Dear CCI Friends and Colleagues,
Gilbert Doctorow, a CCI trusted source, has summarized his opinion of the continued development and expansion of BRICS. The new developments with BRICS plus create an opportunity for more multilateral cooperation away from the traditional western economies. This presents some good opportunities for Russia, China, and the entire global south.
Doctorow’s opinion is that the importance of BRICS including countries that are not naturally culturally or politically compatible is to be taken very seriously. To quote Doctorow,
“The lesson here is one that the United States has not begun to learn: that inclusion of fractious nations is a far better way of arriving at policy moderation and coexistence than exclusion and creation of ‘pariah states’ through sanctions.”
We look forward to your comments.
Center for Citizen Initiatives
Is the expanded BRICS truly a new international institution or just the Nonaligned Bloc 2.0?
September 2, 2023
By Gilbert Doctorow
In the week since the 15th Summit meeting of BRICS in Johannesburg closed, there has been a lot of commentary in Western media directed at quashing the notion that something substantial occurred there which will further the emergence of a multipolar world, which had been the message of the five member states in their closing Declaration.
Some analysts have said that the addition of six new members taking effect on 1 January 2024 and plans for still greater enlargement next year to take in more of the 23 nations which had expressed an interest in joining amounts to little more than the recreation of the Bloc of Nonaligned Nations, which was a talking shop among Global South countries and little more during the Cold War. Other critics point out that there are serious contradictions between the national interests of the founding members India and China, and that this problem will arise between the new members, as for example between Iran and Saudi Arabia, so that the chances of BRICS arriving at consensus in policy matters and geopolitics in particular will be slim; its weight on the world stage will be correspondingly small, they say.