Future plans with BRICS

In April 2023, the former president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, was announced as president of the BRICS bank, a grouping of countries that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Truth be told, the ad drew much more attention due to Dilma's protagonism, her historical data: the first woman president of the country, who suffered an impeachment and saw a country split between those who supported and rejected her. The rest is history.

But beyond the domestic political clashes, the decision on the BRICS bank brought back the group itself, which for years had lost its place in Brazilian international politics.

In this text, my site recovers the history of this group of countries that promised to dominate the world economy in less than 50 years and points out what the return of the Lula government signals about its future.

Founding of BRICS

BRICS is the acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the member countries of the group. And the reason for only these countries in particular to meet is back in the 2000s. In this period, some nations began to enter cycles of economic growth with upward trajectories: they were the so-called emerging countries.

The idea of ​​​​grouping these countries, excluding, at first, South Africa, came up with the British economist Jim O'Neil in 2001. He grouped them – in the field of theory, of course – and created the acronym as a way of categorizing and analyzing the similar economic, social, communicational and business aspects of each of the countries.

Five years later, in 2006, the countries put this idea on paper and effectively joined forces, incorporating the union into their international policies.

They reorganized or continued the path they had already been showing, trying to expand their businesses around the world, becoming actors in diplomatic terms", explains Pedro Brites, professor of the International Relations course at FGV (Fundação Getúlio Vargas). "By positioning themselves. . as new actors, these countries would be able to become protagonists of the global economic scenario", he concludes. 

In the beginning, only Brazil, Russia, India and China were part of the still very informal grouping. It was, in a way, a response to the growing turbulence in the global economic scenario, which would culminate in the 2008 crisis, and to the fact that the largest countries in the world did not offer a solution for the emerging ones.

At that time, there were already meetings in UN assemblies (United Nations Organizations), for example, to create alliances. "Ideas emerged from groups that thought about possibilities for a response to the crisis and global governance. Among them, the BRICS, in 2006", says Brites. It was only a few years later, in 2011, that South Africa joined the group.

But what formally united and unites the BRICS? Anything. BRICS is not a summit, an organization. There is no treaty or single currency adopted by member countries, as in the European Union. For this very reason, it is not possible to classify it as an economic block.

What unites Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and intensifies their relations is the desire to create political strategies that bring them closer together and make their economies grow, reaching increasingly relevant levels on the global stage. For a few years, the idea worked.

The group's golden years

Since the creation of the BRICS, in 2006, the member countries have had different growth paths, but all have emerged as important players in their regions. For years, the group was treated as one of the foreign policy priorities of these countries and, thanks to that, they managed to strengthen political-economic ties more fluidly and face the economic crisis.

The BRICS thought of the group's trajectory in the long term. Its aim was to see the members establish themselves as the top five world powers by 2050.

It is clear that each country had different social, political, governmental and economic objectives. An example that illustrates well is the investment of Russia and China in nuclear weapons, unlike Brazil, India and South Africa. But the members of the group aimed to align their foreign policies and strengthen agreements and debates without losing their own dynamics, which worked. until 2012.

The disarticulation

In the middle of the last decade, things changed. Russia and China, mainly China, maintained a dizzying growth and established themselves as important figures on the planet. India, on the other hand, established itself as an important ruler in South Asia, gaining space in the technology market.

Around here, things were not going well. "Brazil has been going through a political crisis since 2013, which deepens with the fall of Dilma in 2015. Since then, the country has never been able to recover from a series of challenges: inflation, low growth, political extremism", says Pedro Brits, from FGV. With a less promising trajectory than in the first decade of the 2000s, the country is moving away from the BRICS.

More recently, other events shook the politics and economy of the five countries, including those emerging as world leaders. China faced a serious crisis due to the covid-19 pandemic, not to mention its direct confrontation with the United States. Russia, which has a trajectory linked to oil and other energy resources, is facing a war that affects its economic performance.

South Africa has also suffered from the effects of the pandemic, in addition to experiencing high unemployment rates, especially among young people, and rising inflation.

You can see that each country was too preoccupied with its own problems to think of a specific global foreign policy, like the BRICS.

Future Perspectives for the BRICS

The BRICS was created during the Lula government and it is again there that expectations of its rearticulation arise. Since the appointment of Dilma to the presidency of the BRICS bank (a project that aims at financial support for development projects within the member countries), meetings and dialogues have already taken place on the resumption of joint projects.

For Pedro Brites, this is a window of opportunity for these countries to get closer. "Clearly there were some ideological differences, especially during the Bolsonaro government, which created friction between countries. Members drifted apart, ceasing to have close political relations and to think of solutions for the world together. But now you have a completely different perspective," he analyzes.

The political systems of each member country are quite different, so it is essential that they exert some force for this political-economic rapprochement to occur. After all, everyone seems to have something to gain from it.

“Brazil wants to put aside this legacy of isolation in foreign policy and return to being a global player. China needs to increase its network of partners and reduce the weight of rivalry with the United States. The same situation with Russia and India: despite having a growth trajectory, they also want to be global players.”

The professor believes that the BRICS still makes sense in terms of the possibility of thinking about alternatives to the established global order. The union of these countries can result in solutions to world problems and more opportunities for growth and development in different areas, not just the economic one.