EXPANSION OF BRICS AND WORLD ORDER

BRICS’ five founder members gathered for the fifteenth summit at Johannesburg city in
South Africa. The main and prioritized purpose of the summit from 22-24 August 2023 was to
build consensus among member countries to provide full membership status to six countries
(Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and UAE) aspiring for it. Ergo, it was
unanimously decided that the process will begin on January 1, 2024, to make the organization
BRICS+ from just BRICS. However, South Africa being the host of the 15th summit rationally
pinpointed the theme; BRICS and Africa: Partnership for Mutually Accelerated Growth,
Sustainable Development and Inclusive Multilateralism. It ostensibly means to impetus economic
activities based on mutual respect, understanding, and interests without a unilateral approach. It
also emphasized on helping developing countries or the Global South in potentially achieving the
goals of SDGs (Sustainable Developmental Goals) by 2030. In short, it promotes multilateralism
and encouragingly provides wider options to the Global South.
Moving ahead with the expansion, BRICS is past, and BRICS+ is future. Apart from these six
ones, about 40 other countries have shown interest in joining the bloc. Since 1945, the global
economy has been dominated by Western especially USA created multilateral institutions and
liberal order. This liberal order became more influential and ubiquitous with the collapse of the
Soviet option in 1989. Poor and weak states in particular had been left with one and only one
option of liberal order in international politics. America became a world police and was running
the global system on its terms unilaterally till 2016-17. Renowned International Relations IR
expert, John Mearsheimer, considers the mentioned year as a flipping one in global politics, liberal
order in particular. However, BRICS has a win-win strategy for all the members to cooperate on
burning issues like the waning global economy, climate change, and trade for mutual benefits. In
such an inclusive environment, Beijing has tremendous benefits from it to make BRI a successful
project and to meet its energy demands from the resource-rich countries. The reason China’s
President Xi Jinping called the membership expansion a historic move. Other original members of
BRICS commented with positive tones on the BRICS+. South African president said, “BRICS has
embarked on a new chapter in its effort to build a world that is fair, a world that is just, a world
that is inclusive and prosperous”.
Reasons for the Expansion of BRICS
A slew of applications have been received from numerous countries for joining the BRICS.
As mentioned above, only six will have to officially get full membership status from January 2024.
Why is it so? The reasons are obvious and limpid on the part of Western vicious practices. The
USA and its like-minded partners imposed financial sanctions on their opponent states unilaterally
without taking the developing countries into confidence. The sanctions have heavy ramifications
for the fragile economies in the world. Moreover, developed states in the West are breaching and
violating the international payments mechanism to meet their myopic interests. Moving forward,
Global South is mollifying with just making tall promises, and not undertaking practical actions
for its development. Renege on climate fund commitments to support developing countries
combating climate shocks as well as accord minimal respect to health and food imperatives of the
Global South during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their growing disenchantment with the prevailing
global system made them inclined toward joining the BRICS. Therefore, the bloc has potentially
created an attractive space for the Global South to express its ambitions, interests, and priorities in
international politics.
On the part of BRICS, the organization like other thriving intergovernmental organizations
works successfully for three reasons. The first is it provides a platform for sharing information
with all members. Information-sharing boosts trust among the member states. BRICS offers an
operating structure that is inclusively intensified by the members’ participation. Second, states
usually desire to join organizations that meet or marshal their mutual interests. It is a natural
inclination and BRICS reflects that scenario quite well. The countries are actively building
consensus on making sustainable economic growth, a stimulus to trade, encouraging people-to-
people contacts, fighting global warming and improving information and technology etc. The third
reason is the organization can enhance the reputations of members by providing them with
visibility and a structure through which they can carry out complex activities, such as consensus-
building on agreements, fleshing out shared norms and ideas, mitigating conflicts, managing
disagreements, and even providing technical assistance to them (members). BRICS is the epitome
of such a reason.

