Last week’s BRICS meeting in South Africa reiterated the desire of China and Russia to position themselves in determined and sharpened opposition to the United States, its allies in Europe and NATO (and Japan); a new Cold War is in the making. Both countries think that their authoritarian approaches to domestic and international priorities are best served by erecting a strong pole of anti-Americanism around which similarly minded autocracies (and a few friendly others) can now cluster.
Until now BRICS has been a relatively inarticulate assemblage consisting of one rising world power, a second declining power unwilling to accept its loss of global salience, a third -- the world’s largest sometime democracy hoping to gain greater international credibility, and the leading economic and political entities on the African and South American continents. Together, the enlarged BRICS now represents 46 percent of the globe’s total population and 29 percent of the globe’s total GDP. But, aside from a BRICS development bank that has doled out few loans, BRICS has until now mostly been a pretentious talking shop. (BRICS arose from the linking together of BRIC, without South Africa, by a Goldman Sachs analyst in 2001. He was trying to explain the rising growth rates of the Chinese, Russian, Indian, and Brazilian economies. BRIC established itself in 2009; South Africa became a member in 2010, creating BRICS.)
The newly expanded grouping did not, as earlier threatened, attempt to introduce some kind of new currency to employ instead of the U. S. dollar. Some of its added members may accept payments in yuan for their oil, but the BRICS will for the moment forebear trying to unsettle world money markets.
In many senses, BRICS is now all about China as a major market for African, Brazilian, and Russian exports, and as a prospective magnet for Chinese investment, concessional loans, and infrastructural construction assistance. None of the other BRICS, not even India, begin to approximate China’s importance as an engine of economic growth for the countries that consider themselves not of the West. Brazil sells vast quantities of soy and beef to China. Russia sends oil and gas at concessionary prices. South Africa exports gold, coal, and minerals like platinum and manganese. India sells iron ore, refined (Russian) petroleum, and raw aluminum. China ships all of the other countries inexpensive consumer goods.
By deciding to follow China and Russia’s preferences to admit new members and thus to double its size to attempt to become collectively a major tribune for the non-West, BRICS apparently hopes to transform itself into a voice for those who think that the countries of the West lack respect for the aspirations of their former colonies and for those nations that ideologically follow the drumming beat of insistence on alternatives to American global leadership.
By expanding their membership last week to include Iran, the BRICS have begun drawing major lines in the sand. Inviting Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates gives BRICS major leverage in the supply of fossil fuels, and plunges the BRICS into Muslim Sunni-Shia contestation and the deadly on-going struggle for hegemony in the Middle East. It is unclear how much sense that makes for BRICS, although it does give it more hold of the world’s wealth, and much more potential for destabilizing how the globe copes with global warming and climate change.
BRICS also added Argentina, in many ways the sick man of South America, thanks to inflation of over 100 percent per annum, a badly mismanaged economy, and repeated episodes of political instability.
Egypt, another very questionable and corrupt entity, and Ethiopia, with its many internal conflicts, are also becoming BRICS’ members. Both are autocracies, thus making BRICS even more decisively a meeting place for hard-core autocrats and wannabe autocrats (India) -- a ready forum for authoritarianism with ruling parties lording it over opponents and civil society (as in Zimbabwe).
Since that is what BRICS now represents more dramatically than hitherto, why is it going to be a useful platform for Brazil, recovering under President Lula da Silva from the despotic behavior of President Jair Bolsonaro, his predecessor? What will Argentina gain from now being associated with kleptocrats, monarchs, and assassins? Chinese funding, perhaps?
Equally perplexing is why South Africa was so keen on expanding the BRICS membership, and losing its own precarious footing among the much larger and much wealthier other nations. Furthermore, South Africa under President Cyril Ramaphosa appears to be tying himself much more closely – and dangerously – to the enemies of the West than opinion polls show that his people want. His attempt to reduce Putin’s appetite for war was an abject failure in St. Petersburg last month; his lavish welcome to President Xi Jinping did not excite his citizens either, and a major protocol breach made Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi furious.
South Africa needs to right it domestic democratic ship, to turn its lights on consistently, to crack corrupt heads within the African National Congress ruling party, attack rampant crime, reduce homicides, improve schooling, and strengthen the police. Instead, externally Ramaphosa has tied himself and South Africa to Putin’s invasion; to China’s crackdown on the human rights of its citizens; to Saudi Arabia’s shooting, maiming, and torturing of Ethiopian migrants crossing from Yemen; to Iran’s bigotry and persecution of women; and to India’s discrimination against its 200 million Muslims. As the South African opposition Democratic Alliance declared: BRICS now tilts in favor of “illiberal, oppressive, and autocratic approach[es] to foreign relations and trade.”
BRICS (or whatever it will now call itself) is (mostly now) a hollow collective morally and in terms of respect for civil liberties and human freedoms. What Nelson Mandela’s South Africa gains reputationally from being associated with places like Iran and Russia, and even Egypt and Saudi Arabia, is not clear. It also risks losing valuable duty-free access to the American market.
Zimbabwe
The official result from the haphazardly run and very compromised election that we wrote about Thursday is a hardly unexpected victory for the ruling Zimbabwe African People’s Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) over the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC). President Emmerson Mnangagwa was re-elected for five years with 52.6 percent of the vote. The CCC’s Nelson Chamisa obtain 44 percent of total. Equally disturbing, ZANU-PF won two-thirds of the parliamentary seats; Mnangagwa’s party can now alter the national constitution to permit him a third presidential term in five years. About 70 percent of 6.6 million registered voters finally cast ballots, in many urban constituencies after as long as twenty-six hour delays.
Several observer missions declared the vote hardly free or fair. The European delegation was particularly scathing and so was the observer group from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), chaired by Zambia’s former vice-president. Even the African Union mission was critical. Gerrymandering distorted urban constituency numbers (where the CCC had its main support), local observers trying to obtain polling place returns were arrested, and – during the runup to the actual balloting – CCC candidates were forcibly prevented from holding rallies. A so-called Patriotic Act penalized criticisms of the ruling party.
The CCC says it may appeal to the courts to overturn Zimbabwe’s “fraudulent” election. But the courts are under Mnangagwa’s control.
This is all so very true ... frankly it reminds me so much now of the so-called Non-Aligned movement of the 1970s under the 'leadership' of such forces for democracy as Tito & Khieu Samphan of the Khmer Rouge .... but really just a thinly-disguised Trojan horse for a host of left-wing governments, all operating at least in the shadow of the Kremlin. The concept at the outset was laudable but as with this, how long will it take to come fully under the sway of malevolent, certainly anti-democratic (with a small 'd') forces?!