Over the past weekend Heads of State of BRICS met in South Africa to discuss the future of the grouping.
BRICS is an acronym for the political and economic grouping made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Historical pretext for the grouping now know as BRICS began with the need for HIV drugs and intellectual property laws preventing access to drugs.
India is one of the worlds leading producers in pharmaceuticals, including those used to treat HIV-AIDS. Brazil and South Africa were both in need of affordable drugs to treat individuals infected with HIV and other illnesses. The trilateral grouping known as IBSA defined their key objectives as promoting South-South dialogue and cooperation.
The acronym BRICS was first formulated by economist Jim O’neal of Goldman Sachsin a report on economic growth prospects for the economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Today BRICS represents over 42% of the global population and 23% of GDP.
The Brazilian Ministry of External Relations marks 2006 as the beginning of “regular informal diplomatic coordination” between Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The first formal summit of the grouping met in 2009. South Africa joined the organization in 2011, which then became BRICS.
BRICS in Financial Terms
A BRICS bank was proposed in 2014 at the 4th BRICS summit. By 2015 all 5 BRICS nations signed The Agreement for establishing New Development Bank (NDB) and by 2016 the bank became fully operational. So far the NDB has funded a plethora of critical development initiatives like bringing solar power to Lingang China, and the modernization of the container terminal in Durban South Africa.
The Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), ratified in 2015 is another major institutional achievement of the BRICS grouping. The CRA although currently inactive still boasts $100 billion in funds to assist countries facing liquidity issues.
While BRICs has made many strides since its formation, the grouping has also faced significant setbacks in the consolidation of the group.
Two member states of the grouping became headed by right wing leaders. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi who was elected in 2014; and later in 2016 the coup that ousted Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff ushered in the election of right-wing ex president Jair Balsonaro who abandoned many of Brazil’s commitments to the grouping.
Why is BRICS so Important Now?
Set with the backdrop of war in Russia, Increasing use of sanctions and freezing of assets by the West, and a global economy still reeling from the disastrous effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, this most recent BRICS summit stands out as a beacon of hope to many in the developing world. For far too long lopsided trade arrangements, forever debts, and neocolonialism has cast a dark shadow over the Global South. Citizens of the West have largely come to take for granted basic necessities like electricity and running water. In countries like Niger whose military recently deposed its President Mohamed Bazoum, over 80% of the population live without electricity.
Sanctions against Venezuela inflated the cost of medical supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic many developing nations relied on COVAX, a vaccine sharing initiative backed by the World Health Organization, to secure vaccines. As Venezuela inched closer to obtaining the $120 million needed to pay for vaccines, the west colluded to block that effort. According to Venezuelan Foreign minister Jorge Arreaza, Swiss Bank UBS had blocked access to $4.6 million claiming that the transactions were “under investigation.”
Because the United States uses sanctions to restrict access to dollars there is a growing movement in the developing world to move to another currency. This desire to move to another currency or to “de-dollarize” has already been gaining momentum and this most recent BRICS summit marks yet another stride in that direction. Anil Sooklal, South African Ambassador to BRICS pointed out that member nations are not anti-dollar and insisted that, “what we are against is the continued dominance of the dollar in terms of global financial interactions.”
Another target of some of the United States most aggressive sanctions has been China. In August of 2022 Joe Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Sciences act. On its face and with no context it would be easy to mistake the act as a generous patronage to computer science. A deeper look into the CHIPS and Sciences Act reveals something much more sinister. The act, which provides $280 billion to research and manufacturing of semiconductors, also stipulates that companies awarded subsidies are prohibited to build or expand manufacturing capacity “for certain advanced semiconductors in specific countries that present a national security threat to the United States.” The Biden administration also issued a set of export controls late last year that would block the export of certain chips used in advanced AI calculations and supercomputing.
To put it plainly, the United States is always minding someone else’s business and sticking its nose where it does not belong. Instead of looking to the progress and development of China and trying to recreate that success for its own people, the United States would rather try to impede that progress. What the people who run the United States fail to realize is that humanity is pushed forward through the sharing of technological advancement. Imagine life had China developed technologies like paper, the printing press, gunpowder and kept them locked away from the advancement of humanity. Analysts are already forecasting that in the years to come, the CHIPS act will likely backfire and tech companies will opt not to expand their U.S. operations.
Commitments to Development
Colonialism at its most bare definition is the political and economical domination of one country over another. To colonize means to seize the land, occupy it with settlers, and subject the natives to all manner of domination and exploitation.
Almost every African independence struggle was supported by the East. Whether it was North Korean military advisors training Zimbabwean soldiers, or the USSR supplying arms to defend the Libyan revolution, the friendship between Africa and the East is a long standing one.
There is a relentless and far reaching propaganda campaign coming from the West and particularly from the United States to suggest that Africa is being recolonized by the East. It is true that collaboration between Africa and the East has taken on a different character now that the USSR has been dismantled and China, though still a revolutionary society, has shifted toward a socialist market economy. Still, the shift away from the centuries long domination of the West over African political and economic life represents a positive trend for the African continent.
In a 2020 State Department document titled “The Elements of the China Challenge,” US officials allege that China has engaged in “debt-trap diplomacy and other predatory economic practices.” The truth however, is that China is constantly issuing loan forgiveness. In Summer of 2022 Beijing announced that it would be forgiving 23 interest free loans for 17 African countries. Research by Deborah Brautigam, director of the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies shows that between 2000 and 2019, China canceled at least $3.4 billion in similar debts held by African countries.
Following in the path of China, President Putin in his address to the BRICS summit asserted his commitment to strengthening trade relations with Africa. He remarked on the boom in agricultural trade between Russia and African states and said, “our country is and will remain a responsible supplier of food to the African continent.”
A New Multipolar World
On the final day of the BRICS summit South African president Cyril Ramaphosa released a statement announcing that the BRICS grouping had invited six more countries, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to become full members of BRICS beginning January 1, 2024. More than 40 countries including Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, and Kazakhstan have expressed interest in joining the grouping.
This latests BRICS summit signals the entering in of a new multipolar world. Multipolarity alone does not mean systems of domination and exploitation will be brought to an end simply by virtue of having more than one world power. What multipolarity does mean is that those countries and peoples most impacted by the systems of domination and exploitation have a better chance at fighting their oppression. A multipolar world is one where developing countries can choose the alliances and partnerships that best suit the needs of their citizens, making themselves their own masters. The trend toward a multipolar world, even with its contradictions, is a positive one.
