BRICS once again meet to complain and vent frustrations

Hosting this week’s BRICS summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin had two related objectives: one short-term, the other long.

Most immediately, he wanted to demonstrate his indifference to and defiance of international condemnation for his invasion of Ukraine, launched 2½ years ago, and highlight the support he receives from other countries.

That is linked to his longer-term goal, the creation of a multipolar world that shields nations like Russia from pressures imposed by the United States to conform to its preferred behaviors. The nearly two dozen heads of state that joined Putin in Kazan this week all share his preference for that multipolar world or at least one in which Washington has less power; they are less convinced that his readiness to redraw international borders is a just cause.

Putin is hosting the BRICS summit, a group that originally included Brazil, Russia, India and China, which soon after added South Africa and recently expanded with the membership of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. It already accounts for 45% of the world's population and 35% of the global economy, and other nations have expressed interest in joining.

First defined as a group of nations with unrecognized economic potential, today its defining characteristic is a shared sense of dissatisfaction with the current structure and distribution of global power. Simply put, these governments feel that they do not have the influence, status or respect that they feel they deserve.

The mere fact that the summit is being held supports Putin’s first objective. The presence of so many world leaders makes clear that the Russian president is not isolated and enjoys considerable international support. Putin did not attend last year’s BRICS summit in South Africa because the International Criminal Court had issued an arrest warrant for him after the invasion of Ukraine. That blight did not prevent him from hosting the largest diplomatic event in Russia since that attack.

Nevertheless, the shadow of the Ukraine conflict is long. Kazan, the site of the summit, is about 1,000 kilometers from the Ukraine border, and the region has been targeted in drone attacks by Kyiv. Security measures were tight.

As would be expected, the war raging in Ukraine quickly became a major point of discussion at the summit. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has performed a difficult balancing act by retaining the confidence of both the West and Russia, has offered his services as a mediator and urged both sides to reach a peaceful resolution to the conflict. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was also in attendance. In a bilateral meeting with Putin he “reaffirmed well-known positions” on the war and laid out “conditions for just peace.”

A “just peace” in Putin’s mind and that of his closest allies is one that gives extra weight to Russian concerns. Simply put, Putin, like other BRICS leaders, demands that his national interests prevail when regional issues arise. He sees an international order based on the rule of law, in which all nations are equal, as unfair and unjust.

Of course, that is not the language that he uses. Putin instead speaks of “common values, a common vision of development and, most importantly, the principle of taking into account each others' interests.” These are honeyed words, but his real concern is the power of the United States, the global order it has established and the way that it checks Russian — or like-minded governments’ — ambitions. For Putin, this is “classic colonialism” that promotes U.S. hegemony.

Putin’s closest and most important partner in this endeavor is Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Xi, too, rails against U.S. power and the ability of the global order Washington supports to frustrate Chinese designs. China also supports a multipolar world that would give his country more autonomy and authority. China has slightly modified Putin’s words in calling for “mutual respect for core interests.”

Xi and Putin announced in February 2022, just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, “a partnership without limits.” It has since deepened. At their bilateral meeting on the sidelines of this week’s BRICS summit, Xi praised “profound” ties with Russia that are a foundation of global “stability” and pledged to strengthen them still further. Putin in turn called the bilateral relationship “a model of what cooperation between two states should be like in the modern world.”

At the end of their meeting, the group released the Kazan Declaration, a 43-page, 134-point document, that made clear the BRICS’ focus and intent. After perfunctory and obligatory calls for peaceful settlement of the conflict in Ukraine and the immediate cessation of hostilities in the Middle East, it focused on mechanisms that would limit or block Western hegemony.

Central to that effort is a BRICS-led payment system that would allow governments to work around SWIFT, the Western international financial network that is the real instrument of U.S. power. The threat of being cut off from SWIFT, essential to business transactions, is what gives U.S. sanctions bite. The declaration also encouraged members to use local currencies in their financial transactions to reduce U.S. influence.

In addition, the communique criticized the unilateral sanctions imposed by the U.S., charging that they hurt the poorest people in targeted states and called for their elimination.

The declaration also called for a BRICS grain exchange in recognition that member countries are “the world's largest producers of grains, legumes and oilseeds.” This could later expand to include other major commodities such as oil, gas and metals. This would, Putin argued, “protect national markets from negative external interference, speculation and attempts to create an artificial food shortage.”

The Kazan Declaration also called for studies of other Russian initiatives, such as BRICS Clear, a depository and securities trade settlement system, and a common reinsurance company.

While there is a shared desire among all BRICS members to reduce U.S. power, there is reluctance to accept the more extreme formulations that Putin and some other leaders propose. Those nations seek cooperation within the group to reform global governance, but that does not equate with a call for confrontation with the West.

This is a critical divide among the BRICS member states and it is a gap that grows larger as the BRICS expands. While larger membership will in theory give the group more heft and influence it also undercuts unity. Broad agreement on some goals cannot overcome the divergence created by fundamentally different interests on specific issues. This tension is evident even in the China-Russia “partnership without limits.”

The BRICS’ desire for global governance reform is understandable and justified. International institutions have not kept pace with changes in the world since they were established. If there are concerns about the BRICS, the best way to address them is to implement needed institutional reforms, which would leave the group with only bitter complaints that expose its true animating principles: Empowering autocrats to do as they please.