A lot happens every day. Alliances shift, leaders change, and conflicts erupt. With In Brief, we’ll help you make sense of it all. Each week, experts will dig deep into a single issue happening in the world to help you better understand it.***Last month, the BRICS economic bloc, comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, voted to expand to include six new countries, making the group BRICS+. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Argentina, the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia will be part of the group from the beginning of next year, more than doubling its size. We asked three experts to tell us more about the significance and potential repercussions of the expansion, which Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping called “historic.”Read more below. Tanvi Madan Senior Fellow, Brookings InstitutionIt’s worth neither ignoring nor exaggerating BRICS+. Members and aspirants have different motivations, but at the basic level, membership reflects frustration with the functioning of, or the lack of representation in, the existing international order. But there are several rivalries and contradictions that limit BRICS+’s potential, including Chinese-Indian, Iranian-Saudi Arabian, and even Emirati–Saudi Arabian competition, and some members’ close ties with the West. The recent BRICS declaration reflected this, with few significant concrete initiatives, no endorsement of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative or Global Development Initiative, no consensus on alternative payment infrastructure thus far, and disparate views on the Russia-Ukraine war. Zack Cooper Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute & Partner, Armitage InternationalChina is pushing an expanded BRICS as a competitor to the G7 and arguing that BRICS better reflects the interests of the world, particularly the Global South. The problem, of course, is that BRICS countries have relatively little in common, so they will have difficulty actually using the group in a meaningful way. An expanded BRICS will be even more
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A lot happens every day. Alliances shift, leaders change, and conflicts erupt. With In Brief, we’ll help you make sense of it all. Each week, experts will dig deep into a single issue happening in the world to help you better understand it.***Last month, the BRICS economic bloc, comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, voted to expand to include six new countries, making the group BRICS+. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Argentina, the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia will be part of the group from the beginning of next year, more than doubling its size. We asked three