BRICS+ and World Order

To reach a unanimous decision on expanding the bloc member states vouch for their friendly
and seemingly propitious countries. Brazil for Argentina, Egypt has warm commercial ties with
Russia and India, and Ethiopia has progressive relations with China and South Africa. However,
the views of experts on international politics are varying regarding the future world order. Russia
and Iran are unequivocally rhetoric against the West due to obvious reasons. “Unilateral approach
is on the way to decay”, commented by President of Iran. Other members do not want to establish
unpleasant ties with the West, especially the USA. India has a strategic partnership with America
and is a member of QUAD and I2U2. Moreover, according to analysts the Saudi’s ironclad alliance
with the US has already loosened on a number of fronts; its entry into BRICS would be another
barrier- but still far from doing away with ties. UAE, a partner of the USA, will be hyper-cautious
in treading with the BRICS+. Therefore, it would not be an anti-west or anti-existing world order.
But despite the member countries having divergent foreign policy interests, it will definitely
reshuffle world order. If not a new world order, the BRICS+ is certainly an alternative world order.
This alternative world order will be tilted toward the development and growth of weak states. The
existing global governance system is based on a zero-sum and parochial approach in which the
Global South has been a victim of exploitation, discrimination, and suppression from the Western
powerful states. The alternative institution will be providing encouraging opportunities to the
developing states in international affairs.
Furthermore, BRICS expansion has become per se a high-priority organization in which, say,
vulnerable federates are warmly welcomed beyond the traditionally accepted partners in
international politics. The increasingly pivotal role of the Global South in today’s global affairs
has prompted G7 countries especially France and the US to create substance in their bilateral and
multilateral engagements for the developing South, African Continent in particular. It would not
work due to the experience with the Western states of domination on them. Contrarily, BRICS has
respect and a mutually conducive environment for the Global South. The organization showed
appreciation for the African Leaders Peace Mission’s Proposal for the Ukraine crisis. Therefore,
the geopolitical move of the BRICS+ is to circumvent economic sanctions and protectionist
measures in world trade. The older order is becoming unworkable and fragile to run the global
governance system effectively and indiscriminately. The valve-based partnership and rules-based
multilateralism of the expansion of BRICS will be beneficial for the developing states in the
alternative world order.
In another view, the expansion of the BRICS is considered as a critical situation for a new
world order that has just begun. These comments do not forecast the creation of an alternative
order to the Western controlling order but a new one most influential by Asian powerful players
especially China. Martin Jacques, British Journalist and Scholar and also writer of the book,
“When China Rules the World”, called the expansion a key moment for the world order in which
the countries particularly the Global South are increasingly finding their feet and the BRICS has
captured that situation amazingly. Moreover, the key trading chokepoints such as the Suez Canal,
Strait of Hormuz, and Bab-al Mandab Strait would come under the supremacy of the BRICS+ and
China definitely wants that scenario to push the USA out of these critical territories. A famous
intellectual of the time, John Mearsheimer states that China like the US [Monroe Doctrine] would
first become a regional hegemon and, therefore, would not tolerate any misadventure in the region.
Moving ahead, the de-dollarization journey in the international financial market initiated from the
platform of BRICS and BRICS+ would accelerate it. This depicts the start of the decay of the US
dominance in the world’s economic system. Trading in national currencies is becoming a reality.
Rupee-designated oil transaction between India and UAE is a big example. Further, China has
dramatically increased the use of Yuan to buy Russian commodities since February 2022.
BRICS, despite ill-lit projections, established two financial institutions; the New
Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) in 2014. NDB is the
first bank developed by the developing states and offers more favorable and attractive conditions
to other countries than Western financial institutions. The NDB offers lending in local currency,
which protects the borrowing country from the stronger U.S. dollar, and allows borrowing
countries to set the standards for environmental and social compliance rather than having such
standards imposed on them. The CRA, with a capital of more than $100 billion, is meant to help
members withstand any short-term balance-of-payment pressures. BRICS is galloping towards a
time in which the world will be witnessing the diminishing influence of international financial
institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
America must realize that international order is not a monolithic set-up but comprises
multiple groupings of power and capability that vie for supremacy. BRICS is one such grouping
whose individual members carry far more significant weight in international politics than, say,
many who have joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative. And it offers members who are wary of
a rising China the ability to keep an alternative path for cooperation with Beijing open.