Opinion A bag of BRICS

For those in the West,so accustomed to dominating the international political discourse during the last two decades,the prospect of a powerful non-Western bloc is deeply disconcerting. That Russia,China,India and Brazil abstained in the United Nations Security Council vote authorising the use of force in Libya last month has been greeted with some hostility in the West.

South Africa,which joins the forum this week and converts the small ‘s’ in the BRICs into a capital letter,had,however,voted for the resolution. As the Libyan intervention begins to falter,there is speculation whether South Africa might change its mind about supporting “humanitarian interventions”.

The negative reaction has not been limited to the West. Some third world intellectuals too have seen the BRIC vote on Libya as revealing the fact that the emerging powers are not ready for global prime time. The former Mexican foreign minister,Jorge Castaneda,argues that the “world’s rising economies lack the ability — and the values — to project their power on the world stage”. Castaneda insists that rising non-Western powers lack the commitment of the Western powers “to supranational institutions and universal values such as human rights,the collective defence of democracy,a robust climate-change framework,nuclear nonproliferation,and so forth”. Giving permanent seats on the UNSC to India,Brazil and South Africa,Castaneda concludes,might make this body more representative,but “might weaken the very foundations of the liberal democratic order”.

To be fair,the leaders of the BRICS themselves had never really made exalted claims for their forum. It is the supporters and critics who injected it with a lot more political purpose that it could really bear.

Viewed from the realist prism,the BRICS forum is no more than a sack of potatoes,formless and without a specific strategic orientation. As a group,BRICS have little political coherence. Located in different corners of the world,BRICS is not a forum to promote the regionalism that has had much success in Europe and East Asia. Yet their geographic disparateness would not have mattered much,if the BRICS had a shared set of political and economic values.

The declarations from the Hainan summit must then be read for the many contradictions that confront the BRICS. One is about their divergent attitudes towards the West in general and the United States in particular.

It was in the mid-1990s that Russia proposed the construction of the so-called “strategic triangle” with China and India. China,which was enjoying a growing economic and political partnership with the US,was not too enthusiastic. India,which was trying to improve ties with the US,did not want to offend Moscow and chose to go along. The Russians brought Brazil into the forum in 2009 and the Chinese strongly supported the entry of South Africa into the BRICs.

All the forum’s members want to build a special relationship with the United States,and wish to use the forum as a leverage to expand their political space with Washington. That is part of political jockeying in a multipolar world.

As the US offers to reset relations with Russia,flirts with the notion of a “G-2” with China,and seeks to develop new partnerships with rising powers like India,Brazil and South Africa,there is little incentive for any one of these to build a solid anti-US block. That India has chosen to announce a new trilateral strategic dialogue with the US and Japan days before the Hainan summit of the BRICS suggests the limits of anti-Westernism as a glue binding the BRICS.

Second,the economic crisis in the West and the rise of Chinese power have also begun to alter the dynamics within BRICS. Beijing clearly wants to mobilise support from the rising powers to deal with its growing divergence with the US on how to rebalance the world economy. On the eve of the summit,Chinese officials underlined the importance of greater financial coordination between the BRICS and the need to develop a common position at G-20 meetings. China,however,has made it clear that exchange rate of the Chinese currency,the yuan,is not on the table at the Hainan summit. But India has concerns about its growing trade deficits with China and has often raised questions about the yuan exchange rate.

Third,India and Brazil would want to see the BRICS forum endorse their claims for a permanent seat in the UNSC. Beijing is clearly not too enthusiastic. The last summit in Brasilia endorsed the expansion of the UNSC — but would not come out in support of India and Brazil.

These contradictions do not mean that India should not take the opportunity to expand political and economic engagement with the major economies represented at the forum. What Delhi needs to avoid is a political romanticisation of BRICS,which is only one of the many plurilateral organisations that India participates in.

While taking a practical view of BRICS and other forums,India must become more assertive in articulating its own interests. After all,multilateralism is about pursuit of national interest by different means and is not an end in itself.

The writer is a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research,Delhi. express@expressindia.com