BRICS Shows It’s Little More Than a Meaningless Acronym
The group seeks to counter US influence but mostly practices cynical expediency
Photo of leaders at the BRICS meeting in South Africa this week.
Photographer: Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images EuropeThe 15th summit of BRICS countries, which just concluded in South Africa, received unprecedented international attention. Some commentators even invoked the Bandung conference of 1955, where leaders of India, China, Indonesia, Egypt, and Yugoslavia launched the non-aligned movement. It seemed as though another generation of leaders, this time from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, were building an alternative to the US-dominated global order.
As it happened, their doings and sayings ranged from the semi-farcical to the meaningless. According to a leading South African news website, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi refused to leave his aircraft on arrival in South Africa because the host, President Cyril Ramaphosa, wasn’t at the airport to welcome him. China’s Xi Jinping inexplicably failed to deliver a scheduled speech at an opening event where the other leaders spoke, including Russian President Vladimir Putin on video link.