Experts say that how BRICS members navigate those tensions will determine whether the group can become a more unified voice on the global stage.

What are its origins?

The term was originally coined by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill in a 2001 research paper in which he argued that the growth of what was then the “BRIC” countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) was poised to challenge the dominant G7 wealthy economies.

Russia was the first to call a convening of the four countries, a decision analysts say was driven by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s growing desire to create a counterweight to the West. Russia hosted the first official BRIC summit in 2009, and South Africa joined a year later by invitation from China, forming the five-country grouping that would persist for more than a decade.

The next wave of expansion came at the 2023 BRICS summit, with invitations extended to six newcomers: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). All accepted except Argentina, after its newly elected President Javier Milei pledged to turn the country in a pro-West direction, saying that it would not “ally with communists.” Saudi Arabia has reportedly accepted the membership, but has delayed officially joining without giving detailed further explanation.

What does BRICS do?

The BRICS heads of state convene annually, with each country taking a one-year chairmanship to set priorities and host a summit. The bloc relies on consensus-based decision-making and is largely informal: it has no defining charter, secretariat, or common funds.

A few thematic areas underscore its priorities:

Advocate for greater representation in global organizations. BRICS seeks to establish a united front of emerging economy perspectives in multilateral institutions. The group aims both to push for reform of existing institutions, such as expanding the UN Security Council, and to form negotiating blocs within those institutions. For instance, many BRICS countries opposed the UN condemnation of Russia’s war in Ukraine and have sought common positions on the Iran nuclear program and conflicts in Afghanistan, Gaza, Libya, and Syria.

Coordinate economic policy. The 2008 global recession hit the BRICS countries hard, leading the group to emphasize economic coordination on issues such as tariff policy, export restrictions of critical resources, and investment. The bloc’s annual foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows more than quadrupled from 2001 to 2021, though they have slowed in recent years.

Reduce reliance on the U.S. dollar. Increasingly disgruntled over the domination of the dollar in global transactions, which exposes them to Western sanctions, BRICS leaders have long advocated for de-dollarization in favor of increased trade in local currencies or even a potential common BRICS currency.

Create an alternative finance system. The group’s New Development Bank (NDB) and Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) are meant to mimic the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), respectively. BRICS members hope that alternative lending institutions can invigorate South-South cooperation and reduce dependence on traditional funding sources. 

How effective have the BRICS financial institutions been?

The NDB and the CRA were designed as an alternative to the so-called Bretton Woods arrangement, the mainstream global financial system founded by leading industrial countries in the aftermath of World War II. Many countries of the Global South believe those institutions, especially the World Bank and the IMF, are failing to meet the needs of poorer nations, especially in areas such as climate financing.

“This system was created by rich countries to benefit rich countries,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres has argued. “Practically no African country was sitting at the table of the Bretton Woods Agreement.”

The two institutions operate in different ways. The CRA, a common fund among the BRICS central banks that offers support during a currency crisis, is limited to BRICS countries, while in 2021 the NDB opened to private projects in other emerging-market countries.

The NDB offers loans, guarantees, and other financial mechanisms to support private projects that contribute to sustainable development and building out infrastructure. It is intended to offer more flexibility, greater equality among shareholders, and easier access to funds than the World Bank, which must share its attention across 190 members. Its lending focuses on clean energy, transportation, sanitation, and social development, and it has sought to devote 40 percent of its projects to tackling climate change. To date, the bank has approved more than $32 billion for ninety-six projects since operations began in 2016.

However, those efforts face roadblocks. The NDB is more than five times [PDF] smaller than the World Bank, and experts doubt it could completely replace it. Others contend that its ambitions to redesign the global financial systemhave fallen short as it maintains many of the practices of its competitors. It has also faced criticism for vague commitments on environmental and social impact standards.

Can a BRICS currency replace the dollar?

The BRICS countries have sought to reduce the primacy of the U.S. dollar in international trade for more than a decade, primarily by increasing the use of their own currencies for trading, especially China’s renminbi. There is also a push to introduce a new, BRICS-wide currency, of which Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is a major proponent. Other monetary proposals laid out at the 2023 summit included founding a new cryptocurrency or using a combined basket of BRICS currencies.

Skeptics say those ambitions are far from reach, however. A BRICS currency would require major political compromises, including a banking union, a fiscal union, and general macroeconomic convergence. The dollar, long the world’s principal reserve currency, is still used in more than 80 percent of global trade, and many experts doubt that a new BRICS reserve currency would be stable or reliable enough to be widely trusted for global transactions.

What has divided BRICS members?

According to experts, in addition to those challenges implementing their economic vision, the BRICS countries also face increasing internal tensions and rivalry among members. China and India have seen tensions rise over their decades-old border dispute as well as their growing competition for economic and geopolitical leadership of the Global South. The group has already had problems in making decisions; at a foreign ministers’ meeting in New York in September, leaders sought to propose a model for streamlining new additions to the UN Security Council, but the group could not musteran agreement. 

