The recently concluded BRICS summit from October 22-24 in Kazan was the first meeting of the enlarged group which also marked the participation of many Southern countries keen to join the bloc. Although Western analyzes frequently dismiss its relevance, the interests of many developing countries in joining the bloc to navigate an uncertain world attest to its longevity. But despite its appeal, deep internal tensions threaten its effectiveness. The main one is the sword of Damocles which hangs over the BRICS due to the persistent geopolitical tensions between India and China, despite the military disengagement agreement announced on the eve of the summit.
As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi pointed out in his closing speech to the summit, in which he warned against the group being seen as “divisive”: the two countries have strategic differences over objective of the block. India is content to reform the existing order by gaining a seat at the negotiating table, but China, like Russia, is increasingly positioning BRICS in opposition to the West and the created world order by the United States.
To realize its ambition to dethrone the United States as the sole global hegemon, China has spearheaded a campaign to add members beyond the original four (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and to South Africa to become the leader of an important bloc with a considerable economy. weigh. India and Brazil first clashed with China’s desire to expand the BRICS group in 2017, fearing the expansion would limit their influence. While China presented BRICS enlargement as a counterweight to the G7 and presented itself as the voice of the Global South, it launched a diplomatic offensive in 2023 to legitimize the bloc’s expansion as an essential step to improve the world’s position in development. Ultimately, India that aspires to woo the South could ill afford to appear non-inclusive.
China also strongly believed that the expansion would add economic vitality to the group after the growth rate declined significantly in countries like South Africa and Brazil, worsened by the pandemic. The economic downturn has weakened their association with the bloc and turned them away from cooperation. China realized that at a time when it was beginning to face growing resistance from the Western world, trudging forward alongside a weakened BRICS limited to its original five members would not serve its national interest .
Although India had to admit that the expansion diluted the original objective and would make it more difficult to reach a consensus decision, the group’s expansion also brought new opportunities, especially given its significant ties to Iran and Saudi Arabia (which has not yet accepted the invitation). . Although India failed to establish criteria for membership, all countries welcomed were ultimately among New Delhi’s recommendations. The previous episode suggests that future rounds of expansion will generate differences between New Delhi and China over which countries to include due to their divergent strategic outlooks towards the bloc.
All founding members of BRICS harbored decades-old grievances against an unjust US-led world order. India and China have criticized post-war global governance institutions for ignoring their economic rise and remaining out of step with the existing configuration of power. India and China joined forces with other emerging countries to make their voices heard while the West remained deaf to the geopolitical realities of the 21st century. Their participation in BRICS was underpinned by a mutual desire to improve the South’s material conditions, increase local currency settlements, and reform the Bretton Woods institutions and the World Trade Organization. They are also increasingly concerned about Washington’s unilateral use of sanctions to restrict trade and investment.
However, there are strategic differences between them on their approach to BRICS. Under the leadership of Hu Jintao, China has been content to keep a low profile and has been reluctant to claim leadership of the group. However, following the rise of Xi Jinping and concerns about US containment policies, Beijing wanted to supplant Western institutions with its architecture. India, however, wanted to reform the existing order by giving it a greater role while distancing countries in the South from Chinese projects like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
China, alongside Russia, views BRICS as an arena to cooperate with other regional powers in the South and gradually limit Western influence. Beijing is confident in its ability to partner with other emerging economies and build new international organizations rather than fighting for hierarchical rights in the Western-led order. BRICS was also seen as a way for China to counter US anti-China policy by deepening its institutional and economic ties with the non-Western world. For example, China wants to integrate BRICS countries into its BRI infrastructure by offering development assistance to non-G7 countries more generously than to the West.
India is far from sharing the revisionist enthusiasm aimed at containing the West. New Delhi is largely satisfied with a high status where it is recognized and respected as a vital node in an emerging multipolarity. India has dedicated its diplomatic capital to reforming multilateral institutions, strengthening South-South cooperation and working on non-controversial issues such as counter-terrorism, climate change, energy cooperation and the pandemic. India’s main grievance with the West is its exclusion from the United Nations Security Council, and it believes that BRICS support would be necessary for such reform. As part of its multi-aligned foreign policy, India’s membership in BRICS reminds the West of its long-standing strategic autonomy and not taking its cooperation for granted while ensuring that the group bases its identity on a non-Western and non-anti-Western basis. -The Westerner.
Although India and China have doubts about US hegemony, their strategies vary. China wants to accelerate American decline, while India tends to hide in a world where America’s relative power has declined and the future of the international order is uncertain. Seen from New Delhi’s perspective, the world is moving from a unipolar, US-led world to a more multipolar world, and BRICS, despite its internal fissures and loose institutionalization, is a valuable step to be among the actors who choreograph this change.
On October 21, India and China reached an agreement on modalities for patrolling along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), leading to disengagement and resolution of issues that emerged in these areas in 2020. The rapprochement does this tactic herald a better future for the BRICS? An over-reading of border detente is wrong. Indian elites believe that, while advocating a multipolar Asia and a multipolar world, China harbors ambitions for a unipolar Asia and a bipolar world leading to insoluble structural competition. Great powers like China naturally desire and aim for regional hegemony. India, however, is historically and culturally programmed for independence; he will not accept a relationship of servitude with China, in which the balance of power in Asia would tip in favor of the Middle Kingdom. The disputes between these two great countries are long and complex and will not be resolved anytime soon.
While some voices are advising India to leave BRICS, New Delhi will continue to invest in the bloc to ensure that China does not monopolize the institutional space for global cooperation with the South. India will draw on China’s strategic model and use BRICS as a necessary, albeit insufficient, institutional mechanism to limit China’s hegemonic tendencies, just as China has sought to do against the United States. Only a full-scale war between India and China will force New Delhi’s hand to abandon the bloc.
Furthermore, India’s distrust of China due to the latter’s military and diplomatic support for Pakistan, the challenge to its traditional leadership in South Asia and the latent border conflict will result in a India’s continued engagement in international institutions, such as BRICS mechanisms, Russian Union. – India-China Frameworks and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank as tools of its soft-balancing strategy to restrain Beijing. The lack of mutual overlap on sensitive geopolitical issues between India and China will reduce the bloc’s influence on the international stage. Far from achieving goals such as dedollarization championed by countries like China and Russia, BRICS will mostly be limited to a series of low-hanging fruits focused on issues such as climate change and public health.
Although the group will have to manage tensions and contradictions between India and China in the years to come, contestation within BRICS will not lead to its disintegration as it serves the national interest of both countries. India will use the collective bargaining power of the bloc to reform Western-dominated institutions without allowing them to transform into an anti-Western formation. At the same time, growing strategic rivalry with the United States will prompt China to prioritize BRICS. The overarching goal of Chinese foreign policy is to counterbalance the United States, for which it will be willing to share decision-making power with lesser BRICS powers. The forum will allow China to compete with the United States without attracting excessive negative attention.
The rivalry between the two will invariably reduce the political cohesion of the group to become an influential force in world affairs. The competition within BRICS to shape their future will likely be more intense than any collective struggle against Western hegemony. The struggle between anti-Western states led by China and Russia and non-aligned states championed by India and Brazil will be a major theme of BRICS as they all seek to court the Global South. Even if New Delhi and Beijing have a national interest in remaining invested in BRICS, their mutual antipathy and distrust will ensure that the gap between the bloc’s blistering rhetoric and concrete actions remains wide.
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