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also deepened fissures. It sparked widespread condemnation, Western-led sanctions, and diplomatic pressure to stop trading with Russia, disconcerting its BRICS allies. An International Criminal Court(ICC) warrant for Putin’s arrest over war crimes allegedly committed by Russian forces in Ukraine complicated the 2023 BRICS forum, forcing Putin to stay home or risk arrest by ICC member South Africa. Most BRICS members have sought a middle ground, while other members have largely ignored Western sanctions. Some analysts argue the sanctions on oil and other necessities are in fact pushing the BRICS countries closer together.

Meanwhile, economic and political instability in member countries has also shaken confidence in BRICS efforts. In the past decade, Brazil and South Africa have faced collapsing state capacity, yearslong recessions, chronic corruption, and crumbling infrastructure. China’s economic slump also threatens the group’s dynamism. Other major dividing lines include tensions between democracies and autocracies and long-standing rivalries such as those between Saudi Arabia and Iran and between Egypt and Ethiopia.

Why the expansion? 

The push to grow membership is another fault line in the bloc. China and Russia have favored expansion, while Brazil and India were more hesitant, concerned it would dilute their own influence. India’s growing rivalry with China further fueled the desire not to prop up China’s power with a larger group in Beijing’s orbit.

The addition of Egypt and Ethiopia will amplify voices from the African continent. Egypt also had close commercial ties with China and India, and political ties with Russia; as a new BRICS member, Egypt seeks to attract more investmentand improve its battered economy. China has long courted Ethiopia, the third-biggest economy in sub-Saharan Africa, with billions of dollars of investment to make the country a hub of its Belt and Road Initiative.

The addition of Saudi Arabia and the UAE would bring in the two biggest economies in the Arab world and the second and eighth top oil producers globally. They also play mediation roles in other regions, with Saudi Arabia leading ongoing peace talks for Sudan’s civil war and the war in Ukraine, the UAE hosting India-Pakistan stability talks, and both countries considering normalizing relations with Israel for the first time in decades. However, some experts warn that the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, in which they have at times supported opposing sides of conflicts, could carry into BRICS. Others say both countries are hoping that BRICS membership will help them focus on economic development.

The new members bring questions, however, over relations with the West. Iran and Russia are staunch adversaries of U.S. influence, while China sees itself as locked in economic and geopolitical competition with the United States. As Iran’s former President Ibrahim Raisi told his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, “Iran’s membership in the bloc is opposition to American unilateralism.” Still, Brazil, India, South Africa have had warmer relations with the United States, and likewise Saudi Arabia and the UAE are its major security partners.

How have Western countries responded?

Western countries have largely downplayed the group’s growth. White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that Washington doesn’t see BRICS as a geopolitical rival, while Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has largely dismissed efforts to move away from the dollar. Similarly, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has downplayed growing ties between BRICS members. Other political analyses claim the BRICS countries’ ambitions are exaggerated, and its members’ domestic headwinds are troubling enough to hamper any real threat to Western economic health.

Still, some European policymakers have cautioned that the anti-West sentiment is growing more confrontational. They see the expansion as the result of a lackluster Western response to low-income countries’ needs. They say Western countries need to begin reforming financial institutions in earnest.

“The accusation that the West is arrogant toward the needs of the Global South is serious. It cannot be answered by offering ‘value-based partnerships’ and a ‘rules-based’ multilateralism when the interest of the BRICS is focused on changing those rules in global finance, trade, and other standard-setting procedures,” writes Günther Maihold, senior fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

Other analysts say the BRICS de-dollarization efforts could eventually undermine the strength of the dollar and thus the health of the U.S. economy. “Ignoring BRICS as a major policy force—something the U.S. has been prone to do in the past—is no longer an option,” argued Tufts University scholars in 2023.

What’s next for BRICS?

Russia holds the rotating BRICS presidency this year and has set out to use its time as chair to focus on establishing a more “fair world order” and steering the pivot to local currencies and payment systems at its October summit in Kazan. The Russia-led BRICS meeting comes as the Kremlin presses on with its third year of war in Ukraine; analysts expect Putin will use the chairmanship to attempt to show Russia has not been isolated by Western pressure.

Despite Russia’s desire to take the bloc in a more strongly anti-West direction, experts say members such as Brazil and India, with closer U.S. ties, will put up resistance. “Nobody in this bloc is willing to put themselves in the position that Russia is currently in, as an open adversary of the West and the United States, risking armed confrontation,” Boris Bondarev, former Russian diplomat to the United Nations, told the Washington Post in 2023.

Other 2024 priorities include integrating new members and establishing a new category of BRICS partner countries that will likely fall short of a full membership.

Meanwhile, BRICS is already looking ahead to further growth. Current members have indicated they seek to bring in more members and partner countries to gain access to other regional trade blocs. The group opening its doors is attracting BRICS hopefuls: more than forty countries have expressed interest in joining, and at least twenty reportedly applied to join after the 2023 summit expansion.

Recommended Resources

This Council of Councils memo looks at whether BRICS can tip toward a new world order in its expansion.

For Cambridge University Press, CFR Senior Fellow Zongyuan Zoe Liu’s book questions whether BRICS can de-dollarize the global financial system.

At this CFR event, a panel of experts discusses BRICS nations and the future of emerging markets.

For Foreign Affairs, Alexander Gabuev and Oliver Stuenkel unpack the battle for the BRICS.

For The Conversation, Bhaso Ndzendze details what the newcomers are getting into in joining BRICS.